Making Homemade Bagels

Wow!  Making homemade bagels can be a big job!  You have to start them with potato water.  So it is a good idea to think ahead and when you make potatoes, save your water for bagels.  I usually make mashed potatoes for supper the night before I am going to be making bagels.  I just save my water in a covered kettle in the fridge until I am ready.  Then I heat the potato water till warm on the stove.  This is one of my favorite things to make even though they take so long.  There is nothing like them.  They are so fresh and yummy.  The other thing that makes them a big job is that they have to be boiled 3 minutes on each side and then baked.  If you are still interested in making them after getting this information, I have included my favorite recipe.  These are the best topped with cream cheese and a homemade raspberry freezer jam.
Some benefits of making your own bagels is that they are a lot cheaper then buying them.  You can freeze them and use when ready.  If you raise chickens, this is a great way to use up extra eggs.

BAGEL RECIPE

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups potato water
2 packages of yeast
1 Tbs. of sugar
1 Tbs. salt
3 Tbs. canola oil
3 eggs
6 cups of flour

Heat water to just warm on your wrist.  Pour into your largest mixing bowl.  Add the yeast, sugar, salt, oil and eggs.  Beat with a wire whisk until all mixed.  Add the flour 3 cups at a time.  Then, turn out onto a lightly floured surface and kneed until smooth and elastic like.  Wash out the mixing bowl and dry it.  Grease the bowl and put the dough in it, cover with a cloth, and set in a warm place to rise.  Once the dough rises once, push it down and get ready to form it.  Start by forming the dough into 2 long log rolls.  Then cut each of these into 12 pieces.  These little pieces will each be 1 bagel.  Roll each one in your hands like a play dough snake.  Then, join the ends to make a ring.  Pinch together and just dab with water where you pinched it to hold it together.  After you have formed all the bagels, let them set and rise for about 20 minutes.
While they are rising.  Get your largest kettle, add 1/4 cup sugar and a gallon of water.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Once it is boiling, Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Add bagels to the water about 4 to a time and boil 3 minutes on each side.  Then put on a greased cookie sheet and bake.  These will bake until they are lightly brown on bottom and the top.  Keep in mind they are mostly cooked from boiling.  They are just going into the oven to brown. 
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SUPER MOON

Did anyone see that Super Moon we had last week?  It was really something.  My husband went down to the Old Mill Pond where he could get a good look at it.  He ended up taking a bunch of really interesting pictures of it. 
This is the biggest and brightest full moon of the year.  This moon is closer to earth then the average moon.  This moon is closer to earth then the average moon. 
Check out these photos.
http://www.zazzle.com/mainewildsensations/super+moon+gifts

Collecting Old Jars and Bottles Part 3

I was very surprised the other day, when we found an old foundation.  I started to look around and thought that I had found the old personal dump.  I was digging around and found a few nice ones.  Then, my husband found another personal dump on the old property, this one was huge.  He filled 2 big clothes baskets to the top!  It was a great find.  I can't wait to go back and dig deeper.  We got all of these ones just on the very top, after brushing away some old cans.  We found really old brown glass ones, old soda bottles, and everything else you can imagine.  This has been so fun for me. 
If you are out in the woods, keep your eyes open, you never know what you might find! 

Collecting Old Jars and Bottles Part 2

Today, I found the honey hole of old glass.  In just about 30  minutes I came home with 10 old bottles and jars.  These ranged in age from 1933-1955.  I found brown glass, and clear glass.  They all look so interesting.  I also found an old glass insulator for an eclectic line.  It is so neat!  The color is emerald green.  I wasn't sure what it was, I had to have my husband tell me.
If you are interested in collecting old glass, then get out in the woods and see what you can find.  Where I found the stuff today, was a place where someone must have had an old camp in the woods and this was a hole where they had buried all of their trash.  I dug up a lot of old tin cans before I got to the good stuff. 
The fun part about finding this stuff is, there is always a history lesson behind it, and it is a treasure hunt.  Lets face it, no matter how old we are, we love treasure hunts. 
Although I think old glass is about the best thing there is.  And, I would love to receive some as a gift, not all mothers feel this way!  Don't forget to get your mother something she would enjoy this Mother's day. 
http://www.zazzle.com/mainewildsensations/mom+gifts

ARE YOU TIRED OF THE SAME OLD MOTHER'S DAY GIFTS?

Maybe you are trying to figure out what you are going to buy your mother????  Maybe you have been to the store and everything looks blah or to much like what other family members will be buying.  I love to find new unique things when purchasing a gift.
The trouble with buying flowers is that they never last.  How about a wildflower mug???  That would be different!  You could pair it up with some nice organic tea or coffee.  You could even fill it up with some individually wrapped candy! 
Check these out!
http://www.zazzle.com/mainewildsensations/mom+gifts

Collecting Old Bottles And Jars

One of my newest projects, is collecting old bottles!  I love this!  I never know where I am going to find them.
  I found some a few weeks ago in an opening along the edge of an old logging road.  They were canning jars dating around 1970.  One was a star jar and the other was a 2 Quart Jar.
Then, while driving out an old dirt road I found an old 1/2 gallon jar with etched flowers all along the top.  It looked like maybe an old juice jar. I have no idea what the age of this one was.  It was just laying on a stump along the edge of the woods.
Old foundations are another great place to look for bottles and jars.  I found an old juice jar and Pepsi bottle in an old foundation last week.  Then I went out back and found where the people used to bury their trash.  That is always a great find on an old property.  Because, they never had dumps, they had their own dump on their land.  Anyhow, I found an old glass octagon jar I have no idea how old.  I am guessing it was a pill jar.  An old whiskey bottle around the same age.  A ginger ale bottle 1 quart around 1970.  A soda bottle that is Christmas green and rough textured about 1940. 
My husband has found some other bottles while doing ground work on our land.  He found an old peroxide bottle that took a cork, an old 1940 Christmas green jar, and a tiny cork bottle that is really old.
My husband also found for me while hunting last fall some old bottles from the 1800's or maybe earlier.  Check out the picture of those on this T-shirt!
http://www.zazzle.com/mainewildsensations/cross+gifts

Cheap Mother's Day Gift Ideas

Well, Mother's Day is just around the corner.  It's time to get thinking about gift ideas.  I know that Mother's Day can be costly especially if you have several mothers and grandmothers to buy for.  Try to remember that it isn't what you spend that matters.  I always try to make sure the gift is going to match their personality and be something useful to them, instead of worrying about how much I am spending. 

GIFT IDEAS

1.  A garden gift basket  I have done these buy picking up a flower pot, adding some packages of flower seeds, some garden gloves, and gardening tools. Then I cover the whole pot in clear gift basket wrap and add a homemade name tag with curly ribbon.  These always look so beautiful.  If you go to the dollar store, you can do the whole thing for around $5.00 for a nice one.

2.  You can pick up a couple of flats of flowers at your local greenhouse and some pots at the dollar store, along with potting soil.  Then transplant the flowers into the pots.

3.  Make some homemade truffles and give those.  Find a recipe for them on an online recipe site.   You can put these in just a sandwich bag ( not a ziplock) and add the gift tag and ribbon at the top. 

4.  Make a candy arrangement in a coffee cup.  This is very simple!  First, buy a coffee cup from the dollar store.  Second, add some M&M's in the cup.  Third, cut out some flower petals from construction paper or even regular paper that you have colored. .  Fourth, Poke a toothpick ( one of those sturdy ones, the cheap ones won't work) through the center of the construction paper flower, add a hershey kiss buy poking the toothpick into it but not all the way through.  Then, wrap a pipe cleaner around the other end of the toothpick several times.  Next, wrap the pipe cleaner around a craft stick, to make a stem, and stick into the cup full of M&M's.  You can add some store bought truffles buy just poking the toothpick directly into them and then repeating the pipe cleaner, craft stick stem.   Keep making and adding until the cup is full.  It doesn't take a lot, you should be able to do about 3 cups with a few bags of candy.  Make sure you have enough M&M's though.  It takes alot to hold everything in the cup.

5.  Walmart has medium sized boxes of Russel Stover Chocolates for 3.00.  The flavors I saw were, cherry cordial, coconut clusters, and carmels. I am sure the variety varies for each store.  But this is a pretty cheap gift that looks like something.

6.  Send them an invitation for a meal at your house.  Then, make the meal really special bringing out the best dishes, tablecloth, and serving something very nice.

7. Make a homemade card telling them exactly how you feel about them.  The store bought cards are nice, but a personal touch is always better. 

8.  Give them a coupon for a job you will do for them, that they need help with or hate doing.  Put it in a card.
This is a site that has some really beautiful unique cards.
http://www.zazzle.com/mainewildsensations/mother+day+greeting+cards