The Burger Joint: Milford, Michigan

First, I must apologize for a lack of pictures. Our camera battery died as I was trying to get a picture of the outside of the restaurant. *Sigh* Oh well, use your imagination and you'll be fine!

The Burger Joint, on Main Street in Milford, Michigan, is awesome! It's a small place where you order at the counter and then wait for your number to be called. Their meat is ground locally just for them and their fries are hand cut. At our table, we ordered a salmon burger (a special for Lent), a kid's cheeseburger, a Joey burger, and a custom burger with garlic aioli, bleu cheese and burnt onions. Every sandwich was delicious and perfectly made. The fries and coleslaw were also wonderful.  We were there in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and there was a pretty steady trickle of customers, but we only waited about 10 minutes for our freshly made food.

All-in-all The Burger Joint was a great place for a quick, casual meal and I will definitely go back!

The Road to Financial Independence: Selling Online

One of the most popular ways to work for yourself these days is to set up an online store, but which site is the best for you? I've used several, but I'm just going to give you a quick run down of three biggies.

eBay has been a popular auction site for a long time. Some people have great luck selling on eBay, but it depends greatly on what you are selling and your customer base. Many people visit the site looking for something for nothing and, sadly, many sellers are willing to give it to them just to get the sale. There are also a lot of fees involved. Be sure to read and understand all the fine print before you start listing. You want to make sure you can sell your goods at a fair price and cover your costs for listing. If you're going to be selling a large number of items, you may want to look into opening a store front. You'll pay a monthly fee and get discounted rates on the other fees that eBay charges.

Etsyis a site that specializes in handmade and vintage items. On Etsy, you will pay a fee every time you list (or re-list) an item and you will pay a final value fee when you sell an item. It's fee structure that is very similar to eBay's. Etsy gets a lot of traffic. And I do mean a lot. However, it can be hard to be seen here. You will need to spend as much time promoting your store as you will spend creating things to put in it before you will see much traffic to your specific store. If you're lucky enough to snag a feature, you'll probably get very busy. If you don't (and with thousands and thousands of stores you probably won't), you'll have your work cut out for you.

Artfire is the new kid on the block. It is also dedicated to handmade and vintage, and also features fine art and design. Artfire has several options for your account (your "studio"). You can set up a basic account for free. You will be able to list an unlimited number of items, but you don't have access to all the seller tools that a paid account does. There will also be ads on your studio pages. If you're brand new to online selling and don't want to invest a bundle this is the way to go. You can also get a "pro" studio. With this category, you will pay a monthly fee. No listing fees and no final value fees. If you're a serious seller with a lot of inventory to list, I highly recommend this option. Artfire also offers the most tools to their pro sellers of all the sites. You will need to spend some serious time promoting your studio here, too, but Artfire's search functions differently than Etsy's, making results a bit more random. Which, in turn, makes it a bit easier to be found in the crowd.

Of course, there are lots of other options out there. There are other auction and storefront sites on the internet. There is also the option of having your own website with a shopping function. You really have to do some research to see what will work best for your situation. This is just a brief synopsis to help get you started. Good luck!

**Full disclosure: I've had a store on all three sites. Currently, I only use Artfire as it has come to be my favorite and the most economical for me.**

Tuesday Tips and Tidbits: Kitchen Science

I'm always searching for cool activities to do with my son to keep him interested in science, and learning in general. While playing around the interwebs, I found a video at Downstream Parenting illustrating how to make "Marbled Milk". It also provided a link to the book where she found the project. I can't wait to get the book and to try this with my little guy! Take a look at the video. It's so simple, but very cool!

Baby Biscuits

Who doesn't love a biscuit? They're soft and fluffy, a perfect vehicle for sweet or savory. For some reason, I decided to make some little mini-biscuits the other day as I was making biscuits for ham and beans. It's nothing revolutionary, just something I hadn't thought of before. Take your favorite cut out biscuit recipe (I used the one below from the Super Suppers Cookbook) and just use a small round cutter. I used a Tupperware midget, but a shot glass would be perfect as well. You might need to watch them pretty closely, but I baked them for about 2/3 of the time called for and they turned out very yummy!

Angel Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 5 cups flour
• 3 tsps baking powder
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 envelope dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 2 cups buttermilk
• flour for rolling
• 1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375°. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
• In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two forks until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
• In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add buttermilk.
• Add to flour mixture. Stir until flour is just moistened.
• Pat or lightly roll to 1/2-inch thick on a floured surface. Cut into desired size, rerolling scraps as necessary. Dip each biscuit in melted butter (I just brushed the tops with butter, rather than dipping the whole biscuit) and place in prepared baking dish. Bake 12 to 15 minutes (for minis, I baked about 10 minutes) or until golden brown.

Wordless Weekend: Spring?

Building a Stronger Community: Giving Back

Most people that know me, know that I participate in the Komen 3-Day for the Cure every year. This event sends folks on a 3 day walk, covering 60 miles. An all-volunteer crew staffs the event, along with the small tour staff that travels from city to city coordinating the events. Sometimes I walk, sometimes I crew, sometimes I do both. This year I am going to walk in Boston in July and then crew in Michigan a couple of weeks later.

Someone invariably asks me why I do the Breast Cancer 3-Day every year. After all, when I started in 2002, I knew very few friends or family that had ever had breast cancer. (Although, tragically, the number of friends with the disease grows every year.) I think that's beside the point. Why wouldn't I help raise money and awareness for breast cancer? EVERYONE has breasts (yes, men have to worry about it too). This event not only helps fund research for better treatments (and hopefully, someday, a cure), but it also helps to fund programs that assist underserved men and women in getting testing and medical attention.

The 3-Day has become a very special event for me. Now that I participate, I have many friends who are survivors or are fighting at this very moment. And even if I didn't know a single person who had been affected in some way by breast cancer, wouldn't it be enough to want to do something positive? Wouldn't it be enough to want to contribute to something larger than one's self? Wouldn't it be enough to want to be a part of something so optimistic in our highly cynical world? I think it is and that is why I participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day.

How you choose to give back is entirely up to you. It doesn't have to be a physical event. You could volunteer at a nursing home, hospital or school. You could volunteer at one of the physical events. You could donate money to a cause that is close to your heart. You could simply offer a kind word and a granola bar to the homeless man you pass every day on the way to work. Even children can get involved. My son has three piggy banks and one is his "Donate" bank. He gets to decide what gets done with that money. His favorite is adopting a child around Christmas time.

Every gesture, big or small, makes a difference to someone. And, I think you'll be amazed at how much you gain by giving.

Sourdough 101: The Starter

Sourdough starter is a beautiful thing. You can use it as a base for bread, pancakes, pizza dough, biscuits... It's simple to make and needs minimal maintenance to last just about forever. Now, many hardcore traditionalists would consider my version a cheat, since I use yeast in the starter and don't just let it ferment on its own via the yeastie beasties that float around in the air. However, I find this version to be fairly foolproof and, while I do love experimentation, I'm a huge fan of things that work without any heartache.

Sourdough Starter

Ingredients:

• 1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
• 2 cups warm water
• 2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

• In a non-metallic bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water; let stand 5 minutes.
• Add flour; stir until smooth.
• Cover loosely.
• Let stand in a warm place for 48 hours; stirring several times a day. (The mixture will get all bubbly, smell yeasty-a bit like beer-and a liquid will rise to the top. These are all good things.)
• Use the starter or keep in the refrigerator. Before you use your starter bring it to room temperature. The longer you leave it out before you use it, the stronger the "tang" in the final product will be.

Keeping your starter:

• Whenever you use some of your starter, replenish it with equal amounts of flour and warm water. (For instance, if you use 1 cup of starter, replenish with 1 cup water and 1 cup flour.)
• If, after 2 weeks, you haven't used any, remove half of the starter and replenish with the flour and water.
• If it ever develops mold or a bad smell, discard and start over after sterilizing the storage container.