Thursday, September 22, 2016

Sweet & Sour Chicken Make Ahead Freezer Meals

Freezer Meals!

Made with love,

For the busy people, elderly, and working parents of today.

 

Here is what you need.

The containers $1 at the dollar store for a pkg of 3

A marker to write the name & date of the meal

 

Today I'm going to show you a sweet and sour chicken freezer meal.

 

Cooked Basmati rice, cooked carrots from Brookfield Gardens PEI, Chicken from a local Farm Gate small producer named The Egg Man of Hunter River, PEI.

 

 

 

 

 

Directions:

Cook rice set aside, cut and cook carrots set aside. Cook chicken in a slow cooker - cool and refrigerate overnight.

The next day make the sweet and sour sauce.

Sweet & Sour Sauce

  1. 1/4 cup brown sugar
  2. 1/4 teaspoon of salt
  3. 1 Tablespoon of ketchup
  4. 1/2 cup of pineapple juice/chicken stock/or water
  5. 3 tablespoons of rice vinegar
  6. 1-2 Tablespoons of light soy sauce
  7. 2 teaspoons of cornstarch stired into 2 Tablespoons of water.

I double this recipe easily. Place 1-6 in a pot on medium heat and bring to just before a boil. Mix 2 tsp of cornstarch with the 2 Tbs of water. Pour into the sweet and sour sauce and cook until thickens, then cool.

 

Cut up the chicken into cubes.

Fill your containers with the cooled rice/carrots and then add the sauce to the cut up chicken and put it into the containers. Label the lid with the name and date and heating instructions ex: thaw in fridge, heat 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Enjoy from Grandma's Afternoon,

Cindy

 

Etsy Marketing & Sales

We the Artisans and Etsy marketers try to break the trend of going from zero sales to the first sale.
Finding the niche and market for our on-line goods is hard.

Etsy shop owners like seaglassing https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/seaglassing are out there but they compete with a bazillion other artisans with the same product idea. How do we stand out? how can we be unique? How do we get sales? Do we have a select market and direct product just there? Who has the answers?

We have a product, we craft for all different reasons, and we run out of family to give these gifts away to. We are mothers, crafters, taxi drivers, nurses, time stretchers, and yet we all want to polinate like a Bee turning the pollen into rich honey. Everyone says we are amazing, "oh you should sell these" This is beautiful! But does anyodne buy it?

I've had a booth at events and it is hard as an artisan to hear someone say, "Martha, you got buckets of sea glass? look you could do that! It can't be that hard."

Come on people we artisans are struggling, don't insult us while we struggle, at the very least walk away and say these sort of things. Live market is one thing.
Selling on line is another thing.
I have an etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/seaglassing, part of marketing is where I put the link right here https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/seaglassing right now. Not for you to buy, but just for you to visit, visitors get other visitors. Do you know having a Pinterest account and following other on Pinterest, and following sellers on Etsy is a good way to get noticed? I blog as well. I know, I don't blog much in the summer as life is hectic but I love taking pictures of my product but most of all I love to get comments on the pictures.
Do you have a story to tell. People love to hear how you started, what you do and why, maybe someone about the product you use.
Ghost Bead Bracelets
The photo below is a product I made special order off my https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/seaglassing seaglassing shop. A Grandmother asked me to make a special order for her grand-daughter who lost her bracelet awhile back and is so upset. That might be the story although true, I created this for her and it sells for $3.75.
But the story is the Ghost Beads,
The wee brown ones.
These are juniper berries off a cedar tree. They fall to the ground, ants nibble off the end and eat the centre. Artisans collect and drill out the other end making them into a bead. Why? Well it is a Navaho tradition that women years ago made these ghost bead necklaces for children to wear or hang over a baby crib if the child had bad dreams and nightmares. These beaded items connect the earth, the trees, the animals and humans. The Ghost Bead brings peace, harmony, safety and protection to the person wearing them.

Putting product on facebook gets comments. Will it generate sales, not likely but it does generate traffic if you post a link to your etsy account at the same time, oppps there is that sales pitch again, https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/seaglassing nice how I just stick this in.
They say a person has to read or hear a name 7 times before they start to actually show trust and acknowledgement that they know this person or business, 7 times so that means I have to post a link to my seaglassing etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/seaglassing another one more time before you might come for a visit, lol.

If I can share anything I know.
Print business cards and pass them out to everyone who sees or comments on your products, wear your own making, talk it up. After all it is a great product or you wouldn't take the time to make it.
Share your etsy name with me so I can visit soon.
Bye for now,

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Tea Gift for Tea Lovers of Prince Edward Island

TEA-RIFFIC

Tea gift giving ideas from Grandmas Teas

 

 

This Vintage Rose Queen Anne Tea Cup and Saucer is included with Island memorabilia making this a tea drinkers dream box.

65g of our best English Breakfast tea

Disposable paper tea bags

Wild blueberry tea / Anne's favourite

A tea pot tea strainer

PEI Island tartan tea towel

3 photos of PEI

Tea scrapbooking for card making

A "tea time in PEI" card

 

 

 

A Tea Time Gift Box ready to ship

What better way to say I love you than with tea!

Great for teachers gifts, grandmothers, or somone who needs a pick me up.

Find on Etsy at MadeByGrandmasHands https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/MadeByGrandmasHands

Enjoy your day,

Cindy

Seems that cindy@besidethetrail.ca hasn't been working and I'm just finding out that the profile email stopped working ??? Whenever. I've fixed it now and I can be reached.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

A bike hike into town

I want to Blog!

I've been away so long I think I've forgotten how,

I lost all my blog friends,

I've been so blog lonely lately and don't know where to start.

Breathe!

 

Let me start by saying, "I"m sorry". Sorry for staying away, and sorry for not just jumping on here to say, "hey, I've been busy with our tourism year and not had a chance to visit you or to blog."

 

Forgive me?

Nice, thank you!

 

Yesterday,

I gave some time to exercise,contemplating and cobwebs. First thing was getting the cobwebs off my bike, second was contemplating how windy it really was, third thing was pushing past the wind and getting that all needed exercise. So I biked into Charlottetown, to Wendy's in fact for a favourite of mine, come bike wiht me.

The day wonderful,

the salad was the apple, pecan with roasted chicken, oh magnificent,

and then a stop at the grocery store to pick up a little that always turns into a lot.

The ride home pushed past cow pastures and hay fields, the memory strikes me vividly - I was looking down at the pee gravel path when the strong smell of fresh cut field caught my attention. The sun was jumping through the hedge row that lined both sides of the Confederation Trail and I came to a short small clearing pointing to where the fresh hay smell came from. Just as I cleared the hedge row a box on the back of a tractor pooped out a large bail, giggling over the ordeal as I thought of #6 grand-daughter and how she finds humour in everything. I pushed on past, realizing although the trail was a safer ride it was 4 klm longer than If I'd rode from town on the highway.

Home with the groceries.

The Asian pears were on sale but heavy for the ride.

Hummus on the bottom of the pile and pita to the right. The back is everything bagels - two only because I had to buy to get the sale price and herb cream cheese to go with.

Nice fruit, very watery, not so sweet but gritty. Hubby likes them and they were on sale. I tried to imagine these heavy things growing on a tree and my imagination saw them all falling to the ground.

Thank you for stopping by,

If you have come this far leave me a short note so I can return the visit and start my routine back up again.

Take care,

We care,

Cindy

 

 

 

 

 

~00~ Grandma (aka Cindy) or Crafting - http://scrapandwrap.ca

 

My Sourdough English Muffins