Let them eat cake

Had a spaghetti fundraiser at church Sunday for youth & children's ministries. Such fun with the love/Italian theme!

I got to make a cake! :-) I was rushed, but apparently it was good!

Now I get to make another for a friend's 50th wedding celebration & this is the style I'm going to use for Melodie's birthday cake too! Maybe I WILL get enough practice to do this once I retire!

How did I never learn about powdered buttermilk before now??

Powdered Buttermilk for baking

Seriously. I love baking, but hate trying to keep buttermilk on hand, both because of the wastefulness of only using a half to one cup before it spoils, and because i never think about needing it when I go grocery shopping. And then, I find out about this wonderful stuff, just by happening to read along the random links in a recipe about easy breads. Amazon is out of the 3 pack (who really needs 3 cans anyhow?) but some quality grocery stores (NOT Wally World, at least not around here) stock it and other brands of the same regularly. I need to track some down!
 *** update: wally world started stocking this recently, over by the powdered milk, for about $5 a can!***

*******************************************************************************
for some odd internety reason, I can't log in and comment on our own blog! but here's some alternatives I've found, and also, they make a heavy cream powder, too!
Powder heavy Cream Substitute

1 lbs. bag of powdered buttermilk

Bob's Red Mill brand powdered buttermilk

Seeing as Bob's Red Mill is in on the action, I may be able to find it at Natural Grocers locally, or there's always an excuse to run down to Ft. Collins (Which is oddly like the Yellow Springs of Ohio)


OOH! OOH! OOH! Barry Farm Foods on Amazon has all these, and lots of other baking goodies (whole powdered eggs, anyone? Black Lentils? Arrowroot? Powdered egg whites? You know, ALL the stuff you can't easily find at wally world)

Use Old Socks to Keep Pants Contained for Tall Boots

I don't know what it is, but I wear out the the bottoms of my socks ALL.THE.TIME. (Ok, ok, I DO know what it is- I wear socks everywhere with no shoes while I'm at home, even taking out the trash. Hush.)  I normally save the tops of them for sock buns, but there are only so many you need lying about for that. And i have seen the trick of using the tops to make fitted cuffs for jackets, that's nice and all, but I don't have jackets that need that done. But I figured out another use: tame the jeans when I want to wear tall boots. I can't find mitten clips, and using normal blousing straps (military stuff that holds the legs of ABU's or ACU's neatly) means I either get a digging in spot if I got for the narrow ones, doubled up, or a huge lump that's too loose to do much good if I try the wide elastic ones. Because, ya know, they're meant for guys' legs. Soooo.... I'll just leave this right here: