Author Archives: Barb

Chicken is Easy

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A mother of teens once told me that she had never bought a package of chicken. She didn’t even know what to do with one. I guess she always bought processed chicken products or something. I feel sorry for her family.

Assuming there are others like her out there, I decided to photograph the process of making chicken for dinner for my little family of three. I took the photos in my “gourmet kitchen” here in Flyover Land.

IMG_20151020_170906Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Get a big enough pan and grease it with some vegetable oil, then sprinkle salt and pepper on it. Open a package of chicken (I used chicken 1/4s, which are legs and thighs still attached together, plus a couple of additional bone-in thighs) and lay them down in your pan. (Please note: Amish or organic chicken is much tastier than your basic grocery store meat department chicken.)

IMG_20151020_171312Sprinkle with additional salt and pepper, cover with foil, and bake for about 35 minutes (longer if your chicken was at all frozen). Then take out the pan, flip the pieces of chicken over, and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes or so without the foil cover.

If you want barbecued chicken, put some barbecue sauce on top of the pieces before you put the pan back in the oven. Most barbecue sauces are made with high-fructose corn syrup, but Trader Joe’s has a barbecue sauce with all-natural ingredients that’s quite tasty.

Put some extra barbecue sauce on the chicken before serving.

IMG_20151020_182134Now wasn’t that easy? And so much yummier than processed chicken products from the grocery store. I usually make enough so that we have leftovers for the lunch the next day.

 

Quilted Table Runner

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IMG_20150919_163108I finally finished this table runner, which was a kit I bought from Connecting Threads. It includes small triangles and rectangles cut from fabric that raveled easily, so it was somewhat frustrating to assemble. I wasn’t sure it was going to turn out very well, either. But once I quilted it on my supermachine, it came to life and I’m very happy with it. Flowers sent to me by a dear friend really set it off.

This is the first time I came up with my own design for each block. I don’t enjoy marking quilts, so the designs have to be something I can repeat using only the blocks as a guide. Once I knew what I wanted to do, it was easy.

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“Weeds” Quilt

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I was at the Quilt Expo last year when I saw a charm pack that I just had to have. The fabric collection is called “Weeds,” which doesn’t sound very attractive but it caught my eye, so I bought three charm packs and decided it would make a great quilt.

But I couldn’t bring myself to cut up those cute little squares, so I decided to let each square be a block. It was easily pieced; the hard part was deciding how to quilt it.

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I chose to quilt each of the 120 blocks in whatever way I wanted to quilt it. I tried not to think too hard and just let myself do it. This sounds easy but it took some getting used to as I prefer to have a plan. Now that the quilt is finished, I realize just how much fun it is to let yourself quilt in whatever way you want without too much thinking or planning.

I free-motion quilted my “Weeds” quilt on my Brother PQ1500S High Speed Quilting and Sewing Machine using Aurifil Quilting Thread.

September is…..

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I can feel it in the air: it’s a little cooler in the mornings and evenings, and the bright green of the trees is starting to fade to yellow. Fall isn’t far away, and it’s back-to-school time.

Like most people, I went to school as a child, so I grew up thinking September was the time for a fresh start each year. Even after I graduated from college and began working, September was the time when everyone was back in the office after their summer vacations, ready to start work on the new sales campaigns and catalogs.

Once I had children, all of whom I homeschooled, September was still back-to-school time, even if we’d been homeschooling all summer, because the neighborhood kids went back to school and our subdivision became very quiet during the day.

Now my youngest is in his 20s, and it’s been several years since we finished homeschooling. I’d like September to become just another month. But the sign out front of the neighborhood school says “Welcome back!” and the stores are filled with displays of school supplies on sale. There’s no escaping it: even if we’re not back to school, the rest of the world is.

The Resurrection Lily

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A few years back, I was at a church rummage sale where a lady was selling plants. She talked me into buying a resurrection lily, saying that it would pop up all green leaves in the spring, then before long it would look like it had died, and then it would reappear with lovely flowers a few months later.

So I planted it and it did well for a while before dying and disappearing. Then, at the end of summer, it returned in the form of a lovely flower.

This spring it was visibly larger and green. Then it died off and I forgot about it until a few weeks ago, when I found this:

IMG_20150810_184759(1)The next day it looked like this:

IMG_20150811_131053(1)And by the end of the week it looked like this:

IMG_20150814_145531When my grandchildren get a little older, this will make a great object lesson for explaining Jesus’ (and our eventual) resurrection, don’t you think? Sure wish I’d had one of these plants when my own children were young.