To ant or not to ant

A few months ago I got hit with Summer Ants.  It's something that I've grown up with for years. It was so engrained in my life that I didn't believe it was possible to have summer with out the little buggers.  This year is the first time in my 3 years of being in my current place that I've run into this problem.  Sugar supplies must have been low because they found their way into every single sugar item I own.

It occurred to me that now was the perfect time to test out a organic remedy for ants that I'd seen on Pintrest at some point.  Corn Meal. What?  That's my first thought when I read the post.  These people must be wrong.

The idea is that you put down some corn meal, and the ants eat it or bring it back to the nest and apparently they can't digest the stuff, so they die.  The entire colony or a large portion of it, because I suppose they eat the stuff before anyone figures out what is going on.

So I pour a bowl of corn meal and place it to the spot where I traced the ants to, behind the biggest couch in my house.  And nothing.

As you can see, there are no ants crawling over the edges to get to the cornmeal feast I have laid out. They apparently care for the stuff so little, that even when bribed with a dead fly sprinkled with Corn meal they couldn't care less.

You can kind of seen the ants in that picture, and accept to pull the fly out, they never went into the corn meal.  Basically ignored it completely.


These ants also appeared to completely ignore the generic ant traps that I bought after the corn meal failed to rid my house of the darn things. So perhaps it's just a case of the super smart ant tribe?  Once I boxed up all the sugar items they could find and kept washing any sugary dishes I ate, they disappeared.  I may never know the real reason.

Pan-cupcakes

Another Pintrest idea was attempted last night.  I decided that I was in serious need of some pancake lovin' and whipped up 12 pancake muffins.  These are some fantastically fun treats and are super easy to create.  It get's you that pancake flavor you desire without any flipping or in my case, flopping.  Relatively mess less and a huge plus, has very few dishes involved for cleaning later. A whole lot of pluses in my mind. The idea have been trending on Pintrest for a few days and simple enough in action.

Step 1: Get pancake mix.

Step 2: Find any other ingriedents if necessary.

Step 3: Mix

Step 4: Pour into cupcake pan.

Step 5: Bake.

Step 6a: Cool

Step 6b: Eat

And I found that I actually really enjoyed these babies.  I filled each cupcake indent of my silicone tray about half full and watched them rise slightly as them baked.  Mine could have used more time in the oven, as they were pretty albino in color, but they taste nice all the same.

I worked off this really simple idea as discussed here, at Gwaltney Foods, and expanded to fit my tastebuds at that moment.

The difference for me is that I went with Chocolate Chip Coconut Pan-Cupcakes and poured the batter into regular sized cupcake pans (as I do not own any mini cupcake pans).

It the batter went a sprinkling of sweetened coconut.  Poured into the cupcake pan when the batter,  was ready.  Now just imagine someone wildly chucking individual  chocolate chips into each cupcake compartment in the misguided hope that this would help evenly disburse chocolaty goodness throughout the pan-cupcakes. On top of that, floating on the lagoon of goo I sprinkled a few more chips and then loaded up on the coconut shavings.  I do love coconut.

While the pan-cupcakes were baking I created yet another tasty dessert, deconstructed almond joys (I guess they would technically be mounds, but almod joys would be easy enough to follow), which I may discuss at another time.

Recipe: Oreo Rice Crispy

This week I went a bit nuts in testing out Rice Crispy recipes. For final days and party events I made three different types in the last 3 days.  Today I'm gonna work through the recipe for one of the creations I made myself.  

I was working with the basic Kellogs Rice Crispy recipe which can be found here.  While classic Crispies are wonderful, I was looking for something with a little more pizazz!!

Thus born are my version of the Oreo Rice Crispy. 

 Ingredients in their packages. I do cheat and use off brand Oreos.  They taste the same when crushed and added to other things!  Plus they're much cheaper on average.

Here are the ingridients all measures out!

The next step is to melt the butter, add the marshmellows and let them melt.

From there, pour in the rice crispies and mix like a maniac.

Once mixed well enough, start folding in the crumbled oreos! 

Continue mixing untill your satisfied that everything is coated in melted marshmallows. 

Pour into per-greased baking dish, a 9 x 13 works well with the basic recipe.

Carefully spread to fit pan.

Important TIP!! 

Do not press heavily on the mixture when spreading into  the pan.  Heavy compression will create solid, hard to bite bricks.  Instead spread lightly, allowing for jumbled spaces.  The marshmallow should be sticky enough to hold it all together. 

Optional Step is to melt down some chocolate and pour it over the rice crispies!

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 1 package (10 oz., about 40) regular marshmallow OR 4 cups miniature marshmallows
• 6 cups puffed rice cereal
• 2 cups crushed Oreos

 

Tools

• Large Pot or Pan
• Spatula
• Pr-greased 9x13 baking pan 

 

Directions

1. In large pot melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. 
2. Remove from heat.
3. Add puffed rice cereal. Stir with spatula until well coated.
4. Fold in Oreo crumbles. 
5. Using buttered spatula or wax paper lightly & evenly press mixture into per-greased 13 x 9 inch pan. 
6. Let Cool. 
7. Cut into 2-inch squares. 
8. If desired, melt chocolate in double boiler.
9. Pour over top of Rice Crispy brick before cutting.

Best if served the same day.

Knife Project

 The knife project is basically finished.  All my knives now have nice shiny handles.

 They've been restained and have a coat or two of polyurethane in these pictures.  

 

There are some very complicated seeming ways to go about refurbishing knife handles.  And I know that poly isn't the most food safe choice, but I personally feel that I don't use the knifes frequently enough, and the food doesn't normally rub on the handles, so i'm all right with it.  A deciding factor in my choice was that I have poly on hand and do not own any of the oils and things that the internet recommended for the job. 

It is safe to say that I am happy with the results.  

Now I just need to figure out what to do about the knife block.  It's looking extra drab itself now.  

It just can't compete with the stylish and shiny knives it houses!!!

Knives

It's about time that my kinfe block got a new life.  The block is a large chunk of dark wood that eats up space.  But as I'm not yet a huge fan of the magnetic strips attached to the walls, I'm thinking that I've got to find a way to liven this baby up rather than replacing it with a modern storage form.

The knives themselves were hand me downs from my parents, and have been going strong since before I was born.  Now the wear and tear is getting pretty obvious.  The handles have lost their luster.  The protective poly coating is basically gone.  And on the knives that get really frequent use the stain is disappearing.

Below is the close up, they're lacking shimmer and shine.  These poor knives appear tired.  

 

So right now I'm in the process of sanding the handles down.   I'm going to have to look up what's the best way to re-liven them.  My instincts say re-stain and coat with polyurethane.  But I may just be treating them like cabinets, and am unsure of the food safety level of polyurethane. Whatever I use I want it to be food safe and water proof, as knives will find themselves in and around food and water. 

Recipe: Banana bread Cinamon Rolls

There are few times in my life when I have trouble sleeping.  Today is one of those days where I can just tell that I'm going to be resistant.  Not really to the act of sleep itself, but more so to the things required for sleep to take place. Which makes me really go bananas because I can tell that I'm tired and do want to sleep.  It seemed thusly appropriate that instead, I try my hand at baking bread.  A Cinnamon Roll Bananna Bread to be precise. 


Click here to be transported to the original glorious instructions.

The miracle about this bread attempt is that I forced myself to basically stick to the directions.  A bad habit that has formed over my life time is to change things up in ways that I think are small changes, but in the end have being time effects on the food. This time I did not make that mistake.  Therefore, I'm hoping that this bread turns out nice enough to bring with me to class tomorrow.  Or if I like it enough, to keep for myself and make another batch with the bananas that now sit on my counter for the slightly longer Monday class time.

I did not take pictures as I was going.  I will take pictures of the final project, no matter what it looks like. I hope it looks good.  As it is a yeast based bread, I now think I should have given it an egg wash to make the top all shiny at the final moment, but it wasn't in the directions.. so perhaps next time.

There are 12 more minutes on the clock.

My one challenge was that the break didn't rise properly.  My place is not warm enough to support the needs of waiting yeast.  Instead of doubleing in size because it was sitting in a warm spot in my house I kept placing it on top of my toaster oven and turning the appliance on and off so as to carefully assist with the rising and not bake the bottom part of the bread.  And I worry that because I had to do all the kneading on the cold counter top, perhaps it messed with the chemical reactions that were going on.

I also do not own a Kitchen aide type of mixer so everything was hand mixed.  I'm never sure if I'm over doing the mixing or under doing it.  The dough did look awfully soggy to me, before I started kneading it the first time.  After I finally got it to rise it looked more how I'm used to so that was encouraging.  Now I wait for the ding of the oven timer.  And keep clicking the oven light on and off to see what's going on.

It does smell really good!!

 And there they are, cooling!  They look and smell great.  I can only hope that they're going to taste good as well.  I'm trying to continue to follow directions, "Cool Completly." But I'm not sure that I have the will power.  I want to cut into one of them right now!!  Eating warm bread fresh out of the oven is one of those great little joys in life.  I can't really see it hurting the bread to be cut into before it's cool and needs to be warmed again.  Plus, how do you get the butter to melt without something warming it up above room temp?

Recipe below the Cut!!
In case you didn't check out the link!