Muffin Tin Cooking Makes Meals Fun

Today, I’m pleased to have Brette Sember, author of the newly released The Muffin Tin Cookbook, as well as The Parchment Paper Cookbook and The Organized Kitchen.  All of Brette’s books are fan­tas­tic and make great addi­tions to small house kitchens, but today, she’s going to tell us what makes muf­fin tins great and why they’re for more than just muffins. She also gives away a cou­ple of recipes. Read to the end, you have a chance to win one of these books!

 

Your muf­fin tins can do much more than just cup­cakes and muffins! This ver­sa­tile pan can be used to make entrees, appe­tiz­ers, break­fasts, sides, breads, desserts, and much more. Forget big casse­role dishes or bak­ing pans – you can do it all in your muf­fin tin. If you’re liv­ing in a small space, you’ll find that you can make many dishes with just a six-cup muf­fin pan which is easy to store and doesn’t take up a lot of room in your cupboard.

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Satisfying end to a Work Weekend at Our Little House

This past week­end was a work week­end at Our Little House. We started on that to-do list and Dale had a few unplanned projects, such as replac­ing that heat­ing ele­ment in the hot water tank.

The ser­vice­man came out last Monday, spent all of 10 min­utes on it, declared the solved the prob­lem with­out drain­ing the tank and check­ing the element.

It worked till Wednesday and we couldn’t get them back out here until this Monday, so Dale did it himself.

So much for my praise of extended war­ranties. We’ve decided we will not pur­chase them any­more on things Dale can fix, which is quite a lot.

Everyone knows around here that the well water is extremely hard, mak­ing it hard on heat­ing ele­ments in hot water tanks. Dale decided if the “Yahoo” who came out here didn’t know that much, he didn’t want him back (besides, I was get­ting tired of not hav­ing enough hot water to even shower).

Now we know the tank is cleaned to Dale’s stan­dards and it’s been prop­erly fixed and every­one from here to Chicago (where the store is based) knows we’ll never shop at their store again.

Dale also got the new win­dow air unit installed and we needed it. We’ve had three days now of near 90 degree or over temps and high humidity.

My main job this week­end – in addi­tion to get­ting our paper­work ready for the tax accoun­tant and orga­niz­ing The Belle Writer’s Studio – was plant­ing our deck garden.

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It may Look Like a Tornado Hit but it was Only the Utility Company

 

For the most part, the county and util­ity com­pa­nies pretty much leave us alone out here.

But like some tor­na­does, we were given a warn­ing they were com­ing this spring through fliers placed in our mailboxes.

It wasn’t a force of nature, but large tree trim­ming machines and brush hogs, sent by the util­ity companies.

They decided to claim their 15 feet of ease­ment along the util­ity line routes, which of course, runs the nearly 2 miles from the black­top along the road and right in front of our property.

My aunt, who was the first to run power lines down our road said she cried the first time they came in 1997 to install the lines.

I said, ‘what have I done to this beau­ti­ful land­scape,” my aunt remem­bers. “And then some­one reminded me if we hadn’t done it, some­one else would have.”

The road after the brush hog

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Lightning and June Bugs in March!

Sitting on the party deck in the pitch black dark­ness of the coun­try star gaz­ing, I looked over at the tree line that sur­rounded our house.

I just saw a light­ning bug!” I told Dale.

He didn’t respond, but I could tell by his silence that he didn’t believe me.

It is, after­all, only March.

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