Life Skills - Day 21

How to Make an Angel Food Cake from Scratch

Let the baking blogs begin :) I hope you are all ready for this baking extravaganza I will be having for the next few days. Today I am making my dad's birthday cake. Every year he requests an angel food or confetti (angel food type) cake, and this year was no exception. The only thing different this year was that I decided to try and make it from scratch instead of using the easy peasy box mix. (I wasn't even brave enough to try this during my cake month) This was probably a bad idea, but I'm waiting to eat it to decide for sure. First of all, here is the recipe that I used: Angel Food Cake . . . this looks like a pretty fun blog that I will have to continue to visit in the future. I followed her directions pretty exactly, except I didn't want that many egg yolks to be wasted so I used powdered egg whites:

The egg white powder reconstituted

 I was really hoping it wouldn't make a difference, but it may have a little bit. Here is the pre-cooked cake. I added in some sprinkles to make it a confetti cake and just prayed that the extra additive wouldn't make my batter too heavy to rise. I also may not have mixed it quite enough because I was so scared of deflating it, but I won't know for sure until I cut into it.

Before cooking

 I let it cool in the pan overnight, and then the next day, removed it. This was the result:

Slightly more crumbly, and not as tall or even as the boxed kind. At least it was made with love right?

 Then I made my customary "7-minute frosting" (Fluffy Boiled Icing), but it didn't turn out quite right. I have noticed Allrecipes.com switching some of the recipes after I've bookmarked them, so perhaps the recipe was a bit different, but I didn't have nearly enough frosting this time, and it was really thick (it seemed way too thin so I added the 1 Tbsp. powdered sugar like the recipe said, but obviously I shouldn't have). So I am rather disappointed in my cake, but my husband was nice enough to help me cover it in sprinkles (which improves the look I think) and I'll leave my final judgement until I taste it. Plus, I think my dad will love it anyways :)

Good enough :)

Life Skills - Day 20

How to Check Your Credit Score

It doesn't get much more boring and grown-up than that, but there it is, that is what I learned how to do today. Whenever I heard about doing it, I always thought, "Huh, I should do that", but I never got around to it, so I finally learned how tonight. I read this post: Credit Report and followed the checklist (I used Equifax) and tada, I got my credit report. Of course I found an error (just my name) so I now have to go about fixing that, but at least I know. Sorry this isn't a super exciting post, but it's something good to know how to do, so I'm glad I did it. 

Life Skills - Day 19

How to Properly Make a Bed

Let me start off by saying that I hate making my bed.  My mom will tell you it was always a battle to get me to do it as a kid, and as soon as I moved out, I stopped entirely. I used to like building a fort around my bed, so then no one could see it so my mom didn't have any reason to make me make it. So today's challenge was not something that I was looking forward to, but we are having company soon, and I had no idea how to make hospital corners, so I figured it was something good to learn. Here is what I started with (what our bed usually looks like):

Messy bed

Now, after watching this Martha Stewart video: How to Properly Make A Bed and looking at this site (yes, I know it's for guys . . . oh well): How to Make a Bed, this is the result:

Look at that fancy hospital corner :) 

Ta da

I can't take credit for the amazingly lovely quilt (both of them actually), they were wedding gifts from my aunt . . . the best quilter I know :) 

Life Skills - Day 18

How to Change a Baby's Diaper

Yup, this is a true life skill for sure. I know many of you may be surprised that as a female I made it 26 years without changing a single diaper, but it's true, I have never done it before, so today was the day. Luckily, my friend just happened to have a cute and happy baby with a wet (but thankfully not poopy) diaper, so she was more than happy to let me change him. I know, it wasn't a full "blow out", so therefore it will not count in some of your minds, but it's a start at least. I don't think I really need to describe what I did because it's pretty self-explanatory, so I'll just put up with picture of me with the clean baby. He was all smiley, but then a friend started making faces at him and he got distracted . . . oh well. I still managed to change his diaper without him crying = success :) 

Me with a clean baby :) 

Life Skills - Day 17

How to Change a Automobile Headlight

This was not a challenge I was expecting to tackle this month, but when we discovered that my headlight was burnt out on my car, I figured, why not? So, on our way home, we stopped at our local big box store and picked out the mid-range light bulb meant for my car. Then I took out the manual and read about how to change it . . . it seemed easy enough, so when we got home, I was ready. I had my husband time me, and even though I was distracted for a short while by a cute cat passing through our yard, I managed to replace the car's headlight (with only minimal assistance from my husband when I was confused and couldn't see (it was dark out)) in less than 10 minutes. Nine minutes something . . . not too shabby :) I didn't take any pictures because it's just my car's headlight, and like I said, it was dark out and rather difficult to see, but now I know that is a project I can easily tackle again in the future if I need to. Who knew I would learn so much about cars this month? 

Life Skills - Day 16

How to French Braid My Hair

Alright, I'll give you a break from the baking blogs for a day :) Today, one of my lovely friends taught me how to French braid my hair. Now, I'll confess that I have tried this before, but I've never actually had anyone teach me, and therefore have never had very much success, so I still count this as learning something new. She gave me many good pointers, the best being: 1. It's okay to hold all three strands in one hand in order to get the rest of your hair straightened out . . . I'd never tried that before and it really helped. 2. Once you add the extra bit of hair into the existing strand, smooth it with your fingers before adding it into the braid, that really helps make it look nicer. And 3. When doing the two braided look, take the forward most strand and start by placing that over the middle strand, it improves the look of the front. So, I'm sorry this is not a great tutorial on how to French braid, I don't really know how to describe it in words, and I already knew how to braid, so I didn't have to learn that part. It really is just a lot of practice, and I don't have it perfect yet by any means, but I'm much better at it that I was yesterday :) 

Here was my progress:

Trial One

Not so good from the front

Getting better (Trial Two or Three)

Two or Three

Making some improvement

Not too shabby :)

Moving on, to the two braid look

I thought it worked out well

Until I saw the top . . . oops. I did so much better on the left side. Oh well, my arms were pretty tired by this time.

Me and my awesome teacher :) 

Life Skills - Day 15

How to Make Shortbread

I apologize if you are getting sick of my baking blogs that really aren't true life skills, but I was still feeling under the weather and not up for a lot of the other ideas I had (or didn't have anyone available to teach them to me), so I had to resort to another new baking challenge. It turns out, shortbread isn't that challenging (much easier than the other idea I had, but I didn't have time for that one unfortunately . . . maybe another day). Anyways, I figured I was on an international cooking kick (filet/fillet, souffle) so why not head to a different country and try to make some shortbread to rival the Scottish "Walkers" that is beloved by so many. I wondered if it was really worth it to try and make it at home or if I should just go buy some because I hadn't had any for a while and was in the mood for some. So I asked the internet, and I found (thanks to this article from Bon Appetit: Is Homemade Shortbread Worth It?) that indeed it is worth the effort. The recipe was a Martha Stewart creation, and she hadn't steered me wrong when I learned how to fold a fitted sheet (see Life Skills Day 2), so I decided to try it. I was a little surprised that shortbread doesn't have any shortening in it, but I followed the recipe nonetheless. I got a little nervous when I saw how dense the cookie dough was, but I continued. Then I was worried that they weren't mixed well enough when I felt variations in the dough when pricking it and saw it rising unevenly in the oven. But in the end, it was pretty even, and looked rather nice. For my first attempt, I think it turned out well. So the life skill here (that I'm reminded of so often) is probably: don't worry so much :) 

The very dense dough

Pressed and scored, ready for the oven

Finished, and cut apart. Yummy and buttery, ready for Christmas :)

Life Skills - Day 14

How to Make a Souffle

First of all, try to spell "souffle". . . that's a fun one to learn :) Next, follow this recipe: Cheese Souffle, and tada,  you have a fancy cheese souffle. Well, it wasn't quite that easy, but it definitely wasn't as hard as I was expecting. I don't think I could have make three different souffles in a very limited time period, like they had to do on "Master Chef", but for my first souffle, I think it turned out okay. I did burn the butter the first time (the recipe says to evaporate the water out of it, and I just left it on too long), but other than that, it went pretty smoothly. Here is how it looked in my kitchen: 

Butter with flour mixture

Add the cheese . . . yum :)

Prepared pan, buttered, coated with Parmesan cheese, and frozen for ~5 minutes

Well beaten egg whites

Egg whites added to cheese sauce

Ready for baking

Ooo . . . it was a little higher, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera . . . it falls pretty quickly

My first souffle

Enjoy the cheesy goodness

Even though I would say this was a success, I'm not sure I really liked it too much. It could be the fact that I have a cold and couldn't really taste it, but it was kind of like a really fluffy cheese omelette with a slight bready taste. It wasn't bad, but not my favorite . . . I think I would have preferred a chocolate souffle. That being said, my husband liked it so much (and was apparently very hungry), that he ate the entire rest of the dish (he added fresh bell peppers too and said that was good too). So try it out, and let me know what you think :) 

Life Skills - Day 13

How to Fillet a Fish

So, before I was even finished with this challenge, I was ready to call it a failure. I didn't think I'd be very good at this, but it did not even start out well. For starters, do you know how difficult it is to find a fish that is not already filleted? That was an interesting and unexpected challenge. One grocery store suggested trying an Asian food store, and sure enough, they had frozen, whole fish. But, I had no idea what any of these kinds of fish were . . . I was expecting walleye, or perch, or some other Friday night fish fry tradition, but no . . . my choices were blue runner or milkfish. The blue runners were cheaper, so I got those. A pack of two for ~$2.50. My heart sank a little as I was checking out because the cashier was trying to be helpful and tell me how to cook it and he said to fry or steam it whole . . . not what I was planning to do with it. I asked him if I could try filleting it, and he said yes, so I figured I'd just wing it and see how it went. Upon further research, I discovered that blue runners are usually used for bait to catch bigger fish, and not usually for eating (uh oh), but I did find a few websites that said they were good for eating (this blog was particularly helpful, although I didn't really want to try his ways of eating it: Professor Fishheads), so again, I just decided to wing it . . . how bad could it be, right? I couldn't find a video on filleting a blue runner, so I tried what I figured was close, a video about how to fillet a blue fish (Blue Fish Filleting). With that minimal information, I just dove in, because I'm not really feeling well tonight (I think my first illness of the year is kicking in, boo) so I wanted to get it over with. Here are my images (don't continue if you got squeamish in biology class):

My "subjects"

The massacre (I tried skinning the first one, but it didn't really work. For the second one I left the skin on and cooked it that way . . . it was much better)

Eww . . . I think I missed out on quite a bit of meat :( I'm definitely not a professional at this.

I cooked it in a pan with lemon olive oil then added a little fish/chicken seasoning.

And the most amazing part? It was actually tasty :) I thought it would be fishy and kind of gross, but I liked it. Success (for the most part), now I can go to bed. Yes, it's 8:30 . . . here's to feeling better tomorrow. 

Life Skills - Day 12

How to Make Homemade Pasta

I think this really is a good life skill to know. I was pretty impressed with myself at the end, when I realized that I had made a tasty dish using just flour, eggs, cream, and garlic salt (garlic buttered noodles . . . yum. See Life Skills - Day 7 for how I made the butter). Overall, this was a pretty easy task, and the results were good too :) Here is my pasta journey (I followed these instructions: Homemade Pasta, with 2 eggs and 1 cup of flour):

1 C. flour mixed with 2 eggs. I would have had an earlier picture, but I was too busy making a serious mess of my counter . . . it was kind of fun :) 

Lovely dough after kneading for 10 minutes

After resting (in a plastic bag) for a few hours since I had church tonight, I rolled it all out and sliced it into noodles with a pizza cutter

Noodles!

Boiled in salt water for 3 minutes

Look, I made noodles . . . wow :) They are chewier than dried noodles, but are very hearty and tasty. They would be so good in chicken noodle soup. Hmm, now there's an idea ;)

Life Skills - Day 11

How to Make Etched Glass

This idea was in one of the "Show Me How" (500 life skills) books. It was actually pretty easy. I bought some Armor Etch at a craft store, found a piece of glass in my house, cut out a design from contact paper, and off I went. I used the lid of a flowery smelling candle (I didn't want to do anything fancy in case I really screwed it up), so I picked a flower pattern to use. I think the pictures show this the best:

Item awaiting etching

Pattern taped on top of contact paper on lid

Pattern cut out with X-acto knife

Finished product (sorry I didn't get a picture with the etching cream on, I was scared of it because it has lots of warnings on it. I wore gloves though, so I'm okay)

Pretty :) 

So, why don't you go out, get the few simple materials, and give it a try . . . an easy and fun way to spice up vases, plates, serving platters, etc. :) 

Life Skills - Day 10

How to Jump Start a Car

I decided this was a very practical skill to know how to do, especially with the arrival of winter, so I went out to my car and dug out my "Safety Triangle" (an orange triangle filled with safety stuff), and attempted to learn how to do it. Again, as with changing the oil, my husband was there to help and it was his truck that we used as the rescue vehicle. Since my car wasn't actually dead, we didn't have to start it, but I learned about the safety, and how to attach the cables. If you're curious and don't know, the cable has a red (positive) connection and a black (negative) connection on each end. First, connect the red side to the dead battery, and then the other red to the live battery. Then connect the black side to the negative terminal on the good battery. Make sure the cars are not touching each other, and don't touch the red and black ends together or you'll cause a large spark that can start a fire . . . be very careful. Finally, attach the remaining black end to something metal in the engine compartment of the dead car, but NOT to the black side of the dead battery because if there are leaking fumes and it sparks you could set your whole car on fire . . .eek! Either the latch for the hood release, or a few other spots would have worked on my car. Here is what it looked like:

"Dead" Battery

Live battery

Then start your car :) If it doesn't work after turning the key for 10 seconds, let it rest for a minute and then try again. If it still doesn't work, have the person with the live car rev the engine a little bit to give the battery more "juice" and try again. If it still doesn't work . . . ask someone else, that is the extent of my knowledge right now, sorry ;) Be safe out there!

Life Skills - Day 9

How to Tie a Tie

This one was pretty simple, but I wasn't home all day, so I needed something I could do in the car, thus, learning how to tie a necktie. I picked out four of my husband's ugliest ties (judging from the fact that they were at the bottom of his tie rack and I've never seen him wear them) to practice with. I used this site (How to Tie a Tie) and although my pictures don't look quite as nice as theirs, I think I did okay. This was a fun skill to learn. Here are my four ties, each with a different tie knot (readers, do you have a favorite tie knot?):

Four-in-hand (I don't like the asymmetrical nature of it, but it was very easy)

Windsor (too many loops = a thicker knot)

Half-Windsor, my favorite

Pratt knot (clever, but it didn't unravel as easily as the rest)

The backs of all of them