Tracing & Cutting & Baking Day

While the bright sunlight was blazing in my sewing room, I spent most of today tracing and cutting out patterns. Of course, my BWOF 12-2008-113 took the longest time. Being my first BWOF attempt, I had to make sure I added the seam allowances to the pattern pieces I traced. I also figured out the roadmap to the pattern sheets. That will have to wait for a separate post on my first BWOF experience. Stay tuned.

I zipped through tracing and cutting out New Look 6735. Another knit top in the works.

In between tracing and cutting, I also spent time backing up all my photos and data onto two separate external drives. I've been taking about 500 photos a month...that's been the average. This coming week, I've been tasked to take some pictures at our church...rehearsals for the Christmas program. This should be fun.

Now, it's time to bake some cookies. I think the last time I baked cookies was over 15 years ago. I used to make wonderful desserts (e.g. cream puffs, cakes, pies, etc) and baking with chocolate was my specialty. I just hope I am not too rusty to bake oatmeal cookies.

** Update **

Well, my oatmeal & raisin cookies came out pretty good and I didn't burn them. I should have left them in the oven for another minute to get a bit more browner. But they are yummy and chewy. I used parchment paper on the cookie sheet before placing the dough on the sheet. I got the recipe from America's Test Kitchen site.

I was a little apprehensive to use their recipe as the directions included: using two cookie sheets with one sheet placed on the lower rack (oven) and the other sheet placed on the middle rack. Bake for 22-25 minutes. About half-way through the baking process, swap the sheets on the two different racks and then turn the cookie sheets halfway. Basically, the lower sheet moves up to the middle rack and the middle sheet moves down to the lower rack. Then take the cookie sheets and turn so that the back cookies are now in the front. You know what? It really worked. All the cookies were evenly baked. I won't doubt any of their recipes again. I do love watching their shows on PBS.

Hello Champion Juicer...Goodbye Jack LaLanne Power Juicer

Warning! This is not a new sewing machine or sewing gadget! But it's a new toy for me. Yippeee!

Our new Champion 2000+ Juicer arrived late last week. Finally.

I ordered this new juicer in silver. Not white, not almond...good ole silver to match our granite-like countertop. I knew carrot juice stains would be an issue. Black would have been another good color choice, but I also wanted to see what I was cleaning.

And doesn't the juicer look like a meat grinder???

I tried the Champion out this evening. Let me tell you...I love this Juicer! The quality of the juice is amazing. DH has told me several times he likes the results. The new juicer is 100x times quieter than our old Jack LaLanne Power Juicer.

Here's our new juicer without the feeding chamber/body attached.

There are 3 reasons why I love our new juicer: (1) more intense juice flavor, (2) noticeably quieter, and (3) cleanup is sooooo easy!

This particular juicer masticates or chews up the fiber and breaks up the cells of the veggie/fruit. This provides more fiber, vitamins, and enzymes in your juice. I have to agree with Champion's logo.

It is goodbye to our old friend the Power Juicer. It was a good juicer to start with and allowed me to figure out if juicing was going to be part of our daily vegetarian diet. This juicer basically took whatever veggie or fruit I threw in.