LPink, both my mom & I have baked just the filling for our family recipe's spanakopita. And with good results. Nowadays, when I make it (with or without the fillo), I use low fat cottage cheese. In fact, to make it lower in sodium, I use the no-salt-added cottage cheese from Safeway (which is very low fat too). I also cut the feta from 8 oz. down to only 4 oz. Here's just the filling portion of the recipe: Spanakopita Filling: 2 packages frozen chopped spinach 4 - 5 eggs 1 large carton cottage cheese 8 ounces. Feta cheese 1 bunch green onions 1 tablespoon dried mint 1 tablespoon dried dill weed 2 tablespoons dry, unflavored breadcrumbs Filling Preparation: â¢Thaw spinach; drain & squeeze dry â¢Beat eggs â¢Chop green onions (my mom always sauteed the green onions for a bit; I'm too lazy) â¢Chop/crumble Feta cheese â¢Combine spinach, eggs, cottage cheese, Feta cheese, green onions, mint, dill weed, and breadcrumbs in large bowl. Mix well. Bake pita at 350ð for 45 - 60 minutes; pita should be light, golden brown. When baked by itself, the fillilng is very spinachy and pretty dense, but that's how I like it. Also, regarding fillo preparation, my mom & grandmother only brushed butter on the top fillo layer. They said it helped the pita to brown. But all the other layers were brushed with olive oil. Several times when I found myself in a hurry, exceptionally lazy, or overly calorie conscious, I used PAM olive oil spray for most of the fillo layers. The pan was brushed with real olive, as well as the first couple of layers. Then PAM spray, and finally a good dousing of butter on the top layer. FWIW, we hardly ever make spanakopitakia (the triangles). We much prefer pan pita. I've made the recipe below several times too, using the same no-salt-added/low fat cottage cheese. I usually omit the butter since it doesn't seem necessary -- the cheddar cheese exudes enough fat on its own. Deep Dish Spinach Cheese Bake MQmoi via Woodie2 1 lb cottage cheese 3 eggs, beaten 1 C cheddar cheese, grated 3 T butter, cut into bits 1 pckge frozen chopped spinach, thawed & drained 3 T flour Lightly combine cottage cheese, eggs, grated cheese, & butter. Add spinach flour, & salt to taste. Place in buttered casserole dish (6.5x8.5x2 in deep). Bake at 350 degrees for 45 mins. to 1 hr. until golden brown. Pour off butter that has risen to surface. And, finally, I've made the Bisquick spinach pie a few times too. I use my own homemade baking mix and the Safeway no-salt-added cottage cheese. I usually flavor it with dill, so it tastes more like spanakopita. It's linked below. Here is a link that might be useful: Bisquick Impossibly Easy Spinach-Parmesan Pie

chris8796: Yup, I think that is the route I'm going to have to take. (I'm just tired, that's all.) I've never done any plumbing because my dad never did any plumbing: he always figured the price of failure was too high to mess around with for that area of home improvement (and electricity, too). I don't doubt I can do this, though. It is just one more line item on my list of things to learn how to do because I can't find anyone to not rip me off. suburbanmd: Actually, we ponied up for the plumbers report for Washington Consumer Checkbook. I called the top fourteen on the list and only got two callbacks. One was the $580 quote (of the two quotes I got, it was indeed lower than the other by about $100), and the other never returned my follow-up call (I wasn't home when he first called me). And Angie's list is basically useless. I think we are small and plumbers either won't bother or they jack the price up high enough that it is "worth" their precious time. Fair enough but I'm sick of it, and at best, it is either rude or disingenuous. There is absolutely no way I think removing two stupid cut-off valves will take almost four hours by a licensed plumber (which is what the $580 implies, given what that company quoted as their time-and-materials per-hour rate). And yes, I do understand that when they give you a firm quote, they are supposed to be trying to factor in the "mystery" part where they don't actually know for sure what is inside your walls or what they might encounter. But we have no drywall and they can see everything.

I'd put the three-seat sofa up against the wall (facing the TV) and the two-seat sofa where the three seater is now. In other words, just reverse the sofas and move everything to the left, so that the large sofa is against the wall. If you want to use your laptops there, I'd move the glass table and use it for the TV and components, and use the ottoman as a "coffee table" on which to put your feet when using your laptops. Get a second, somewhat larger, ottoman to put in front of the larger sofa, so that each sofa has an ottoman on which to rest feet and which is reachable from all seats of the sofa. Breakfast nook, I'd reverse the cabinets you've got, put the small cab and mirror where the tall cab is, and the tall where the small and mirror are now.

Annie, I've found there's a lot of differences between the wheatberries from different farms. If yours aren't working, you might try finding one with a tested for that crop higher protein level. These might not apply to you, but are some of the things I've learned for 100% whole wheat, home milled, bread: If you mill at home, and aren't looking for a sweet flavor, you don't need any sweetener. What the honey is for in a lot of recipes is hiding the bitterness that whole wheat flour develops when it sits awhile (weeks) and starts to go rancid. A little acid, besides dealing with the anti-nutrients, works as a dough conditioner and retards mold growth (if we leave an end long enough to mold it's the free flour on it where it starts, not the bread itself). Ascorbic acid is fairly easily found as vitamin C crystals. I figure a jar may last me forever. It does add a little complexity to the flavor, which you might notice as acidity, but won't taste sour like vinegar. Handling the risen dough as little as possible, helps keep the gluten from being cut. It does not like "drawing a tight cloak". Like that saying about teaching a pig to dance, drawing it around like that just annoys the bread--the gluten breaks rather than stretches. A better way to shape, if necessary, is by folding, lightly. Do your best not to degas because it may not reinflate. If you're willing, adding vital wheat gluten makes up for the deficiencies of the protein content of the wheat. Re hydration, I always do a soak. A soak is where you either make up the dough for a long rise (at least 8 hours), or just combine the flour and liquid and let that set for at least 8 hours. This can be done in or out of the fridge. It takes awhile for the wheat to hydrate and what seems too dry turns damp and sticky. Whole wheat also takes more hydration than white. The best proportion I've been able to find, and have been using, but haven't tested extensively enough to know for sure from my own hands is 5 tsp. water for every cup of whole wheat flour that you substitute for white flour. Also be careful of the rise. If it doubles, it's probably too far gone. Aim for half that (1.5 times the original bulk). Maybe a little more. I haven't found a lot of good recipes, but that's common to all of the ones I do have, and if I miss and it gets to double on the rise, I don't get any oven spring. Oh, and no double rises. It doesn't want to be punched down. I found this recipe in a surprising place when I was looking for a low cleanup (water saving) daily bread: http://www.instructables.com/id/100-Whole-Wheat-Crusty-No-Knead-Artisan-Bread/ It's a good recipe. I've been playing with it, adding in other grains, and mixing in seeds and all. Overdoing that can also interfere with the rise, but I've got it to where I like it, and I prefer the multigrain flavor. I don't know if any of that is helpful to you. I've been on the same journey for a year, and had some sourdough flats of my own. :) Great sympathy here!