Joan’s Country Kitchen

Cooking, Entertaining and Home Improvement Blog

Archive for the ‘Joan's Cooking Blog’ Category

Searching for eye-catching free wordpress themes is one of things you do when setting up a Wordpress website or blog.

Visit free wordpress themes to find a theme with whatever options you’re looking for. Here you can find one to four column themes, right or left sidebar, and adsense and widget ready. You can also choose your theme by topic, such as nature (with 176 choices), women (with 55 choices) and fashion (74 choices).

No matter what the topic of your Wordpress blog is about, you’re sure to find just the look and options you need, and all are free download! Check out free wordpress themes today.

I just found a great new foodie resource called FoodConnect. This cooking and recipe site is a terrific

Chicken and Herbed Dumplings

Chicken and Herbed Dumplings

social network too. Membership is free and sign-up just takes minutes. From there you can connect with cooking friends, sign up for a weekly cooking and recipe newsletter and more.

FoodConnect.com is all about recipes and food! Members post their own recipes - one terrific sounding recipe I am going to try is Chicken and Herbed Dumplings with Aromatic Vegetables posted by Alex Firman. Members can review the recipes and rate them too. Once you’ve chosen recipes that interest you, you can use the shopping tool to create a shopping list, making it easy to fix that special recipe.

Find a few recipes you love and don’t want to forget? Add them to “My Recipes” so they’ll always be there to refer back to at any time. You can also create and post your own favorite menus and search for info on cookbooks.

Another foodie area on FoodConnect.com is restaurants. You can search for restaurants by zip code or city, add your own favorite restaurant or rate the ones that are listed. It’s a great way to promote your favorite eating hot spots in your town or city.

There are lots of interesting food-related articles on FoodConnect as well. Here is one by Judy Witts called Liquid Gold about olive oil.

Almost all of the members I looked at on the site were from Vancouver, BC so FoodConnect could use some members from the United States! Take a moment to sign up for it’s free membership and browse. You could be the first in your city to post your favorite restaurant or make some new friends in BC.

This was a paid review by FoodConnect.com but, as with all my reviews, I fully checked out the site and really like it. FoodConnect has great potential and you can be part of it so sign up and post those recipes.

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If you’re looking for any type of party favors, from candles, soaps, edible favors, place cards and coasters, you can find them at partease.

I’ll be planning a baby shower very soon and I loved the baby shower party favor section.. They were really cute and the prices were great too.

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Want to Make Money Blogging? It’s Easy to Learn How to Make Money on Internet

Learning how to make money on Internet is a new concept for many people. Internet marketing is a relatively young industry and blogging is a huge part of it.

Not too long ago, many families didn’t even own a computer but nowadays, most families do just about everything online from socializing, playing games, to banking and shopping online. Internet marketing now provides booming business opportunities for those who want to work at home.

There are an infinite number of wonderful opportunities out there and many people are attracted to blogging as a way to make income online. Everybody has a hobby or passion they’d love to get paid writing about. What they need to get them on the right track is a successful, profitable business model to take them step by step through the process.

Some people choose to create their own informational product to sell online. Many niche markets are very receptive to downloadable books. Recipe books and cooking how to books are wonderful topics for ebooks to sell online. Ebooks are becoming more common all the time so if you come up with a good ideas, you should have little problem selling it online. Once your content is created, then you need a great blog to help promote it.

Once you have your own blog, you can add affiliate marketing (where companies pay you to post their links and products), create your own content to sell and more. There are many streams of income possible through professional blogging.

The easiest way to become an affiliate marketer is to create your own website. You then create high quality content and articles for your site and learn to drive traffic to it. The content, coupled with relevant ads which visitors click on, is the key to making money online.

The problem with creating a website is that it gets harder and harder to rank well with the search engines. The easiest way around that is to use blogging software, like Wordpress, to create your own blog. One of the benefits of blogging software is that it is faster it’s set up, more search engine friendly and easier to use.

Learning how to start a blog doesn’t have to be intimidating. If you have the right tutorial to follow, it’s easy in fact. The Niche Blogger is the easiest to follow guide that we have found and it’s the one I’ve personally used to set up several profitable blogs. The Niche Blogger is a membership site and the cost to join is so low that you should be able to easily make back your investment fairly quickly. Plus, you can cancel at any time, once you have your blogs set up and running.

While there are many different models, you really can’t go wrong with blogging. It’s possible to create a part or full-time income through through blogging, once you have the right tools and someone to help you at every step of the way.

Shopping online is easy and convenient but, let’s face it, every time you shop or transact with a web site online you put yourself the risk because other people have access to your personal financial information. As someone who has had my own credit card number stolen while shopping online, I can vouch for the necessity of using a service like Shop Shield® to keep me safer online and protect me from identity theft in the future. Shop Shield® offers the most complete protection against identity theft and credit card fraud when you shop, pay bills, make a Credit Card Payment or register with web sites.

Shop Shield® safeguards all my personal data when I’m shopping or paying bills online because Internet thieves, hackers and insiders don’t have access to my name, address, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords or my email addresses, because this information is never provided to any web sites. Shop Shield® replaces all my personal identity information with anonymous information so you and your family stay anonymous, and your information is secure.

Shop Shield® works almost everywhere major Credit Card Payment is accepted – so you can shop or pay bills securely at almost any web site.

How Shop Shield® Works

Shop Shield® replaces your real payment and identity information with anonymous data that is useless to thieves and can’t be traced to you. It’s the only product that protects ALL of your data, including your name, billing address, email address, passwords, phone number, credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts.

Using Shop Shield® is also FREE when you pay with a checking account and is guaranteed 100% secure.

Luckily for me, my own case was easily solved. I check my bank accounts frequently and noticed a few small charges I did not make. My bank was great about canceling the charges and the card and issuing me a new card. If I’d known about Shop Shield® back then, however, I wouldn’t even have had that inconvenience.

Check out their service and see for yourself how easy, convenient and safe Shop Shield can be.

Like most Americans these days, I have had my credit card number stolen while shopping online. Luckily for me, it was easy to fix the problem and I didn’t lose any money. However, since this happened, I decided to look into a prepaid card like those offered by NetSpend.

NetSpend offers a company debit card to use virtually anywhere to make purchases, pay bills, secure hotel and car rental reservations and shop online without the need even for a bank or credit history. This is a perfect solution for teaching your teenager to use a debit card responsibly. Simply charge the card with their allowence each week. Send one off with your college student so you can put money on the card at home and they can use it safely anywhere.

You can also get a prepaid debit card from NetSpend for traveling. Simply put the money onto your card and use it to make purchases for a specific length of time. That way you won’t be a victim of identity theft while traveling, eating in restaurants and shopping in distant cities.

NetSpend’s prepaid cards offer a great budgeting tool also. Put your grocery moeny on a NetSpend card each month and resolve to only spend your budgeted amount. Even low to moderate income shoppers can use these prepaid cards.

If you’re worried about identity theft, and these days, who isn’t, consider a Netspend prepaid card.

I always love a great Hannah Swensen mystery by Joanne Fluke and Blueberry Muffin Murder was another hit. Reading a Joanne Fluke mystery, set in Lake Eden, Minnesota, is like having a homey visit with Hannah, her sister Andrea, Hannah’s two boyfriends, Mike and Norman, and all the various characters who reside in this chilly little town, including the neurotic Moishe the cat.

Hannah, who owns and operates The Cookie Jar, a popular bake and coffee shop in Lake Eden. These light-hearted cookie mysteries always seem to kill off some person who isn’t very well liked anyway and the Blueberry Muffin Murder is no exception. This time the victim is Connie Mac, a famous TV chef who comes to Lake Eden to open a store - and gets killed in the process. The fact that Connie Mac died in Hannah’s shop - with one of Hannah’s blueberry muffins - still in her hand, gives Hannah and her sister a special interest in the case.Despite the fact that one of Hannah’s boyfriends, Mike, is a police officer in Lake Eden who forbids Hannah to investigate the murder, the clues are piling up and Hannah is on the case.

Joanne Fluke mysteries are all interspersed with real recipes and the Blueberry Muffin Murder is no exception. This mystery includes tasty cookies and muffins like Blue Blueberry muffins, Multiple Choice Bar Cookies and Twin Chocolate Delights. All together there are eight recipes which make these books you’d like to hang onto after you read them.

Other great Hannah Swensen murder mysteries include other tasty titles like the Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder and the Strawberry Shortcake Murder. If you like light-hearted murder mysteries that make you want to grab a warm, fragrant cookie and a cup of coffee, you’ll love Joanne Fluke’s books.

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I have to admit my Easter cupcakes were made from a cake mix this time as I’ve been fighting a cold. Still, the art is in the cup cake decorating and these cute Easter cupcakes are very easy to make.
Easter Cupcake

Easter Cupcake

Ingredients

Cupcakes

Frosting Ingredients

3 C Powdered Sugar
1 stick butter or margarine
Just enough milk to make a good consistency frosting

Mix these together until smooth. Add green food coloring.

Ingredients for Easy Easter cupcakes

Ingredients for Easy Easter cupcakes

Decorations Needed for Easter Cupcakes

Flaked coconut
Green food coloring
Jelly Beans and Candy Eggs

Mix a few drops of green food coloring into the coconut until you get the color of grass.

Frost cupcakes with green frosting, pile on some “grass” and set a few eggs in the center. You’re done!

My grandkids love these easy Easter cupcakes so I always make a double batch.

Happy Easter!

Easy Easter Cupcakes-make a double batch!

Easy Easter Cupcakes-make a double batch!

Recipe for Easy Cherry Cobbler

Apr-9-2009 By Joan

This cherry cobbler has a crunchy crust and the sugar-cornstarch sauce makes a delicious sweet liquid for your cobbler so it doesn’t dry out like some recipes I’ve tried.
Cherry cobbler topped with whipped cream

Cherry cobbler topped with whipped cream

Ingredients

5 cups fresh or frozen cherries ( I used frozen organic cherries for this recipe)
1 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 c. flour
3 c. sugar, divided
1 c. milk
1/3 c. butter, soft ( I used ghee here and it was luscious!)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt, divided
2 tbsp. cornstarch
1 1/2 c. boiling water

delicious organic, frozen cherries

delicious organic, frozen cherries

Directions for Easy Cherry Cobbler

Add Cherries to a greased, 2 1/2 quart baking dish and spread evenly.

Sprinkle cherries with lemon juice and toss to coat evenly. Set cherries aside.

In a small mixing bowl, blend flour, 1 1/2 c sugar, milk, butter, baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt.

When mixture is well blended, spread it evenly over the cherries.

Boil the water and add cornstarch, 1/2 tsp of salt, and 1 1/2 c sugar and stir until smooth.

Brown crunchy crust and sweet sauce make this cherry cobbler special.

Brown crunchy crust and sweet sauce make this cherry cobbler special.

Pour water and cornstarch mixture over cobbler.

cherry Cobbler cooking

cherry Cobbler cooking

Bake cobbler at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Cobbler is done when the top is a hard crust.