Category Archive: Cooking

Cooking: Making French Fries at Home

We’re expanding from home renovation and gardening to include cooking! Now you can think of our blog as a lifestyle blog instead of just a home renovation blog. But don’t worry – we’re not even close to being done with the renovation, so there will still be plenty of updates on that front.

Here is a simple recipe for making homemade French fries. This is something really worth trying. Finding fries that haven’t been prepared in a factory and frozen is tough to find. Even at restaurants fries come in giant frozen bags, so you can’t get the real authentic French fry experience.

List of things you’ll need from the grocery store:

  • Russet potatoes. Get the five pound bag.
  • Canola oil. Canola oil has a high temperature point and works good for frying.
  • Salt or Tony’s Seasoning.

That’s all you need. It is really simple.

Start off by peeling the potatoes and slicing them up in to French fry sized pieces. Put the pieces in a bowl under the faucet (use cold water). When the water runs clear you are good to go.

Ready for the frier

Ready for the frier

Get yourself a large pot and fill it with canola oil. A couple inches of oil is enough, and you can adjust the depth depending how many fries you are making.

Turn on the heat. You want to wait until the oil is hot before dropping in the fries. I usually turn the knob on my gas stove up a little over half way. You’re going to turn the heat up later in the recipe.

The goal of this first round is to get the potatoes to be soggy. When you pick one up it should be floppy. If it isn’t floppy you need more time. Stir them around occasionally so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot.

Fry time

Fry time

Pull the fries out of the oil and set them aside in a bowl lined with a paper towel. This will help absorb some of the oil.

Waiting for round two

Waiting for round two

Crank up the heat on the stove. You want the oil to get HOT! If the oil starts to smoke it is too hot. Here comes the secret to great homemade fries – you are going to double fry them. The first round of frying softened them up. This second round is going to crisp up the outside.

Second fry

Second fry

Drop the fries in and when they start to look golden brown they are ready! Again, stick them in a bowl with a paper towel to absorb some of the oil, and then transfer them to a clean bowl. Season them with Tony’s Seasoning or just salt and ENJOY!

Chow down

Chow down!

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Building Our Garden Path – And Almost Finishing!

It just seems like yesterday we were building the raised bed for our vegetables and planting new flowers in the yard, but today we officially started preparing for the winter. Crazy right? I really understand the saying “Time flies!” But before I get into preparing the yard for winter I should talk about the garden path.

In April 2008 we came up with a plan for a path in our backyard. The path was to be the central point for all landscaping, and it leads to our back seating area under the oak tress. We decided to start off small just to make sure we liked the look of it.

Beginning of the Backyard Path

Beginning of the Backyard Path

Everything looked promising, and when Steffi’s parents visited (still April 2008) they bought her some more pavers for her birthday. We put a few more down and then all of a sudden it was March 2009 (almost a year later). How on earth did that happen?!

With the impeding visit of Steffi’s parents coming up in April we felt obligated to get those pavers laid, so we once again got busy! This time my mom came to supervise the project to make sure it was done correctly. Just check out her face in this picture. She really has that “motherly” attitude down. Okay, okay… she actually was helping. She wasn’t just supervising, but the photo is priceless. You can also see the path in the background.

Mom Supervising

Mom Supervising

When we finished this VigRX Plus time the path made it about to the halfway point. A little progress here and there and we were eventually bound to get there.

When Steffi’s parents came to visit they saw what a fantastic job we were doing with the path, so they gave us BOTH pavers for our birthdays! This time it was enough to finish the path! What a wonderful birthday present! (I know what you are thinking, but I’m not being sarcastic here.)

Fast forward to October… the pavers were still sitting in the backyard until yesterday. We finally finished laying them and we had just the right amount to make it to the seating area. Hooray for kind of finishing projects. We still have to remove all of the bricks and put some sand down, so until then we have a not-so-level path. It should at least hold us over until next spring.

Path towards the back fence

Path towards the back fence

Looking back towards the house.

Path towards the house

Path towards the house

And just as a reminder this is what we started with.

No Path

What we started with!

Today we started preparing the garden for winter. We did some general weeding and trimming, and we started laying down fresh mulch to protect all of the plants from the freezing temperatures. Last years we had some success with a few annuals that decided to return, but somehow we lost some perennials. Go figure. This year we are trying to be a little more proactive.

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