I found and awesome bargain on a TV/DVD combo for $30.00. I had them play a movie to make sure it worked, and it did. Awesome! I was so excited! I got the TV home, and set up, and lo and behold, it won't pay any DVD'S. Why? I have no idea! quite annoying. I'm hoping that it just might need to be cleaned, so I'm holding off on purchasing a new dvd player until I know forsure. so, that was a major bummer. But the rest of the TV is fine, great color, great sound. So if nothing else, my son now has a decent sized TV to watch or play games on.
The next purchase I found was at a local thrift store. I was actually looking for VCR'S so my kids would each have their own, and not have to use my TV to watch tapes, but alas, no such luck. Oh well. That was when I found my bread machine. The tag on the machine said $5.00. It's a magic chef bread maker. When I got to the counter to purchase it, the sales lady informed me that yesterday was $1.00 small appliance day, so, even though it was an awesome steal for $5.00, I was actually saving myself $4.00! AWESOME! The final question was, would this awesomely priced machine actually work or did i just waste a buck. I would soon find out the answer.
I was so very excited that at 9pm last night, I almost baked my 1st loaf of bread in it, but alas, we had a lightening storm, and I was not able to find a basic breadmachine white bread recipe. Unbelievable huh? lol. So, the anticipation of having to wait just continued to build. This morning I decided to check out bettycrocker.com, and look at her recipes since I use to have a Betty Crocker cookbook, and had found a recipe to use in it on my mom's machine. YEE HAW! I found a recipe! This one was actually to have the machine kneed the dough and stuff, then you would have to make rolls, but well, today, I'm being lazy. So, instead of following the recipe and making the rolls, I decided to just let the machine do all the work. Besides, I really did need to find out if this awesome purchase worked completely or not. So I loaded the bucket with all the ingredients, and turned it on... whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, the sound of the little paddle spinning was music to my ears. YAY! If nothing else, the machine would be able to kneed my bread for me. no more store bought bread for me! I realized that in my recent move, I still hadn't brought over all my dried goods, so while the machine did it's business, I quickly went to my old house, and picked up a load of food, and other stuff, so I can cook dinner (more details are on the cooking page). When I arrived back home, I was very excited to be welcomed with the aroma of baking bread. Yes, my bread machine works! When the timmer finally hit 0:00, I excitedly opened the lid, and saw one of the most beautiful loafs of bread. Ahhh, so yummy! This is when I came to the realization, the bucket did not have a handle on it! Silently cursing this fact, I grabbed a hot pad, to take the bucket out, but it was too big, then I had the bright idea of using my hand mixer beaters, and it worked... not well, but it worked enough that I was able to pull the hot bucket out. the next issue came trying to figure out how to dump the bread out of the bucket. LOL. After a little pulling and pushing, I was finally able to get the bucket to release my beautiful loaf. I cut into it, and mmmm, so wonderful! Fresh hot bread, slathered with butter (almost put honey on it, but wanted a slice with out first.) As I was looking to find pictures of this wonderful machine, I finally found an online copy of the user manuel, so it is now saved to my computer for future reference. As I tipped the machine over to get the model number, lo and behold, I found the handle for the bucket! YAY! Now I do not have to finagle any longer!Another purchase I found at that Thrift store was an Ice cream machine. Ok, I know you all are thinking of the big bulky ones, that usually have a hand crank, where the user about kills him/herself for an hour or more trying to get the stupid stuff to freeze; having to buy bags and bags of ice, and rock salt, to freeze the ice cream. All this work for just a minute return on the investment... aka, ice cream. Nope, not this Ice Cream maker! This is the Cordless electric Ice cream maker by Ronco. It makes 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream. It is powered by batteries, and placed in the freezer, and in 20 minutes, you get your reward of yummy Ice Cream! Sounds too good to be true right? Well we'll see. I haven't tried it out just yet. I'll probably do that this weekend. But if it works well, hasta la vista Ben & Jerry's and Cold Cream! I will forever be a member of the Single Mom's Ice Cream Club!
