We ran out of our homemade laundry soap last week, and everything in our house came to a grinding halt. Luckily I had a couple of small containers of laundry detergent to limp along until I could afford the luxury of making more soap. This time, I was planning to go to our local hardware store to get all of the ingredients for making powdered laundry soap because they sent me a high-value coupon: $7 off of any $20 purchase!
I went to the store and purchased what I needed. Here's the cost breakdown:
2 bars of Fels Naptha $1.89 each- $3.78
Oxiclean $6.99
Borax $4.99
Washing Soda $6.49
4 boxes Baking soda $3.96- (I already had these on hand)
_________________________________
Total Cost $26.21
Coupon - $7.00
_________________________________
Discounted Cost $19.21
My laundry soap batch usually lasts our family of five about six months. Less than $20 in detergent will last our family through the next six months!
The link above includes adding a scent booster of some kind, but I leave it out of my big batch and add in some kind of fragrance to individual loads if I want. The Fels Naptha adds a nice clean smell on its own. I like the plain detergent on my kids' clothes, and I add Downy Unstopables to bath towels and adult clothes to make them smell great.
There's nothing that feels like getting a great deal on an already awesome homemade detergent!
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Angel food cake is from the devil
So today has turned into a crummy day.
It started off as usual with running here and there taking kids to and from school, running to the store and completing errands like any other day. This day has been utterly jam-packed with little annoying occurrences that started this afternoon. I attempted to make a from-scratch angel food cake to take along to dinner with some church friends later on. I've never made an angel food cake before, but I wanted to practice because my daughter asked for Ree Drummond's Strawberry Sparkle Cake instead of a traditional birthday cake this year. I'm not a very good baker, so I decided to give it a test run today, and the cake was a total flop.
I began by following the directions as listed in Ree's detailed, picture-guided tutorial, and I cracked eggs and separated them, and I sifted and sifted and sifted ingredients as the recipe commanded. I got the cake in the oven and looked at the clock to see that it was 2:34! I had exactly 9 minutes to wake my two younger kids from naps and get them in the car to go retrieve their older sister from Kindergarten.
How could I let time slip away from me like this?! I thought to myself as I ran up the steps to get our youngest up. His sister had awakened and headed downstairs by now. As I walked into his room, I was greeted with the smell of dirty diaper, and I found my son sitting on the floor with an overflowed diaper. I quickly assessed the rest of the room, and I found that the overflow started in his bed and trailed throughout his room. I scooped him up from the floor and carried him to the changing table to see about cleaning him up. It took a quick assessment to determine that this was a mess that required a bath immediately. But I had no time to give a bath and make it to Kindergarten pick up on time. I carefully pulled out my phone to see if my husband could pick our daughter up from school; it's 2:41 now. The phone rang and rang. No answer. I called his secretary. She informed me that he was out of his office. I called his cell again. Straight to voice mail. Great.
I quickly began drawing a bath and plopped our messy son into the water and scrubbed the mess from his adorable skin. A scream from downstairs reached my ears as I pull our son from the bath. Our middle daughter comes crying and running up the stairs; she has a smashed finger. It is cut, and I am holding an angry, dripping wet boy at 2:47. We are already two minutes late. I send her crying into the bathroom to rinse her finger in cool water while I race through the boy's foul-smelling room to find some clean clothes. My phone rings. It's my husband. I explain the situation, and he says he can quickly run to get our Kindergartener from school. Hallelujah! My husband swooped in to save part of the day!
Thankfully the pinched finger was perfectly treated with the cool water, and she calmed down and decided to catch up on some cartoons. I got our son dressed, swapped out the nasty bed sheets for clean ones, used about a can of Lysol in his room and did a quick clean up of his carpets before I headed back downstairs. While I was gathering the grossness and placing it in the hamper, my son was playing with his closet door, opening and closing it and laughing. On one particular close, he put his finger where it wasn't supposed to go, and the wailing began again. The finger smashing broke the skin just enough to freak him out, so we went to rinse his finger in cool water too.
It took a moment to calm him down, and then I was determined to make it back downstairs where I could take a second to catch my breath. About half-way down the stairs, I smelled something. The cake! I had forgotten about the cake! I went to the oven and checked its' progress, and all was well with the cake from appearances.
I finished with the allotted bake time and tested the done-ness. It looked great. I flipped it over and let it begin to cool. Though I wasn't aware of it yet, I had messed up with the pan. I don't have an angel food cake pan, but I do have a silicone Bundt cake pan, and I assumed that would work out OK; it did not. When I began to pull the fluffy cake from the pan, things went awry, and I had a terrible mess on my hands. It came out of the plan in stringy sections that were ugly. I attempted to taste it, and I can only explain to you that it tasted like overcooked scrambled eggs with sugar in them mixed with dish soap. It was terrible. Apparently the light folding that I did was not enough to thoroughly incorporate the five-times-sifted super fine cake flour, and I found it in large clumps in other places in the cake. My kitchen was a disaster, and I had nothing to show for it!
The entire mess ended up in the trash can, and I am determined to purchase the rest of the angel food cakes that I will need in the future from a reputable bakery when I can find them at a good price. Maybe that's not fair for me to do because I had such a rough time otherwise during the prep/baking time for this cake, but still. I can rejoice in this day without rejoicing in this cake.
This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24
It started off as usual with running here and there taking kids to and from school, running to the store and completing errands like any other day. This day has been utterly jam-packed with little annoying occurrences that started this afternoon. I attempted to make a from-scratch angel food cake to take along to dinner with some church friends later on. I've never made an angel food cake before, but I wanted to practice because my daughter asked for Ree Drummond's Strawberry Sparkle Cake instead of a traditional birthday cake this year. I'm not a very good baker, so I decided to give it a test run today, and the cake was a total flop.
I began by following the directions as listed in Ree's detailed, picture-guided tutorial, and I cracked eggs and separated them, and I sifted and sifted and sifted ingredients as the recipe commanded. I got the cake in the oven and looked at the clock to see that it was 2:34! I had exactly 9 minutes to wake my two younger kids from naps and get them in the car to go retrieve their older sister from Kindergarten.
How could I let time slip away from me like this?! I thought to myself as I ran up the steps to get our youngest up. His sister had awakened and headed downstairs by now. As I walked into his room, I was greeted with the smell of dirty diaper, and I found my son sitting on the floor with an overflowed diaper. I quickly assessed the rest of the room, and I found that the overflow started in his bed and trailed throughout his room. I scooped him up from the floor and carried him to the changing table to see about cleaning him up. It took a quick assessment to determine that this was a mess that required a bath immediately. But I had no time to give a bath and make it to Kindergarten pick up on time. I carefully pulled out my phone to see if my husband could pick our daughter up from school; it's 2:41 now. The phone rang and rang. No answer. I called his secretary. She informed me that he was out of his office. I called his cell again. Straight to voice mail. Great.
I quickly began drawing a bath and plopped our messy son into the water and scrubbed the mess from his adorable skin. A scream from downstairs reached my ears as I pull our son from the bath. Our middle daughter comes crying and running up the stairs; she has a smashed finger. It is cut, and I am holding an angry, dripping wet boy at 2:47. We are already two minutes late. I send her crying into the bathroom to rinse her finger in cool water while I race through the boy's foul-smelling room to find some clean clothes. My phone rings. It's my husband. I explain the situation, and he says he can quickly run to get our Kindergartener from school. Hallelujah! My husband swooped in to save part of the day!
Thankfully the pinched finger was perfectly treated with the cool water, and she calmed down and decided to catch up on some cartoons. I got our son dressed, swapped out the nasty bed sheets for clean ones, used about a can of Lysol in his room and did a quick clean up of his carpets before I headed back downstairs. While I was gathering the grossness and placing it in the hamper, my son was playing with his closet door, opening and closing it and laughing. On one particular close, he put his finger where it wasn't supposed to go, and the wailing began again. The finger smashing broke the skin just enough to freak him out, so we went to rinse his finger in cool water too.
It took a moment to calm him down, and then I was determined to make it back downstairs where I could take a second to catch my breath. About half-way down the stairs, I smelled something. The cake! I had forgotten about the cake! I went to the oven and checked its' progress, and all was well with the cake from appearances.
I finished with the allotted bake time and tested the done-ness. It looked great. I flipped it over and let it begin to cool. Though I wasn't aware of it yet, I had messed up with the pan. I don't have an angel food cake pan, but I do have a silicone Bundt cake pan, and I assumed that would work out OK; it did not. When I began to pull the fluffy cake from the pan, things went awry, and I had a terrible mess on my hands. It came out of the plan in stringy sections that were ugly. I attempted to taste it, and I can only explain to you that it tasted like overcooked scrambled eggs with sugar in them mixed with dish soap. It was terrible. Apparently the light folding that I did was not enough to thoroughly incorporate the five-times-sifted super fine cake flour, and I found it in large clumps in other places in the cake. My kitchen was a disaster, and I had nothing to show for it!
The entire mess ended up in the trash can, and I am determined to purchase the rest of the angel food cakes that I will need in the future from a reputable bakery when I can find them at a good price. Maybe that's not fair for me to do because I had such a rough time otherwise during the prep/baking time for this cake, but still. I can rejoice in this day without rejoicing in this cake.
This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24
Monday, May 4, 2015
Swedish Meatballs
My husband gets frustrated with me at times because I am exceptionally creative in the kitchen, and I often can make a dish one time, but then I never remember how to recreate the dish exactly the same way again. I made this batch of Swedish Meatballs tonight, and my husband LOVED them! But he jokingly told me that though he thinks he'll never get to eat them again because I won't remember how I made them. Just for that, I decided to document my delicious experiment just to spite my hubby... kind of. Now that I think about it, I think maybe he was using reverse psychology on me.
Anyway. Here's the delicious details.
Ingredients
4 c. hot water + 1 T cold water
3 chicken flavored bullion cubes
2 T powdered ranch mix
1-2 T Worcestershire
about 20 frozen meatballs
2 T cornstarch
wide egg noodles
1/2 c. heavy cream
1 T chopped parsley
Instructions
Add four cups of water, three chicken bouillon cubes, and 2 tablespoons of Hidden Valley Ranch powdered mix to a large skillet and bring to a boil. Add Worcestershire and about 20 frozen meatballs, and return to a boil. Mix one tablespoon of cold water with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and stir into the boiling liquid in the skillet. Keep stirring.In another pot, cook a half of a bag of wide egg noodles per package directions. Cook until almost tender, then scoop with a slotted spoon into the skillet with the meatballs and sauce. Finish cooking the noodles in the sauce. Add some of the starchy cooking liquid from the noodles if the sauce gets too thick. After the noodles are totally tender, add 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley. Stir and reduce until sauce is thick and bubbly. Yield: 5 servings
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