Biscuits and Ideas

Welcome to another Friday in Central Texas! Today is the official launch of my sister's series idea on Toaster Oven Cooking. This morning, I worked with a simple quick bread, Biscuits. The recipe is just like the one for scones, but with a bit more buttermilk and no sugar. They take just a few minutes to make and are delicious as a stand alone breakfast delight or as a side to your already wonderful bacon and eggs. Be sure to check out the KitchenAid 12-inch Convection Bake Countertop Oven. I purchased mine at Target, but they are readily available online as well. Check out the

Nancy's Buttermilk Biscuits

recipe for the biscuits in the sidebar to the right. The recipe makes the perfect number of biscuits for my toaster oven and they come out even and beautiful. There are plenty of options for cutting the biscuits. I used a 3" scalloped biscuit cutter, but feel free to use whatever you like. Cut a larger biscuit and when they are baked make biscuit sandwiches. Little biscuits would make great Hors d'oeuvres with some country ham! There are lots of options. Throw some sharp grated cheese into the mix and you've got cheese biscuits. I could go on and on, but use your imagination and make them your own.

This has been an incredible day. I completed my work and had a great time outside for awhile. The temperature at 3 p.m. when I came back into the house was just 85 degrees F. Yes, it is August 1st and yes, it is Central Texas where usually at this time of year we're looking at 105 degrees, but today it really is a BEAUTIFUL, summer day. I'm looking forward to the rest of the weekend. There are chores to be done and errands to run and I will need to be outside for some of that.

It's hard not to spend time outside when the flowers are so pretty, but the garden continues to amaze me. The corn that the squirrel planted is actually going to give us an ear of corn. I have no idea what the ear of corn will look like, but we'll dry it and feed it to the Squirrels in the end. They grew it so they should get to eat it. We've been learning a great deal about growing corn from YouTube. It's incredibly complicated! So much so that I'm amazed we have any corn to eat at all. Here is what the corn is looking like:

Amazing!

This week I'm starting the process of cleaning out the garage. Every Saturday (that I'm home) between now and early November, I will work for 2 hours in the garage, grouping things together, identifying things that need to be given away and throwing out trash and things that have just accumulated. The goal is to transform the garage into several new and useful areas for the family. In our neighborhood, we're not allowed to turn the garage into a room, so everything we do in there has to be okay with an overhead garage door still in place. I drew up a plan that gives us the following spaces:

• An area for the workbench and tools
• A space for a desk or table work/craft/project area
• Shelves for household storage
• Shelves for seasonal items (i.e. Christmas decorations and etc.)
• Space for household cleaning implements (i.e. brooms, mops, buckets, vacuums and etc.)
• Workout space
• Even some room for a small car...maybe?

A quarter of the garage will become a gym. We have a treadmill and elliptical trainer that both live in my living room at the moment and I want them to move into the garage where I can open the garage door and exercise while feeling like I'm outside. The gym section will have the addition of cushioned floor panels and the weight bench, weights and other exercise implements will join the aforementioned equipment. But there is lots of clean out and up that needs to be done. We seem to have a hard time letting go of stuff and I'm ready for stuff to leave my life so I can have the space inside my house I need to really feel at home. I use the exercise equipment, but it's suffocating me in the house. I'll take pictures along the way and share the progress.  The first pictures will thoroughly embarrass me, but hey, maybe what I do will help someone else!

The rest of the weekend is all about getting things done and relaxing a little. What do you do on your weekends? If you have a great way to spend a weekend, leave me a comment and let me know your ideas. That's it for today! Until next time, when I'll share more in the world of Toaster Oven Cooking and other nonsense, Godspeed, Voyagers!!