Monday, January 11, 2010

From the Recipe Box: Corn Casserole

For years I've been looking for a good corn casserole recipe, and even though I have a huge stack of cookbooks, none of them have a recipe for this in them. What? How can that be?

I went to one of my favorite recipes sites, www.allrecipes.com , and found a dreamy corn casserole recipe that is so easy and everyone loves. I made it for a church potluck and someone actually said it was good enough to be a dessert. Yum!

If you're on a diet, I'm sure you don't want to know what's in here. And when I doubled the recipe for Thanksgiving, I shuddered to think that there were four eggs, two cups of sour cream and two whole sticks of butter in here. (Paula Deen would be proud.) But it's so good, who really cares.

Corn Casserole

Ingredients:
1/2 c. melted butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 package (8 1/2 ounces) dry cornbread mix (I use Jiffy, which is super cheap!)
1 (15 ounce) can of creamed corn
1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
1 cup sour cream

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease an 8x8 baking dish.
• In a bowl, combine all ingredients and spoon into prepared dish. Make sure to stir well, because you don't want a lump of sour cream to turn up when you bite into it (or maybe you do??).
• Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

It's been my experience that if you let it cook a little too long, it sort of loses that souffle quality that makes it so yummy. When it looks firm in the middle (but not hard), that's a good indication that it's done.

I found this recipe here .

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Homemade Christmas Ornaments

Now that it's almost time to take down the tree, I am taking a moment to look at a lot of the ornaments I've made over the years and take some photos to share with everyone. I've made this a yearly tradition, because someone in my family long ago decided to do the same for me. 

Some are quite simple. The easiest, and one of my favorites, was this small dollhouse miniature that I hot-glued on to a colored clothespin. Probably took like two minutes, tops, and made use of a random object that I had for no good reason (who keeps, or even has, a green clothespin?). There are all kinds of neat-o miniature items just like this in the dollhouse section at most craft stores that can accommodate just about any hobby or interest you can think of. 

Isn't this just the cutest? And a total pain in the butt to photograph, I might add, because everything's so tiny. 

But really, I am the queen of wooden ornaments. They are cheap, you can paint them and decorate them any way you like, and they are definitely kid-friendly. Like most people with children (or pets, too, I suppose), my poor tree usually looks top-heavy with all the fragile ornaments on top (I usually buy several blown-glass ornaments each year to add to my collection, too). I usually add beads, glitter, paint - whatever I can find in my giant box of crap - and glue on a photo each year of each child and also a family picture, so that we can look back and see how we've changed. Because they're pretty durable, the kids can easily hang them up themselves without worry of breaking them. 

This one is of a snowflake (obviously) that is just plain unpainted wood. I painted a few coats of white iridescent paint on it and then, once dry, added a thin layer of regular Elmer's Glue. Then I sprinkled white glitter on top and allowed to dry overnight. Once dry, I added a coat of varnish (you can also get this in the craft aisle next to the acrylic paints, so it's not like I used anything crazy or special) to keep the glitter from coming off and make it more durable. It still sparkles and looks so pretty hanging on the tree. I've got several, with filigree-type designs in the shape of hearts, a bell and a star from years past. 

Another favorite that was a bit more painstaking was a sled with two kids on it for my older children. This one required some thought about the shapes (I'm surprised it came to me so quickly LOL) because they are just little craft shapes. I don't know if they were supposed to be snowmen or not; at any rate, you can paint them to look like just about anything. The sled came separately and I painted on the coats and faces - which I usually stink at. (Painting is not something you'll see much of on this blog, for sure.) The balls, I believe, are like little cotton thingies that came in a pack but I have no idea where I bought them. I just glued them all together to look like a pile of snowballs. The red thing around the girl's neck is supposed to be a scarf, but you really can't tell from the photo. But check it out - they even have ear muffs! 

And lastly, are these simple ones I did several years ago while newly married. You know, before kids came and would routinely plow through your table of stuff, sending things flying and putting hands in the paint/glue/glitter or whatever you might have out. These were just simple shapes with a hole drilled in the top and I used rubber stamps to make many of the pictures. This particular one, I think, I used a star sticker as a template and then peeled it off when the paint was dry.  I also used a crackle glaze underneath that would give it a cool vintage effect. This flag theme seemed appropriate since this was Christmas 2001.

Now that I've shared, who's going to come to my house and help me put it all away??