Easter is such a lovely time of year, but the week after I always wonder: What in the world am I going to do with all these eggs? My mom makes the best egg salad in the world (at least I think so, and my husband agrees!) and was kind enough to share her recipe.

Egg Salad

6 hard boiled eggs

½ cup Miracle Whip

2 tablespoons white vinegar

salt and pepper to taste  Read the rest of the story...

• Mash the eggs with a potato masher or fork.

Is there a person alive, child or adult, who doesn’t like pancakes? Well probably, but not at our house. It surprises me when I hear people say they don’t know how to make them (without a box of mix) or don’t have time for them. If I make them during the week I only make a single batch for the kids and they don’t take much longer than cereal (but are much more welcome on a cold morning.) Here’s a quick and easy recipe for pancakes with ingredients you almost certainly have on hand. They’ll give your kids a special morning!  Read the rest of the story...

I recently read a statistic in a magazine (can’t remember which one) that alarmed me. According to the magazine Americans spend 90% of their food budget on processed or prepared food. Yikes! In a society where we are constantly being told processed food is bad for us, why would we buy so much of it? The reasons are, or course, that it’s cheap and easy. In our house, much more than 10% of our grocery money is spent on produce and baking supplies, but we are certainly guilty of buying processed foods: dry pasta, sauce, veggie burgers and bread are a few things I don’t often make myself. My husband and I decided we could do better, so we undertook a project: we decided to make our own bread for a couple of weeks.  Read the rest of the story...

Last year when my son turned three, he shared his birthday party with two of his pals whose birthdays fell in the same week. I like to bake, so I volunteered to make the cake. I asked the other moms what their sons wanted as a party theme. One boy wanted a rocket ship birthday, another wanted Veggie Tales, and my son just wanted everything green. Boy was I sorry I asked! Then, to top it off, one of the other moms (a hen who shall remain nameless) said she thought fondant would look nice on the cake. GULP! I had never done, nor wanted to do, fondant. It’s beautiful, and if you watch an expert do it fondant looks as easy as pie, but in real life I doubted that. It is available for purchase in craft stores, but it’s expensive and many reviews say it tastes awful. But, always ready for a challenge, I started some research. True fondant takes several ingredients you may not have on hand: glycerine, corn syrup and unflavored gelatin come to mind. But I found a recipe that replaces those ingredients with something easy to work with and inexpensive to buy: mini marshmallows. The recipe I originally used was from a website called Fondant Making 101 by Peggy Weaver but some of my technique was borrowed from a Youtube video by a woman named Amber. I recommend both sites for more information.  By the way, the picture above is our final product, a green, Veggie Tales-piloted rocket to the moon. And it tasted great, too!  Read the rest of the story...