Tag Archives: Homemaking

Slow Cooked Brisket

Barbecue Brisket

This is a great recipe for a crowd!

1 (5-pound) brisket
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chili sauce
1 cup water
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 (10-ounce) bottle of beer
Fresh parsley

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Wash and dry the brisket, cutting away most of visible fat.
Sprinkle the brisket with salt, pepper and paprika.
Place the brisket, fat side up, in a heavy baking pan. Surround with the onions, celery and garlic.
Pour chili sauce on top of the brisket.
Slowly pour the water into the pan around the brisket. Sprinkle with the parsley.

Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour. Remove from oven and pour the beer over the brisket.
Do this slowly so it doesn’t wash off the chili sauce.
Cover the brisket and cook 3 hours longer or until tender.
Cool to room temperature. Place in refrigerator.
Remove any accumulated fat from the top.
Slice and reheat in the sauce.
Garnish with a sprinkling of fresh minced parsley.

Yield: 10 servings.

This recipe is from That’s My Home Free Recipes – Cattleman’s Barbecue Sauce

We served ours after baking it for 5 hours without refrigerating it. We cut it across the grain and shred it before serving also. We served it along with BBQ Sauce.

We also provided Potato Rolls for anyone who wanted to make it into a BBQ Sandwich. Yummy!

This is my big turkey roaster I cooked 2 – 5# briskets in here and all the extras fit in around them well for the baking time.

So the next party you have invite a crowd and let them bring the extras to go with the brisket. It will make for an easy breezy fun party for the hostess and guests!

4th of July at Our House

Do you know why bloggers wear aprons when they are hosting a party? Why to have a pocket for their camera, of course! So convenient, always at your side, or front as the pocket may be…

So we ended up having 14 over for a meal, conversation, Ticket to Ride, and more. The doc and his wife couldn’t make it because someone’s baby decided to be born on the 4th of July.

 

Of course there was enough food for 24. That’s the curse of growing up in a large family, you tend to make way more and buy way more than you really need :0)

 

Some of the “Usual Suspects”. We always love it when little Finn gets to come and he brings his parents along. Oops, I didn’t get pictures of his parents but I did get some of his Auntie Jamie.

 

Finn loves our son Josh. He’s helping Josh make some strategic moves in the game Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride is a cross country train adventure.

We learned this great trick from Finn’s grandmother, Jody. This is the quick way to baby proof your cabinets. This is a hair thingee, pony tail thingee, you know what I mean. You just twist it around the knobs.

 

We ended our meal with some Russian Royal Tea of Czar Nicholas II.

It was a wonderful day and a lovely celebration of our freedom in the USA. Blessings on y’all.

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Walk About the Yard

I’m in the Seattle area spending 6 weeks at my home here. I took a stroll about the yard to see what was blooming and growing.

 

We’ve got some wild blackberry blossoms, our apples and pears are maturing, the hydrangea is promising a few blooms, the lavender is in it’s glory and the blueberries are still green but plumping up.

I’m still getting my bearings here in my house. I decided to tackle a few rooms at a time for cleaning and organizing. On Tuesday I deep cleaned the kitchen and dusted the living room. Yesterday I got everything presentable except for my Master Bedroom. We’re having 16 for the 4th and I wanted the main living areas clean. Saturday I’ll tackle my bedroom, it’s on the 3rd floor all by itself so I felt fine leaving it till last and after our company on the 4th. Dear goes back to California on Sunday and then he flies back up to Seattle for the first two weeks in August. I’ll be able to get a lot of weeding in while he’s gone.

A very happy 4th to all you in the U.S.A.  and a very happy Friday to my friends in other parts of the world. My flag waving post for the 4th is just below this so scroll on down if you’d like…

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

8 Random Things About My Kitchen ~ Meme

Hello everyone! We made it to Seattle at 12:30 A.M. this morning. 17 hours on the road. I’m brain dead but I had this little meme in my drafts and decided I needed to put something new to look at on my blog. Since the kitchen and cooking and eating and fellowship were the theme of the last 3 days I thought this was a good filler for the time being. Hope to get around soon and see what you are all up to! Blessings.

Here’s a little Meme about the Kitchen. List 8 random things about your kitchen. You can combine things about your kitchen with your cooking style…

1. My Kitchen in my home in Washington is also my Dining Room. It all happens in here….

2. I have a gas stove top that is separate from my electric double oven.

3. A center rectangular work area with cabinets and a section of bar seating doubles as a buffet service area.

4. My kitchen has loads of cabinets that were an Oak finish and Dear painted them for me in two shades of green with my walls an even darker shade of the same green tone.

5. We used to have fluorescent light fixtures in this space that we jokingly said we could do surgery under. Dear replaced them with recessed lighting and drop down pen lights over my Island and a light fixture over our table.

6. We have seated up to 16 people around our dining room table!

7. We like to cook classic comfort food and also experiment with the latest recipes we see on Food Network!

We clean up all the messes in this wonderful sink. It’s deep and wide and I can fit a cookie sheet in here and my large pots and pans.

8. We love to share our space and our food with no expectations of reciprocation…

If you’d like to participate in this meme please do and let me know if you do…

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Pelemeny ~ Russian Ravioli

Pelemeny (Russian Version of Ravioli)

Filling:

1/2 lb. ground chicken
1/2 lb. ground veal, or lamb, or beef
1 medium onion grated
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

Dough:

2 cups sifted flour
1 egg
1/3 cup water

Combine the two meats with onion. Add seasonings to taste and mix well and set aside.

Prepare Dough: In a small mixing bowl, sift the flour and a pinch of salt. Make a nest in the flour, add the egg which has been mixed with water. Work the flour into the egg and mix and then knead to a rather dry dough. Use more or less flour as needed. Roll dough very thin. We used a pelemeny mold/maker that my mom brought back on one of her trips to Russia so the pelemeny come out in a round shape. If you don’t have a mold cut the dough into 2″ circles. Put a small ball of filling (about 1/2 tsp) onto each circle and fold over and pinch edges making a half-moon shape. Then pinch each corner up together.

Boil in your choice of broth. Add the Pelemeny to the boiling broth. When they are done they will surface like doughnuts. You can serve them with the broth like a soup or you can have them plain with some sour cream. This recipe should feed 4-6 people.

The photo collages that I have shown are of my family making a huge batch of these for a family gathering we’re having. We made 648 of these.

It is very important to flour this mold really well each time you put the dough on to fill.

We found that a plastic teaspoon worked best to press the meat into each little hole.

You have to shake the completed Pelemeny out of the mold.

You can serve these with a lot of broth like a soup or just plain with sourcream.

Some people enjoy them with soy sauce.

Enjoy!

Getting Ready

 

My front porch plants were just sitting on the concrete floor so Dear suggested I look for a plant stand. Don’t have to suggest to me twice to shop for something we need want. So on my way to buy replacement batteries for our garage door openers I went to Ross and found this Plant stand that folds up!

 

I love the details on the metal. It was Tuesday so they give us older gals an extra 10% off! Sweet!

 

Now my three plants are nice and tidy and up off the concrete.

On the shopping note we are getting ready for a big Bagdanov family weekend. My nephew Tim is getting married to Jessica a week from this Saturday. Since we are going to cram a few extra bodies into our condo for part of the week I went in search of an extra aero bed. We have a queen size one and we’re adding a twin size one.

We are very pleased with this product!

Got some jersey sheets that were on sale to go with the bed…

Our son and his wife are flying in on Tuesday night and our daughter and brother’s family are flying in on Thursday. Family Day at Disneyland is planned for Thursday for whoever is here. It will be interesting to see when I can fit in some blogging as I’m also in charge of catering the Rehearsal dinner. I’ve got lots of help for that but it takes a lot of creative mind effort to pull it off. My family is wonderful at pulling together and making an event happen so I’m not concerned. If I don’t get around like usual you will all understand why…

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

BooMama’s Before and After ~

BooMamaBeforeAfter

It’s a before and after project. So all you have to do is post about something you want to re-do, re-decorate, clean up, etc. and then do it before July 25th and re-post your before and after results. How cool and motivating is that. To get the official scoop click over to BooMama.

Here’s what I’m going to try to do.

1. Create an inviting atmosphere on my deck in Seattle (I’m in our condo in So. California right now but I get to be at my home in Seattle from July 1st – August 15th )

 

2. Do a thorough cleaning of my Seattle home since my adult children have been “taking care of it” while I’m in Southern California.

3. Show some photos of our huge project…redoing the basement. My husband only has 3 weeks in Seattle so I don’t know what we’ll be able to accomplish but I will show the progress…

Here are some photos of the torn up basement. We had some water issues so this was a “have to do” project! The hard part about my husband completing this project is that we are living 1200 miles away right now because of his job.

 

So I hope to show you some great changes July 25th!

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Fun Monday ~ Walls

Jan from the Prytz Family is hosting Fun Monday on June 16th. She says… The subject is walls. We all have walls of some sort. What I want to hear about and see, if you’re going to show off your amazing photo skills, is what is on your walls, what color are your walls, what is special about them, what is your favorite or least favorite, is it inside or outside.

 

I am very fortunate to be married to a talented man who was a professional house painter in a former life. He has moved on to a new profession but his skills remain amazing in choosing and applying paint. I chose to show you the walls in our 1 bedroom condo in California. Our living room is a tan color. It was a can of Ralph Lauren oops paint from Home Depot ($5.00). My favorite print on the wall in the living room is our skyline/waterfront of Downtown Seattle. I really like the Blessed Tin Sign and the candle holder on the Norwegian Blue that the kitchen area is painted.

We really love checking the oops paint when we’re ready to paint. The Kitchen is another color that we found in the oops bin. Norwegian Blue for $5.00 a gallon.

Our bedroom and bathroom are a color called Mother Nature and we paid full price for it. No nice greens in the oops pile this time. This water color on the wall is done by Dear’s Aunt Carol.

 

It’s hard to get the photo to show the true color. The color reflected in the mirror is truer to the color.

 

This is part of an old dresser from my grandmother. We salvaged it and Dear added a shelf to the bottom of it and it is hanging in our dining area of the condo. The photograph reflected in the mirror is a self portrait of our daughter. She completed this for an art project in college.

Hope you enjoyed the little tour of my condo. Remember not to be afraid of painting your walls. You can always re-paint if the color is really bad or when you get tired of it :0)

For more Fun Monday Walls head over to Jan’s.

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Pasta Salad ~ Take One

Dear and I are going to be helping cater a rehearsal dinner for 70 people so I decided to start experimenting with Pasta Salad.

The ingredients I chose this time are Farfalle pasta, persian cucumbers, grape tomatoes, fresh basil, red onion, Perlini (small little round fresh mozzarella balls, and Wish Bone Robusto Italian Dressing.

Here’s what the Perlini look like in their container. And here’s what they look like drained and ready to be mixed in with the rest of the chopped ingredients.

I boiled the Farfalle in generously salted water, then rinsed and cooled them off while I prepared the rest of the ingredients.

All the ingredients mixed together.

 

The salad in a pretty bowl.

 

We tried it last night for dinner and it’s a keeper. Anyone free tonight because there’s way too much for us to eat. That’s the problem with experiments…

Scroll on down for the Italian Wedding Cookie Recipe…

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Italian Wedding Cookies

This is one of several recipes for Italian Wedding Cookies out there. We had these cookies recently at a shower and I decided to share the recipe for Wendy at Ivory Spring and anyone else who might like it.

Ingredients:

5 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
4 eggs
1-1/2 cups Sugar
1/2 cup melted crisco
1/4 cup softened butter
3/4 cup milk
2 tsp. Anise

Mix together the dry ingredients. Beat the eggs and sugar together. Add the crisco, butter, milk and anise. Work into dry ingredients. Roll into 1/2 thick rolls. Cut to desired size and place on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for approx. 10 minutes. When cool you can ice them.

Icing:

3 Tblsp. melted butter
3 Cups powdered sugar
3 Tblsp. lite whipping cream or 1/2 and 1/2.
2 tsp. anise

Mix together and if you want to add food coloring to coordinate with your event now is the time. Ice the cookies…