7/10/10

Brownies, Bacon-Cheese Cornbread and Birthdays

This summer, my nephews, Alexander and Zachary, have been helping keep my little guys entertained so my brain won't seize up. Kind of them, really. So in return, we do fun things together, and I feed them. This week I fed them pinto beans, bacon/cheese cornbread, potato pancakes, and brownies.


I don't know if I've shared my bean recipe before, but my potato pancakes are on here. The boys weren't enthralled with them, but Terah, who had come over sew that day, scarfed them down. They ARE delicious.
I also made delicious bacon/cheese cornbread. This is SO easy!! I take my regular cornbread recipe, replace the butter with bacon drippings, and add crumbled bacon and about a cup of shredded cheese. I used cheddar, but whatever you have is fine. I do add the bacon and cheese to the dry ingredients, and I heat the bacon drippings in an iron skillet in the oven before adding it to the batter. I pour the batter right into that hot skillet, which makes for a crispy yummy crust on the cornbread. Bake it as usual.

The amount of bacon I use depends on how much is left from cooking a pound for breakfast. Sorry the pic isn't better, but it SOUNDS so good, the pic is pointless.


My brownies are a shameful embarrassment. I buy the cheapest package of brownie mix I can find, then add most of a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips to the batter. That's it! The high percentage of chocolate chips to brownie REALLY keeps it moist and makes it even MORE chocolaty! I *can*, and sometimes do, make brownies from scratch, but these are good enough for company! The boys scarfed a couple of these down, and took some for the road. Terah enjoyed a couple, too. To be honest, I don't like chocolate that much, and the rest are still wrapped tightly on my counter. Three days later.




Recently, two sweet girls I know had birthdays, so I whipped them up some cute outfits from Ottobre Design Mag, 1/2008.
I made them each the #16 Polka Dot Blouse (obviously of non-polka dot fabric) and the #17 Desert Pants.
I did the blouses out of woven fabrics, one Alexander Henry and the other a cute sushi print, and I used commercially made binding rather than making it from another fabric. They have a vent in one shoulder seam with tie closures made from the binding.



The pants are made from a super-soft knit from Golden D'or. The sides of the "ankle" have elastic on both the inside and out, to gather it up. The pants are cut from one piece of fabric, and have only two seams: the back seam and the long crotch seam. Both of these go together pretty easily (altho faster if sewn during normal daylight hours)

See the gathering at the ankles? This fabric is so finely knit that it drapes beautifully!


William kindly models the smaller of the outfits for me. He's a difficult model, in that he gets super excited to wear the new clothes, even if they're not his, and he dances around like a lunatic.

And pictures of the wrapped packages, because I like to take pictures of wrapped gifts.

1 comment:

Little Messy Missy said...

Thanks for sharing the recipes!!! Yummy!!!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails