A New Place to Make Amazing

Sorry for the long time between posts, I have good reason, I really do.  And this reason comes with an announcement:

Making Making Do Amazing is moving to a new location!  In the lag time between moving out of our apartment and moving in to a new place, my husband and I will be making some amazing out of his parents' house.  I'm certain this will afford many blog opportunities about maximizing small living quarters and enjoying time with family.  These next few weeks are going to be priceless, especially since we lived with them while waiting for this apartment to be ready and now we've come back to the beginning before making a fresh start in a new city with (hopefully) the new job for my husband. 

So, on the agenda today, moving the outdoor plants.  I am not confident that my irises and gladiolas will fare well in buckets, so I'm planting them and enriching the poor soil options to hopefully create something to add to Momma's home, and not just take up space. 

Christmas in August

I love Christmas, I really do.  It's the only real bright spot making the cold weather worth surviving.  I know, I'm a wuss, I live in Georgia, where we only usually have 4 weeks of hard freezing and mid 50s the rest of the winter, but that's cold to me.  And last year's 8 weeks of hard freezing were...how to describe it...insufferable? Miserable? Horrifying?  Anyway, back to the topic at hand. 

Christmas.  Warm colors, family, friends, gifts, abounding creativity.  It has been on my mind in an unusual way, and early on this year.  "Christmas in August" has been an offering for years now, but I never really understood the mid-summer yearning for ice and cold wind and Christmas, until I'm feeling it now.  Minus the ice and cold wind bit. 

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.  Since last Christmas, January has New Year's, February Valentine's Day, March/April have Easter, May my birthday, July Independence day, then we have a long dry spell in August, September, October, and the first half of November, until Thanksgiving and Christmas herald new beginnings for next year.  This is the longest festivity dry spell in the entire year.  There's no gardening to be done, only a weekly filling of my hummingbird feeder. 

Of course, if I truly realized the urgency of how soon my mission trip to Honduras was coming up, I wouldn't be indulging these thoughts of Christmas lists and pinecone bird feeders....but what the hey.

What do you guys think?  What are some good Christmas to-do items that I can start early?

Apple Pancakes

I love looking at fresh-juiced apple juice.  

The LaFayette, Georgia Goodwill is my newest Achilles heel.  I might as well budget $25 toward every time I walk into that store.  And who can blame me, when there sits a brand new Oster juicer on the shelf for $10.00?  I had been saving up Swagbucks rewards and in another year and a half I'd have enough Amazon gift cards to buy a juicer.  So of course I had to try it out.  After I juiced almost every fruit and vegetable in my refrigerator, I realized the true expense of this critter was in the grocery bill it would produce.  I also saw how addictive it could be, especially watching the pulp and foam layering out in a cup of apple juice.  All of a sudden, the watery junk sold at the grocery store lost all appeal when faced with this complex beverage. 

A fun experiment followed.  I had made shredded apple pancakes before at Christmas, and served them with a spiced apple syrup, but I wondered if this juicer would make apple pancakes a hearty, healthy, non-special-occasion breakfast. 

So, I chose a recipe from Cooks.com:

1 1/2 cups apple juice
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup flour
1/2 cup quick oats
2 tablespoons wheat germ
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoons grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Beat together apple juice and eggs in a medium bowl. Add the flour, oats, wheat germ, baking powder, orange peel and cinnamon. Stir until well mixed.Lightly grease a nonstick skillet. Make as you would pancakes pouring approximately 2 tablespoons batter mixture onto hot skillet for each pancake. Flip (only once) when bubbles begin to form around edges.

Simple, right?  And notice something else: the absolute absence of anything that involves milk or oil/fats or sugar (except in the juice itself).  I had neither the orange peel nor the wheat germ, but I did use whole wheat flour.  I would probably use the orange peel next time, the pancakes had a wonderful texture but were a little bland.  They didn't taste much like apples, either, which may have been the fault of my apples.  I usually prefer a stark organic Fuji or McIntosh. 

Here's the batter.  It made about 8 pancakes and fed 4 people.

I used a cast iron quesadilla skillet as a griddle. 

This is rehydrated pulp from the juicer.  It reminded me of applesauce.

The "applesauce" garnishing the pancakes.  Definitely a winner.

Pros and Cons:
Pros: Simple recipe, very healthy ingredients, filling and hearty
Cons: Juicer makes hard cleanup, a little bland (fixable), recipe should be doubled for large families.