One day, Ginny said to Jenn: “Let’s do a cooking blog post.”

A flurry of emails later, Two Spoonfuls was born!

We are two creative gals who became friends through our mutual love of fabric and sewing. Now, we’re bringing our energy and style into the kitchen, trying new recipes, re-vamping old favorites and sharing them with you.

We’ll use familiar ingredients to create dishes that are flavorful and easy to prepare, while adding our own helpful tips, bits of kitchen wisdom, and a little food history too. The recipes we share will be practical, with easy gourmet touches.

Look for Two Spoonfuls recipe recommendations: always in time for a weekend, to share with your family and friends.

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Welcome everyone, to our first Two Spoonfuls post!

With Thanksgiving fast approaching and lots of pumpkiny goodness all around us, I’ve chosen Pumpkin Bread Pudding as my first recipe to explore. This recipe is from Ian Knauer and can be found on the Epicurious website.

Most of the ingredients for this recipe - you probably already have in your pantry.

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin

1/2 cup whole milk

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs plus 1 yolk

salt, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground allspice, ground cloves

5 cups cubed day-old baguette

3/4 stick unsalted butter

This recipe makes 6 servings and is very easy!

Simply mix up everything except butter and bread, toss the bread in melted butter and mix into the custard.

Bake for 25 - 30 minutes until set and golden…

And ENJOY!

You can drizzle on maple syrup, add a dollop of icecream, or just eat as is (like I did).

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* Jenn’s Notes *

I really liked this recipe - it was very tasty and easy to make.

Also - the house smells fantastic while this is baking in the oven.

At the Epicurious website, there were a couple suggestions that people had for this recipe. I made note of the suggestions, but decided to try the recipe as it is written before I started changing things. Now that I’ve made this, here is what I found:

* This recipe is mild in the seasoning. You could increase the amount of spices if you like that strong pumpkin pie kind of flavor.

* In my opinion tossing the bread in the amount of butter called for was unnecessary. When I make this again, I’ll start by cutting back to 1/2 cup.

* This would be a great recipe to add to! If you’re like me, then there’s a half box of raisins in the back of your refrigerator, yearning to see daylight. Go ahead and toss a half cup or so into the mix! Chopped crystallized ginger would be nice, too.

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Did You Know?

* Bread pudding is basically a custard (milk and eggs combined with heat) with the addition of bread and seasonings.

* According to Wikipedia: “In the United Kingdom, ‘custard’ generally refers to a dessert topping made from cornflour rather than eggs, either bought ready-made, or made by adding hot milk to a powdered form.” “Since true custards are made with eggs, in the UK there is a distinction made between the true “egg-custard”, found in custard tarts, and “ordinary” custard, the popular corn-flour variety.”

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this first Two Spoonfuls post

You can click here *Pumpkin Bread Pudding* for the complete recipe.

I look forward to hearing from you, especially if you decide to give this tasty dish a try!

We’re aiming to share our Two Spoonfuls posts every other Friday,

I’ll still be doing my usual work-in-progress posts, too!

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Now let’s see what Ginny’s been up to over in her kitchen…

Click here to find out!

*Two Spoonfuls*

Jenn : )

This year, I’ve gotten it in my head to start preparing for the holidays early. I know that I’m going to be very busy as it gets closer to the end of the year, who knows what the economy will bring, and with many friends and family on the other side of the country - it wouldn’t hurt to start setting aside gifts now.

Last year, in keeping with the Buy Handmade pledge, we did alot of our shopping on Etsy and local small businesses. This year I’d like an even greater percentage of our gifts to be handmade - including some made by me!

Not too long ago I posted about this great canvas fabric that I purchased at The Quilting Loft.

The one on top is called “Sprig Canvas Green: 2007 Jessica Jones for J. Caroline Designs”.

The blue and green is called “Peapod Blue/Green Circles: 2007 Jessica Jones for J. Caroline Designs”.

Both of these fabrics had washing instructions on the bolt,

and the clerk recommended serging them before washing.

Here is what I did with them:

I cut them…

I stitched them…

I ironed them…

I pinned them…

And by the end of the day I had made four Market Tote bags!

Two will be Christmas gifts for my mom and two will be gifts for my grandparents.

They hold alot!

Two in this gorgeous green sprig pattern.

And two in this eye-catching peapod pattern.

The pattern I used was fantastic.

The bags were fun to make and not difficult at all.

These bags are reusable and washable, so my relatives will not only have a handmade gift from me, but they will be helping the environment by not using plastic or paper grocery bags.

By following the easy, step-by-step instructions, before I knew it - I had made French seams! That’s a technique that I’ve been hearing alot about but I had never tried before. Now I know how to create them and they are wonderful!

I got this great pattern from my friend Ginny and she has made it available to everyone through her iSew shop. I made the very basic bag, but her pattern also includes instructions for various pocket sizes and an additional exterior decorative band.

So, if you’ve been looking for a gift for that hard to buy for person - well, get ‘em going green with a gift of a reusable Market Tote. They’ll thank you, and so will the environment! : )

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Just one more quick note: I am getting ready to send out Issue #1 of my e-newsletter,so if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up!

Cheers!

Jenn : )

Earlier this week Josh and I went over to Evolution, where my business cards are being printed. We did a press check on the color for the back of the cards. I had to give the okay on the color, and I got to take one of the sheets home with me. The card stock is an oatmeal color that has tiny threads in it. This will be the back of the cards, soon we’ll do a check on the fronts.

Yay - I can’t wait to see them finished!

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If you saw my last post, I’ve been having some problems with uploading photos to my blog. For the last couple days I haven’t been able to upload them at all. Josh and I have gotten around this by using a program called Ecto. Ecto works with Flickr to not only make photo uploading easier, it also decreases the amount of time it takes to publish the entire blog post. Another problem I was having was that, on occasion I would upload my photos, type up all my text and get everything spaced and arranged the way I wanted it - only to discover that I wanted to include one more photo. If I then added any additional photos - all of the spacing in the blog post I was working on would be undone. Everything that I had typed would be mashed together in one big paragraph and I’d have to redo all the spacing. (Blog posting takes enough time as it is without that kind of hassle!) Ecto lets you create your entire blog post independently of Blogger. I can click and drag photos and play with the layout to my heart’s content and then publish. Adding photos doesn’t effect your text. Whew! I think this is going to work out much, much better!

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Since I couldn’t do any blog posting myself, I got to catch up on a bit of blog reading.

I was over at Mrs. Kwitty’s blog and saw that she’s been doing some spring cleaning, which inspired me to do some, too.

Mrs. Kwitty has been reorganizing her rick-rack collection (which is quite impressive, I must say!) and by coincidence, my own rick-rack has outgrown the glass jar I’ve been keeping it in.

Weeks (or maybe months?) ago I thrifted a long wooden box that was filled with projector slide boxes. Yesterday I decided that it would be perfect for keeping my rick-rack in. I lined the bottom with pretty paper and here it is:

Much better!

(Josh is using the slide boxes to keep Legos in.)

Thanks for the organization motivation, Mrs. Kwitty! : )

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Pooh what have you gotten yourself into?

Oh, this baby blanket is very warm and snuggly soft!

This lovely set is for friends of ours who have their first baby on the way.

When I saw this blanket, matching booties and bib in Ginny’s Etsy shop,

I had to scoop them up!

They are so pretty and well made! Right now Ginny has some very cute bibs in her shop.

I’m especially fond of this one !

Cheers!

Jenn : )