Tuesday's tid-bit...

Monday's value meal...

This is the time of year when the kids are back in school and everyone is figuring out their new schedules.  Its a great time for a make ahead dinner so I thought the original Cobb Salad would be wonderful.  Cobb salad was created at the Brown Derby Restaurant in Hollywood, a place I have many great memories of as a little girl.  It has long since been closed despite its famous and sometimes infamous, patrons and long history.  The restaurant was a one of a kind landmark in Hollywood, now there is a reproduction, built in 1989 in Orlando Florida.

The Original Cobb Salad with dressing: 

1/2 head lettuce, about 4 cups

1 bunch watercress

1 small bunch chicory, about 2 1/2 cups

1/2 head romaine, about 2 1/2 cups

2 medium peeled tomatoes

6 strips of crisp bacon

2 breasts of boiled chicken

3 hard cooked eggs

1 avocado

1/2 cup crumbled Roquefort cheese

2 tablespoons chopped chives

1 cup (approximately) Original Cobb Salad Dressing

Cut lettuce, half the watercress, chicory and romaine in fine pieces and arrange in a large salad bowl.  Cut the tomatoes, bacon, chicken, eggs, and avocado in small pieces and arrange, along with the crumbled Roquefort cheese, in strips on the greens.  Sprinkle finely cut chives over the Cobb salad and garnish with the remaining watercress.  Just before serving mix the salad with the Cobb salad dressing.

Original Cobb Salad Dressing:

Makes 1 1/2 cups

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 teaspoons salt

3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 teaspoon dry English mustard

1 small clove garlic, finely minced

1/4 cup full-flavored olive oil

3/4 cup salad oil

Blend all ingredients together, except oils. Add olive and salad oils. Mix well.  Blend well again before mixing with salad.

A note from the Brown Derby: "The water is optional, depending upon the degree of oiliness desired in the dressing."

A lot of the ingredients can be found fresh and may even be in abundance in your garden this time of year, for the rest here are the coupons:

---Main course---

$0.75 off one Hormel Fully Cooked Bacon

$0.55 off one Pilgrim's Pride Chicken

$0.55 off one Florida Crystals Natural or Organic Sugar

$1.00 off one Lea & Perrins Thick Classic Worcestershire Sauce

$1.00 off one Crisco Olive Oil

---Bread---

$0.75/2 Pillsbury Frozen Grands! Biscuits

---Beverage---

 $0.50 off one Tetley Tea iced tea blend

---Dessert---

$1 off Duncan Hines Amazing Glaze with purchase of a Duncan Hines Cake Mix

I hope you are all having a great Monday!

C.Q.

Sunday's media madness...

With Fall arriving quickly its time to look towards having a quiet blanket of white for the garden, or is it? I came across a book called The Garden in Winter: Plant for Beauty and Interest in the Quiet Season by Suzy Bales. If you live in an area that gets brown, grey or white in the Winter this is the book to check out. The author gives you ideas for planting a winter garden so you can enjoy your views in in every month, June or January, in all seasons. She also has ideas to change and light up the view from your windows and how to bring the outdoors in for the holidays. The ideas in this book are extremely creative and will keep you smiling all through the year.

* Product Description:

Most of us think of winter as the time when the garden sleeps and our attention turns to indoor activities. Yet Better Homes & Gardens contributing editor Suzy Bales lures us to the windows, the garden paths, and outdoor areas to witness the beauty and vitality of the winter garden.

The possibilities for creating interest in the winter landscape are considerable. Through Suzy’s eyes, you’ll discover the intriguing patterns of tree bark; the sculptural shapes created by trees, arching vines, shrubs, and seed heads of perennials and grasses; the outline of outdoor structures, containers, and ornaments; and the unexpected but welcome dashes of color added by conifers, berries, early bulbs, and yes, even flowers. Suzy provides details on the best plants and cultivars to choose and explains how to group them for the most arresting vignettes.

Suzy devotes an entire chapter sharing her secrets for creating one-of-a-kind holiday wreaths, unique centerpieces and mantel arrangements, and striking outdoor features with greens, interesting branches, berries, cones, and seedpods from her winter garden. Sometimes whimsical, always useful, her suggestions and ideas bring the outdoors in to brighten the darkest time of year.

You will also find descriptions of places and people who celebrate winter in unusual ways, such as Les Blake, the creator of "fire and ice" sculptures in Alaska, or the village of Cooperstown, New York, that decorates for the holidays with a flourish.

This book overflows with ideas for transforming your views in winter. Plan for the quiet season by following the suggestions of garden enthusiast Suzy Bales and your garden will continue to delight you through the year.

* About the Author:

SUZY BALES is a contributing editor at Better Homes and Gardens and the author of Suzy Bales' Down to Earth Gardener. She divides her time between Manhattan and Oyster Bay on Long Island, where she maintains her extensive gardens.

* Information from Amazon.com

If you would like a peek inside the book you can see it at Amazon, but for the lowest price on a new go to eBooksWeb.net where I found it for only $2.76, if you don’t mind a used copy you can find one in like new condition at Amazon for $0.01 with $3.99 shipping.

Hope you all have a fantastic Sunday!

C.Q.

Grandmother's cost effective cleaning...

I remember visiting my grandmother a lot when I was younger and she had such a small house that I loved to pretend it was mine to take care of, kind of like a small princess castle, I especially loved to dust and vacuum with her big pink upright, much to my grandmothers delight I'm sure.  I remember my grandmothers cleaning cupboard quite vividly as well, it housed 7 things, a BIG glass jug of vinegar, several boxes of Baking Soda, salt, dish soap, steal wool pads, a dusting cloth and a glass bottle of camphor oil.  From those seven things came one of the cleanest houses I have ever known. I think she had the right idea, keep it simple and inexpensive, I look at all the things on the market nowadays that do exactly what grandma did with much less and wonder why folks spend so much on this stuff every year. 

In our own home I haven't bought a bottle of glass cleaner in years, I use grandma's recipe of equal parts vinegar and warm water wiped off with newspaper to wash all our windows and leave no streaks.  Grandma used to use it to clean the oven window off as well, she just put it on a cloth right from the jug and wiped down the window, worked like a charm.  One of my other favorite uses for vinegar is to clean my flower vases, I love to bring in fresh flowers from the garden but most of the time I end up with a white ring in the vase and if its a bud vase this is hard to clean out.  I just pour in some vinegar, let it sit then use a bottle brush and its gone.  Vinegar is definitely one of those underutilized tools and you can check out 1001 tips for using vinegar at the vinegar website, many of the ideas shown I have used at one point or another, and some of them may surprise you, I know I found some things I didn't know, like vinegar can be used to discourage ants and get rid of fruit flies. There is a printable a coupon for $0.50 off Heinz Vinegar just for entering your name, email address and checking a few boxes at the Heinz Vinegar web site.

My Grandmother was using baking soda in her refrigerator long before I understood it wasn't there to use in her cooking, it was there to keep her food fresh, but she had other tricks up her sleeve for this versatile product as well.  When she cleaned the kitchen at the end of the day she would wipe the counters with her damp dish cloth, the lightly sprinkle baking soda on them and let it sit while she put the dishes away, then she would use the damp cloth to wipe it up, it left the kitchen smelling like new and it cleaned up any grease or stains on the counter.  Way before there was any type of sprinkle in carpet deodorizer grandma and I would have fun dancing through her little living room sprinkling the carpet with baking soda before I vacuumed, it worked great and left everything smelling so fresh.  When the box was empty she would cut it open and set it in the bottom of her little garbage can between the can and the bag, that way the area under the kitchen sink where she kept the garbage would have any unpleasant odors held in check.  Even though this was long before  the days recycling she used every part of everything and nothing went to waste.  For some easy ideas for cleaning and keeping your house smelling fresh check out The New Homemaker blog.  I also found a coupon for $0.50 off two of either the 2# or 4# boxes of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, just click on the special offers on the side and  enter your name and email address.

Grandma usually used the salt when she needed a harder abrasive than the baking soda, like for really icky frying pans or stuff that was caked onto her oven wear, I also remember her putting her dish sponges in salt water overnight about every other day to keep them fresh.  She kept some downstairs as well by her washing machine, I wasn't allowed to help with the laundry because she was always afraid I would run my hand through the mangle, then she would have to explain that to my mother.  For more on the everyday and not so everyday uses of salt be sure to check out the Belly Bytes web page.  The Morton Salt site also has ideas for the uses of salt as well as offering coupons on occasion.

You know what the dish soap, steal wool and dusting cloth are for, but not everyone knows about the magic of camphor oil.  That one bottle was used over the years whenever there was a white ring left on a wood table, just a little dab on a cotton cloth rubbed with the grain of the wood right over the ring and it would disappear like magic.  For a while it was hard to find Camphor oil because of FDA restrictions on the product, but now you can find it again with relative ease.  Don't be tempted to buy the largest bottle you can find though, that little bottle the size of my hand was passed down from my grandmother to my mom and finally to me.  The lowest price I found for a two ounce bottle was at NOW Foods for $2.49.

The basic message is back to basics will save you quite a lot of cash.  Why spend $2.50 - $3.00 for a carpet deodorizer when a box of baking soda will do the trick for around a buck?  Do you have any cleaning tips or tricks from by gone eras?  I would love to hear about them.

Have a great weekend!

C.Q.

Friday's freebie...

With the addition of a new kitten to our family we are looking at needing a second litter box, which of course means more litter to fill it with.  Today's freebie is from Arm & Hammer, enter your email address and they will get you $10.50 in coupons for their new Double Duty Clumping Litter that has advanced odor control.  I have used their litters for many years and have always liked them, they seem to be a leader in this type of product.

I hope everyone on having a fantastic Friday!!

C.Q.

Thursdays picture perfect deal..

The picture...

Last Summer we had a baby Flycatcher parked on our railing by its mother, it stayed for quite awhile so I got some great shots of it.

The deal...

I love burning scented candles, its especially therapeutic in the middle of a long winter when I can smell things like fresh roses, cut grass, a mountain lake or Honeydew melon.  From now until October 3, 2010 Yankee Candle is having their buy 2 get one free sale with $5.00 flat rate shipping if you buy on line, if your order is over $100.00 they will wave the shipping fee.  If you have a Yankee Candle store near you then clip the coupon and bring it in with you when you shop, you can also shop by phone, just mention coupon code XG010A1 to the operator.  Recently my husband and I decided to try two of the new scents, Jelly Roll and Maple Pancake and we love them both, Yankee never ceases to amaze me with their scents.

I hope you are all having a great Thursday!

Wednesday's learn and earn

~WORD OF THE DAY~

squinny \SKWIN-ee\ ~ verb

DEFINITION: to look or peer with eyes partly closed : squint

EXAMPLE: "I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign / That this was still the town that had been 'mine'…." (Philip Larkin, "I Remember, I Remember") 

 

DID YOU KNOW?: "I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me?" So asks Shakespeare's mad King Lear of blind Gloucester, marking the first use of the verb "squinny" in 1605. It is likely that Shakespeare formed the word from an earlier English word "squin," meaning "with the eye directed to one side." Shakespeare also uses the more familiar "squint" in King Lear: "This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet.… He gives the web and the pin, / squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, / and hurts the poor creature of earth." Although this is not the first known use of the verb "squint," which appears in print six years earlier, it is the first known use of the verb's transitive sense.

 

~THE REBATE~
 
I loved this rebate because I actually have the season two release of Castle on my pop up calender so I don't forget and I think Wholly Guacamole is wonderful!
 
Get $10 back by mail when you purchase any one eligible ABC TV season on DVD and any Wholly Guacamole product. 

Eligible DVDs include:

• Cougar Town Season 1
• Desperate Housewives Season 6
• Brothers & Sisters Season 4
• Castle Season 2
• Grey’s Anatomy Season 6
• Private Practice Season 3
• Lost Season 6
• Flash Forward Season 1
• Scrubs Season 9

 

You will need to down load the rebate form and mail it back with the cash register receipt with the price circled and the proof of purchase tab from the DVD you choose together with the cash register receipt for the Wholly Guacamole, both recieptes must be imprinted with the store name and the date of purchase between August 15, 2010 and November 30, 2010.  All requests must be in by December 30, 2010.  (Note that all the reciepts must be from within the state you live in so if you buy on vacation in another state it won't qualify.)

As an added bonus, there are currently 3 coupons available for Wholly Guacamole, the first is $1.50 off of one pacagage directly from the company, the other two are for $1.00 off one package and $1.00 off of two packages.

I hope you are all having a great day!

C.Q.