Homemade Laundry Soap

Homemade Powder Laundry Soap

 Ingredients:

1 grated/shaven bar Fels-Naptha

1 cup Borax Laundry Booster

1 cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda

Grate Fels-Naptha and mix thoroughly with washing soda and Borax Laundry Booster.  Use 1-2 Tablespoons per load.

Humingbird Cake

Hummingbird Cake

 

1 package (18.25 oz) plain yellow cake mix

 1 can (8 oz) crushed pineapple packed in juice, undrained

2 medium or 3 small ripe bananas, peeled and mashed (1 cup)

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup vegetable oil, such as canola, corn, safflower, soybean, or sunflower

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 chopped pecans, toasted

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  

Lightly grease two 9 inch round cake pans with solid vegetable shortening, then dust with four.  Shake out excess flour.

Place the cake mix, pineapple with its juice, mashed bananas, water, oil, eggs, vanilla and cinnamon in a large bowl.  Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute.  Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed.  The batter should look thick and the fruit well blended.  Divide the batter between the prepared pans, smoothing it down with the rubber spatula.  Place the pans in the oven side by side.

 

Bake until golden brown, about 30-32 minutes. Cool them on wire racks.

Prepare the cream cheese frosting. 

When cakes have cooled completely, frost with frosting and top with toasted pecans. (or toasted almonds if you don't have pecans and don't want to run to the store...again.)

 

 Cream Cheese Frosting 

 1 package cream cheese, at room temperature

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

3 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Place cream cheese and butter in large mixing bowl.  Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, 30 seconds.  Stop the machine.  Add the confectioners' sugar, a bit at a time, blending with the mixer on low speed until the sugar is well incorporated, 1 minute.  Add the vanilla, then increase the mixer speed to medium and blend the frosting until fluffy, 1 minute more.

Dutch Oven Artisan Bread

Dutch Oven Artisan Bread

RECIPE:

3 cups flour

1 3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon yeast

1 1/2 cups water

Mix dry ingredients and then add water.  Mix thoroughly. 

Cover and let sit 12-18 hours.

After it sits overnight, plop it out on a heavily floured surface then into the Dutch oven.

Bake at 450 Degrees F. for 30 min lid on then 10-15 more with lid off.

GastronomyTrickery. Green Tomato Jam

Maybe you've heard of  soda cracker pie, vegan burgers and black bean fudge brownies? 

Well, my version of gastronomy trickery today is green tomato jam. 

Since mother nature forced me to harvest my tomatoes, rather than have them freeze, I happily plucked them all off their bountiful vines.  I'm up to my eyeballs in tomatoes of varying shades of green, pale orange and red, but since green is the predominant color of the 6 bowls I picked I needed a creative way to use them up.

 We were a little skeptical that letting them ripen indoors would result in anything other than the perfect vine ripened sphere of goodness so my husband recommended making jam. 

 Jam from tomatoes. 

Jam from tomatoes that looks like jam from raspberries.

The process is really very simple.

 Here's the recipe from Food.com. I searched many different recipes and determined that I'd just stick to the ratio's of this recipe.

READY IN:  35mins
YIELD:  2 jars	UNITS:  US

INGREDIENTSNutrition

• 2cups green tomatoes, ground or grated
• 2cups sugar
• 1(3 ounce) package raspberry Jell-O gelatin (or strawberry, etc.)

DIRECTIONS

1. Grind or grate tomatoes.
2. Mix tomatoes and sugar.
3. Bring to a boil.
4. Boil 15 minutes.
5. Remove from heat.
6. Add jello and stir well.
7. Seal in jars or freeze.
8. Enjoy!

I made 6 quarts of "raspberry" jam until I ran out of sugar, but I could have made probably 16 more. I had plans to make strawberry as well until the sugar shortage, but really the flavors are as numerous as the JELL is O. 

*Editors note: I would recommend really grinding the green tomatoes well and cooking longer if needed to make sure the texture is that of soft raspberries and not of unripe tomatoes if you get my drift. 

Gifts

So our church burnt down last Tuesday, I had a root canal last Thursday and then a cold sore the next day after as a result (either from the stress of it all or the stress to my mouth--it happens nearly every time) I'm sending my step son, who has lived with us since he was 12, on a mission in two days, all the kids are now spending Christmas with us which was not what we were planning on ($!!!) and I woke up today with a happy heart. With no desire to be anything but happy. Like, Braylan happy. That annoying happy when there's nothing to be happy about kind of happy.
I consider it a true gift from above. A Christmas miracle. A tender mercy from a loving Heavenly Father who knows what we need.
I don't know if this bliss will last longer than today and that tomorrow I'll be back to my grumpy cat self, but today I'll take it.
I'll swim in it until my fingers get prune-y. (Name that movie.)

Now, I have shopping to do, errands to run and FHE to plan. The last FHE with our prospective missionary for two years.

I'm so excited for him to serve a mission! He gets to go serve the people of  Louisville, Kentucky and surrounding areas. He gets to immerse himself in the spirit, happily serve the Lord and others and teach the gospel. So.....the same thing he's been doing forever.

What a happy day.

Thank you Heavenly Father!

Purse organizer

After making my purse, I have learned what has worked and what has not.

What isn't working is the lack of pockets or an organizing system, so this is my quick DIY purse organizer because  mess = stress.

I used wipe-off-able material, so, you know, it can be wiped off and mesh for the bottom so crumbs can fall through for ease of cleaning.

You catching a theme here?

Here's what I did...

When you fold your material, you get a quick pocket.

Folded to make first row of pockets.

Second row of pockets.

Pocket boundaries via the sewing machine.

Pen and pencil dividers.

Mesh bottom.

Ya know, to let those pesky crumbs fall through. Its this laziness or efficient?

You decide...

Then I just met the ends, sewed the edges together and voila!

Inside my purse.

Organized!!

This took me about an hour top to bottom. Easy because I just folded those layers instead of cutting and sewing everything.

 I quickly threw together a coin purse also with mesh for a bottom because who wants crumby coins?

Chair do over

So our kitty and puppy love to chase each other.

A lot.

They usually end up under my vintage chair and consequently have torn the underneath to shreds.

Well not to shreds exactly, but did a good enough job on it that I just decided to jump in, gimp finger and all, and disassemble it so I can reupholster it.

So I grabbed the closest butter knife and went to work. Now I know that there are tools made just for the disassembling of a chair, and I have one...somewhere, but a butter knife and a pair of needle nose pliers work just fine.

This is the point I'm at and I'm struggling whether or not to use a patterned fabric or just go neutral.

Leaning toward this little yellow and grey/taupe number.

Whaddaya think?

*To see the chair before, click here*

Surgery on my hand...

I found this video of a surgery on an extensor tendon on YouTube almost just like mine. The tendon in my hand didn't get completely severed though so they didn't need to go searching for it-thank goodness! Not shown in this video was repair of the hood that was also damaged.
If you have a strong stomach you can watch this video, if you don't have the wherewithal, don't look at the accompanying photo either.

I'm Alive-The Rest Will Heal

This post is a journal entry more than a public blog post, but wanted to document the events that took place this last week.

Monday, June 20th I was in a single car accident and rolled my GMC Yukon.

Despite what could have been, I'm alive and the rest will heal.

As far as the accident is concerned, I don't remember

Fences-to keep some things in and some things out

So we let our chickens free range during the day and it's wonderful. They are fun, and funny and friendly and they roam around our ranch (hubby disagrees with the title hobby farm) and eat stuff. They come running when someone throws veggie scraps to them (except asparagus- they won't eat that) and they eat bugs and worms after it rains. They really eat everything (except asparagus) that we feed them, but that's also a problem because they would eat the garden if we let them. IMO there's no reason to go to all the work of planting if our lovely chickens just think our garden is there very own personal smorgasbord.

So I went all trump and built a fence.