Confusion Over Location of Sharing Buttons

Tags

Confusion, Easter, facebook, new website, posts, sharing, sharing buttons, Sunday, twitter

Good afternoon to everyone, and I will add that I hope everyone has had a Very Nice Easter Sunday!!

I have had several emails from readers telling me that the could not find the sharing buttons like Face Book and Twitter.

If you click on the title of the individual post (even though you can read the whole post on the main page) it will open that post in a new page for that particular post. At the bottom of the page you will see all of the sharing buttons, if you would like to share with other people.

I am hoping in the near future to have another website (moving this one) and all the content will be on one site but in a better much more organized fashion which will be much easier to find posts, recipes and how to articles.

I hope this post will clear up some confusion on finding the sharing buttons, if you have any comments or questions please feel free to comment here, or email me at mcw1961@gmail.com

The Voices of Spring

Tags

flowers, rushing waters, seasons, Spring, trees

At last Spring has broken and you can see the voices of Spring, heralding in the season. For me since I love gardening and flowers, flowers are the voices of spring.

Everyday there are new voices singing the songs of spring, from the ground to the trees. Everywhere you look there are things to make you smile and have a good day.

These are some pictures that I took this week.

A view of the river at Rawley Springs, Va, after heavy spring rains, this picture was taken after the river had a couple days to recede a bit. This river is usually dry during the summer months, unless there are heavy rains.

LEMON POUND CAKE–CLEAR LEMON GLAZE

Tags

baking, butter, citrus, Clear Lemon Glaze, cookbook, Country Kitchen, Daffodils, dense, eggs, flour, Forsythias, fresh, lemon juice, Lemon Pound Cake, lemon zest, Lemons, light, Mennonite, recipes, Rural Living, Spring Day, sugar, yellow, zest

It is spring now, finally and I felt like something bright and yellow like the Forsythia’s and Daffodils, so a nice Lemon Pound Cake was in order.

This recipe of course is made from scratch, with fresh lemon juice and butter, since the weather is warmer and you feel like being outside more and walking more you can eat this and work it off  outside now!! Better yet, make it and share it with friends, then the total burden will not fall on you to work it off.

I will add here like all things made from scratch that, at home we don’t always follow a recipe exactly, this time I did not feel like a tube cake, so I divided the batter into two loaf pans. (you may want to check your cake for doneness after about an hour, since it is in two pans) for me it was done in about 1 1/4 hours.

Also, I did not have lemon extract, so put a quarter cup lemon juice in, which I did reduce the milk by 1/4 cup.

I also love to use zests of citrus when I am cooking. so I added finely chopped lemon zest to the sugar about an hour or so before making the cake, (the sugar helps draw out the oils from the zest)

This recipe was NOT from a Mennonite cookbook which I rely on heavily, I found it online and used it basically because it had oil in it which I have never seen before (I am assuming they did this to make a less heavy or dense cake) which I prefer the heavier pound cake. However I feel that the recipe came out nice kind of middle of the road, not dense and not light. I was pleased with it.

I will also add here that the cake would have been just fine WITHOUT the lemon glaze. However I just wanted to  see what difference it made.

Pound Cake

1 cup Butter, softened

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 cups Sugar

5 Eggs

3 cups All Purpose Flour

1 cup  Milk

1 tsp Lemon Extract (I used 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice)

Zest from 2 lemons, chopped fine and mixed with the sugar

Glaze

1/2 cup Sugar

1/2 cup Water

1 tsp grated Lemon Rind

1/4 cup Lemon Juice

Preparation

Cream butter in mixing bowl., at medium speed.

Gradually add oil. beating until well blended.

Gradually add sugar beating well.

Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add flour to mixture alternately with milk, starting with flour and ending with flour.

Mix just until blended after each addition.

Stir in lemon extract (1/4 cup fresh lemon juice in my case)

Pour batter into greased and floured 10 inch tube pan (I used 2 loaf pans)

Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour & 30 minutes, or until a wooden tooth pick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool cake on wire rack for 15 minutes, then remove cake to wire rack to finish cooling.

Glaze

Combine all ingredients (I used warm water) and stir until sugar dissolves,

Brush over top and sides of cake a little at a time.

Let cake cool completely.

Enjoy

TORN- ONE BLOG OR SEVERAL?

Tags

baking, Basketry, blog(s), Caning, Canning, chair caning, cooking, cooking from scratch, lifestyles, Mennonite-Amish, recipes

Good Morning Everyone- I have been torn the last couple of weeks pondering my blog!

As all of you know it started out with Basketry and Chair Caning which I still do, then I added recipes that I  make, as I cook nearly everything from scratch everyday. Many recipes are Mennonite and Amish recipes.

The one thing I never wanted for my original blog was to become a mish-mash of ideas and topics. While many of you have commented and written to me privately telling you like the blog the way it is, because it introduces you to a wide variety of topics, some have written wanting to see a Cooking Blog, with recipes, pictures and posts about cooking, baking and canning, and Mennonite Life.

If I did create a blog, based solely on these things I would link it to the original Blog, like the blog I have for the Baskets for sale (which as you know has not happened yet) life seems to get in the way sometimes.

So I am asking my followers, readers out there to either write to the following ways and let me know what you think.

email mcw1961@gmail.com

or

Comment on the Blog for this post

If you know others that like to read cooking blogs you can pass this along to them and they are free to comment also. I want to thank everyone for their help in this decision!

Since for me cooking from scratch is a daily thing, a cooking blog alone is not impossible, but I would just like to see everyone’s feeling about this.