Recipe Test Tuesdays - Wild Violet Jelly

Never made it before but so far so good.

Gathered my wild violets out of the yard then rinsed them under cold water. I'm surprised I got 2 heaping cups of these bad boys for the recipe I found. Took a while to get them picked. Who knows what people thought I was doing out in the yard.

So I boiled water and poured it over the top of the violets in a pyrex bowl to steep. I'll put them in the fridge and pull this out in the morning and make my jelly from the violet tea I made.


So I took the violets in their 'tea' and poured them through a strainer into a glass measuring cup. I added 1/4 C of lemon juice and it turned a purple color from this sick looking greenish color that it was. Poured it into a non-reactive pot. I set aside another bowl and put the 4 Cups of Sugar and 1 box of Sure Jel pectin and stirred it up. Poured it into the pot with the Violets and warmed it up to medium high and stirred it up. When it tried to foam I cut back the temperature to medium.

When I got done making it, I ended up with 3 1/2 pints of jelly. Mine turned a pinkish color at the end. Next to try a dandelion jelly.

Tuesday is replenishing day!

So today is a day of replenishing the basics of items in the pantry. So today's job will be to make Chocolate Syrup, Laundry soap, and baking bread. The dish soap recipe has already been posted with the link in a previous article. As I walk through this blog, I will be posting the links to the recipes to give the author/creator of the recipes the credit they deserve. I will also try to post the good, the bad, and the ugly of testing recipes so I know not to use them again in future blog ramblings.

Chocolate Syrup recipe is from:
http://www.kitchentreaty.com/homemade-chocolate-syrup/

And makes 1 pint of syrup. You can reuse your chocolate syrup bottle, but wait until your syrup it totally cooled down before putting it in the bottle.

Bread Recipe is from:
Betty Crocker Gold Medal Classic White Bread

Lower the temp by 25 degrees and only bake 15-20 minutes for a less dark crust. No need to butter the outside. I've found that tossing a tea towel or kitchen towel over them helps keep the crust softer before packaging. You will need an electric bread knife for this one as it is as soft as store bought bread.

Laundry Soap Recipe is from:
 http://www.budget101.com/myo-household-items/whipped-cream-super-laundry-soap-3993.html

Feel free to jump in at anytime to make a recipe and even tweak it a little to make it your own unique recipe. We took the bread recipe to a new level by adding colored sugar and cinnamon before rolling it up and baking it. It was for our St. Patrick's Day meal.

I hope you enjoyed the blog today. Go ahead and get off the computer and try something new. Thanks for stopping by!

Canning to Save Time and Money - Getting Started

I just started to can things with a serious goal in mind last year when I got a call to come 'help yourself' to a bunch of green beans, corn and blackberries that got away from the folks who planted too much. Since we all know that we really can't snarf down mass quantities of green beans several days in a row without massive groaning from the family members, we have to do something with our tons of food we bring home from the store, pick your own produce places, or from your own garden. Many of us waste too much money on food from spoilage and those items we could have frozen, dehydrated, or even canned them for use later on. I'm guilty of this and I know I'm not the only person in the world to lose something in the fridge that would later become the fuzzy science experiment. So in order to get started on canning I had to have the basics. So here's the general start up list for canning:

1. Jars (Wide-mouth & Regular)
• Pint
• Quart
• Half-pint
• Half-gallon
• Gallon
• Pint and a half
2. Lids & Rings
3. Waterbath (Acidic, Fruits, Tomatoes)
4. Pressure Canner (Low Acid, Meats, Beans, Vegetables)
5. Canning Jar Tongs
6. Plastic headspace measure and bubble remover thingy
7. Free online study course & food preservation materials
• https://spock.fcs.uga.edu/ext/food/nchfp_elc/
• http://nchfp.uga.edu/index.html
8. Join various Facebook Canning and Preserving pages
9. Utilize the local county 4-H Extensions in your area for testing used pressure cookers or getting a specialist to come teach you how to can safely if it is available in your area.

Take advantage of food sales at the different times of the year and save your fruits, veggies, and meat in jars so that when their cheap season is over that you will have a stash to hold you over. We buy our hamburger on sale at the local grocery store, brown it and then can it in pint jars for use for any hamburger dish meals to add to a mix or pasta/sauce combinations. By storing meats in jars, you free up your freezer and also prevent that sad occasion when electricity is lost or your fridge or freezer dies and your food has gone bad. Trust me, it's more than canning for the Zombie Apocolypse. You worked hard for your money and don't just throw it down the drain with spoilage. We are far too reliant on our appliances and need to know how to handle a crisis before it happens, even if it is deciding whether to eat chicken or hamburger while trying to get to a dance class in 45 minutes. Grabbing the jar of whatever and heating it up in 5 minutes and tossing other ingredients to create a meal with it to be ready in 15 or so is better than sitting in a drive thru for 10 and still waiting for the special order to be done in another 5 or so. We've made our own lives hell with being slaves to fast food and restaurants. Time to wean ourselves from this and know what we are eating and where our money is going. 

I'm just at the beginning stages of this blog and will hit these main topics first and then throw in my recipes for the day if there is something new I haven't posted yet. Thanks for stopping by and maybe joining in this back to the basics movement. :-)

Laundry on the Cheap! Quit giving your money to the BIG companies!

Here's your penny pincher post of the day. As with this blog being my go to page with like personal favorite bookmarks for items we use in our daily lives, I will post pages to save them for you or my kids to be able to look up without fighting with Google Search.

Here's my story about stepping away from those horrible plastic jugs of overpriced laundry soap. Last summer I found this awesome recipe online at Budget 101 for the Laundry Sauce.

 http://www.budget101.com/myo-household-items/whipped-cream-super-laundry-soap-3993.html

My first recipe was made with Dove soap with the rose scent and it was okay. It smelled good so I made a little more. Second batch oozed over the top of the stove since I didn't keep stirring it like I should have. LOL! At least my stove got a good cleaning! The third time I made it was with the Fels Naptha bar as it shows in the recipe. I grated it and set it aside. The toddler decided to try it because he thought it was cheese. Needless to say, he won't try that again! I also set it up out of his reach, so keep that in mind when you have little helpers around. I'm needing to make more this week to restock the pantry.

Here's the ingredients for those of you to buy to make this and then make sure you bookmark the page the recipe is on as it gives a step by step walk-through on making it with PICTURES!

Mom's Super Laundry Sauce

Fels Naptha Bar
20 Mule Team Borax
Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (not baking soda!)
2 Regular Mouth Quart Jars -- with lids and rings
Blender 

You will pay less for all these ingredients that will give you enough soap for approximately 128 loads of laundry. It averages about $2 or less per jar as the borax and washing soda makes about 3 batches overall. The jars can be bought at second hand stores for as little as 25 cents each and you can re-use lids and rings from your canning endeavors. Check tomorrow's post on canning if you haven't gotten involved in that highly addicting past time.

Thanks for stopping by to read my page! Hope this helps you to keep a few dollars in your pocket so you can save it for something fun for yourself!

Diving in and going back to the basics

You never realize how you come to a point in life that you feel like you aren't getting anywhere until you reach it. Times now demand so much of our money to even feed our families or just have the basics with never a chance of frills and total fun frivolous things. We watch our neighbors swapping out cars every two years while we drive old beaters with over 200K miles on them that are paid for. We see fancy gadgets, jeans, power tools, and even kitchen appliances that we might hope to have, but will not be able to afford unless we work more hours or cut back on our spending to SAVE for it. Just recently we decided to make more items from scratch so that we aren't getting all the preservatives AND to just save money. No coupon clipping, as that was a fruitless venture of actually spending more money to buy the items that I probably WOULD NOT have bought had there not been a coupon for it in the first place.

So, while hitting this little time in my life of new recipes and adventures in baking, cooking and even making my own cleaning supplies, many times I've been asked for recipes that I've been making. So this little blog will become my journal AND my go to cookbook for anyone and everyone to follow along. I encourage all who read this to take a little time out of their day to make their own things. Quit relying on large companies to make your things for you and never know what all the ingredients are or if they are safe for you to eat. Remember just recently that a nationwide sub sandwich chain decided to take a certain ingredient out of their recipe after it was found it was also used to make yoga mats? Blech! Do you really want to eat that? What if I told you that bread is actually easy to make by hand? You don't need an expensive KitchenAid stand mixer or an expensive bread machine... all you need is a large bowl and a fork. So you say yeast packets are expensive? I agree with that, but if you buy it in the little jars and use 1 Tablespoon of yeast in the recipe for each package a recipe calls for, you can make bread for at least 1/2 the price of buying store bought.

Also, I hear people complain that it takes too long to cook a meal when their families are hitting all the after school or evening family activities and want to hit a fast food place because it takes too long to cook. Well, guess what... canning, freezing, or precooking meals on a day that you aren't running like mad will SAVE you time, money, and stress. In this blog we will look at living on a dime, learning how to cook, learning how to can, learning how to bake, how to care for chickens, gardening, and just tons more bits of info so you can survive the great recession without near as much fear. Feel free to interact and share your favorite recipes, garden plans, or whatever has helped you through the rough times. Welcome to the blog!