Saturday, November 24, 2012

Shutterfly

I received a great coupon for Shutterfly so I decided to use it to make Christmas cards.  I think it turned out nice.

Stationery card
View the entire collection of cards.

Stationery card

Flourish Of Frames Christmas Card
Create from the Heart: photo Christmas cards from Shutterfly .
View the entire collection of cards.

Friday, August 10, 2012

50 year old phone

My Grandma and her significant other, Jerry, live in his childhood home.  In the family room, also known as the breezeway, is this rotary dial phone.  Jerry said this phone has been there as long as the house has, which is about 50 years.  Believe it or not, this phone still works and they actually use it.


Monday, August 6, 2012

Bishop Castle - Rye, Colorado



Bishop Castle is the project of a single man, Jim Bishop.  Mr. Bishop has been building the castle by hand since the 1960s.  

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Lazy does not make a good blogger

I admit it; I am lazy.  I could spend hours and hours surfing Pinterest, but when it comes time to write my own blog entries I find better things to do.  

I have many posts written in my head, but somehow getting them from my head to you seems like an awful lot of work.   I will try to be better about keeping this blog updated.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Beef Stroganoff

I love vintage cookbooks, especially anything pre-1960s.  Yesterday I had some sirloin steak I needed to cook. I was going to make Pepper Steak with it, but my 12 year old son was protesting profusely so I decided I would look in my cookbooks and see if I could find something else to do with the steak.

In a booklet dated 1954 for a dairy company called Knudsen, I found a Beef Stroganoff recipe that I just happened to have all the ingredients for.  It was decided; that would be dinner.  Mys son, who protests pretty much everything these days, scoffed at the news of this new dinner.  He had never had it;  He just didn't like the name.  I made it anyway and guess what?  He loved it!

If my son likes it, I'm sure pretty much anyone will because he doesn't like much.  It was really good.  It was pretty easy to make too.  There was enough to feed three adults, two kids, and have leftovers for lunch today.  I don't have any pictures to show you, but I will share the recipe.  I am going to post the original recipe although, I did modify it slightly when I made it.   I will just add some notes in at the end of how I changed it up.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds thin sirloin steak
1/2 t salt
1/8 t garlic salt
1/2 t paprika
1/8 t pepper
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup sliced mushrooms
1 cup bouillon
1 small bay leaf
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
16oz Sour Cream
cooked rice

Directions
Cut steak into 2-inch squares, season with salts, paprika, and pepper.  Brown with onion in butter.  Add mushrooms and brown them a few minutes, then add bouillon, bay leaf, and worcestershire sauce.  Simmer about 15 minutes.  Place rice on a serving plate and place cooked meat pieces on rice.  Add sour cream to sauce in pan and heat, stirring constantly.  Pour over rice and meat.  Serve at once.  Serves 6.

My Notes
I only used an 1/8 t of salt.  I used about 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder instead of the garlic salt.  I also chopped up a clove of fresh garlic and added that.  I add fresh garlic to pretty much everything.  I forgot to season the meat before I put it in the pan so I just threw all the spices in the pan with the meat and onions and stirred it up real well.   I did not use the butter at all for the meat and onions.  It really wasn't needed.

I didn't have any bay leaf so I skipped adding that in (obviously).  For the bouillon, I used a cup of water and a veggie bouillon cube.  Veggie was all I had, otherwise, I would have used beef bouillon.

I used a slotted spoon to pick the meat pieces out, but I put them on a plate and set aside.  When I added the sour cream I also added about 1/2 t of sage.  I used sage because I didn't have a bay leaf and I remember making a stroganoff before that called for sage and it being good. After the sour cream was stirred in and heated well, I added the meat back to the sauce.

We did serve it over white rice individually.  If you can have gluten, I think egg noodles would be just as good as rice.