Showing posts with label handmade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label handmade. Show all posts

Monday, November 13, 2017

List of Available Soap!

All our soaps are homemade, from scratch (NOT "melt & pour").
 $4 each or buy 12 and get one free! They make great gifts!

All soap (except for the Barbershop Quartet) are entirely scented with good quality Essential Oils. 

  We have:
E.M. (effective microorganisms)
Goat Milk (with honey!)
Colloidal Silver
Plain Jane (sold out)
Refreshing Mint
Scrubby Soap (great for the kitchen or for gardeners) smaller bar
Anise
Orange Spice
(sold out)
Orange Cream (sold out)
Garden Breeze
Lavender
Barbershop Quartet....A Bay Rum type. Our own secret blend.

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 We use the hot process method and it's fully cured and ready to use...long lasting bars with great lather.   4 to 5 ounce bars. 
Below is one of the ingredient labels-














Thursday, April 20, 2017

Homemade Apple Wine

 We prefer our wine with added sparkling water.  It's just too strong to drink without it! 

  The organic apples (juice quality sweet apples from Azure Standard)  were grated and soaked...
....then Adrienne squeezed out every last bit of goodness! 

 Pouring the remaining juice through a nut milk bag.


Bottling:  The bottom of the bucket with 2 pounds of organic raisins left from the wine making.  Because we didn't bottle after 2 weeks as planned, the raisins sat in the apple wine for 5 months.  It could only have improved the final results, right?  =) 

 (click the picture to view it larger)
Recipe from H. E. Bravery's book "Home Wine-Making Without Failures"

See how the color is so similar to the color of Kombucha Tea? You really can't tell which is which- good thing we labeled it!!!


Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Homemade Pfeffernusse cookies


We just made these and used 2 teaspoons of cloves...they are wonderful! Of course they are even better after several days (not so strong and we worried the 2 t. was a mistake at first!). 
My mother keeps insisting that they should have black pepper. Is that really a traditional ingredient? 
I think they would be good with the bottoms dipped into dark chocolate- something like the chocolate covered, soft gingerbread cookies that Aldi's sells. Ours had a nice cross between soft and chewy texture. 
We cooked them a little longer, they were just too soft at 10 minutes. 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Honeyed Jalapeno Rings

Adrienne prepped 2+ pounds of our organically grown jalapeno peppers, so we could make...
..."Honeyed Jalapeno Rings" found in  The Joy of Pickling(We really like this book.)


Some garlic slices and 3 peppercorns for each jar.
Eight half-pints!



Friday, August 21, 2015

Pesto Pasta Salad

Yum!  One 1/2 pint jar of basil pesto from the freezer....1 pound package of organic pasta from Costco, cherry tomatoes and sweet red peppers from our garden (I sauteed the peppers first), one pound + cubed mozzarella from Costco and some fresh Italian Romano and Parmesan cheese.... the pasta was too hot when I added the cheese and some of it melted into a gooey mess, but OH, WAS IT EVER GOOD!  Especially eaten right away....it lost something when chilled and eaten later, but it was still good...with more Parmesan on top, of course!   We added black olives the first time we made this and we forgot this time! 


Pesto recipe:
(if you click on the recipe, it should pop-up larger) we've made it with pine nuts as well as walnuts....well, walnuts ARE cheaper! 


Thursday, May 21, 2015

Almond Milk

Not to be used as a milk replacement for babies!


We followed the Vita-Mix directions.

1 cup raw almonds (I sprayed them with H2O2 first)

3 cups water

Blended as per directions.

There was a lot of thick, creamy pulp left....we added it to the quiche recipe we were making, could be used for crackers or added to breads or smoothies....

In the future we will soak the almonds in salt water overnight and skin them (like we usually do) then try this recipe again.

Unless this is really scrumptious we'll probably stick to using almonds for nut butters and snacking.

 We like to salt water soak, skin and dehydrate almonds, then toast them briefly in the oven.  Yes, that's a lot of work and steps to follow, but that's the way we like them.







Next adventure....almond butter from the Vita-Mix!  Stay tuned....

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Rice Milk

(please don't give it to your baby as a milk replacement!)

We basically followed the Vita-Mix directions.

1 cup cold cooked brown basmati rice (cooked with salt and rice bran oil - 2 cups rice per 6 cups water)

4 cups warm water

2 Tablespoons Sucanat

Blended as per directions.  Decided it was a little on the thin and watery tasting side so we....

added another 1/2 cup cold cooked brown basmati rice and poured the rice milk back and processed it again.....


....we were delighted to see there was nothing in the strainer, so we can dispense with that step in the future! 


We bought the rice at a store called "India Market" in Irving off Hwy 183 on the way to the DFW airport.

From the recent news concerning arsenic levels in rice (from Ag use such as pesticides and feeding to conventional poultry - then using the manure for fertilizer) in rice grown in the good ol' USA, we might be better off getting our rice from India, although it wasn't organic.....

Monday, July 30, 2012

Bottling the wine!

How many McKees does it take to bottle wine?  Three! 


The ring is from the yeasty bubbles that occurred during the fermentation process.


We bought this "Easy Siphon" years ago to use for bottling EM (effective microorganisms).  It works pretty well.  After bottling 4 gallons of wine we bottled 5 gallons of EM.  
(It's time to start another batch of EM!)


 It's a good thing we had so many Pellegrino Italian Sparkling Mineral water bottles around.  The last of each bucket went into canning jars....maybe to be used for cooking?   The dregs in the bucket were pretty thick and very pretty!  Like creamy grape sherbet!   
That went to the compost bin.


Our first try, successful!  Two cases of Muscadine Wine!  Thanks so much, Pat and Arnie! 


We love to try new things!  (Click here to see the first part of the project)

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We tried it last night - had a small portion (2 or 3 ounces) on ice, it needed diluting with Pellegrino...much improved...It's sweet and strong...I think it would make a nice Sangria, add some orange and lemon slices....

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Kale Chips

I ordered some kale from Azure Standard Co-op and thought I'd try making some kale chips.  I've heard about dehydrated recipes, but came across some baked kale chips.  I thought I'd try that first, takes less time!   I found several recipes, one of them here.  The variety of kale we got was the really curly kind which was hard to get very dry.  I think that's one reason they seemed to take longer to finish up in the oven.....


I poured the olive oil into a little bowl and flicked the oil on the leaves and tossed them with my fingers (like gently gelling or moussing curly, wet hair!).  I was trying to distribute evenly and not end up with all the oil in one place!  It worked well.....I ground some sea salt on top of the leaves spread out on the parchment lined trays.  I sprinkled a bit of Simply Organics Chipotle on some of them....


They were pronounced GOOD and that they tasted like popcorn.  The last of them were forgotten in the oven and burned.  =(  Those tasted like....you guessed it...burnt popcorn!  Oh well, we got tired of babysitting them!   So the hardest part of the project is getting them done to a "T" and not burning them!

These are the burnt ones...

  Next time we'll try a dehydrated recipe.  It's not good to eat a lot of cruciferous veg raw.  They are goitrogenic*...they block iodine uptake to the thyroid.  Incidentally, I recently read that almonds are also goitrogenic...we toast ours after soaking, skinning and drying them....they taste better and are more digestible, too!

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*Cruciferous vegetables can potentially be goitrogenic (inducing goiter formation). They contain enzymes that interfere with the formation of thyroid hormone in people with iodine deficiency. Cooking for 30 minutes significantly reduces the amount of goitrogens and nitriles. At high intake of crucifers, the goitrogens inhibit the incorporation of iodine into thyroid hormone and also the transfer of iodine into milk by the mammary gland. (source)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Wine?

 We have never tried making real wine before and have wanted to try it for a long time...in fact the only fermented drinks we make are Kombucha, Kefir, and EM "wine".

Sunday evening:
We picked the Muscadine Grapes at a friend's house (for free!).
I am VERY sorry to have to tell you, but we forgot to bring the camera when we harvested the grapes. =(  


 Monday morning:


We separated the good from the bad/green and stems....

 Cute little bunch....

 After looking at a lot of books, this is the one we chose to follow:


 Mashed the grapes with a potato masher, in 5 gal buckets (two batches in each bucket).


This is the recipe:

 (click the picture to view it larger)

Wednesday afternoon:


 Pleas helped Debbie strain, smash and squeeze the grape mash...it was a mess!



The juice:


 Clean out the buckets, put the juice in again, add white sugar...


...and Baker's Yeast and stir it in.....


...now you have to wait...for two weeks....   (click here for part 2)