Register now to live well and spend less!

Quick reminder:  my next Live Well, Spend Less! course at Waubonsee Community College starts next week on Monday, July 18 at the Sugar Grove campus.  To get a small taste of this class, check out my blog post on living well and spending less in the summer.  Also, take a peek at what we accomplished in this class during the spring semester.  The best ideas featured in the class (as determined by the participants) will make it onto The Martha Initiative.

Sign up for the class here.  You can find it by typing in the class title:  Live Well, Spend Less; or by typing in my last name: Grant.  As always, you can see a list of all of my upcoming courses on the right sidebar.  I hope you can join me at Waubonsee!

Martha Monday--Sipping up summer

We've had a wickedly hot past two weeks with no rain (until this morning, that is) and I've been searching for some great ways to cool off.  For obvious reasons (fanaticism and laziness) I looked no further for inspiration than MarthaStewart.com and found some great summer drink recipes.

I need to get my hands on some Pimm's No. 1 to make a Pimm's cup:

I also need to get my hands on some prosecco for this Prosecco Sangria:

Isn't this fun? What a great idea for a punchbowl!

I love plain/regular mojitos, but I'm willing to give this Bing Cherry version a try:

I'm off to the liquor store and then home to experiment...have a great Monday, everyone!

Cherry chocolate mice

I saw these at a birthday party a few months ago, and they've been in my Idea File ever since.  They're cherry and chocolate mice...aren't they adorable? 

The body is a maraschino cherry dipped in chocolate, keeping the stem on to represent a tail.  The head is a Hershey's kiss, and the ears are almond slivers. I'm guessing the eyes and noses are simply frosting dabbed on.  I ate several, and I can assure you they taste just as good as they look. Yum!

These mice would fit into a variety of birthday and shower themes...I'm thinking of doing a barnyard theme for Little Miss' 2nd birthday, and these would be perfect in a toy barn.  I could also see these at a nursery-rhyme themed baby shower ("Hickory Dickory Dock," anyone?). 

I'm sure these took a nice chunk of time to prepare. Fortunately, I sure they could be done a day or two ahead of time and held in the fridge until the party.  These were just so cute and delicious...mice have never been more appealing to me!

Drying herbs

Remember this?

The Little Guy and I had planted an herb garden in February, and by June, everything was out of control.  I demolished the basil to make pesto, which left only thyme and oregano for drying.

Look at this thyme! It's crazy! Crazy thyme!

I snipped the thyme and oregano stalks off at the base and simply placed them on paper towels and left them in a cool, dry place for a few weeks to dry out.  This might not be the preferred way to do it, and I'll show you why in a minute, but that's just how I roll here. 

Also how I roll: I left these alone and then actually forgot about them.  It was such a pleasant surprise to find them every few days: "Hey! What's that?  Oh yeah, those are the herbs I'm drying. I should do something with that."

The thyme was a big, tangled clump when I cut it, and I didn't take the time to untangle it before it dried out. As a result, I had a huge clump of dried tangled thyme on my hands, which made leaf extraction very difficult. 

I ended up just wringing the whole clump in my hands over a sheet of wax paper, hoping that I would only get the leaves.  As people with more sense know, thyme stalks are quite thin, and in the wringing process I also got a lot of stems in there along with the leaves. 

It took a few minutes of extra work, but I did get most of the stems out. This thyme will be stored in an airtight jar and saved for future use. If it's not all used up in the next few months, then it will be at Thanksgiving when I pile it all on the turkey.

The oregano was much easier to process, perhaps because the stems are quite substantial and not as prone to breakage.  I simply separated the stems from their drying-process-clump, and ran my fingers over the stems to break off the dried leaves.

These, too, will go into an airtight jar for future use.  I foresee lots of it going to pizza dip. 

Now that I'm all out of live herbs, I'm staring a whole new round of herb growing in the kitchen.  And because my need for pesto has grown, I'm planting some basil out in the garden as well.  How Martha is that?

Martha Monday--Fireworks cookies

On the cover of the July issue of Martha Stewart Living, there's an awesome picture of frosted sugar cookies done up like fireworks.  Love it!  And so obviously, I had to make them. 

Fortunately, we had a great July 4th weekend birthday party to attend for our friend and neighbor, so I made a platter of circle and star fireworks cookies for the adults and, at the hostess' request,  individually wrapped twelve cookies to be included in the kids' favor bags. 

This project was a lot of fun.  Martha's colors are a lot deeper, and I had some icing consistency issues going on here, but overall I'm really happy with the result.

Happy Fourth of July to everyone!  Have a safe and fun celebration!