Apple Cider Cheese Fondue

This fondue has become one of our Christmas Eve traditions.  It is very quick and easy to prepare and the whole family loves it.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup apple cider or apple juice
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1 Tbsp. cornstarch (apparently flour will work too)
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 loaf of French or sourdough bread, cubed (denser bread works better for dipping.  If bread is soft, let it sit out ahead of time to dry out a bit).

Directions:
In a saucepan, bring cider to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low.  Toss the cheeses together with cornstarch and pepper.  Cook and stir for 3-4 minutes or until cheese is melted.  Transfer to a small ceramic fondue pot or slow cooker.  Serve with bread cubes.

If fondue gets too thick, add a little more hot cider to bring it to the right consistency.

Recipe source: http://allrecipes.com

Paula Deen Picks Longaberger

Paula Deen has selected Longaberger's Collegiate Series Baskets as one of “Paula’s Picks – The things I LOVE, from my home to yours” in her September/October issue of Cooking with Paula Deen.

Get Organized! Solution #17: Gather the Miscellaneous

You know all the little (and not so little) stuff that seems to collect near your arm chair or near the dining room table?  You know how much it bugs you?  Well, Longaberger has an attractive and very functional solution to those problems.  Their Sort and Store Small Rectangle Storage Basket (available in four stain colors) can hold a collection of items that you can hide from view with a beautiful woodcraft lid or leave open for easy access.  Put one on the bottom shelf of an end table or next to your bed or arm chair and you can quickly and easily "tidy up" by putting everything in the basket and topping it off with the lid!  Save yourself from going crazy and invest in some  beautiful organizational baskets--they're cheaper than a shrink!

Join Longaberger for FREE and Earn Extra Cash for the Holidays

Starting September 1st through December 31st, Longaberger is offering you the opportunity to try an online Longaberger business for FREE. Earn some extra holiday spending money with 25% commission on all Wishlist and Monthly Flyer sales. Recruit your friends and earn 5% commission on their sales until Dec. 31 as well (Fundraising, Factory Store, and Supply/Sample Orders excluded).

To join my team, simply go to my website and click on 'Join My Team' or 'Join' on the homepage. You will get your own website and receive weekly email promotions directly from Longaberger which you can then forward on to your friends, family, and colleagues just in time for holiday shopping! You can run your business completely online with no product samples or home shows, or you can order samples or a kit during your first 30 days. Customers can access the Wishlist and Monthly Flyers online and then order directly from your personal website.

Longaberger will also be offering weekly training calls for all new consultants. If you sell at least $500 worth of product by December 31st you will be offered the opportunity to continue as a Longaberger Home Consultant at no extra charge unless you choose to maintain the MyShop Gold membership for $4.99 per month. 

Please call if you have any questions (541-752-8247) or email me at cindypaden@live.com.

Get Organized! Solution #34 Reclaim Counter Space

The Small Baker's Rack is one of my favorite items.  I use one in my kitchen to hold a fruit bowl on the bottom shelf, and tea bags in a one pint crock with a sugar bowl and creamer on the top shelf.  I still have room underneath to tuck away my  two wrought iron trivets as well.  At right, you see it being used to hold dishes for a buffet setting. The bottom shelf also holds the 9x13 baking dish.

You can earn the wrought iron Baker's Rack plus two furniture-quality maple wood shelves for  just $69 plus an additional half-priced item when you host a $350 home show.  Call me to schedule your show today (541-752-8247).

Quick Dinner Solutions: Nachos!

Longaberger's handled platter is the perfect piece for preparing and serving nachos.

Layer tortilla chips on the platter with shredded cheddar cheese and top with canned black beans (drained), shredded cooked chicken or pork, black olives, diced green chilies or jalapeno peppers and more shredded cheese. 

Bake in the oven at 300F until cheese is melted.  Top with Salsa Fresca* and sour cream or guacamole (or both!) and serve on your Longaberger wrought iron trivets. People can eat straight from the platter with just a napkin! 

One dish does it all--simple and beautiful!

The Woven Traditions Handled Platter comes in all the pottery colors including the new chocolate color.  Get yours for $60 plus S/H or for just $30 when you host a $150 show or more.

*Fred Meyer has a nice Salsa Fresca in the Deli section near the prepared fruit and vegetable platters.

Quick Dinner Solutions: Spring Salad With Chicken and Fresh Fruit

This is another family favorite for summer.  Before all the fresh berries are gone, you need to try this refreshing and healthy salad!

Ingredients (Per Serving)
2-3 chicken tenders, cooked & lightly browned
Prepared Spring Salad Mix
4 strawberries, sliced
1/6 apple, thinly sliced
Brianna's Blush Wine Vinaigrette (strawberry on label)

Preparation
Cook and brown chicken tenders in skillet with a small amount of olive oil or butter.

Fill plate with salad greens, top with sliced strawberries and apples followed by chicken tenders.  Drizzle with vinaigrette and enjoy!

Get Organized! Solution #21: The Medium Market Basket

The Medium Market Basket was Founder Dave Longaberger's favorite basket and he fashioned the company's home office after its design.

This basket can serve multiple purposes when you also have a plastic liner or two and look beautiful while its doing it:

1. Put one in your car to corral all the "stuff" that seems to accumulate there.
2. Remove the liner with the "stuff" and carry the basket into the market when you are picking up just a few items.  How green is that!
3. Keep one near the front door or kitchen to store the unopened mail that usually accumulates on the dining room table.  Sort & open the mail when time allows.
4. Put one in a place that you like to keep neat and use it as a cache for stray items around the house.  With a woodcraft lid you can keep things covered until you can carry the basket around the house and put things where they belong!
5. Put a lidded Market Basket in the kitchen to store accumulating newspapers until you can recycle them.  It looks just beautiful.  Imagine how that will make you feel!

Ever Considered a Marketing Career?

Last year I decided to sign up to be a Longaberger Home Consultant because I loved the product, but also because I wanted to expand my world and the people in it.  What has amazed me since that time is how unpredictable people are in what they buy and when.  Being a scientist by training, this has been perplexing because I cannot see any pattern (yet, anyway).  Mind you, my current list of customers are my friends and neighbors so you would think I would know something.  It strikes me that this business is an excellent opportunity to gain some marketing skills and experience, especially for those who are interested in the subject, but not able to find a career position in this economy.  Here is what I have learned or am doing as part of my Longaberger home-based business:

1. Learning to talk to people about this product when I am not always comfortable doing so.  I can see that without a God-given gift for sales or public speaking this can take some practice.
2. But, I have been saved by a recent decision on the part of The Longaberger Company to allow home consultants to advertise online and in print advertising.
3. I have since worked with a marketing person at our local university to create an ad for placement in the alumni magazine.  I took product photos and he laid the design out in Photoshop with my feedback on the image placement and ad copy.
4. I have obtained a domain alias for my Longaberger website so that my print ad URL will be shorter and more relevant to the ad content (www.TailgateBaskets.com will forward to my site at www.longaberger.com/cindypaden).
5. I took a web design class a few years ago "just for fun."  After a grueling quarter, I created my first website, having learned HTML and CSS.  Since then I have been recruited by my family's business to help them with their website where I learned more about Content Management Systems and understand what is behind the Longaberger website to some degree.
6. I will now be creating a one-page website at www.TailgateBaskets.com to highlight the Team Spirit, Collegiate, and NFL baskets from Longaberger and then direct people to my consultant website to purchase.  More online marketing skills.
7. I have read about inbound marketing and find myself enthralled with the internet and social media.  So today I decided to learn how to use ConstantContact so that I could send out weekly (hopefully) newsletters to my Longaberger customers with "inbound" links to my online store.
8. I have contacted another, larger university to inquire about placing an ad in their alumni magazine, only to find out that the prices there are 5-10 times higher!!  I guess it would make sense because they have a larger readership than our local university and are much more well known.
9. We had a meeting last night for our Branch (our group of Longaberger consultant's under one leader) and discussed the recent conference and how to enhance our social media presence by adding a page to our Facebook account.  Of course we only have Facebook accounts (being of a certain age) because people have asked us to be their "friend", not because we "write on our wall".  Being in sales with a company like Longaberger forces one to consider multiple marketing avenues and to stretch and learn the new technologies that are available.

All this made me think of my niece, Lauren, who recently received a degree in marketing.  She finally was able to find a job that was not 60-80 hours a week at a start-up company when she accepted a position as an administrative assistant at Stanford University. It occurred to me that starting a Longaberger business would provide one with a lot of opportunity to practice and learn marketing skills.  For only $49 plus S/H you can get a sample basket and catalogs plus your own website.  You are automatically part of a team that meets and communicates with one another to learn how to promote the product.  But most of all, you have a real life opportunity to see consumer spending habits and likes and dislikes.  What better way to keep on learning and growing while you move up the career ladder to your final marketing position.  To join, got to my website and click on "Join My Team" near the top of the home page and follow the instructions or call me for questions and/or help.

Quick Dinner Solutions: Chicken Enchilada Casserole

The eternal question:  What to serve for dinner tonight?  This recipe is one of our family favorites. 

Using your 9x13 Woven Traditions Baking Dish, you can make an easy and delicious casserole that can be made ahead or in less than an hour.  This is also fairly low in calories if you watch the amount of cheese that you use (and, of course, the amount that you eat!). 

With Longaberger's vitrified pottery, clean up will be a snap as well.  Just scrape out the baking dish with a rubber scraper and place it in the front of the lower rack of the dishwasher (dirty side facing the back).  You will be pleasantly surprised!  (The glaze on your pottery makes for easy clean-up as long as you are careful not to scratch it too much by heavy use of metal utensils).
Ingredients:
1 pack of 12 corn tortillas
1 large can of green enchilada sauce (Winco is cheapest)
2 pounds of chicken tenders or chicken breast meat
Pepper Jack Cheese, Shredded
Optional:  1 can cooked black beans
Optional:  Light Sour Cream
Preparation:
Microwave or cook chicken until just cooked through and dice or shred the meat.  Pour half of the enchilada sauce into a shallow dish and the other half over the diced cooked chicken.  Dip several corn tortillas into the sauce and layer them into the bottom of your lightly oiled Woven Traditions Baking Dish.  Spread a layer of the chicken and sauce mixture and another layer of coated tortillas.  Top with shredded cheese.  Add another layer of chicken, tortillas, and top with cheese.  You will most likely need to adjust your ingredients based on how much chicken versus tortilla you prefer.
Bake in the oven at 350F for 30 minutes or until sauce is bubbling.  Let cool for 10-15 minutes. This casserole is GREAT the following day.  You can also add a layer of canned black beans for a more substantial meal and serve with a salad.  Serve with Light Sour Cream (Tillamook is the best!).

Longaberger's New Fundraising Program

Starting in September, Longaberger will offer a whole new fundraising program in which organizations will retain 40% of their sales with no up front costs.  Longaberger is also introducing a complementary food line for gift-giving that will be a part of the fundraising pacakge, as well as the new 'Sisters' line of colorful quilted wallets and cell phone cases that can be sold as well.

Design a Basket -- Custom Order a Basket to Honor a Coach, Give to Your Bridesmaids or Flower Girl, or to Honor a Special Occasion

Longaberger makes it possible for you to order custom-made baskets for fundraisers, corporate events, or to honor special occasions.  With the Design-A-Basket Program you select the basket type, stain, color of the decorative weaves and bands, and decorative tacks. 

They have lids that are made to look like a baseball, a volleyball, a soccer ball, a football, or a basketball.  Consider getting a gift for your team coach and having players sign the bottom of the lid.  A small round basket with a decorative woodcrafts lid and an engraved tag that says 'Thank You' would cost just a few dollars per player and create a lifetime of memories.  Coaches can use their basket on their desk for miscellaneous items or on their dresser to hold their extra change and watch.

You can order white-washed or natural colored baskets for flower girls or brides maids, or make a basket as a keepsake for a special family or organizational event.  Create a basket as an achievement award for your organization. The possibilities are endless!

Man-Proof, Kid-Proof, AND Easy to Clean

I wanted to share my latest 'discovery' about Longaberger pottery.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a scientist by training and that is how I approach life....lots of questions and a lot of skepticism, testing, and analysis.  Well you can be sure that I have put the Longaberger pottery through the wringer by now.  My latest experiment was to test how easily my 9"x13" baking dish came clean in the dishwasher WITHOUT washing it ahead of time.  I made lasagna in it, scraped off the stuck on noodles, put it at the front of the lower rack and....it came out spotless.  I made chicken enchilada casserole, burnt the cheese on the edges, scraped off the bits of tortilla still stuck on the bottom, put it in the dishwasher, and .....voila! it came out spotless again.   My husband made lasagna, burnt the sauce all over the edges, put it in the dishwasher just like that, and ....it came out spotless!  Boy! I tell ya, this would have saved me so many "discussions" with my husband about how he needs to scrape the dishes off better before he puts them in the dishwasher and then me having to wash them by hand again after they had already been through the dishwasher.   Not to mention that the dishes no longer get chipped around the edges even though loading the dishwasher seems to be a contact sport for "some people I know". :-)

Twice-Baked Potatoes Recipe

As I mentioned in my last post, I use my Longaberger Handled Platter to bake and serve one of my family's favorite dishes:  Twice-Baked Potatoes.  The recipe is from "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" by Mollie Katzen (she calls them Rebaked Potatoes).  Her recipe serves two people, but you can multiply accordingly.  We use 6-8 potatoes and have leftovers for breakfast with eggs!  Yummm....

2 fist-sized potatoes
3 Tbs. (low-fat) mayonnaise
1/2 cup (low-fat) cottage cheese
1 hard-boiled egg, finely-chopped
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dill weed
1/2 packed cup grated cheddar cheese
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tsp. prepared mustard (we use sweet-hot mustard)
paprika and extra grated cheddar

Ahead of time:  Bake the potatoes for about 45 minutes at 375 F until done.  When cool enough to handle, slice in half length-wise and scoop out the insides leaving the skin intact (leaving about 1/4 inch of potato flesh).

Place all the potato innards in a bowl, and mash them with the mayonnaise and cottage cheese.  Add all remaining ingredients, except the paprika and extra cheddar.  Mix well.  Adjust spices according to your own personal taste.

Divide the filling evenly among the potato skins.  Sprinkle some extra cheese over the tops of the potatoes and dust with paprika if desired.  Place the potatoes in your Longaberger Handled Platter or 9" x 13" Baking Dish and bake for 35 minutes at 375F until potatoes are hard and cheese has melted.

Remove from the oven and serve just as they are.  Be sure to use a trivet!  Add a salad and you have a wonderful meal for family or guests.

Celebrating the Season with Longaberger's Handled Platter

One of the first items I purchased after becoming a home consultant, was the Longaberger Woven Traditions Handled Platter. I had seen an ivory one in last year's catalog that was used to hold a beautiful candle arrangement for Christmas. It has been one of my favorite items. We served our turkey on it at Thanksgiving as well as our Cornish game hens for Christmas dinner. It was beautiful as well as easy to carry securely using the handles. My neighbor, Mary, ordered one to use for Christmas and was very happy with it as well.

Prior to the holidays, I used the platter to bake and serve nachos as well as Twice Baked Potatoes (recipe in another post). Since all of Longaberger's pottery is vitrified, you can prepare and refrigerate dishes ahead of time and then simply put them in the oven when you are ready to cook (as long as you place the cold dish in the oven as you preheat it so that you slowly bring it up to temperature). Afterward, you can serve the food directly from the baking dishes, since they are so beautiful and coordinate with all the other Longaberger pottery. And last, but definitely not least, vitrified pottery is so easy to clean. You simply scrape off the large pieces of food and place the pottery in the dishwasher or you can soak briefly in warm soapy water and easily wash by hand.

Before owning Longaberger pottery, I used to use the inexpensive glass bakeware. I always felt as though I needed to spend the least amount of money I could on things for my kitchen--I don't know why. However, now that I have used the vitrified pottery from Longaberger, I could never go back. It has saved me so much time in the kitchen as well as made the whole family feel more nurtured by our meals simply because of the ease of use and the beauty of the dishes.