Pecan Pie Bars

Yummy Scrummy Gooey and Good!

I’ve had several emails for the recipe for the Pecan Pie Bars --- so here you go! Maybe it’s time to practice on these so you can have them for Thanksgiving? Mmmmm!

Don't you just love the recipes that come from a buffet lunch with the girls? :cD

Crust

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 cup butter or margarine, softened

Bars

• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups corn syrup (karo)
• 2 1/2 cups pecan halves

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Prepare and bake Cookie Crust as follows: Spray 10 x 15-inch baking dish with non stick cooking spray.

3. Beat the sugar, flour, salt and butter at medium speed until mix is fine crumbs.

4. Press into pan.

5. Bake 20 to 30 minutes or until light brown.

6. While baking prepare filling as follows: Beat eggs, corn syrup, sugar, butter and vanilla until blended.

7. Stir in pecans.

8. Pour over hot crust.

9. Bake 30 minutes.

10. Cool and cut into squares.

Enjoy!

**Note** This recipe can easily be split in half, or made in two smaller containers rather than one large 10 X 15 pan!

People, Places & Projects!

One of the interesting things of traveling place to place to teach quilting, is the history of the places I get to visit. Sometimes the most INTERESTING histories come from the smaller out-of-the-way places.

Sometimes getting off the main interstate takes me to a place I’ve never been before.

Have you ever heard of Oak Ridge, Tennessee as a “Secret City?” Anna gave me a little tour of what she could of the Y-12 area. I had to come back to my hotel room and read more about it:

From 1942 until 1949, Oak Ridge a city of 75,000 people did not exist on ANY map. The 100,000 people working here to both build and operate the world's first successful uranium separation facilities were locked in a battle with Germany and Japan, although they did not specifically know exactly what the true nature of the "battle" was, they only knew THEY HAD TO WIN IT.

Oak Ridge grew within a matter of months to the fifth largest city in Tennessee, but was a SECRET CITY. A city that required special badges to be worn by all inhabitants, even children. 840 buses brought people to work here and took them home. The city operated twenty-four hours a day. The plants operated day and night. Thousands of rail cars brought materials into Oak Ridge and ALL of them left empty.

Doesn’t that sound like a plot for some kind of Hollywood movie? We'll, it is not. It was real, it happened here in this little sleepy area with it’s rivers, rolling hills and ridges! I found THIS ARTICLE to be really interesting!

But while the whole “Secret City” was about splitting atoms, plutonium, and uranium with the focus on ending WWII, we ourselves made messes that had us stating

“It looks like a BOMB went off in here!!”

We were playing with our strings and turning them into Spider-Web blocks!

		Spider Webs! Oak Ridge, TN 2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

It was a wonderful day with the ladies --- some who had come from Georgia…..some from down by Chattanooga, Some from Nashville, and some even from Ohio! Those who travelled in found that they were only strangers up until the introductions were made, and then everyone knew everyone. And we were friends. Quilters are just like that, you know? '

One of the great things I enjoy is walking table to table to table and “eaves dropping” on conversations, and sharing in the stories and the laughter. It’s infectious! You just can’t “NOT” have a good time when hanging around with Quilters, even if you are strangers at the beginning of the morning!

Add a buffet table for lunch, and that seals the deal! There are some shots of our yummies in the slide show above. Pay very close attention to the pecan pie bars..Oh yeah, man! Those were delish!

I’ve got a couple more hours before check out time in the hotel…project coming along nicely! It will be a beautiful day for a drive, leaving the Secret City on my way back home through the Smoky Mountains ---

Thanks for everything, Ritzy Thimble Quilters! It’s been a ball! Let’s do this again, shall we?

Evening Edition: Free Kindle Book!

Yeah, I’m browsing still….and yes, I just sent through another post just a while ago ((And the fridge is still chirping here!)) But I just came across this freebie and wanted to pass it along.

Maid to Match by Deanne Gist is free today from the Amazon Kindle store, and has received an average user rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 52 customer reviews.

Here is the book’s description from the Amazon website:

Tillie Reese, a bright young woman hindered by the extreme poverty in the mountains of New York, gets the job of her dreams—a position as a housemaid in George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate.

Surrounded by beauty and opulence, Tillie doesn’t mind the physical demands of being a servant. Meanwhile, Mack Danver will do anything to save money so he can get his sister out of the school for orphans.

His twin brother, Earl, is a footman for the Vanderbilts, and when Mrs. Vanderbilt sees Mack, she decides to make the handsome brothers a “matched set.” Although well read, Mack is a mountain man at heart, and he hates being at the beck and call of the privileged upper class.

However, the need to save his sister trumps his distaste. Then it’s love at first sight for Mack and Tillie, but rules against the help dating each other make Tillie fight her attraction with all the strength she can muster.

Gist’s snapshot of the lives of late-nineteenth-century servants is rich in detail, and readers will root for Gist’s characters as they face one difficult situation after another with courage and faith. Another crowd-pleaser from this popular author.

Why did this one intrigue me? I’ve visited the Vanderbilt Biltmore Estate many times, and I know as I read this, I’ll be able to picture just what goes on. The servant’s quarters at Biltmore were really interesting…((Yes, there was ONE sewing machine on display, but no quilts!))

I just thought this would be an enjoyable easy fictional read that takes place in a historical spot that is not far from me….in fact, I’ll be going right by here on my way home tomorrow.

Get it now while it’s free! It might not be later ----

Things That Go Chirp!

I’m back in my hotel room in Oak Ridge TN --- I was describing to my friend on the phone about the weirdness going on in my hotel room when I was encouraged to see if I could record it to share…

Usually I get things like water dripping, the sound of the elevator or ice machine --- the coke machine, or sometimes the guest laundry if it is on the same floor as me.

Sometimes there is weird snoring through the wall, or worse…..the sounds of couples being amorous through the thin walls. Why did they ever think it was a good idea to put rooms headboard to headboard with just a WALL in between!?? O_o

But this time…I was laughing on the phone while describing the sounds of squirrel chirping in the fridge!

This lead to me making a little iphone video to catch the sounds……

Just watch this…tell me if YOU can hear it!!

At first I thought it was a cricket, or a frog. Out came the ear plugs….

But I found if I unplugged the fridge it stopped. Have you ever heard a fridge make these sounds? I mean, I’m used to water running, to window a/c units going on and off….but this one comes with it’s own Smoky Mountain soundtrack!

I’m still sewing away in the hotel room. MUCH accomplished!--- just about to treat myself to the Chinese Buffet across the street.

There will be pics to follow in the next post if I can tear myself away from the machine long enough to edit a bunch of pics down.

What are YOU working on this weekend?! Do tell!!

Hexie Uh-Oh!!

I sewed hexies ALL THE WAY from Greensboro, North Carolina to Newark, New Jersey.

I sewed hexies ALL THE WAY from Newark, New Jersey to Seattle, Washington.

I sewed hexies ALL THE WAY from Seattle Washington to Anchorage, Alaska!

And yes, I even sewed hexies ALL THE WAY from Anchorage, Alaska to Cordova, Alaska if for no other reason that it was DARKER THAN DARK and storming and we were being tossed around on a little prop-job commuter plane.

The commuter plane experience was interesting….no cock pit door, so we could watch the pilots the whole time…and watch the windshield wipers going like mad, and when focusing on the front of the plane out the front windshield, you could REALLY feel that the wind was tossing us a bit side ways….

So it was BETTER to focus on stitching hexies, one stitch at a time and imagine we were driving in a bus on a bumpy road, rather than think we were being tossed about over a vast mountainous wilderness in a storm.

This pic above is one that Terri took of me sitting on that plane. Do I look exhausted yet? It was just after 7pm Anchorage time, which was just past 11pm North Carolina time, and I’d been up since 3:15 am North Carolina time. Not a pretty picture! But I kept a stitchin!

And then I noticed, as I got some of the neutral filled in just above the red border……that I didn’t think the corner turned the same way it did on the previous fill in section that was already attached to the “Mother Ship”.

UH. OH.

So until I could check it I just sewed neutrals in the neutral area, knowing that whatever I had to do or undo, that neutral area was still not going to change. In the morning, when Val went off to work….I checked it:

Oops! I certainly AM off! I was off on my color way! I was alternating the green and neutral “centers” of the border units, but where the greens are in the DONE one, I had neutrals, and visa versa. This meant some un stitching was in order!

I even saw that I was one row OFF on the end of the new unit…there needed to be three hexes past where I ended it, but yet the count of the number of hexes I had DONE was right? I couldn’t just add 3 red ones…everything would be a row too long then….Sheesh. How did I get so mixed up?

Here I’ve removed the offending “wrong” parts, rearranged things, stitched some back on, left some off…and my corner is just about ready to reattach so it’s right. I will no longer worry that my hand stitches aren't going to be "STRONG ENOUGH" to hold this together. I had to work and pick to get the stitches out! Yup, this one is pieced to last!

Back in business!!

This section needs to be identical to the one above, and then I have two more to do, in mirror image, for the two remaining corners. It’s still a lot of work. I’m guessing a year before it’s done. Serious. Still many many trips to go since I don’t work on it at home, only when on the road!

So what did I get done on the way HOME from Alaska!? I was so tired I slept more, or tried to, but I still got quite a bit added:

Though it might not look like much, this is 197 hexes so far in this section. See? It’s got a long way to go yet!

While in Cordova I was shown the NEATEST knitting shop! And I bought this NEW TOTE just for ME! See, it has the label of the Net Loft there on it, as a souvenir of my trip!

It didn’t take me long to move my stuff from my OLD boring busy bag to this new cool blue one!

Just love this new tote! Now my busy bag is stylin!!!

PS….I’ve traveled around blogland over the last little while! I love that I’m seeing people recreating my hexie medallion to have one of their own. It’s a huge undertaking! I know because I’ve been working on this one for 12 years.

I’ve been asked if there is a pattern for it. Not yet --- It’s still really in the design process for me. It’s not even a complete top yet.

Some are just doing it by looking at my pictures, and that’s great.

All I ask is that if you show pictures of your hexie medallion on your blog or website, and it looks like mine, is inspired by mine, that you just link your post back here to my blog so people can find the original, okay? THANKS!