Saturday

Fried Sandwich Rolls


I am feeling sick as a dog and craving some dirt nasty foods! Has anyone here tried making fried sandwich rolls before? 

What you will need to make fried sandwich rolls (multiply by the amount of rolls you want to make):
- A slice of bread
- A slice of ham, smoked or cooked your preference, you could dabble in other meats
- A slice of cheese, again your choice of which cheese you want but stick with fatty ones because they melt good 
- An egg, scrambled well
- Bread crumbs 
- Oil to fry in

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How to make fried sandwich rolls (multiply by the amount of rolls you want to make):
- Take a rolling pin, glass, bottle or a jar (be creative if you don't have a rolling pin) and flatten the piece of bread
- Put the ham and cheese onto the flattened slice of bread and carefully roll up.
- Dip the rolls first into egg then bread crumbs, then repeat the process.
- Fry the rolls in hot oil, making sure you get all the sides, until they are golden brown.

Soooooooo who wants to volunteer to make these for me today??? 

Photo Credits: www.coolinarika.com/klub/sanjalica81/

Thursday

Natural homemade fruit jelly: Raspberry jelly



What you will need to make natural homemade raspberry jelly:
- 4 kg of raspberries.
- Sugar, amount depends on the amount of juice you get from the raspberries.
- A strainer, make sure it is not metal.

How to make natural homemade Raspberry jelly:
-First cook all four kg of the raspberries, without any water, for about eight minutes. 
- Keep stirring so it doesn't start to burn or stick to the bottom.
- After eight minutes put it into a fine strainer and let the juice drain into a bowl.
- When its all drained weigh the juice and add the same amount of sugar.
- Put the mixture into a pan and cook on low heat while stirring occasionally.
- When it comes to a boil stop stirring and just take the foam off the top while cooking for another 3 minutes.
- While still warm pour the jelly into cleaned dry jars, do not close them until it is completely cooled off.

Before following any of the natural homemade jelly recipes make sure you read the following post which acts as a quick intro to natural jelly making:
Natural homemade fruit jelly: the intro to jelly making 

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Natural homemade fruit jelly: Mint jelly

By Midori (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.1 jp (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.1/jp/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons


What you will need to make natural homemade mint jelly:
- 1/4 kg mint leaves
- 1 kg of sugar
- 1 apple
- 4 dl of water
- A strainer, make sure it is not metal

How to make natural homemade Mint jelly:
- Clean the mint leaves with a damp cloth and remove the stems
- Peel, and dice the apple.
- Heat up the mint leaves with the 4 dl of water
- Add the sugar and the diced apple to the cooking mint leaves
- Once it has been brought to a boiling point turn the heat down and keep cooking until the mass stiffens
- Strain the mass and store in well cleaned and completely dry glass jars.

Before following any of the natural homemade Jelly recipes make sure you read the following post which acts as a quick intro to natural jelly making:


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Natural homemade fruit jelly: the intro to jelly making

Jelly should be firm, see through, and should retain the color and fragrance of the fruit. 
It is prepared with fruit juice, and you should only use fruit which has enough acidity and pectin (essentially the thing that makes it turn into jelly). I realize that nowadays you can buy all sorts of additives and pectin that will act as firming agents but this is meant for natural jellies without those. 
The fruits that contain pectin are sour apples, nearly ripe raspberries and grapes and they are the easiest ones to make jelly with, you can mix them with other fruits too.
It is generally good to add some lemon juice to any fruit when making jelly because of its acidic properties.
If you want your jelly to look really nice don't peel your fruit or take out the core because they contain the most pectin.
Instead wash the fruit and cook it either whole or just cut up, with just enough water to cover it.

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Cook it on high heat so it would get soft, but be careful not to have it fall apart. 
You should line your strainer with two layers of gauze and leave the fruit in it to drain on its own. Do not press it just let it sit there for a few hours and do its thing.
The juice drained from the fruit should be weight and then added the same amount of sugar, then cooked on low heat. 
In general the jelly is done if you put a drop of it on a plate and it hardens straight away.

There is also raw jelly which can be attained from cherries and from red and black currants.
The fruit should be washed and seeds removed then the juice pressed out. 
The juice should then be warmed up, but not to the boiling point. 
once warmed up turn the heat off an add the same weight in sugar to it. 
Keep stirring it well until the whole thing starts to cool and harden. 
The raw jelly should be done in small quantities.

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Wednesday

Halloween Decorations on a Budget

Halloween, like other main holidays, is all
about the big decor, big scare, big fun and all of that can easily
lead to a big hole in your pocket. There are, however, some steps you
can take to make that hole significantly smaller. And don't worry the
fun and all the bang will still be big! The good thing about
Halloween is that its the same theme every year. Scary, it never goes
out of style, so you don't need to worry about whats new each year.
The first thing you need to do is go to the attic, garage, or your
closet see what left over decorations you can salvage. You might be
lucky and have plenty if you are the type that saves, but if not
don't you can still work things out. 

Another great way to decorate for Halloween, or any occasion for that matter, is to do
things like this yourself. Make your own decorations, and why not
after all? That way you can kill two birds with one stone. Get your
decorations taken care of and spend quality time with your kids while
doing some fun crafts, for an example. If you get some Red Rosin
paper, some paints and brushes, glue and scissors you would be
surprised of what you will be able to create. You can paint pumpkins,
evil cats or make lanterns, and trust me it doesn't end there, sky is
the limit.

However, if you get stuck during your arts and
crafts sessions, and there is no help in the last years boxes full of
stuff you can do some spending. Dollar stores and Party stores are
always cheap and have a bunch of nonsense in them. You are bound to
find plenty of stuff without spending a lot of money. Be careful not
to get carried away though, just because everything is a dollar we
get the sense that everything is cheap, which it is but then we
forget about the quantities and get a huge total at the checkout. Pay
attention to how much you buy and what you buy to make sure there are
no embarrassing "oops" at the checkout.
Internet is very wonderful, it is a vast space full of so many things
that you could use. If you do some research, you can find anything
for your holiday needs, from recipes to templates for gift boxes, to
instructions on how to carve pumpkins, instructions on how to make
decorations. There are plenty of pictures and templates and arts and
crafts projects that you can use. There is not as much need anymore
to buy the pricey magazines with the seasonal ideas in them, you can
find all that and more online for free.