Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, but ya know, I'm partial to mine - so Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Cake made from scratch by my talented little brother.

another use for those old t-shirts

So, I recently went to yoga class in one of Nick's t-shirts. I just had bought him new ones and got rid of the old so I thought I was in the clear. I came back from class, looked in the mirror, raised my arm and uh-oh. Yep, I had gone out in a lovely white t-shirt with attractive little stains in the underarm area. Looks like we will be purging a few more...

But rather than just throw out those old tees that are too worn to be worn, try re-purposing them into something useful. You could always cut them up to use as un-paper towels as I showed in my last tutorial, but if you have enough of those to last you for a bit, why don't you try making a super cute grocery tote?

   

Source: pm-betweenthelines.blogspot.com

Based on an inventory of Nick's current t-shirts, I think I might be making a few of these in the near future. Check out this tutorial from //between the lines// for step by step instructions.

Club: Baked

The aftermath of this cake

Here's the back story: I am not a baker. I learned to cook by adding a little of this, a little of that and just mixing things up until I liked them. Sure there was trial and error. But baking intimidated intimidates me. Everything is tasty AND beautiful. and seems sorta kinda scientific. I hated chemistry in high school. That's the part that gives me the heebee geebees.

Plus, baking when you can't have traditional baked good ingredients poses a unique challenge that a novice baker like me just was a little too shy to try and conquer. And why bother, my mom loves to bake. And if you know anyone like her, you know that they need someone to pawn off all those goodies onto and back when I lived in my hometown, I was happy to oblige. As long as I could cook dinner for myself at my apartment, I could just swing by on the weekends and steal half of a french silk pie (and watch my dad shed a tear) or a bag of cookies.

But I decided that I want to try and bake more often. And different recipes. I can do cookies pretty well. And pies - because to me, fruit based desserts are sort of closer to cooking than floured ones. But beyond that, I'm pretty limited. So what better way to dive into baking than a blog club dedicated to the art? I joined Club: Baked, a blogging/baking club that posts twice a month. Each baker bakes the same recipe from the cookbook Baked: Explorations and can visit the others to see what they've done with it. I figure that I can learn from some other amazing bloggers and try some things I never would have before. So stay tuned here on July 1st for my very first attempt at NY Style Crumb Cake!

Resource: Recipe Cards

So, I don't know about all of you, but I find that it is just so annoying to have recipes listed on well, just about everything, from post-its to sheets of oil stained paper. We have a great recipe binder from Williams-Sonoma that I love, but the recipe card refills are a tad expensive.

So I created some that suit my tastes that I can print out at home on card stock for cheap that I can also offer to you. Feel free to print them out. Click on the resources tab for the links to download.

P.S. I've been a little under the weather lately, with not much appetite, but new recipes are coming soon!