About two months ago, I bought me a Sunbeam Breadmaker at a rummage sale for $15. I blogged about it at Elementary Chef. The first few loaves I did turned out awesome. Since then I haven’t had the best results. The bread is still edible but it doesn’t rise as much. Since I’m doing the same process, I’m not sure what is going wrong.

It has me wondering if the weather has anything to do with it. It seems high humidity days are not the days to make a loaf of bread. Another possible reason could be the well water. We switched to well water not too long ago. If it’s hard water, then that could be the culprit. The next loaf I will use bottled water, which is probably a good idea anyway since it’s already at room temperature.

If I can’t make bread in high humidity, then that will only leave about two months of the year I can bake. Ah the joys of living in the deep south. Oh well, at least I only paid $15 for the breadmaker.

I have been testing out cooking in the microwave with my new silicone bakeware. First, I did a cake which turned out pretty darn good. This weekend I made brownies that turned out OK.

The brownies would have been much better if my pan could have rotated in the microwave but it was just too big.

Next time I will not cut the water as the cake seemed to dry out pretty fast. Of course that could have been because I sliced it up to take it to a get together.

It was a fast and easy way to bake a cake. It’s so hot in the summer so baking in the oven is just out of the question but with the microwave it is a great alternative.

Meals this week are going to down and dirty. We will be having a lot of frozen meals for two reason.

First, we are starting a diet and to keep our calories in check, we will start out with frozen meals. It means less worry about calories while we adjust to a new way of eating. Plus hubby thinks he’ll be working late this week. I hate cooking when it’s just me eating. The two year old eats various foods but it’s always whatever she wants and not necessarily what I’ve cooked.

So, this week will be fast and easy. Probably not the tastiest or the best for us but hopefully will help get us on the dieting track.

Weeks like this make me feel like such a smart housewife. I took about 5-10 minutes and actually did some menu planning! To try to get into the habit of doing this, I’m going to try to do Menu Planning Monday each week. We had some leftover food from last week, so this week was pretty easy to plan.

Monday – Hamburgers, French Fries
Tuesday – Manicotti, corn
Wednesday – Spaghetti, breadsticks
Thursday – homemade pizza
Friday – eat out

For breakfast, we either have biscuits or oatmeal. I eat lunch at my Mom’s and hubby either takes his lunch or eats out. The weekends are usually a free-for-all – whatever you can find you can eat.

I already feel peace about this week knowing the menu is planned. Now I can answer that daily question from my husband “What’s for dinner?” with ease.

When I cook, we always have leftovers. Usually I save them because it seems wasteful to throw out good food. The problem is that my husband does not eat leftovers, so it falls on me to eat them. Yea, me! Sometimes I do not finish all the leftovers or forget exactly how long they have been in the refrigerator.

I have come up with a new system for storing leftovers. I buy those Rubbermaid storage containers that have the colored lids. At certain times of the year, the lids will be different colors like for Halloween they were orange. I thought about buying some containers with different colored lids and then use one color for each day of the week. This way I will know when leftovers were put in the fridge.

If I can’t find enough colored lids, then I can get some of those colored stickers used to price items for rummage sales and assign a color for each day of the week. Then just place that color on the lid when I store leftovers. I could even write the date on the sticker since sometimes I go for a week longer without cleaning out the fridge.

After looking for a few weeks for this item, I finally found a mini muffin pan at Wal-Mart in another city. I had been wanting one ever since a co-worker brought mini cupcakes to work. It was like a light bulb went off in my head and I was struck with a great idea.

I love the hostess 100 calorie cupcake packs. There are three cupcakes filled with a creme topped with chocolate icing. How can all of this goodness have just 100 calories? Well there are only three and they are tiny. But they are very satisfying. Seeing the delicious treats my co-worker brought to share made me realize that I could make these at home in any flavor that I wanted. The key to the 100 calorie pack snacks is portions, so I can figure out how much the cake has and then divide by the number of cupcakes I have. Who knows. I might can have 4 cupcakes instead of 3!

Also while I was buying the pan, the cashier told me that she bakes brownies in hers since they come out the perfect size for her daughter. I made some yesterday as my daughter loves brownies, too. They came out really well. Also I plan to back some strawberry cupcakes today.

The only drawback is getting that tiny bit of batter into the cups. I tried a ladle spoon but it’s still messy. It seems I have a pancake batter cup with a special spout somewhere that I might try next.

So, while it’s a little more work to get the mix into the mini muffin cups, it’s worth the effort since you can have a bite-sized snack of your favorite sweets without a lot of calories.

Honey is just one of those kitchen staples that I seldom use by always have on hand. When I was a child, my mom would heat up honey to soothe my sore throat but thats about the only time I remember eating honey. I bought some for a recipe, used it once, and now it just sits on my shelf since I’m not sure what to do with it.

That is until this weekend when I was at a friend’s home. She was talking about how her soon-to-be husband it borderline diabetic, so they have changed their eating habits drastically. One change they made was to get rid of the sugar and replace it with honey. But not with just any honey but honey made locally.

I was intrigued since I always like to support local farmers but what she said next had me sold on it. She said that since they’ve been adding local honey to their tea, etc. that their allergies have improved greatly! Hearing her explain why really makes sense. Local bees visit local flowers and then make the honey. You eat the honey, giving your body exposure to those allergens while giving it time to build up an immunity. That makes sense because flu vaccines contain a small amount of the flu.

Here are some honey recipes from the Honey Association. You can replace sugar with honey in any recipe but remember the honey is much sweeter than sugar, so use less.

So, now I’m on the hunt for local honey. Of course, Wal-Mart didn’t have any but some of the local grocers might. If that fails, then I’ll try the local fruit stand or a local farm that we toured last October.

I’ve been looking for foods that burn more calories than they actually have. These are the foods that I really want to include in my daily diet. These fat burners would hopefully help me lose weight and still eat most of the foods that I love.

Here are a few foods that I have found:

Carrots
Soybeans
Blueberries
Watermelon
Chillies
Apples

Also, apparently dairy is once again good for your diet since it help to breakdown fat.

I’m going to play Menu Planning Monday this week, so I’ll have to keep these foods in mind and plan accordingly.

I may not be a great cook but I love to look at recipes, especially ones with pictures. It makes the food more appealing and gives a guide as to what the finish product should look like. Also I’m trying to improve my technique of taking food pictures, so having a cache of photos to look at is helpful.

TasteSpotting is a website that has pages and pages upon food pictures. Some are recipes, and some might be other information. Each food picture is submitted. You can search for food pictures since it seems that food photos are listed as they are added.

I found a delicious looking brownie recipe featuring Reese’s peanut butter chips. You can’t go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter.

If I get better with my photo-taking skills, I might even submit a food picture with a recipe.

It’s almost summer time and a popular dessert in the south is strawberry shortcake. It’s probably popular everywhere because it is so good! Preparing strawberries for cooking can take a few minutes since you have to remove the stem. Now here is an easy trick I learned today that will get rid of that stem.

Take a plastic straw and place it in the middle of the bottom of the strawberry. Then gently push it up through the top. The green leaves will come with it, plus the core of the strawberry will be inside the straw.

I haven’t tried this but saw someone do it at work. He did had to poke two holes in the first one he did to line it up properly, but after that he was removing the stems like a pro. So, not only is it a good way to prepare those strawberries fast, it’s an easy one to do.