Saturday, November 24, 2012

Rosie's Holiday Recipes and Music

How does Rosie fry a turkey?

Here is the Romero family recipe for deep fried turkey:

Ingredients:
1 whole turkey

1 can of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning

Peanut oil (enough to fill a pot)

Preparation:
*Place the turkey in a pot and fill with water to just past the turkey legs
                      
*Remove the turkey and mark where the water level drops to

*Fill the pot to this mark with peanut oil once you’ve emptied the water

*Clean the turkey in the sink, removing all entrails and rinsing with water

*Pour a generous amount of Tony’s all over the turkey; be generous with the seasonings inside of the cavity and get underneath and all around the wings and legs

*Place completely dry and seasoned turkey in deep fry basket until ready to drop in oil

*Heat the oil at 350 degrees



What does Santa snack on at Rosie’s house?

Forget the milk and cookies. Santa snacks on buttermilk and seasoned, roasted pecans when he visits Rosie’s home on Christmas Eve.

Rosie loves whole buttermilk,which he cannot find anywhere anymore (if you know where to find some, email us here)—and usually leaves it out for Santa to drink.

For snacks, Santa enjoys Cajun-seasoned, roasted pecans, a specialty of Rosie’s mom. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:
Pecan halves (2 cups)
Melted butter (1/2 stick or 1/4 cup)
Salt to taste
Garlic powder to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste



What about Rosie's Favorite Holiday Music?

Here are the links to Rosie's favorite Christmas Music:

-Merry Christmas Cajun

Friday, November 23, 2012

Bad Odors: Get rid of them!

Odors are generally something we avoid in polite conversation. You’re not likely to walk into your neighbor’s house and ask, “Wow, what is that smell?”
Homeowners aren’t shy though about asking us that question. We have dozens of ideas on our Rosie on the House Web site about how to get rid of this or that odor – every place from the bedroom to the laundry room to the kitchen and more. To tell the truth, we get more homeowners emailing us for advice about bad odors than about any other subject. What follows are some possible solutions for what you’re experiencing.

For sewage smells in your yard or house:
Sometimes that semi-permanent bad smell in your bathroom or kitchen or backyard is really a problem starting on your roof where your plumbing system has a vent. In many cases, the vent isn’t tall enough. When a gust of wind comes along – our southwest wind blowing up from the Gulf of California – it blows those smelly gases across your roof and into your north or east facing yards. The wind can even swirl around and blow methane gas back into your house through a window or back down the vent.
This isn’t just a problem for older homes; in fact, it can happen in new construction. We have actually seen this in multi-million dollar homes in pricy neighborhoods.
But it can be fixed with minimal expense and effort. First, you need an extension on that vent pipe. That should do the trick, but if not, add a charcoal filter to the vent to absorb the gases or an inline powered ventilating fan to blow them away or do both. If you want to know more about this topic, you can check out www.odorhog.com.


For bathroom odors:
A problem with a vent can affect all the drains in your house, but if the smell comes from one sink, then your P-trap (the U-shaped pipe under the sink) may be clogged or lined with years of accumulated stinky gunk. The pipe under that fragrant sink drain could be obstructed with hair, toothpaste, dirt and soap scum that begins to reek. You need to remove the P-trap and clean it out or use a drain cleaner daily until the enzymes can eat away at the trapped organic mess. By the way, we never recommend using highly corrosive liquid drain cleaners or drain cleaning crystals.

Special warning for snowbirds: If you leave your house untended for months and no water runs through the drains, you can have bad odors coming out of any or all of them. So have someone turn on the water once or twice during your trips up north. The water is a seal in the pipe under the drains that prevents sewer or septic gases from entering your home.

In general, bathroom ceiling fans can help remove odors. But these fans don’t last forever; if they sound as if they’re rattling, they’re probably not doing their job and need to be replaced before burning out.

You can easily remove a fan after turning off power to the room at your electrical panel. After taking off the cover on the old fan, unplug the electrical cord; then find the screws securing the fan unit to the ceiling. Use a flat-head screwdriver to remove the screws, pull out the fan, and take it to the store to help you choose a replacement that fits.

Read more...

For answers to all YOUR Landscape, Garden and Home Improvement questions, visit our website, Rosieonthehouse.com

Friday, November 16, 2012

Four DIY Plumbing Jobs

It’s 4 p.m. Saturday and you’re cooking dinner for a big crowd, and suddenly the kitchen sink backs up. Who do you call? Or can you fix it yourself before guests arrive?  Believe it or not, before you call a plumber, you can attempt this job yourself and probably succeed.

In fact there are several plumbing jobs around the house that you can take on, if you’re patient and careful and have the right equipment. Of course, many of our readers may find the following jobs pretty basic. But if you’re a new homeowner, you might want to read further:

1 – Unclog a Drain in a Kitchen Sink, Toilet, or Bathtub –

Unclogging that sink is really the most important repair of all because you don’t want to wash dinner dishes in the bathtub. With a double sink, start by putting a stopper in one of the drain holes, probably the one where there is no standing water; then go down through the water to put a bathroom plunger on top of the other drain hole and pump up and down. This back-and-forth pressure will eventually build up enough force to dislodge the clog. With a single basin sink (this will work in a bathtub or lavatory sink), plug the overflow holes with wet cloths, put a little water into the sink and do the same pumping action with a plunger. Plumbers tell us that sometimes the pipes under the sink can become disconnected when you do this, so keep an eye on them while you’re working to free the clog.

When you’re using a plunger in a clogged toilet, try to create suction by sealing the bell-shaped rubber end around the opening at the bottom of the bowl. If you need a new plunger, buy one with an extension flange on the rubber end.

Preventive advice: In the kitchen don’t put grease, onion skins or potato peelings down the garbage disposal and especially not all three at the same time. And always run water through the garbage disposal while it’s grinding away to flush debris down the drain.

Don’t throw anything in the toilet that doesn’t belong there. You might want to buy a toilet auger, a long snakelike device to use in case a plunger isn’t enough.


Read more...


For answers to all YOUR Landscape, Garden and Home Improvement questions, visit our website, Rosieonthehouse.com

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Urban Farming Resource Guide

Sweet Jennifer's Guide to Urban Farming

‘The real voyage of discovery consists of not seeking new landscapes  but, in having new eyes!' - Marcel Proust

Rosie on the House Companies:


Education and Resources:
Read more...

For answer to all YOUR Landscape, Gardening and Home Improvement questions, visit our website, Rosieonthehouse.com

Friday, November 2, 2012

Home Electrical: DIY or Professional?

Most homeowners approach electrical jobs in their home themselves with some anxiety. After all, if you mess up a plumbing job, it’s just a puddle of water on the floor; but when doing the wrong thing with electrical wires, the results can be more serious.

Of course, I’m not allowed to do electrical work at my house any more. My wife, Jennifer, threatens that if she ever sees me take electrical tools out again, she’ll take all the kids and pets off to the ER to wait for me there. In the past, I’ve had sparks fly across the room, and I’ve felt that eerie voltage sting creep through my body.

“Some homeowners get worried about doing electrical jobs, and they should be,” said Joel Wheeler of Wheeler Electric in Glendale. “If you make a mistake with electrical wires, even if nothing goes wrong at first, eventually something could catch fire.”

Still, plenty of homeowners are confident about their knowledge of electricity and successfully change outlets and install new lighting fixtures. “They can do that if they have a little know-how and common sense,” said Michael Bensel of the Mighty Electricians in Phoenix. “But sometimes they go down to the hardware store, and ask someone what to do and he tells them the wrong thing.”

We’re not going to give details on any difficult jobs, but we do have suggestions about handling some basics involving electricity at your house that can be important to you in future:

To start with, get familiar with your electrical service panel and relabel the circuit breakers – Usually, the panel is outside the house on a wall or inside a garage. In most older homes, a few marks or labels have been scratched on the panel to indicate what areas breakers serve, but that doesn’t provide the detail on all outlets served by individual breakers. Often the labels are nearly unreadable.

The easiest way to fix this is to have two people – one inside the house and one outside -- both on cellphones and talking back and forth.

Read more...

For answers to all YOUR Landscape, Garden and Home Improvement questions, visit our website, Rosieonthehouse.com
 
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