I was in the mood for something reflecting the local harvest. So I threw together muffins featuring acorn squash, cranberries, apples, and buckwheat—plus cinnamon, a traditional autumn spice. These were moist and have an addictive flavor. If you want a more mild buckwheat flavor, substitute half with wheat flour or gluten-free flour mix. Supplies measuring cups and spoons 2 mixing bowls … Read more
I made sauce out of some of the cherries I picked this summer. I often use applesauce in muffins, but decided to experiment with cherry sauce in this batch. They gave these muffins a slight pink tinge that the camera didn’t really pick up. If you don’t have access to cherry sauce, just purée some frozen cherries in a blender or … Read more
We’ve been getting a lot of acorn squash in our farm box. I used to love plain mashed acorn squash, but now prefer it in baked goods for its sweet and delicate flavor. I roasted the acorn squash at 400°F in my halogen oven and scooped out the insides to use as puree in baking, and ended up with about 4 … Read more
Spider plants, tremble in fear. The highlight of Lilo’s week, other than escaping out the back door and hiding under the deck a few times, was the other night when we had our first frost. I brought in several my houseplants from outside to keep them from getting frost-killed and stuck as many as I could in the kitchen sink to … Read more
Sometimes when I make a quilt with both brightly colored and white fabrics, I or the quilt recipient washes it without putting a Shout Color Catcher Sheet in the machine with it, and it ends up looking like this: My solution for this problem has usually been Clorox Bleach Pens, but my local supermarket no longer carries them and I … Read more
For years, I’ve had this cute little console that likely spent its previous life as a side table in a hospital or lab. It’s got an enamel top, and previously had a baked-on pastel paint-job that had seen better days. My friend Dekalb ground off the paint to bare the steel underneath, which I sealed with spray polyurethane. On the … Read more
When I visited Mindy Celeste this summer, I snagged my Icebreaker wool running tights on the pull-out metal frame of the sofa bed. My former way of fixing this would have been to patch it with a scrap of knit fabric. Now that I have a darning foot for my sewing machine, I darned it instead. The darning stitch is … Read more
My sister made me this blue comforter about 15 years ago. Unfortunately, the first house where I lived with it had a mouse problem so I ended up washing it in the machine more often than I should have otherwise. As a result, the edges have frayed. Some of the fabric wore through, too. Then Lilo the cat snacked on … Read more