Is there such as thing as a pie gauntlet? If so, then Mrs Dragon has thrown it down.
In celebration of Pi Day — 3/14 — she has issued a pie challenge, complete with nifty prizes. I certainly won’t be making any more sweet potato pies, but I do have some pecans awaiting their destiny in the freezer.
I also have an awesome recipe from the folks at America’s Test Kitchen. All I lack now is the ability to properly roll out a pie crust.
Posted in Eats | Tagged baking, food, kitchen, Mrs Dragon, Mrs Dragon's Den, pecan pie, Pi Day, pie, pie crust, postaday2011 | 2 Comments »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 47: This is going to sound totally lame, but I’ve wanted a groovy tissue cover box for a while. I mean, if you’re going to have to keep a box of tissues around, it may as well look good. Bless their hearts, tissue makers try, but their box designs just scream “Go get grandma her tissues.”
Target has been slowly marking down tissue cover boxes for a few months And by “slowly,” I mean they’ve been marking down $19.99 boxes to $16.49. Not exactly what I call a clearance.
Today’s Target journey, however, turned up the beauty pictured above for $4.99. It was the only one that I could find, and it was perfect. It’s groovy without being flashy, because a flashy tissue cover box would just be gauche, no?
Previously:
Day 46: Tightened a couple of cabinet pulls in the master bathroom with the handle on a pair of nail clippers. Because sometimes rattling cabinet pulls compel you to fix them RIGHT NOW without having to wander into the freezing garage to search for a proper screwdriver.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, Photographs | Tagged bathroom cabinets, cabinet pulls, challenge, do one, garage, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, resolutions, screwdriver, Target, tissue box cover | Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 45: Rescued a florist’s vase from the garage. Normally, this sort of thing would end up in the thrift store box, but I like its minimalism. I cleaned it up and filled it with colored glass pebbles that I bought for a tiling project. (We were going to intersperse the pebbles in a pattern among the tiles, but it turns out that both my husband and I HATE tiling and there was no way we were going to work any more complications into the project than we had to.)
Anyway, I’m sort of not digging the whole colored pebbles in a vase thing, so it may end up at the thrift store anyway, but at least the garage is a little neater.
Previously:
Day 44: Dropped two magazines from our subscription list. Both are guilty of misguided attempts to blend their print and online operations, attempting to increase subscription prices while publishing all stories on the Internet for free. This is not a survivable online strategy. Besides, my husband cashed in a bunch of airline miles a couple of weeks ago for still more magazine subscriptions, so we’re still in the dead tree business.
Posted in Do One Thing | Tagged challenge, decluttering, Do One Thing, garage organization, glass pebbles, magazines, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, resolutions, subscriptions, thrift store, tiles, tiling, vase | 1 Comment »
And another Valentine’s Day passes without a Haggerty contribution to Hallmark or FTD. Because, seriously, isn’t it nicer to do something awesome for your significant other when they least expect it, rather than when the world tells them they should?
Grand gestures: They’re not controlled by the calendar. Little gestures also mean a lot.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged FTD, Hallmark, husband, postaday2011, spouse, Valentine's Day | 1 Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 42: I picked up a Michael Graves drawer organizer, priced at $4 rather than the normal $10, at Dirt Cheap, which seems to have an unending supply of items from Target this winter. I had three small kitchen cabinet drawers filled with accessories and gadgets, all of which I use sometimes, but some of which I use ALL the time. And drawers are like handbags — the thing you need is always at the bottom under other things.
Now I have the stuff that I use all the time sorted into four little organized rows in a larger drawer. I moved the contents of the larger drawer (rolls of foil, plastic wrap, parchment paper, etc.) into two small drawers, and the third small drawer holds the things I use sometimes.
The three small drawers before organization.
(If you haven’t heard of Dirt Cheap, it’s an offshoot of Hudsons Salvage. When I was growing up in South Mississippi, Hudsons was known for selling what I called “disaster merchandise” from stores that had suffered fires or flood. Today, Hudsons and its offshoots, Treasure Hunt and Dirt Cheap, sell what’s known as “problem inventories,” which apparently include everything from closeout stock to seconds. Shopping at these stores is an adventure, to say the very least.)
Also this week:
Day 41: Filled all the liquid soap containers with liquid soap, then forgot to bring them upstairs for a whole 24 hours. But it’s the thought that counts, right? And your hands can’t be that dirty anyway.
Day 43: Sort of organized some school files I brought with me on a CD from my last job. This is the sort of task that makes Dropbox pretty appealing.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home | Tagged challenge, Dirt Cheap, Do One Thing, drawer organization, drawer organizer, Dropbox, Hudsons Salvage, kitchen, kitchen organization, liquid soap, Michael Graves, mississippi, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, resolutions, South, Target, Treasure Hunt | Leave a Comment »
I’m not a vegetarian, but I always seem to bring vegetarian dishes to parties. I guess I’m a sympathizer.
This is a recipe that several people have requested. Last week, a friend remembered the dish from a year ago and asked me to bring it to a gathering tonight.
It’s ridiculously easy to make. The original recipe, which someone emailed to me a few years ago, called for a couple tablespoons of olive oil, but I left it out after the oil got clumpy in the refrigerator once. You won’t miss it. Also, the original recipe says it makes four to six servings, but it makes tons of servings for a potluck-style dinner.
Black Bean Salad
Two 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed and drained
2 tomatoes, seeded, chopped
1 small bell pepper, chopped
4 green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons minced cilantro
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and black pepper to taste
Combine all ingredients, mixing well. Chill, covered, for at least one hour.
Posted in Eats | Tagged black bean salad, black beans, cooking, food, olive oil, postaday2011, potluck, recipes, vegetarian | 1 Comment »
Here it is: my version of the Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie that’s been mentioned on dozens of food blogs over the past few weeks.
I’m glad I got that out of my system.
They were delicious just out of the oven, but they seem to be getting crunchier with every hour that passes. I prefer my cookies softer.
I used mini Oreos instead of the full-sized cookies, since blog after blog warned me that these cookies were ridiculously oversized. Since I don’t own a cookie scoop of any size, I weighed small balls of cookie dough on my digital kitchen scale. Two .5-ounce dough balls covered each cookie.
My verdict: They’re fun, but overrated. I’m taking them to a party tomorrow night, so we’ll see if I change their rating based on the reaction of other diners.
Posted in Eats | Tagged Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookie Sandwich, cookies, digital scale, kitchen scale, Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies, Oreos, postaday2011 | Leave a Comment »
In the end, it was nobody’s fault but my own that I brought home a monstrously large plastic box filled with salad greens. I already had my requisite $5 worth of Earth Fare hipster food (quinoa and steel-cut oats) in the cart, and the free salad coupon was burning a hole in my pocket. I sighed when I saw the packaging, but I put it in the cart anyway.
I didn’t truly realize how large the box was until I got it home and had to rearrange my entire refrigerator to make it fit.
I try not to buy produce in big plastic boxes like this, but other people obviously do. On the New York Times Freakonomics blog, James McWilliams maintains that this kind of packaging extends the life of produce, meaning that people are more likely to get a chance to eat it before it goes bad. Granted, this box of lettuce stayed reasonably fresh for the better part of two weeks. Had I been able to choose the amount of salad greens I was going to purchase, however, I never would have bought that much at one time. (And note that Earth Fare does offer a fresh mix of greens that you can purchase by the pound. Or ounce, in my case.)
Clamshell packaging just seems like so much overkill.
McWilliams points out that consumers could alleviate the need for food-extending packaging by learning how to shop strategically (don’t buy too much food at once), a skill that, admittedly, may be easier for a two-person household with a reasonably predictable routine.
Luckily, the box was No. 1 plastic, meaning I could put it in my recycling bin. I note, however, that a lot of houses in my neighborhood don’t put out a big blue recycling bin every week, so I fear that a lot of this packaging is not being recycled. Even if it is recycled — and even if the company uses 100 percent recycled plastic in the packaging — more plastic clamshells must be manufactured.
I guess what I’m saying is no more huge clamshell produce containers in the Haggerty household, free coupon or not. And I’m thinking that some sort of washable produce bags, like these, are in my future.
Posted in Eats | Tagged clamshell, Earth Fare, food, greens, plastic, postaday2011, produce, quinoa, recycling, salad, steel-cut oats, washable produce bags | 1 Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 35: Pinpointed the cause of the problem with one of the closet doors in my office (other than the fact that cheap, hollow-core bi-fold closet doors are the worst invention ever marketed to uncaring builders and unaware homeowners). Whoever lived here before yanked on the door so hard that the bottom pivot screw was actually ripped from the door, leaving a gigantic hole that I’ll have to fill with epoxy. Assuming I don’t simply replace both the doors with an awesome beaded curtain first.
Day 36: Spent the better part of the morning helping the husband set up my mom’s new computer via telephone and remove connection. He configured her wireless connection, while I ran Mac orientation. And if your mom has ever had computer problems while you were eight hours away, you know that helping her launch a reliable new computer setup totally helps your peace of mind. Ergo, this counts as a point for life organization.
Day 37: Spent a couple of hours researching online backup systems. I tried Mozy, but it’s become extremely unreliable lately, and its non-detailed interface doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies about which files have REALLY moved into the cloud. I’m currently leaning toward Dropbox, but I’m still taking nominations if anybody has a strong opinion.
Day 38: I made the mistake of taking the humidifier apart before I filled it up with water before bed. Oh my. The scale buildup on and around the heating element was simply horrifying, and I spent the better part of 30 minutes trying to scrub it clean. Even more horrifying was the knowledge that my husband had, indeed, actually cleaned it before. More than once. Meaning that the mess I saw did not take three years to accumulate, but possibly only weeks.
Day 39: I sorted through two catch-all UAH file folders. Not the biggest task, but I did manage to merge the documents that belonged together and get rid of some duplicates. The paperless office remains elusive.
Day 40: I grabbed a small stack of old copies of the New Yorker, tore out the stories that I had marked to save, filed them and put the old magazines in the recycling bin.
Posted in Do One Thing, Family, Home | Tagged beaded curtain, bifold closet doors, challenge, computer, Do One Thing, Dropbox, epoxy, filing cabinet, humidifier, husband, Mac, mother, Mozy, New Year's resolution, New Yorker, online backup, organization, paperwork, postaday2011, recycling, resolutions, UAH | 1 Comment »
The husband was out of town on a business trip earlier this week, and I didn’t realize how desolate the house was without him until I spotted my toothbrush occupying the bathroom counter, all by itself.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Family, Photographs | Tagged business trip, home, husband, postaday2011, toothbrush | Leave a Comment »
Entirely Adequate 