Finding Recipes

Cooking is not my strong suit. I can cook, I just don't like to, but I need to make dinner for my family and I do occasionally like to bake (one of my dietary downfalls)! Maybe you're the same way and like me, you have the cook books and recipe files, but what happens when you don't have the ingredients or you just don't know what to make at all? Well, there is an answer!

Big Oven.com is a literal smorgasbord of recipes and ideas. There are over 160,000 recipes to choose from and maybe you'll finally be able to find out what that elusive ingredient was in Grandma's "famous" chocolate chip cookies...molasses?

But, I have to say the best feature of Big Oven.com is the Leftover Wizard! You just enter the ingredients you have on hand in your fridge and voila, a recipe comes up for a whole new spin on those leftovers! Now this is definitely something I can use!

So, next time you stuck for something to make for dinner, try out Big Oven.com! You might even find yourself purchasing their software program to make up menus and shopping lists to make your life even easier!

No Beads, But How About Food?

Well, I haven't been able to bead lately, but we had a progressive dinner last night and my assignment was two of the appetizers. One was Lemon Chicken kabobs, which were fairly simple to make, but the other was Greek Croustade. If you've never worked with phyllo dough, let me just say, it is an instrument of the devil! I have never been so frustrated. I was supposed to fold each sheet into thirds and create a series of spokes, then put the spinach and cheese filling in the center, pull the ends of the spokes up and twist them into rosettes. As you can see, that particular approach didn't work. It turned out fine without the "glamour", but it always ticks me off when I can't make it look like it's supposed to! Everyone enjoyed it though, so I suppose, in the end, it was still a success.