Baking Mixes

In my efforts to make more of our food from scratch, but still with an element of convenience, the other day I mixed up a few different baking mixes.
It's mostly just a matter of measuring and mixing the dry ingredients together, which is quite a bit of the effort in baking things like cornbread, cake, etc. By mixing up several batches at the same time, you can get all the ingredients out once and dirty up bowls, measuring cups and spoons once for several times of baking.

One of the recipes I mixed up here is a cookie recipe that calls for the sugar to be creamed first with oil. Since the sugar isn't mixed in with the flour at the same time, I just whisked the flour and other dry ingredients together and put them in the bottom of the jar. Then I measured out the sugar, set a storage bag in the top of the jar, and poured the sugar into it, keeping the sugar separate from the other dry ingredients.

I wrote instructions as to how to mix up and bake each one on a card and also labeled each jar with the kind of mix it was.
Here's a honey-wheat muffin mix, pie crust mix, the cookie mix behind it, and two corn bread mixes.The smaller jars are pint jars, and the larger ones are quarts. The cookie recipe just barely fit into a quart jar. I saw some half-gallon jars at the hardware store a few days ago in the canning aisle. Those would probably work better for larger mixes. Canning jars are nice because a lot of the lids are interchangeable, and you can even get plastic screw-on lids if you don't like using the flats and bands.

We've eaten up the cookie mix already, and I'm kind of getting a hankering for some corn bread again. My mouth is watering already!

Goat, Pig, or Cat?

Thought I'd show you this picture of Geronimo, the barn cat. He's begun taking his meals on a shelf in the barn.
The reason? Monkey the Pig, er, I mean Goat, has developed a taste for cat food. If Geronimo is eating anywhere she can reach, the next thing you know, she's stealing his food.Don't worry, this particular sack she's diving into is cracked corn. I try to keep her out of the cat food if possible. It surely can't be good for her, can it? If I don't close the lid on the barrel where the cat food is when I leave the barn for a minute, upon my return I find her trying to get into that sack, too. One night when the wheel barrow was parked beside the feed barrel, she managed to climb high enough to reach Geronimo's "out-of-reach" shelf anyway.

Don't be surprised one of these days if I post a video of the world's first meowing goat. :)

Felted Mittens

So what did your groundhog say? We've had mostly cloudy weather today, but the clouds may be breaking up a little. Maybe it depends on what time the groundhog looks outside.

Wow, this post is actually about yarn and knitting! Can you believe it? I finally finished some felted mittens I'd started some time ago.I used some KnitPicks "Wool of the Andes," holding two strands together and knit them in kind of a combination of two patterns. (And although it doesn't look that way in the picture, they really are both pretty close to the same size.)

I was in a hurry, of course, to get them felted and forgot to take a picture before throwing them in the washer. I used warm water and a little dishwashing soap, and ran them one time through the heavy duty wash cycle. It agitates faster and longer than the regular cycle on our machine.

It took them two or three days to get completely dry. They're really thick (which makes them a little stiff), and seem like they'll be really warm. You can find lots of patterns for felted mittens on Ravelry if you think you want to give some a try. :)

Sorry, But I Couldn't Resist...

Who says you can't find any classy literature here?

Look!!

"A Trail of Two Kitties"

I know, I know, but that's just what came into my mind when I saw the tracks. :)

A Closer Look (1-27-10)

The little pine tree in the front yard covered with frost:

Cafeteria Style?

Monkey the Goat during evening chores:

"Hey, don't they keep cattle food in here? I wonder what it tastes like?"

"Maybe I'll just go up to the barn and see what they've got up there."

"What? The sack isn't open?!"

"Um, excuse me, a little help here..."

"There, that's better. Thanks!"

"Mmmmmm. Corn. Delicious!"

A Change of Scenery

About two weeks ago I took this picture of our thermometer on the back porch rail:

See how fuzzy? That's because I took the picture through the window without opening the door. Why? Notice the temperature...10 degrees below zero. We had several snowfalls with accumulations and some really cold temperatures. Now we've gone from this:

to this:

And doing the chores looks like this:

and this:

Sure glad these boots don't leak. (I have another pair that does.)