Raspberry White Chocolate Muffins

I'm still trying to catch up on my posts, and this one actually dates back to Valentine’s Day.  Wow, I’ve been such a slacker!  And extremely busy too.  But anyways, I’ve mentioned before that I like to take muffins to the people at my bank.  Well I decided that for Valentine’s Day I wanted to treat some other people too, so I made a double batch of these Raspberry White Chocolate Muffins.  I decorated some disposable tins, and took them to the staff at the church where we have The Well on Wednesday nights as well as to the bank the next day.  They were a huge hit!

Camera Cleanse

I often take pictures of things with the intention of blogging about them, but end up not doing it, and that leaves me with lots of random pictures on my camera.  So from time to time I'm going to start doing a camera cleanse, where I post all the random pictures taking up space on my memory card and write a short little description for each one.  Hope you enjoy!

Triple peanut at Dave and Scottie's house.

Hiding the dirty dishes before friends came over for dinner.

Happy Valentine's Day to me and Ivy!

Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Birthday to Jillian!  Hers weighed 8 oz, mine was 11oz. Not surprised.

Tiffani and I bought the same knock-off Toms while in China, and just figured it out.

Another busy week, as evidence of the front door shoe pile.

Cleaning Out Candleholders

 Several weeks ago at The Well we used over 100 mason jars with tea-lights in them to decorate the stage.  A few days prior to that I had gone down into the dungeon basement to see what condition the jars were in, since we hadn’t used them in several months.  And unfortunately, they were like I expected to find them – in really bad shape.  They had lots of wax melted down into the bottom of them, soot from the flames had built up on the inside, and many had mouse droppings in them (eww!).  They were going to need some TLC to look good for Wednesday.  I googled ways to get wax out of candleholders, and several sites said to stick them in the freezer for an hour, and then it should pop right out.  I tried it with a few, and it seemed to work, so that was going to be my plan of attack. 

 

(before)

 

 As I started knocking the wax out of the candles, I found that it only worked about 50% of the time though.  And even for the ones that the majority of the wax had come out of, there was still lots of thin, waxy residue inside the jars.  So I set two large aluminum pans on the stove, filled them about half way full of water, and turned all the burners on medium.  In one pan went the jars that still had the wax in them, and I made sure they were still standing up; in the other pans went the empty jars, and I laid those down on their side. 

Once the jars with wax heated up enough, I could just dump out the melted wax and then I added those jars to the other pan.  And after the empty jars had been in the water for a while, I could wipe them out with a rag and all of the waxy residue came off.  The only problems though, were that after a while the water in the pan would get waxy, and so would the rags, so we had to change them out fairly often. 

(during)

 I’m sure there was a more efficient way to do this, but it’s what we figured out, and it worked!

(after!)

 

(Barely Made It) Breakfast Casserole

Monday night was my night to cook dinner for my community group, and I made breakfast for dinner, because it's my favorite!  I made biscuits, this hash brown casserole, and a breakfast casserole.  While the hash brown casserole was in the oven baking, I was putting together the breakfast casserole, which was a recipe I had never made before.  I had mixed all the ingredients together and then my heart sank when I read the next line: Pour into a greased 9x13 inch baking dish. Cover, and chill in the refrigerator for 8 hours, or overnight.  Refrigerate for 8 hours?!? Community group started in just a few hours!  What was I going to do?  I went ahead and poured it and wrapped it, put it in the freezer and prayed to the casserole gods.  It was in the freezer for about 40 minutes before I baked it.  When it came out it looked a little funny to me.  I'm used to breakfast casseroles being very fluffy, and this one was more flat and dense.  I don't know if that was just the recipe or due to my mistake.  I was nervous about how it would taste, but the little bite I tested seemed fine, and when I went to help clean up after community group was over, this was what the dish looked like:

People had gone back for seconds and ate it all up!  So I guess it turned out ok!

Breakfast Casserole

via allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground pork sausage
• 1 tsp. mustard powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups milk
• 6 slices white bread, toasted and cut into cubes (I used wheat though)
• 8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese

 Directions

• Crumble sausage into a medium skillet. Cook over medium heat until evenly brown; drain. 
• In a medium bowl, mix together mustard powder, salt, eggs and milk. Add the sausage, bread cubes, and cheese, and stir to coat evenly. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch baking dish. Cover, and chill in the refrigerator for 8 hours, or overnight.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). 
• Cover, and bake 45 to 60 minutes. Uncover, and reduce temperature to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Bake for an additional 30 minutes, or until set.