Posted in How-To, In The Kitchen, My Kids, Random Geekery, Recipes, tagged birthday, cake, DIY, marzipan, Minecraft on 8 March 2013 | 5 Comments »
Minecraft is extremely popular with my three boys, so it didn’t really come as a surprise when Boy#1 requested a “Minecraft cake” for his birthday this year.
I put my thinking cap on and decided to make a terrain block — the “easy factor” is a key component of my homemade cakes. I like to have fun with them, but I neither need or want them to look cake store perfect. Using terrain blocks as the basis makes it easy to dress up the top in an infinite number of ways.
Posted in How-To, My Kids, Recipes, Things I Eat on 15 February 2013 | Leave a Comment »
We love poutine at our house. January and February are always a little sad, as a result, as our local chip truck tends to pack up and stay home for these coldest months in Ottawa. We tend to make a lot of stuff from scratch here at our house but, even so, I tend to have a bag or two of my favorite fries in my freezer. I think they’re the best-tasting (unspiced) frozen fries out there right now, and they bake up nice and crispy in the oven.
To make Not-Quite-The-Chip-Truck Poutine, you need the following:
Posted in Sticks and Stones, The Urban Jungle, tagged gardening, upcycled stone patio on 3 January 2013 | 2 Comments »
I grew up rural and January was all about selecting and ordering seeds and planning the garden for the coming growing season. Now that I live in the city, I still feel the urge, as though it has been bred into my bones, but lack the space. My big project for the coming year is my side yard — the last bastion of actual grass on my property!
A number of years ago, I obtained broken patio stones from the dumpsters at a local home renovation store and made a recycled patio in my “urban jungle”:
Posted in Handmade Holidays, Holidays, How-To, In The Kitchen, Recipes, tagged biscotti, DIY, gifts, handmade, Holidays, recipe on 14 November 2012 | 4 Comments »
The holidays are coming and, if you’re like me, you’re starting to plan ahead to avoid the December rush. Biscotti makes a great hostess gift for dinner parties, a lovely accompaniment to a gift of freshly roasted coffee beans (*coughBytownBeanerycough*), or as a sweet indulgence for yourself when assembling childrens’ gifts late on Christmas Eve. It keeps well and can be made fresh up to a week in advance of gifting. Alternately, you can make, cut and freeze the cookies, and then thaw and dip in chocolate just prior to gifting.
While these can’t be made too far in advance, November (or earlier!) is a great time to start sourcing some funky serving plates, vintage tins, or other repurposed storage containers for gifting these. Would you believe that the handmade stoneware plate in the picture above was bought for $0.50 at a local rummage sale?
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