I know I have been such a blog slacker lately, I guess I have never been too good at blogging regularly. Lately any time I sit at the computer my 2 year old thinks that it’s time to sit on my lap and take over the mouse and click on what he wants to click on. That really makes it hard to do anything on the computer, so I usually just give up. This post I have had in the works for a long time, I took the pictures several months ago but just never got them posted.

I present to you the most yummy syrup recipe, you really need to try it! A good friend of mine gave it to me and she calls it liquid gold. It’s really easy to make and you won’t want to buy that stuff in the store that they call syrup. It tastes good on pancakes, waffles, German pancakes and even Ice Cream.

Pancake syrup

1 cube butter
1 C. sugar
1/2 C. milk
1/4 t. baking soda
1 t. Vanilla
1 t. maple flavoring

Melt butter in sauce pan add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil and boil for 2-3 min. Refrigerate leftovers and reheat when needed.

I have heard of variations of this recipe that call for buttermilk or cream instead of milk. I have heard from a reliable source that the buttermilk one is similar in taste but easier with milk because not everybody keeps buttermilk on hand. I don’t know about the cream recipe but I’m just going to go with the milk because it’s healthier. I guess as healthy as a recipe can be with a stick of butter and 1 C. of sugar can be.

I don’t know if I have any real readers left, I know I get a lot of spam comments. That is why I moderate all comments before they are posted to the blog. If there are still some real readers out there, I have some news, I am now a super hero of sorts. I am Eunice the proud side kick of Jello girl. We have a website www.joyofjello.com and we have some fun ideas for St. Patrick’s day and we have some ideas for Easter coming soon. Check it out, leave comments, let us know what you think.

Also I am going to be doing the Beehive Bazaar again, it is going to be in May and they have a new location. Check back on updates about that.

Now go and make some syrup and enjoy!

Lately I have been sewing like crazy to get ready for the Bazaar. Since this is my first time being a vendor at a craft fair, I really have no idea how much stuff I am going to need. I only have a few more days and I have been sewing every chance I get. What I get done is just going to have to be enough. Today the kids watched way too many shows on netflix, so I could get some sewing in.

I am really hoping that all of you that live in Utah county will visit the Bazaar, even those of you that don’t live in Utah county, I have heard that it is worth the drive. Plan a day for the girls to go and do some shopping for Christmas. Just make sure you check out the radseams.com table. The Beehive Bazaar is on Dec. 3,4,5(click the link for more details) I have also been asked to show the week of Feb. 10th at the new store Patina Market, they just opened last week. I haven’t been able to get down to check the shop out yet but I think it’s a cool idea. They have different artists each week. If the Beehive Bazaar goes well, I am going to need feed back and suggestions because I just might try some more craft fairs. Now on to the yummy recipe…

Keep in mind that I am not a food stylist and photographer, I was trying to hurry with this picture while trying to deal with bad lighting.

I made this for dinner last night, we had my husbands family over. When I have made it before our little family has really enjoyed it. It has made it to the top of my list of favorites. Last night everybody here seemed to enjoy it too. Well at least the adults, the kids have developing taste buds that think that a box of Mac and cheese is the best thing there is. If you like Indian food, curries and such. You should totally give this recipe a try.

Fragrant Indian Butter Chicken
2 T. Butter
1 Cup chopped onion
2 t. minced garlic
1 T. grated fresh ginger root
1 t. chili powder
1/2 t. ground turmeric
1/4 t. ground cinnamon
1 Can (14 oz) diced tomatoes, un-drained
2 T. tomato pasted
1 T. brown sugar
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. freshly ground black pepper
1 whole cooked rotisserie chicken, skin removed and cut into chunks or several breast of chicken cooked.
1/3 C. half-and-half
1/4 C. Sour cream(I have substituted plain yogurt instead of the sour cream, it was equally as good, if not better than the sour cream, I just forgot that I did that until now. I made it with sour cream last night)
1 T. minced fresh cilantro
Cooked Rice (optional)

1. In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook and stir until onion is tender, about 5 min. Add ginger root, chili powder, turmeric and cinnamon; cook and stir 1 min. Stir in tomatoes, tomato paste, brown sugar, salt and pepper.

2 Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10 min; stirring occasionally. In another bowl mix half-and-half and sour cream and some of the hot tomato mixture. Slowly add it to the rest of the tomato mixture. Add the chicken; simmer uncovered for 5 more min. Remove from the heat and stir in cilantro. Serve over rice if desired.

yield: 4-6 servings

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Have you been wondering what would happen if you forgot to put water in the pan when you want to steam some broccoli. And you leave to go to a cooking class, and tell your husband to check on it in a few min. This is what happened at our house last night…

This is a big chunk on metal that melted off the bottom of the pan. I really liked that pan.

We were really lucky that it wasn’t worse, the molten metal stayed on the stove top but it just had an inch or so to go and things could have caught on fire. I was happy that I had a house to come home to. I’m not so happy that we have to replace the cooktop, but then it will be nice to have a new one. That one was pretty old.

I’m not sure why we celebrate St. Patrick’s day, but any day that we have an excuse to have a theme color, and we can pinch people if they aren’t wearing that color, I will celebrate. Maybe someday I will look up why we get to wear green on the 17th of March.

Today we put on our green, I sent the kids to school and I made some Irish Soda bread. I don’t know if it is authentic in anyway, but it is called Irish soda bread so I made it in celebration for the day. So give it a try and maybe it will help you get in a Irish sort of mood. I sure wish I could talk with an Irish accent, but when I try I just sound like a pirate. Anyway here’s the recipe…

Irish Soda Bread

4 C. Flour
1 C. Sugar
1 t. Baking soda
2 t. Baking powder
½ t. Salt
3 Eggs
1 pint sour cream (2 cups)
1 C. raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 325, grease 2- 8×4 loaf pans, mix all ingredients until just combined. Divide into pans and bake for 1 hour.

*I don’t have any 8×4 loaf pans so I put the whole mix into one regular size pan. I think about every year I forget that I need to cook it for longer. After I cut the 2 pieces for the pictures we got to the uncooked middle. So if you do it this way cook it for longer.

For those of you that might still be checking out the give away, my bag is still up for grabs the contest ends Friday at midnight MST. It’s the post just below this one.

Monday was pretty normal, get kids to school, feed the family, laundry, dishes, and try to get the Christmas tree up(which still isn’t finished, it’s got lights and our 3 year old has tried to put the decorations on). Tues. morning was about the same, then on Tues. night was the night some friends from the neighborhood get together. We get together once a month for what we call Iron Chief Bountiful, it is pretty much an excuse to get together, eat good food, visit and have a little break from the kids. Each month we pick a country and try to make a recipe from that country. This months theme was France, I tried to think of what kind of food we ate while we were in France and I remembered the yummy crepes from the street vendors. So I set off to make crepes, I filled them with Nutella, Strawberries and topped them off with whipped cream. (If there are any readers from France, I’m sorry if that isn’t authentic) I left out one of the best parts, we vote for our favorite recipes and we get trophies that if we do win we get the honor displaying it in our homes for a month. Well Tues. night with my crepes I never thought that I would win with my easy recipe. Well I did I won the gold!

I stole the gold from a great cook that has won it about 4 times now, woohoo!

My last post about the give away explained what happened late Tues. night with running out of thread and everything. Then Wed. I was completely blown away by what happened. I really expected maybe about 20 comments to enter to win my bag. I was so surprised when I checked my email about 8:00 and I had 113 comments already. The most comments that I had before yesterday was 8. Every spare moment of my day was spent moderating comments, so many nice comments. Today the total comments/entries to win the bag is up to 490, and there are still a few in my inbox waiting to be moderated. I am totally blown away, I never would have thought that many people would ever look at my blog and all in a little over one day. What a fun crafting community! I wish that I could email all of the people back with a nice note but I have no idea how I would go about that. So if you left a comment and you happened to come back, thank you for the nice things that you said. The regular readers of my blog know that I have been going to open a online shop for a few months but I have been dragging my feet, because I have the thought in the back of my head that nobody would want to buy the stuff that I make. But then I think I love to make pottery and I love to sew and if I could make some money to support my crafting habits that would be great. So with your nice comments, you have given me confidence that maybe people would like to buy what I make. I am really going to work on getting the shop up and running. Lets say January, maybe earlier so check back. Like I said in my last post the new site is going to be www.radseams.com.

I have been going to post this recipe for awhile and every time after I make it and it is already consumed I think, I should have taken a picture. I am a very visual person and a picture always makes a post better. I don’t have a picture of this yet, I am going to post the recipe anyway. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Mango Lassi

1 Cup plain yogurt
½ Cup milk
1 Cup chopped mango
4 teaspoons sugar
A dash of ground cardamom (optional)

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend. Makes about 2 cups.

Here in Utah it is hard to find good mango’s, or I am just really bad at picking them out. So I tried some frozen they work out well and it is also good to substitute the mango’s with berries. I have also tried it with a mixture of frozen blueberries and raspberries. I’m sure fresh fruit would work good too.

Check back on the 3rd, I am participating in the sew mama sew give away day.

I was looking at the pictures in iphoto and I came across this photo.

This is my version of Halloween shepherds pie. My recipe isn’t fancy so I don’t think that I will post it. For the ghosts I put the mashed potato’s in a pastry bag without a tip and squirted out ghosts and put peas as eyes. The kids liked it and ate it, so I called it a success. Anybody have any other good ideas for Halloween foods?

My sister-in-law is finally engaged! For years her and I have talked about me doing her wedding cake, so now we have a date in Aug. She has decided that she wants to do a cupcake wedding cake so I have been brushing up on my cupcake making skills. Well I didn’t ever really have any cupcake making skills but when I am done with this wedding cake I’m going to have some serious cupcake skills.

At first I was thinking that we could do a few different kinds with yummy fillings and stuff. But I am finding that might be a bit to ambitious for me, since it is my first cupcake wedding cake. Then I started thinking that we could do 2 flavors Vanilla and Chocolate, but my chocolate batches aren’t turning out as good as I have hoped. They either haven’t tasted very good or the tops sink. So we are probably going to be using a Vanilla cupcake recipe. But I talked to my sister-in law today and she is fine with one flavor, she is going to check with her fiance to make sure he is alright with it. The Vanilla recipe that we will probably use says that it is a recipe that has been adapted from the Magnolia Bakery, I thought that it was very yummy. And we are probably going to use a marshmallow fondant for the icing on the cakes. I think the fondant makes the cupcake look nicer.

…Interrupting this regular scheduled blog…(Well I guess I’m not very regular at blogging but anyway)
I had just checked on my kids and sat down to write this blog entry and there was a knock at the door and this is what was there.

It amazes me how fast kids can make a big mess, and when they do make a big mess I always have to grab the camera and take a picture. I need to have some of the embarrassing pictures to show their dates right? I love the dirt monobrow and cupcake crumb beard. I really do bathe my kids, they are clean now. At least 2 of them are clean.

Anyway back to the cupcakes the recipes are from a friend in the neighborhood, and my sister-in-law picked my 2 favorite designs out of the ones that are in the above picture. She liked the middle one with the yellow fondant rose and the checkered one with the red dots. So we are going to do a combination of the two designs.

I have decided that I am going to open an etsy shop, I have been working on a few things to put up for sale. So my plan is to get the things done and open shop in the next couple of weeks. So write a post when it’s up and ready so you can check it out. Have a happy first day of summer! If you didn’t know the first official day of summer is tomorrow. At least that is what my calendar says.