Learning and Growing: Cake Baking and Decorating

This post/re-post is a resource list designed to aid in the education of women in homemaking and womanhood lines, particularly in keeping with the purpose of The Hope Chest. You can always find all of my resource lists in the sidebar.

I don't necessarily endorse these sites in their entirety. In fact, some of them I may not endorse at all! They are here because I believe they are useful for educational purposes.

Teaching Good Things has a cake decorating DVD New!

Wilton ~ famous cake decorating book and supply company. New!

A Christmas Giveaway

So, obviously I'm spending most of my time somewhere other than The Hope Chest! I'm sorry about that, as The Hope Chest does have the potential to be useful, but Keeping Home is a worthy cause too.

And now about the giveaway. It's . . . on Keeping Home's blog (of course!). Until 12/15 you can enter to win a Christmas instrumental guitar CD. Audio previews included so you can see if you like it first. DON'T WAIT! VISIT TODAY! (Sometimes I just can't be serious when I'm tired!). But seriously, please do visit. I'd appreciate it! :-)

12 Days of Holiday Homemaking

I'm going over to Joyous Home for this. Are you?

Celebrating the Beginning of Autumn with Roasted Potatoes

I'll tell more later about what I did today to celebrate the beginning of Autumn over at my other blog, but one thing I am doing is making roasted potatoes this morning to go with whatever DearMother decides to make for dinner/lunch (it's her turn to cook today).

This dish is still in the experimental stage. I've made it once! What temperature do I use (ETA: high--about 400, but I'm not sure what is best)? How long do they bake (a long time, but I don't know for sure!)? How much salt do I put in them (I guess I'll have to start measuring the potatoes, won't I?)? The herbs are easier since they are a bit flexible.

Here's what I put in the potatoes.
Olive oil (not a lot)
Salt
Ground oregano
Ground rosemary
Ground thyme
Spanish paprika
Basil
Sage (just a little)
Marjoram

I mixed this all with the potatoes (cut into large unpeeled chunks) in a bowl and then poured the potatoes into a sprayed baking dish. I think DearMother put the oven on 250 degrees since she will be baking something else at the same time that requires that temperature.

We shall see how this batch turns out! I think that roasted potatoes must be perfected and that I shall attempt to do that this fall.

While I was making the potatoes I also thought of something else I could do along the lines of using this holiday to better serve those in my household: make a potato dish once a week, at least throughout fall. Not just microwave-baked potatoes but something more "real" like roasted potatoes, oven-baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, etc. I think this would be very popular with DD (dear dad) and DB (dear brother).