Baked doughnuts

I've made this recipe a few times, and while tasty, the doughnuts are very heavy and dense. Might be due to the fact that I always replace some of the white flour with whole wheat. At any rate, it doesn't stop anyone from eating them.

From The Encyclopedia of Country Living,  by Carla Emery

Just as if you were making bread, combine 2 pkg yeas, 1/4 cup warm water, 1/2 cup scalded lukewarm milk, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp salt, 1/3 cup shortening, 1 tsp nutmeg, 4 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Knead, cover and let rise for 50-60 minutes.

Turn onto a floured board and roll with a rolling pin until dough is about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a doughnut cutter and carefully lift with a spatula onto a greased cookie sheet and brush with melted butter.

Let rise until doubled in bulk. Bake at 425* for 8-10 minutes. Brush with more melted butter.

Dust with cinnamon and sugar, or glaze with icing.

EAT!!!

Recycled crafts

Fabric applique using scraps and cereal box

This turned out okay, but I need some stencils. Freehand letters--->not my forte

My first Mother's Day gift from my oldest daughter. I turned it into a candle using melted bits of old candles.

Random cup and saucer I glued together to make a candle using various bits of burned down candles.

Since the handle of this lovely cup broke off long ago, I decided to turn it into a small pedestal. I'll use it to display a birthday cupcake or even a tealight. I plan to make a larger one soon.

Garden update

Image via Wikipedia

So the garden is not going as good as I'd hoped. While vines and plants are growing, they aren't as tall as they should be and aren't producing either. Two days ago I picked a small yellow summer squash. The rest are either too small still or rotting. :(  There area lot of cucumbers, but they're only an inch long and they're just sitting there. The cucumber beetles are having a great time, though, destroying the vines. Now they've moved onto the butternut squash and I am not happy about that at all.

There is a nice head of broccoli growing, however, and that's very nice. Last night Foo-Foo and I were down at the garden looking for pests to pick and drop into the jar of death (as I call it) and suddenly he gets all excited:  "Broccoli!  Broccoli!"   :)

I was reading in my gardening book about cucumber beetles and the only way to reduce them is to use floating row covers, so I guess next year I will try that. I also want to have the cukes grow on trellises. Right now they're growing on the fence and threatening to invade the neighbor's yard, but I have a feeling those little striped and spotted fellows will take care of that.

Rocky buggy time

Rocks are fun! Rocks are cute! Rocks rock!!

Buggy

The weather has been great here in NW Indiana, and I"ve been outside working on my garden, which is getting pretty crazy, as I knew it would. And look what I've found crawling around:

Apparently Japanese beetles are Indiana's main pest, next to mosquitos, that is. At first I was just tossing them into the plastic jar and slamming the lid on real quick. Then I started throwing the bugs into a mixture of water, dish soap and oil and that really did the trick. So far I've taken off a ton of Japanese beetles, some cabbage worms and a few cucumber beetles, which are so small they're hard to catch. I usually go out to the garden a few times a day to pick off pests. It's fun!

Yep, I'm weird.