Archive for the ‘Homemaking’ Category

We’re still working out the kinks in our relationship with Green Pasture‘s Fermented Cod Liver Oil and Butter Oil. (Read the beginning of the saga HERE).

We’ve tried several new things since the first post. Some have been notably less successful than others.

The Littles, who cannot yet swallow pills, have the fewest options. They take the Butter Oil by itself, and then both have settled on the Peppermint flavored Emulsified Fermented Cod Liver Oil as the best choice for both texture and flavor.

Wolf and I find the Butter Oil the least appealing part of the equation. Something about the texture is just icky.

Nick, on the other hand, isn’t too bothered by the Butter Oil, but gags on the Cod Liver Oil.

We (the Big People) are all happiest with the Butter Oil / FCLO Blend Capsules – but the cost per dose is so much higher that way, we don’t feel that’s the best choice.

Our first plan was to compromise and let each person have one of the products in capsules, and take the other straight. So we bought all four components, and everyone went their own way.

As bad as the chocolate blend was, we were still hopeful. When Green Pastures offered to send us a product for review, we chose the blended gel in Cinnamon Tingle flavor.

Sadly, it was just as much of a failure in our house as the chocolate. Everyone preferred their previously-settled-upon method of taking the two separately.

Lately, we have a new hope, discovered by Wolf. He found that you could lick the gel off the spoon with the tip of your tongue, “toss it back” and swallow it quickly — and somehow totally avoid the taste, except for a hint of cinnamon. I’m sure this has to do with the placement of the various taste receptors on the tongue.

We’ll have to keep trying this out, and see if it continues to prove useful. Certainly, having only one product to keep on-hand would be a lot simpler than the current system!

In an amazing instance of “Great Minds Think Alike”, Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist, posted today with a video demonstrating How to Best Swallow Cod Liver Oil.

Breath control – something else to try!

Whatever it takes, though, we are committed to these supplements. I’ve just read too much to discount the benefits, and it’s certainly not something we can get from our diet (here and now, anyway).

If you’re ready to give it a try, you have a few options:

• Directly from Green Pastures
• Radiant Life, who has slightly lower prices on a few items (and the same on the rest), and a percentage discount on multiple bottles
• Dr. Ron’s Ultra Pure, who also has essentially the same prices as Green Pastures, offers Free Shipping on order over $150 (at least as of now), and does full case and half case discounts if you’re really ambitious

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I recently checked out an amazing, and totally free, tool for analyzing your food storage – Emergency Essentials’ Food Storage Analyzer.

Whether you want to have a week’s worth of food on hand in case of a natural disaster, or you’re trying to stash a full year’s worth of non-perishables, this tool can help you gauge your progress.

First you add in everything you have in food storage. You can combine all different types of foods – from freeze-dried, to wet-pack (canned), to dried. There are many, many products listed in the analyzer that you can simply use as-is, and it also has an interface to enter your own items.

You then input the gender and age of the members of your household (to determine their daily calorie requirements).

The Analyzer will then calculate how long you could survive on the food in your pantry!

And best of all, it will show the level of nutrition everyone is receiving! When I didn’t enter our powdered milk, for instance, it showed a dangerously low value for Calcium. And as a bonus, there’s a series of buttons below the nutrition stats allowing you to search for products high in whatever you’re missing.

I found this tool very valuable, and I am definitely bookmarking it for future reference. And, hey – it’s free!

I recently had the opportunity to test out the Laundry Detergent from Tropical Traditions.

Their information describes it as follows:

• Powdered Laundry Detergent is safe and effective at ALL temperatures on whites, permanent press, bright colors, pastels, prints, and delicates in hard or soft water. (Not suitable for Silk or Wool)
• Tropical Traditions Powdered Laundry Detergent is non-toxic, environmentally safe and contains no phosphates.
• Powdered Laundry Detergent cleans and safely bleaches your clothes with the added power of Oxygen Bleach Destainer and Deodorizer.
• With our Laundry Detergent there are no harmful by-products upon decomposition.
• Powdered Laundry Detergent dissolves as completely as liquid detergents and rinses away completely leaving no residue in your clothes.
• Powdered Laundry Detergent costs less to use than commercial liquid detergents and costs no more to use than commercial powdered household laundry detergents.
• Powdered Laundry Detergent contains no dyes, perfumes, fillers or phosphates.

It looks just like any other laundry powder. It does, in fact, dissolve easily and well even in cold water. No cloying perfume scent. All good so far…

And?

The clothes are very clean.

I think my favorite part is how easily and thoroughly it rinses out. Doing the wash by hand I am far more aware of this consideration than I would be with a washing machine!

Want to try it? Tropical Traditions has a free gift for you through their Referral Program:

If you are a new customer, as an As For My House reader you will receive a complimentary copy of the book Virgin Coconut Oil: How it has changed people’s lives and how it can change yours! by Brian and Marianita Shilhavy with your order. This book is filled with testimonies and research showing how healthy coconut oil is, and it also includes over 85 recipes showing how one can incorporate coconut into their diet.

Just select “Referred by a friend” when asked, and in the box that says “How did you hear of us?” enter my Sponsor ID number: 5689476.

…and be sure to come back and share your results!

Want to win it??

Check out my cool new Rafflecopter giveaway form, below!

Please note that some entries require making a blog post to qualify, but only entries that are entered in the Reafflecopter form will be actual contest entries. This is something new for us, so I want to make sure nobody misses out.
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I received this product free from Tropical Traditions; I was not obligated to write a review, nor compensated in any other way for this review. This review has not been approved or edited by anyone.
I was “disclosing” before it was cool. See my Review Policy for the full scoop.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, obviously it does. More importantly, my laundry saga continues.

We purchased a basic utility sink from Lowe’s, and the Dyna-Jet wringer (cheapest place I found it was Wisemen Trading and Supply).

Wolf used heavy plywood to make a square base, to which the legs are screwed, and a side panel for stability and secure wringer mounting.

The hot and cold water taps formerly for the washing machine, complete with washing machine hoses, provide the water. We don’t currently have hot water there, though, which is another story entirely.

Wolf also plumbed the sink’s drain, tapping into the former washing machine drain line.

It took several tries to find a drain plug that will stay in place while clothes are being agitated! Challenges that never even occurred to me in advance…

And the wringer?

It’s SO nice!

But there’s definitely a learning curve.

On the one hand, yes, it is very simply to feed the clothes through it and turn the crank.

But there’s the question of tension…

You have to tighten it down very hard to get a good squeeze on thin things. But then it is challenging to feed through some thicker things. And certain things, such as jeans, I don’t think can be usefully wrung at all – by the time you loosen it enough to get the bulky waistband through the wringer, it’s not going to be tight enough to squeeze the legs.

Do you loosen and tighten it as you go? Or pick a middle-ground setting and just crank on through?

And then came… The icky drips.

The ends of the rollers are metal. So, possibly from tiny rusting spots, or possibly from the lubrication that allows it to turn, it is creaking this nasty gunk.

If you were using this on a freestanding stand, to wring out your shammies at a car wash, this would be a non-issue.

But in my case, it drips into my laundry tub – often right on top of the newly-washed clothes! Bleah.

Clearly, there are still kinks in the system that need to be worked out.

Nobody said it was easy to be a re-pioneer!

Okay, this is not going to be one of those posts that is enlightening and full of my alleged knowledge or insights. This is a post full of questions!

It seems that there are a wide range of opinions about what is the best kind of cookware.

Not only “the best” meaning that it performs its cooking tasks in a desirable manner, but also with health issues factored it.

Yeah, like most things that seem simple at first glance, it’s complicated.

There’s a lot of information in a post over at Earth Easy called Healthy Cookware, but it’s almost overwhelming, really.

Stainless Steel?

Pros:
It’s not aluminum!
Good heat distribution

Cons:
Expensive

Cast Iron?
See the yummy photo above, from the Tool Tips Guide (a website I know otherwise nothing about).

Pros:
Excellent heat distribution properties
Some people feel it imparts the best flavor

Cons:
Some people feel it’s not sanitary because of the “seasoning”
Heavy, cumbersome
Different cooking and care techniques need to be learned

Aluminum?

Pros:
Lightweight
Inexpensive

Cons:
You’re eating aluminum

Non-stick coated

Pros:
Non-stick (duh)
May have the great cooking properties of whatever it is coating

Cons:
Transfers icky stuff into your food (especially once the slightest chip or scratch mars the finish)

Aluminized Steel?

According to Wiki, it’s “steel that has been hot-dip coated both sides with aluminum-silicon alloy. This process assures a tight metallurgical bond between the steel sheet and its aluminum coating, producing a material with a unique combination of properties possessed neither by steel nor by aluminum alone.”

Pros (People seem to love this stuff, such as the USA pans):
Less prone to corrosion than steel (wow, is that an issue?)
Less sticking
Supposed to have a mix of the best cooking properties of aluminum and steel

Cons:
Expensive
You’re still eating aluminum, right?

… And there’s also glass, ceramic, terra cotta (baking stones), and more.

What do you cook with? And why?

I ran across the recipe for Whole Wheat Honey Oatmeal Bread at Hallee the Homemaker’s blog. (That’s her photo)

This is the most delicious bread EVER!

It didn’t rise as much as I anticipated, and was pretty dense, but I’m not sure what I did wrong.

It didn’t seem as gooey as hers did before adding the last incremental flour (go read her post, and look at the thorough photo documentation of the process), but it’s hard to tell exactly.

I wondered about mixing the yeast into the flour, rather than the way I’m used to where, even if you don’t actually “proof” it, you put the yeast and warm water in, together, first – doesn’t that help kick-start the process.

Also, most whole wheat recipes seem to use dough conditioners – wheat gluten, or vinegar, or both. Of course this recipe has eggs, which my others have not, which changes the picture entirely.

So, the long and short of it is… I have no idea!

I guess the only thing to do is to make it again and see if I get the same result. This will eliminate the likelihood of my error, or a pure fluke, before I feel the need to start messing around with a tried and proven recipe.

Because I will be making it again.

Did I mention that it is the yummiest bread ever?!

We took our lovely wheat from our recent bulk order…

And ground it into flour in my brand-new NutriMill Grain Mill.

Then we used the EZ Wheat Bread recipe from Everyday Food Storage (we’ve been using her EZ White Bread up to this point).

(Nick actually made one batch with our fresh-ground flour prior to this, but used the recipe we’ve been using for white bread. As you might expect, it was rather short and dense).

Anyhow, off I went, piling the ingredients in the bowl.

Here’s my lovely assistant, the KitchenAid mixer, doing all the “hard labor” part of the job.

After that, it rises in a bowl for about an hour. It took a bit longer, as it was (surprisingly) chilly in my kitchen.

Then punched down, shaped in to loaves, and left to rise in the loaf pans for another hour or so.

Here are the loaves, after that second rise, ready to go in the oven. I didn’t do a very good job of dividing the dough in half, did I?

We had tweaked the time and temperature a bit on her white bread recipe, but since this was (a) a different recipe, and (b) a new oven from when we worked that all out, I decided to go with the (higher) temperature listed on the recipe.

I didn’t think it was quite done, but it had to come out before we got to “charcoal” on the top.

Sitting there, buttered and shiny, it sure looks good, doesn’t it?

But, alas…

It was not, in fact, done in the middle.

While I was, naturally, very disappointed in the waste, as well as not being able to enjoy the fruits of my labors, I do realize that this is a learning process.

Although we have been baking our own bread for several years now, we have stuck with one “tried and true” recipe — and we went through this same process in the beginning getting it worked out, too.

So, today, we are back at it.

The flour has been ground, and the mixer is churning away.

We’ll lower the oven temperature 25 degrees, and extend the baking time a bit. I’ll keep an eye on things and see if it look like it might still need foil over the top, as well.

Hopefully we’ll have a delicious treat later this afternoon. One step further down the road…

Most of you probably have heard of these by now, but I thought I’d toss them out there in case anyone isn’t using them yet.

There are a number of ways to save money while making the purchases you were planning to make anyway. You just click through to one of these sites, search for the place you want to shop, then click their link to go there – while they track your purchase and give you a rebate.

It may only be a few cents here and there. It doesn’t sounds like a lot, especially if you’re like me and don’t shop for a lot of “consumer goods”. But it does add up over time. So, since none of these cost anything, why would you NOT want to get a little something back?

Shop At Home

Shop At Home is the site I use most – it just seems to overlap best with where I shop online.

It’s free, of course, plus you get a $5 bonus if you make your first purchase through them within 60 days of joining.

EBates

EBates also sometimes runs a ‘$5 bonus with your first purchase’ type offer, but they do not seem to be doing so right now.

If you have the time and patience, you should always check both ShopAtHome and EBates – there are some stores that are on one but not the other, and some stores that are on both sites but with differing rebate percentages.

UPromise

There are two ways to use UPromise:

1. You can sign up to register a UPromise account for your child. Then shopping through their site posts a “rebate” (like the ones above) directly into a college savings account for your child, rather than sending you a check. (Click Here to access their signup form)

The big advantage of this, and the way I use UPromise most, is that you can also register your credit cards and grocery loyalty cards with them, and earn rebates on participating off-line purchases, as well.

2. You can receive a lot of great coupons and offers through their site, without any signup – but also without any back-end rebate. (Click Here to access the Guest Shopping page)

Disclaimer: Some of the links above are personalized links that will generate a small referral bonus for me if you use them. Thank you!

Some things you just know are not good for you — yeah, those.

But sometimes something that was made with good stuff yesterday, is suddenly not made with good stuff today.

In our determination not to eat High Fructose Corn Syrup, I’ve learned that, except for the savvy companies that print “Contains No High Fructose Corn Syrup” across the front of the package, I have to check the labels each and every time I buy something. You’d be surprised how often things change.

And change (not to get political) is not necessarily a good thing!

I just watched this eye-opening video, about a similar phenomenon, combined with plain ol’ sleazy marketing, happening on the breakfast aisle:

I also had a distressing run-in with the need to check while shopping at the Ocean Springs Farmer’s Market a while back.

We passed a table where a woman was selling her “homemade” BBQ sauce and rubbing spices. Yeah, the quotes give it away, right?

Never for a moment thinking that I would find such a thing at the Farmer’s Market, I picked up the bottle to look at the list of ingredients – just curious about her recipe. And guess what was in it.

Yeah, glop. (That’s what we call HFCS in our house).

I was so surprised I made a comment about it. Her response?

Well I don’t put any in. It’s in the base sauce that I make it from.

Just. Wow.

(Photo Credit: It wasn’t attributed there, but I got the cool HFCS = Poison image from the Will Hayes Fitness website, about which I know absolutely nothing else).

I wish I’d taken pictures of the bulk food order we picked up from the LDS Cannery in Slidell last week…

It was on this big flat cart, like you use at Lowe’s, and it totally filled up the back of my Tahoe (that was before Clyde – wait, you didn’t read the story about Clyde??).

As you can see, R.T. enjoys the wheat berries straight out of the bag!

All in all, we got:

• 3 bags of wheat (25 lbs. each)
• 1 bag of black beans
• 1 bag of white beans (great northern)
• 1 bag of sugar
• 1 bag of oats
• 1 box of potato flakes
• 1 box of rice
• 1 box of spaghetti
• 1 box of macaroni
• 1 box of powdered milk
• Plus a package of 100 Oxygen Absorbers to package with the food for storage

Naturally, we got home to discover that we didn’t have enough of the 5-gallon buckets accumulated to store it all! It’s been slow going getting them from the Commissary bakery, but I have a couple of other places to try now, so maybe we can get caught up.

I’ve also gotten in with a group of ladies on an order for combined shipping, to get some Gamma Lids – that will resolve my issues with a couple of buckets I have that are lidless, as well as making life easier in general. (They snap on with a gasket like the regular lids, then the center part screws open (but seals tight) for access).

That’s a lot of supplies! Time to organize the “pantry” space in the back hall closet…