We Like Making Our Own Stuff

Here is a new spin on breakfast that's wonderfully simple.  You can leave the potatoes to cook as you get dressed for the day, while the eggs and sausage fry up quickly once it's about time to eat.  To save even more time in the morning, you can have all the ingredients pre-cooked the night before, and then just reheat everything the morning.

Potato and Cheese Crusted Perch served with wild rice and acorn squash. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will recall a post I put out in May 2012 titled, Dehydrating Potatoes .  In this post, I explained how I dehydrate potato slices and granules, and also alluded to future posts featuring recipes using the dehydrated potatoes.  Well, it has been about five months since that post, so maybe I should actually post a recipe for you, right!?  Sorry I'm such a slacker. This recipe for perch features the dehydrated potato granules.  If you haven't actually dehydrated any, you can either give it a go by following the instructions on Dehydrating Potatoes , or you can buy some granules at the grocery store.  Dehydrated foods are an excellent addition to the pantry and store well. I used perch as my fish of choice in the following recipe, but other freshwater game fish will work just as well, such as walleye or crappie.  I bet even your run of th...

Another summer has come and almost gone here in central Wisconsin.  The night temperatures are now regularly dipping into the 40's, signaling the impending arrival of fall.  This summer has proved to be challenging, mainly because we've hardly gotten any rainfall!  Thankfully, our area is only considered to be "Abnormally Dry," so it could have been much worse. However, we were still forced to water quite a bit this year, and many of our garden plants did not do as well as we had hoped--most notably the squashy plants, like the pumpkins, butternut, zucchini, and crookneck.  These plants are finally setting fruit, but I have my doubts as to whether or not they will reach maturity before it gets frosty. But what may have saved the rest of the garden was our wash water and other gray water saved from the house.  My husband has rigged the washer machine discharge hose up to some large barrels outside; the water is then pumped through a hose and into the garden....

Sometimes, you run across a deal that you just can't pass up: If potatoes go on sale, stock up and dehydrate them. We were grocery shopping one Sunday, and needed to pick up potatoes, which are normally around $2.50 for a 10 pound bag...but then I spied this 25 pound box of potatoes for $2.99, reduced for quick sale.  I'm not sure why they needed to sell them quickly, but we snatched them up! And then we had 25 pounds of potatoes.  That's a lot of taters.

I had two questions.  The first question was:  Why do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day? The second question was:  What can I make for dinner to make St. Patrick's Day fun for the kids (and us crotchety grown-ups too, I guess)? Well, to answer the first question, St. Patrick's Day is actually a catholic holiday, originally celebrated in honor of St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, who died on March 17. This holiday was originally celebrated as a feast day by the Roman Catholic Church.  However, over time, the holiday morphed into a celebration of Irish pride, and began to include other festivities involving consuming large amounts of alcohol and other green mischief. Though I am not much Irish, and am not a Catholic, I still will try to wear at least a little green, so I don't get pinched, and pretend to talk like a leprechaun in a horrible Irish accent.  And I will eat green food. Which brings me to my second question.  What should I make fo...

In 1853, a customer in an elegant resort in New York complained that his potatoes were too thick and soggy.  The chef, who was reportedly miffed by having his potatoes sent back, decided to cut the potato slices as thin as he possibly could.  This was in attempt to annoy the customer, but the chef got an unexpected reaction:  they were a big hit.  The fried, thin slices of potatoes went down in history as being one of America's favorite snack foods. Nowadays, you can buy potato chips of all varieties in bags at your grocery store, but the taste of freshly made potato chips far surpasses anything you could pick up in the chip aisle.  And not only do fresh, homemade potato chips taste better, you can also customize your chip flavors and invent new combinations. If you are growing your own potatoes, you will save a lot of money by making your own chips, and you will also know that aren't any pesticides or other chemicals on your potatoes.  In fact...