Weekly Roundup 10/18/19
Oh boy! The past few days have just flown by and I have a lot to share with you, naturally! I'm also including a recipe and my Friday Favorites all in one post! I think the biggest thing to tell you about is that I finally priced all my products, kits, and classes. I've needed to do that for a long time but it's one of those things that just keeps getting pushed to the back-burner. I have some new products coming soon--mostly kits: salve kits, lip balm kits, and beeswax food cover kits. You'll be able to make several rounds of each of these products with one kit. They even come in a reusable Chicken Librarian bag (I'm waiting for them to get back from the print shop). I'm really excited about them. I'll slowly start phasing out all my products, including the photography options and knitted products. I'm pretty certain I want to focus on teaching classes and offering a 'class at home' by selling the kits. But I also realized that I was underpricing some options, including some of my classes. And I can fix that now that I know. So that was time well spent this past week (and I spent a lot of time on it). I also love, love, love my labels! My graphic design friend made them for me and I think I need to change my font to the palatino font she used! I'm all heart eyes about it.
I keep seeing all these wonderful fall colors and I can't stop taking pictures. I love the fall light too. It's so dreamy. I'm trying to practice my camera skills. Oh. I guess I didn't update you on my photography course. It was canceled due to low enrollment. Or maybe I did update you. Anyway, it was canceled but the gentleman who was running it has offered to give me an one-on-one class. I just need to figure out what I want to know.
if you remember from this post, I brought home Gertrude the Turkey. She's found herself a home and is loving life. I finished decorating for Halloween/Fall outside and inside. There's not as much inside but we made it cozy. Did I mention how much I love this time of the year!?!?
I did a lot of baking and cooking this past week, but sadly I didn't make dinner that much. I must get back to meal planning and cooking accordingly. That's going on my to-do list for next week. I have a really busy week next week (2 classes!!) so I'm going to need to make sure that I am on top of the food game. But I did make a huge batch of grainy white wine mustard and canned it. We got 15 half-pints. So I'm happy with that. I also made pumpkin-currant muffins. And a spice cake. I was asked about the recipe and my modifications to the cake so I'll put that below. We had friends over for dinner. We roasted a chicken with all the veggies--sweet potatoes, red potatoes, apples, onions, golden beets, leeks, lemons, and carrots. And I served the spice cake for dessert. We had fun. It's so nice to get together and share a home cooked meal together. All too often it's easy to just go out to eat but it's so much nicer to be in a more intimate setting and share good times and good food. I think I should make that a winter goal...to get together with friends as often as possible. Our circle of friends pretty much stems from fly fishing and every one knows everyone so it'll be fun to host some dinner guests! And it will stave off the winter blues. But how about a recipe?
The cake is from the Moosewood Restaurant Low Fat Favorites. I've been making it for years but this time I ran out of some ingredients so I substituted. I think it turned out okay. And if you ever get the chance to go to Moosewood, you should totally go!
Applesauce Spice Cake:
2 1/4 cups unbleached white flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups pure maple syrup
5 egg whites
1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Stir in the oats and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream the oil and the maple syrup for at least 3 minutes, until well blended. Add the egg whites and beat on high speed for another 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Thoroughly mix in the applesauce. Gradually add the flour mixture, beating well after each addition.
Lightly coat a 10-inch bundt pan with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Immediately invert the cake onto a serving plate and remove the pan. If desired, lightly dust the top with confectioners' sugar.
Modifications:
I've always made the cake exactly as written but I ran out of cloves but had homemade pumpkin pie spice. So I used 2 tsp of that (recipe to follow) and the normal amount of nutmeg. I also ran out of rolled oats but had steel cut oats. So I made 1 cup of steel cut oats and cooked them until just before they were soft. I added them to the batter after everything was incorporated (rather than adding dry rolled oats to the dry ingredients and then mixing that into the wet ingredients. I hope this makes sense!). And I only used 1 cup steel cut vs 1 1/2 cups rolled oats. I think the steel cut oats are more dense and I didn't want to turn the cake into an oat cake. But I think it worked. The steel cut oats finished cooking while the cake was baking. And they absorbed all that yummy spice cake flavor. Here's the pumpkin pie spice recipe:
Pumpkin Pie Spice Mix:
1/4 cup ground ginger
1/4 cup ground cinnamon
3 tbsp ground cardamom
3 tbsp ground cloves
Mix spices thoroughly and store in a jar.
I hope you make this cake for fall! It's healthier than most cakes which means you can eat as much as you want. It's a fact. I checked.
What else? Today is the next session in the marketing class I'm taking. We're supposed to have our business plans done, but I'm nowhere near done. The biggest challenge for me was pricing all my products, classes, and kits. We're also supposed to bring samples of our products and/or prototype products. I'm taking everything with me even though I'm phasing some things out. I'd like some feedback on what everyone thinks. Speaking of, I should print out my price list and my cost list. Maybe I should just take my laptop and flash drive in case I need to show something?!!?
Sunday is the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival. It's not to be missed. We'll make a day out of squishing yummy yarn, watching sheep dog trials, eating yummy food, and maybe buying yarn. It's always good to go with a plan. My original plan was to start researching local sources of fiber for my dyeing project, but I think I'm putting that on hold for now. But I'll still go and squish yarn and such.
The cash spending is going well. If you remember I didn't do so well the first round so I took out some more cash. I only took out $300 because I forgot that I gave the Mister some money and I wasn't replacing that. So I took out $300 and we still have $100 left. I do have some traveling to do this next week so most of that will go towards gas. So I guess that means no buying yarn at the Festival on Sunday! BOO! But I've got plenty of yarn so I'll try to keep that in mind. I also had some supplies to purchase for my upcoming classes so that was a big hit to the ol' checking account. But that should get me through all my upcoming classes with the exception of a couple of smaller items.
How about some Friday Favorites? I'll make it quick. I haven't had a lot of extra time to be digging too much but here's a quick rundown:
1. I really, really, really want these clogs.
2. I'm totally heart eyed over this comforter set.
3. I just heard about this book. I'm intrigued, especially because we've been watching the Ken Burns Country Music special when we can catch it on PBS.
I'm linking up with the co-hostesses of Friday Favorites. Click the links below to see what they've been up to this past week!
A Little Bit of Everything / Momfessionals / Grace and Love
The composter is up and running finally. I've been using it for our food scraps. One thing I want to do is to reduce how much food we waste. Having chickens is a good way to get rid of scraps but since we're in between flocks, I'm making those scraps work for the garden instead! I would like another compost tumbler so I'll be on the lookout for either a sale or someone selling one that isn't too yucky (they get so yucky so fast). Okay. I think that's enough. I know I'm forgetting to tell you something but whatever it is will just have to wait. I'll leave you with this cuteness.
-k
