Hello, Springtime! Love, Maggie

Spring seems to have finally clicked here in the NW, and this weekend I got an itch to start working outside and logging some really good yard work time. Since my gardening resources at home are limited, and last years 'crop' was a bit of a bust I decided to go with another route this year. I am planning to do a larger garden with some friends on their small family farm (which luckily is nearby) so I didn't need to really have veggies outside my door. Herbs, however, I use constantly. So having a small herb garden, and even a few tomatoes, made sense.

I (with quite a bit of help) threw together some wood boxes, and planted basil, mint, thyme, rosemary and parsley. I still have a bit of room in my planter boxes, and I'm hoping to find some good cilantro plants soon.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow!

Diapers: What do I do with this sh*t now?

Brad K. made an excellent point on my "Ladies Only" post that got me thinking. A lot of women (and other people) don't think about adding things like feminine hygiene stuff to the preps. What else are we forgetting? In my personal case, the Boy has been a sloooooooooow potty trainer. He is pretty sure I'm batty, and this going on and on about doing things in the toilet is just silly. Why bother when you can go in your pants and Mom cleans you up? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me and I'm 25. That being said, the kid is 3. If SHTF, he'll learn really quick.

Now, I'm also quilty has charged for using disposable diapers when the Boy was a baby. Hate me, I don't care. I got lectured up the front and down the back by heaps of people, and yeah, I still don't care. That being said, if I ever so have another baby, I think I'm going to use cloth diapers. I know a few people who've used them and loved them. Their babies had less diaper rash, and potty trained faster as they understood being wet was uncomfortable. Disposable diapers have chemicals that pull the moisture away from the body, and can hold up to 800 times their weight in liquid by converting it into a gel.

Now obviously, if SHTF having a stock pile of disposable diapers isn't very practical. Whereas, cloth diapers will generally last about as long as you can use them. There are a million different types, as is par for the course with handmade type stuff (everyone adapts it to their own needs). A lot of companies now also offer accesories like diaper covers (in various fabrics and designs), reuseable wipes, washable diaper liners, and even training pants.

A few of the girls I know rave about Kushies. Their stuff is adorable, and they have a ton of accesories and was one of the few sites where I found training pants. I love their Classic Diapers but they are very much on the pricey side. A 5 pack of the classics runs about $65 for the baby sized, and about $75 for the toddler sizes. The diaper covers also run about $9. Of course you could also just buy the cover, and use plain old Gerber cloth diapers for underneath.

If your feeling ambitious, you can also give making them yourself a shot. Diaper Jungle has some great resources, and has links to just about anything you'd need. I'm sure if you just google'd a bit you could find a ton more. I can't sew to save my life, so that's a bit out of my realm.

Impending Suds-dom

I'm thinking my next big foray into the homemade world is going to be soap. I'm not sure why, so don't ask. I'm sure there are a ton of things that logically should happen between where I am, and soap-making, but alas soap it shall be. Once you have a basic soap bar, you can use it for a million things. Shampoo, dishsoap, cleaning the house.. The list goes on a on.

I'm a little torn at the moment, because there are a couple different ways I could go. I could take the simple route and just buy the melt and pour bases, buy a soap making kit or go full hog and try to do it from scratch. At the moment I'm leaning towards getting a melt and pour base to start. There is a local natural remedy store that I believe would have all the oils and such I might want to add, and molds are decently cheap. This way at least I can get used to the process before trying to do it all by myself. Also lye freaks me out seeing as they used to use it to cover dead bodies (over share, sorry I know) and I've seen Fight Club one too many times. Lip print scars on my hand is not something I am interested in.

I don't care if it's small, it's still a garden.

Alright, alright. It's 3 planters. But they are BIG planters. Kind of. Whatever, it's my garden so shush.

This weekend I went to one of the big box stores (which I'm starting to hate a little to be honest) because I wanted to pick up the compost bin my sister had recommended to me (but that's another blog). Since I was there anyway, I decided to pilfer through their gardening section and see what I could find. I had a basic list of what I wanted: Planters, potting soil, watering can, yata yata.

I ended up buying 5 planters. 1 large deep round one (for my carrots) 2 medium long ones, and 2 smaller long style ones. I also bought 2 bags of potting soil (one organic compost, one Miracle Grow. Normally I would have stuck with organic but I need all the help I can get). I also bought a trowel and some gloves. I looked at buying watering cans, but couldn't find one under $15, so I scraped the Norman Rockwell picture in my head of me watering plants while the boy plays with a puppy in the background. Instead I bought one of those 42 level hose nozzles and called it odds and evens.

I got home, lugged the bags of potting soil (soooo heavy) out of my trunk and got to work. I ended up filling the tall round pot, and one each of the long pots. I tried to mix the soil about 50/50, but with the Miracle Grow most concentrated on the top and tapering off towards the bottom. Gracie recommended I put gravel or sand in the bottom to help with moisture control, but I didn't have any, and I was impatient. So if they all die, this is an official disclaimer that she told me so.

The carrots went in the tall round, since Gracie and I discussed it and we figured they need lots of 'down' and less 'out'. In the larger long planter I put in the onions and my lettuce. I don't think it'll be big enough for ever, but I plan to move one species over to the other pot in a couple weeks. The small planter is the home of my chives, sage and English thyme.

They all need full sun (at least for Spring) so I have them in the front of my house where I have the most sunlight. So my little garden is tentatively up and running.

Here goes nothing.

Holy Home Compost, Batman!

My sister sent me an email last night with the subject "I think you need this". This could have included many things at this point; some sort of kitchen device, a baby chick, maybe anti-psychotics? Instead I was delight to see a picture of a home compost bin and the words"You can make your own dirt!".

The really sad part is, I honestly got really excited. I've been looking into home composting for awhile, and just hadn't found anything practical yet. Like I've said many times before, I'm on a limited budget, so spending $300 on a home version just isn't in the cards (regardless of it being $50 off).

The version my sister sent me appears to be a Keter 120 Gallon Composter. That is an optimum size for me, and a great price (about $60-70). I really didn't have a ton of organic scraps when I started this adventure. But now that I'm canning and cooking almost exclusively at home, I'm starting to get a good size pile (and right now that's what it is, discreetly hidden under a tree in my side yard). I'm going to head to the local big box store where she saw it this weekend, and depending on my paycheck this week, I might make the investment. I was also thinking about getting a kitchen bucket because well, I'm lazy. I don't want to have to run out to the big bin every time I have a handful of scraps.

Hopefully this works and doesn't just turn into a pile of rotting gross.

Homemade Cream Cheese

I'm not a big cream cheese person (although I am a big cheesecake person) but I saw an article on making your own cream cheese on Little House in the Suburbs and since I'm always down for easy ways to create new things, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I went to Wally World and purchased some plain active culture yogurt. I forget with brand, but I basically picked the one that had only "Milk" and "acidophilus" as ingredients. I picked up two cartons, and also got some cheese cloth. I snagged several yards of cheese cloth as it's used for a lot, and well it's cheap so why not.

When I got home, I realized I still had an unreasonable amount of strawberries left over from the Jam Wars, and decided to try and make myself some strawberry cream cheese. I admit I pretty much set myself up for another good-intention-gone-awry but it all worked out in the end. I cut up, mashed and drained about a cup of strawberries (My intent was to add this to 32 oz. of the plain yogurt), then toss them and said yogurt into a blender.

This is the step I will scratch off on my next batch. My thinking at the time was blenders are for blending, therefore I will have uniform strawberry cream cheese. The theory worked, but also thinned down the yogurt ridiculously. I ended up adding the other portion of yogurt to try and get a somewhat thicker consistency, which didn't work. I just ended up with more strawberry milk-like stuff. Next time I do this, I'm going to directly mix the strawberries in with the yogurt. No blending.

I pour a small amount of the strawberry smoothie into a bowl lined with cheese cloth. Gathered the edges (so much as I could) wrapped it around a wooden spoon, being sure that the bottom of my ball was about 2 inches off the bowl bottom to allow it to drain. Obviously this wasn't the most secure, so I threw on another spoon for balance and threw a heavy glass lid on top just to be sure. It looked fairly ghetto, but hey it worked.


NOTE: I started with a fairly small amount as I was unsure of my success, and I'd rather screw up small, then big.

I let this hang over night (the longer you hang it, the thicker it gets) and was very surprised by how good it look this morning. I didn't get a ton of cheese from it, as a lot seemed to be trapped in my ineffectual cheese clothing. It tasted good, sweeter then I figured from the initial smoothie-thing tasting which was a pleasant surprise. Nice texture, and overall very yummy.

This foray gave me enough confidence to tackle the remaining smoothie-thing. I had it in a regular mixing bowl covered in my fridge, so it had a chance to re-establish a bit of it's yogurt like qualities. I tossed in a couple tablespoons of sugar because I like my flavored cream cheese sweet. Well really, I like anything sweet. I also decided to switch out the cheese cloth in favor of a tea towel. I haven't used cheese cloth enough to really know my way around it, and I seemed to lose a couple of tablespoons of the original batch that way.

I plopped the whole mess into a bowl, this time when I gathered the fabric I rolled it hobo-pack style before tying it on the spoon. This worked much much better. In hind sight considering how much smoothie-thing I used, I probably should have used my crawfish pot, seeing as it's much deeper, so I don't have to drain the whey occasionally.

Overall, I think it worked pretty well. And I will definitely add this to my regular to-make list.

War of the Jams, The Frozen Finale

My second round of jam went much better then the first. I followed the plain ol' strawberry jam recipe from inside the box of pectin I bought. It went something like THIS.

I won't bore you with the gory details, seeing as I've done that for the last two posts. The fact of the matter is, I followed the recipe to the tee, didn't fudge with the amounts, and very carefully washing and sanitized everything in between batches. The results were wonderfully colored and textured jam that tastes as great as it looks.

Each batch (aka amount described for one package of pectic) yielded about 4 total pints. I chose to split them into both pint and half pint jars, and also into the screw-lid 2-cup Ziploc Tupperware things. I didn't bother with fancy-smancy jelly jars since this was mostly a test-run I plan to eat myself and pawn off on friends and family until I can perfect the method.

Today I grabbed some bread, toasted it in the oven (I'm a sucker for oven toast, don't ask me why. Well, that and I can't find my toaster) slathered it with whipped butter and smeared on some jam. This was the result...


The Boy and I managed to polish off the 4 pieces in about 15 seconds. Which left this...



All in all, I think the Freezer Jam experiment can be considered a success. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the other 6 pounds of strawberries.

War of the Jams, Part 2

So I gave up and tossed my original attempt at the strawberry freezer jam. I hate to do that, but I really had no way to salvage it.

For round 2 of the Jam War I wanted to be ready to battle. I went to the local big box store and stocked up on some things I decided I should have. A colander for washing/draining the fruit, dry good measuring cups, table/teaspoons, an egg timer and a veggie peeler. I'm trying to get everything in a non-reactive form (i.e, plastic, coated ceramic, or wood) so if I lose my mind and decide to make pickles I don't have to buy all new stuff. I also picked up Canning for Dummies which sadly didn't have an actual freezer jam section (their own loss, in my opinion).

I went to the still local, but much bigger grocery store, because frankly our little "Ma and Pa" mart is seriously lacking in the fresh fruits and veggies. I managed to pick up very very nice strawberries for about $2.50 a pound so I bought a lot more then I needed, but oh well. They also had a really good variety of jars from quart mason jars clear down to the fancy quilted jelly jars. Ironically, there was only about $1.00 difference in the flats of jars regardless of size.

I prefer wide mouth jars for just about everything you have to dig out. Sauces are one thing, but I hate trying to scrape around for that last bit of jelly and having it be just out of reach. And well, I like highest reward for the least amount of work. I picked up two flats of the wide mouth mason jars; one half-pint and one pint sized. I figure these are pretty good sizes for myself, and for smaller jars to give away to friends.

I was much more careful this time around about which pectin I chose, and I ended up just getting the regular ball "cook for 1 min" pectin. I trust something more when it has been used for decades, and I wasn't about to filch it again this time around.

I ended up making almost 20 jars of jam last night, and it turned out amazing. I'm very very proud of myself, and tomorrow I'll write a bit more to explain that process.

In the meantime, you can rest assured knowing that the Boy has been promised Belgium waffles in the morning.

Freezer Jam 1, Maggy 0

I headed to the local grocery store last night after work to grab some groceries I needed for dinner, and since my dad had informed me that they have strawberries on sale I figured I'd take a shot at the freezer jam. I wandered through the various aisles, scoring some great reusable twist seal containers (2 cups, perfect jam size IMO), a ginormous bag of sugar and worked my way down to the small canning section.

Now let's get this out right off, using pectin scares the hebee's out of me. I've had trouble making functional jello in the past. I can cook my pants off, and love every second of it. I'm a fly by the seat of my pants chef, I add what I want and what I think will work out. 99% of the time, it does. But the whole "this has to set properly, don't screw up the portions, yata yata" freaks me out a bit. So I'm scanning the aisle and see about 18 types of pectin, and my confidence is starting to shutter a bit. Then BAM! The miracle occurs! Right in front of my face is pectin just for freezer jam! Pre-portioned? Perfect! No cook? Even better! I throw a few packages in my cart and move on.

I get home and set to the task of cleaning and cutting the strawberries. Find a potato masher, and set to work making myself some crushed strawberries. This part was actually my favorite. Worked out quite a bit of aggression and was productive at the same time. I remember from when my grandma made freezer jam that's it's pretty straight forward. 2 cups sugar to each cup of fruit, let stand to soften, add pectin and POOF! Wonderful Freezer Jam. I mix the strawberries and sugar and set aside to work it's special magic. I grab the pectin, and start to read the directions.

I know what your thinking, I should have read them before I started all this. In hindsight I agree with that completely. The recipe on the box not only calls for Splenda (?!) but says to mix the sugar and pectin, then add the fruit. Um, a bit too late for that. After my initial moment of sheer panic, and keep reading, and notice in another recipe it says to mix the ingredients and just add the pectin, stirring for 3 mins.

I follow directions #2, and set the containers aside to chill out. I've also had some conflicting stuff with this, some says overnight, POS pectic package says 30 mins. I settled for a bedtime as a middle ground, and chuck them in the freezer about 9:30.

The next morning I realize I forgot to take pictures of this whole process (as was my plan) so I whip some out to do a mini photo shoot. At that point, I realize my jam endeavor was an epic fail. Not only has it not set at all, but the jam has completely separated into fruit on the top, goo in the middle, pectin/sugar goo on the bottom.


Although I'm sure my novice is slightly to blame for this, I was completely unimpressed with the Freezer Jam Pectin. The portion is great, but I didn't have 4 cups of fruit, I had 6. And it seemed that each container I had made about 1.25 cups of fruit. So unless I feel like tossing some of it (no way) or making a 12 cup batch, it was not actually helpful. The recipes on the back of the container called only for Splenda, and had no alternative amounts to people using good ol' white sugar.

Tonight, I'm going to the store (again) buying (more) strawberries, real honest to goodness pectic, pitching the old and starting over.

Canning for Dummies, or more specifically... Me.

One of the strongest memories I have from my early childhood is of my grandmother's strawberry freezer jam. Sadly, I wasn't smart enough to be interested in how she did it before she passed away, but now it seems to me like something I should know how to do.

I started out by google-ing 'freezer jam' and got a lot of mixed information. Lots of recipes, not enough of 'start with a jar, you idiot'. I stumbled around a bit until I found Canning Pantry and Canning Food Recipes. Both of these have fairly straight forward 'how-to' sections, and Canning Pantry has all the supplies you would need, from pressure cookers to jars themselves. Canning Food Recipes has (as obvious from the title) tons of recipes from basic fruits and veggies to salsa and spaghetti sauces.

Canning veggies and most fruits seems fairly straight forward once you have the supplies and a general know-how. Water Boiling and Pressure Canning seem to be the two big methods, the method varying with the PH level of whatever you are canning. the general pattern I'm seeing is: Fruit is water boiled, everything else (veggies, meat, dairy etc.) needs to be pressure cooked. The canners themselves run quite a gamete, from about $70-300. This doesn't include any of the extra supplies like jars, lids and such.

I would love to make my own spaghetti sauce, as it's something I use a lot, and frankly I'm sick of shelling out $5 a pop for a bottle of spaghetti sauce when I can make it myself for a fraction of the cost. The same goes for salsa and jams. Pickling also seems interesting and fairly simple, and who doesn't love a nice pickle?