My make-it-from-scratch philosophy

I blog a lot about things I make from scratch and I realized that I have an underlying philosophy that I’ve never spelled out. So here goes. When I was young, I was fortunate to spend many of my weekends on a farm my parents owned with a friend of theirs about two hours from [...]

Quick & Easy Halloween Costumes for Beginners

I wasn’t up for spending $40 a piece on my kids’ Halloween costumes this year, so I decided to make my own. Let me preface this by saying that, although I make a LOT of things from scratch, my skills with needle and thread and pretty much entirely lacking. So I needed something that was [...]

In search of the perfect pancake

Pancakes were probably the first food I learned to make from scratch. In part because my sister has the best darned “Griddle Cake” recipe I’d ever tasted, and in part because I love cooked breakfast–especially when it can include peanut butter and chocolate chips– I became obsessed with pancakes. Now that I have children of [...]

Make it from Scratch – Ranch Dressing!

Since our year of local began, I have been sweating it out as our bottle of Safeway Organic Buttermilk Ranch dressing got emptier and emptier. On Wednesday night, we finished it and I knew I had a dilemma on my hands: add Ranch to our list of exemptions or figure out a good recipe. It [...]