Shower me with...flour?

Locally milled, whole-wheat flour to be exact.  When a friend said, "My husband is driving to Dawn to get our 50-pound bag of flour."  I said, "Oooooh, I want some!"  So he was sweet enought to lug one home for me.  It cost me a whole 10 dollars!

True Texas Panhandle flour!

See.

It s beautifully milled. 

We don't have enough freezer space to store the entire bag.  I found some 2-gallon freezer bags that work perfectly.  Four of them were completely full and one was about 3/4 full.

We kinda had to stuff them in the freezer.  We have to have room for our beef that will be processed in a month and for our green chili and other veggies to preserve for the winter.

Tons of flour and squash means that we must search out recipes for zucchini breads of all kinds!

Thank you Abba for the blessing of having enough.  May we be good stewards of that blessing.

This blog linked to Homestead Revival's Barn Hop!

Prepare your pits!!

I know it sounds crazy and difficult but making your own deodorant is possible!  Now I am talking deodorant, for the smell factor.  This is not anti-persperant which keeps you from sweating, in theory.  I am not the type of person to see a monster around every corner but I have been concerned for awhile about slathering my armpits with aluminum.  For you sweet friends who don't know, that is the active ingredient in antiperspirant.  This has been connected with risk for breast cancer, Alzheimer's and is not safe for people with kidney disease.

Now this homemade deodorant will not keep you from sweating.  It is simply meant to keep you from stinking.  Our bodies were meant to sweat.  It's part of how we thermoregulate and release toxins.  Sweat is not the enemy.  Bacterial growth in the warm moisture of your armpit is.  So this homemade product is great for controlling BO. 

I do notice a bit of dampness but nothing extreme.  I  LOVE my new stuff!  And there is no stink.  Even the next day.  I think this would be great for those of us who have children who are starting to wear deodorant.  They surely don't need the yucky stuff and can start off right using a product that is healthy for them. 

Are you ready?  These are all of the ingredients.  I am not kidding.  That's it.  Coconut oil, corn starch, baking soda and essential oil.  I got the recipe from Homestead Revival!  Love that blog!

5-6 tablespoons of coconut oil.

1/4 cup of baking soda and cornstarch.  I used my mixer to blend it all together until it was smooth. 

Homestead called for optional tea tree oil.  I opted for this oil blend.  It's great because I need a chill pill at least 3 to 600 times a day.  Now I carry one with me wherever I go!  I used about 7-10 drops of this yummy stuff.

I had a empty Toms container that I packed the blended product into.  It works great!  I did have to stick it in the fridge for a few minutes to let it set.  Now I keep it in my bathroom cabinet.  I put it on like regular deodorant.  I am converted.  And I feel good about the fact that it is so natural that you could eat it!  Not that I would, but I could.  I have seen many antiperspirant alternatives but this one beats any I have tried.  I know it's a strange concept but if you can get past the idea of sweating a little, it's worth it!



It's pink, good smelling and hard working...

Can you guess what it is?  I bet you can't!  I read many frugal, natural, homesteader blogs.  I have seen this made several times and always thought about trying it.  I went so far as to buy the ingredients a couple of weeks ago but I just put them on a shelf in the utility room. 

This week my kids are home for spring break and we have been in need of entertainment. So imagine their joy when I said, "Hey, lets make some laundry soap!" Maybe joy is not the right word. They were a bit confused but were happy to have a project.

We started with a bar of Zote soap.  We got ours from the laundry section at Walmart for less than a dollar.  It is a mild soap with a clean fragrance.

We followed a recipe from Homestead Revival that said we should grate the soap.  Zaddok is demonstrating here.

Jolie put some muscle into it.  It is a very soft soap so it's not hard to do.  The kids kind of enjoyed it!

We then mixed the grated soap with 1 and 1/2 cups Borax and 1 and 1/2 cups washing soda.  You have to make sure you get the washing soda not baking soda!  We found ours in the laundry section of our local grocery store.  Our Walmart did not carry it. 

We had to half the batch to put it through the food processor.  Don't worry.  We washed it thoroughly after we were done.  But don't kid yourself.  The dishwasher soap we use in our dishwasher is probably far more corrosive and toxic than this stuff.  We still would not want to eat it or to have it flavor our next batch of salsa.  So we wash.

I have come to really love essential oils.  Fragrance usually makes me sick.  I can't stand candles and air fresheners.  But these oils smell wonderful and don't make me feel like I am breathing chemicals.  I used this grapefruit to enhance half of this batch of soap.  Matt is weird about smells too so I did not want to do the entire batch in case he didn't like it.

I use my canning jars to store just about everything.  They are good for that.

Here they sit in the utility room.  I have done this weeks washing with our new soap and it seems to do great.  I use a tablespoon in wach load!  I might use a bit more if I had seriously dirty stuff but so far the TBS has done fine.  I peeked during the washing cycle and the water was nasty and brown.  That's a good sign.  I prefer the scented detergent.  It just adds a little something.  Bottom line, this was easy and cheap.  The store-bought natural detergent I was using was 15 dollars for about 90 loads.  This stuff is about 3.  I can handle that! (If you add essential oils that will raise the price a bit but you don't have to have them.  The Zote smells quite nice on it's own.)

A little update.  My seeds are now sweet little seedlings.  All of my tomatoes are sprouted.  The peppers are taking FOREVER.  I always start to panic.  But God is the grower of things so I will not worry.

Tomorrow, homemade deodorant!  Yes it's true!

Graham Flour

I have been baking for a long time.  I have been using healthier options like whole-wheat flour and unbleached white flour, from the very beginning.  (The linked information is exhaustive but interesting.)  I really love to chose the best ingredients to make nutritious meals for my family. 

Recently, I tried graham flour in place of my usual whole-wheat.  (The link provides a little history on the origins of the flour.)  Much like whole-wheat, graham flour contains all three parts of the wheat grain.

  The parts are the endosperm or the "white" portion of the wheat, the germ and the bran.  If you read the links, you know that whole-wheat flour takes all three parts and grinds them together.  They become the same texture.  The short version of graham flour production is that the bran and the germ are removed and coarsely ground.  Then, they are added back into the endosperm which after processing is finely ground white flour.  This results in a flour that retains a heartier and more course texture.  See...

Let me tell you, it makes a difference!  It creates such a wonderful complexity in the bread. 
Now that I have tried it, I may not ever go back!  Of course I still keep unbleached white flour around. 

So give it a try.  I used it as I would regular whole-wheat flour.  I would love to hear how you like it or don't like it.  Or share with us your favorite ingredient to cook with.  (your checkbook does not count!)

(BTW, I just used my new favorite flour to make an insanely good Cinnamon and Sugar Graham bread.  Yeah, it was great research for this blog.  :)

Blessings!

     

Winter gulity pleasure.

If you have read my blog for awhile, you know that I love to garden.  Besides bread-making, it is my favorite activity.  I love to grow food for my family.  It makes me feel good to feed them from dirt I am familiar with. 
So more than likely if you know that about me, then you have seen my obsession with seed and seedlings.  Check out this blog if you are confused.  Spring garden 2  3 and 4 

So last week I got this in the mail...

If you have never visited their site, you should.  Order the catalog.  It is one for the coffee table.  It is beautiful and interesting and I could look through it for hours.  I wish I had more room to plant more varieties of seed.  You can't imagine the things you can grow!

Here are a few of the new things I would like to try this year.  (These varieties and pictures are all from Baker Creek.)

The Green Doctor is a new variety of cherry tomato!

Jing Orange okra.  Doesn't it look gorgeous! 

Orange purple smudge tomato.  So ugly it's beautiful.

I've had my eye on the Moon and Stars melon for years.  I really want to grow it this year!



This is called Red Wonder Wild Strawberry.  I "wonder" if it's a strawberry I can actually grow! 



So, as you can see, the craziness is starting up again!  I will now draw out approximately 15 different garden plans and proceed to purchase more seed than I can possibly use to go with the seed I have left from last year.  It's a sickness. 

What are you looking forward to planting this year?  Is it a new variety or the one you loved last year.  Or is it your hiney in a chair beside the pool?  We all have our weaknesses. 



Something new.

I have to pass this along to all of my canning buddies. I had read an article of the danger of BPA in the traditional canning lids. That really bothers me. I am very conscious not to expose my family to any unnecessary chemicals. That is part of the reason that I grow and save my own food. Now I find that the very food I have taken such care to grow without chemical exposure is being stored in jars that are capped with BPA-containing lids. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! That stinks.
To my great pleasure and surprise I found help in something I read this morning. I follow a blog called Food in Jars. She just did a story on Tattler reusable lids. You can read the story yourself here These alternative lids are much like the old rubber ring seals but you don't have to have the hinged lids. These new Tattler lids are much more expensive than the metal, wax-sealed rings. The great thing is, they will last forever! You can use them over and over for the rest of your life. I know that they would be worth the extra cost. Plus, I can feel really good about canning our garden with BPA free lids. My canning season is winding down but I think I am going to start buying these a little at a time. Then, next season, I will be ready!
So there you are. I love you, therefore I want you to know these things. Peace out.