Turning Back the Tide

We do most of our grocery shopping at Fred Meyer, a Kroger subsidiary. It's not far from our house, it's the store where our son is employed, and usually isn't too unpleasant as far as the whole shopping experience goes.

It's not as inexpensive as the local Winco (warehouse type grocery full of really, really interesting people) but definitely less expensive than Safeway (with fewer annoying and spoiled, self absorbed people who drive their little cute cars with the engines that make that yuppity yuppity sound.)

If you're not a total obliviot, you've noticed the prices of just about everything in the universe going up. And up and up and up. No end in sight. If you can do basic math, you've also noticed that the nation's economy, despite lies "My economic program has brought us back from the edge of the abyss!!" from everyone involved, is in the toilet.
(Yes, I'm sorry, but you've been lied to by the Democrats. And the Republicans. And every other crooked, lying asshole with his or her hand in YOUR wallet, stealing from you and yours. Because taking your money and redistributing it is only fair, after all.)

Oops. This isn't supposed to be a political post.

I wanted to purchase an extra large box of Tide last time we shopped. And then I looked at the extra large price. $27.99. For friggin' LAUNDRY SOAP!?!! SERIOUSLY???

And I don't know about you, but when the package says 120 loads, it's usually more like 100. If you're lucky.

So I started looking here and there online about how to make laundry soap. I'd heard of it before but never been seriously interested.

And I found out it was just like the endless selection of dill pickle recipes that I've been looking up for Eric.

Oh sure, there are different ingredients... no one puts dill in their laundry or grates a bar of soap into their pickles... but the actual creation of recipes seems to be similar. Someone gathers together a bunch of ingredients. Looks them over, says, 'hmm, I think I'll make a batch of ________' and does. Sometimes the stuff works. Sometimes it doesn't.

So I saw there were a few basic ingredients in common with most laundry soap recipes. Some people like the gloppy variety, which can involve cooking soap, or not cooking soap and putting the end result into a bucket and scooping a bit of jelly into each load.

Others prefer the less slimy idea of different powders all mixed up. That idea sounded a bit better to me, too.

So I got washing soda, which is NOT the same as baking soda, borax, a bar of Fels Naptha soap, some knockoff oxyclean and some non-phosphate TSP. Total price about 15 bucks.

First I grated the bar of soap. It looked exactly like the cheese I grate for tacos. Exactly. I dumped half of it into a big Pyrex bowl. Then, I added about half a box of washing soda. Half a box of borax. About a cup of TSP. About a cup of knock off oxyclean. Stirred it all together. Looked at it doubtfully. Added the rest of the grated soap. Stirred some more. Yep, I said to myself, that looks about right.

Then, I got a load of stinky towels. Put 1/4 cup or so of my new soapy stuff in the washer, filled it full of water to see if the soap was dissolving okay (it was) and tossed in the towels. Ran them as usual.

Now one of the things I've been seeing in common with most make your own laundry soap recipes is the statement that 'you won't need fabric softener'.

What better way to take my soap on its inaugural run than on a load of stinky towels?

And as I write this, I am declaring it a conditional success. The towels are fluffy, they smell very fresh without perfume, and they're clean.

The load of shirts and underwear (mine) I washed.. likewise. Not that I ordinarily go around smelling my underwear, but people have done scarier things in the name of science, am I right?

So the 15 bucks I spent on ingredients? I used about half of what I bought. So there's enough for another batch, and technically, the batch I made was about $7.50.

I can't tell you exactly how much it made, but it filled up my largest pyrex mixing bowl and is currently sitting in a once-empty Tide box that held enough for 48 loads. And cost 14 bucks.

Except... I'm using a smaller amount per load than the scoop that came with the soap. I'll try to remember how many loads I get. And update you if it doesn't pass the ultimate test... Eric's really dirty work clothes.

Oh. And PS. There are no suds. This is okay. Suds are there to make you think it's working, they're not necessary to actually clean. So sayeth the web.

Cookies and Music

Know what else I hate?

The sugar cookie recipes that require you to chill the dough. I don't like the taste of them, and I don't like having to wait to cut them out and bake them. So I have a recipe that I use every year. (Well, every year that I actually bake cookies...)

Sift together
2 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder

In a separate bowl, with a mixer, Cream together
1 cup softened butter, 2 tsp vanilla and 1 cup sugar.

Mix in one egg.

Add dry ingredients about a third at a time to sugar/butter/egg mixture, mixing well after each addition.

Divide dough in half, and roll out on floured surface about 1/4 inch thick.

Bake at 400 for 9 to 11 minutes. Let them sit a few minutes. Cool on a rack. These cookies don't really brown much. They're three times as tasty as the traditional sugar cookie, and you won't break any teeth on them.

You're welcome.

Decorate them. Eat them. Give some to friends. That's what I'm doing with a good share of mine. If I get to bake them. Yesterday I made pecan bars (known in my recipe book as Oh. My. God.) two kinds of brownies, fudge and some cookies. Not the cut out kind.

And in an unprecedented surge of Geek-ness, Friday afternoon I finally got around to taking the Christmas songs I love (and have missed terribly) from my vinyl albums and converted them to MP3 format. It's been years and years since I listened to some of them, because I no longer have anything to play them on.

Because it's just too exciting to keep to myself, I made some Christmas CDs for Tami, too.

I am proud of figuring out the USB turntable, the software, and downloading the file I needed to get the job done. When I first learned how to do it, I had to have Matt help me figure out how to get the music I pulled off the albums into the software program that would burn them to a CD. He had to help me again this time because that file I downloaded had migrated to a different, far away file in computer land.

But now I got it. I can do it all by myself. And if not, I produced a son who can.

Yay, me either way.

We won't discuss the fact that I needed my reading glasses to re-familiarize myself with the recording process, okay?

Barbecue Sauce and Politics

Jody asked for my barbecue sauce recipe.
It really is tasty stuff.

After you make it a time or two, you'll be able to adjust the recipe to your personal tastes.
It's NOT good until it's cooked, either in a sauce pan over low heat for about 45 minutes or brushed on to chicken/pork/mystery meat for the last half hour to 45 minutes of cooking. It's really good on chicken thighs or drumsticks. Cook your chicken then add a layer of sauce for the last 45 minutes or so.

The recipe has some room for tweaking, and the measurements aren't exact, because, well, that's how I cook. Most of the time the results are good.

:)

3 cups ketchup*
1/2 to 3/4 cup red wine vinegar
3 TBS worcestershire sauce
3 TBS liquid smoke (not liquid smoke marinade... that stuff is NASTY)
3/4 to 1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cups mustard (I use a stone ground horseradish type, Plochman's. It's seriously the best one I've tried for the sauce, but I wouldn't ask my dog to eat it out of the jar. Eww.) (not that I allow my dog to eat stuff from jars) (and not that she likes mustard.) And you know what pisses me off? Our regular grocery store stocks like 14 kinds of mustard, but I have to go to Winco to buy Plochman's. What the hell is up with that???

Oh yeah. I was trying to post a recipe.

Now add:
1 tsp or more garlic powder... depends on your taste
1/2 tsp or more black pepper

Mix it all up and cook it or use it or store it in the refrigerator uncooked. I've kept it for more than a month in the fridge with no problem. I suppose it would eventually spoil, but if all the products you use are recently manufactured, it should be fine long after you've used it all up. :)

Tastes great mixed in with a can of plain baked beans and a bit of sauteed onion and cooked in the crock or on the stove or in the oven until done.

It's good poured over a 3 to 4 lb chuck roast in the crock pot. Cook on low heat all day long. Remove roast from crock and shred with forks, (toss the fat into the trash can... ptui!!) then return meat to crock and mix.
Serve over toasted sandwich rolls.

*I totally refuse to buy Heinz ketchup. When John Kerry was trying to become the president, I caught the tail end of a television interview with his wife. She was asked about the Heinz family fortune, and airily dismissed it. She said that her share was such a tiny percentage that it really made no difference to her.

As I recall it was slightly more than 1% of the total Heinz income.

This was during the time that Multnomah county had the 'I-tax'. Yes. A county tax on top of the Federal taxes, the state taxes, all the utility taxes and gas taxes and road taxes and fees and licenses and why, while I'm sitting here typing and thinking about taxes do I suddenly feel an almost irresistable urge to bend over?

The I-tax took 1.25% of our yearly income 'for the children' and pissed it away on schools... evidently their then $7,000 per year per pupil spending wasn't enough.
Aaargh.
It cost my family more money than we could really afford, and was a great financial hardship for us. To us, based on our small income, it was a LOT of money. We struggled to pay it off for each of the three years it was extorted from us.

To the heiress of a percentage of a multi billion dollar fortune, 1% was 'nothing'.

I could take her 'nothing' and support my entire family on it. It was just another demonstration of how out of touch politicians are, but it has stuck with me, and I've avoided buying Heinz products ever since.

It's petty, but it's me.
:)

And all Jody wanted was a recipe.
Ha.

Food Saver, Marshmallows and Fruit Salad

On a local radio show just before Thanksgiving, people were invited to call in and share their traditional favorite or not so favored dishes, like the one Aunt Trudy brings that everyone takes a serving of, but then leaves on their plate to be scraped into the garbage disposal later because no one wants to hurt her feelings by not at least pretending to like it by ostentatiously taking a large serving, preferably while she's watching.


Several people called and talked about various jello desserts with strange things floating in them. I once knew a family whose great grandma made an interesting concoction with lime jello, coconut, dill pickles and celery.

No. I never tasted it.
Yes, I took some on my plate and dumped it in the trash after dinner.

Anyway, back to the radio show. Many people had memories of fruit salad, and after the eighth or ninth person called with their story, it was dubbed White Trash Fruit Salad.

We're not talking just fruit here. I think most of you are familiar with the 'drain a can of fruit cocktail and add a bit of this and that' salad. I add cut apples in green and red, sliced bananas, sliced maraschino cherries, celery and I never forget the mini marshmallows. The problem with the marshmallows is that after sitting in the salad for a few hours, they dissolve, so I don't add them until just before serving. If there is salad left to eat the next day, I have to add more marshmallows because the original ones have disappeared. Good times. :)

Most people finish by dumping in a container of Cool Whip and mixing, which makes you end up with a sort of frothy and pink foam.

Makes one feel quite festive... Martha Friggin' Stewart, am I right?

Our family recipe makes the dressing a little differently. The stuff we pour over the salad contains Miracle Whip, sugar and milk. Don't knock it. Seriously.

So I made this for Thanksgiving, even though Eric won't eat it. I just felt like I wanted some. Haven't had it in years. Turns out Matt likes it quite a bit, and is as fond of maraschino cherries as I am.

I had about half a bag of marshmallows left. Rather than add them to the collection of dead and dying marshmallows taking up cupboard space above the dish drainer, I thought I'd try saving them in a Food Saver canister.

That was sort of fun. As the air was sucked out of the canister, the marshmallows puffed up a bit. When I let air back in by pushing the little button, the marshmallows shriveled up like little raisins. They ended up about half their usual size, too.

When I made White Trash Fruit Salad for Christmas dinner, I did not have a bag of fresh marshmallows. All I had were the shrunken ones in the food saver canister on the back of the counter. I shrugged and dumped them in.

Well, they didn't grow, but in some strange and wonderful miracle, they did not dissolve overnight, either. In fact, about three hours ago, I had a serving of fruit salad and the marshmallows are still tasty.

Ah. Tradition.

Aren't you glad you read here today?

What weird or interesting things do you traditionally serve for holiday meals?

Hop to it and bake this!

When I was a young 'un, I found this cake idea in a magazine. I baked four of them one Easter... three to impress my boyfriend's family (his stepmother had a large extended family and we had been invited to come for dinner). I don't know if I impressed them since stepmom and her amazing reproducing family are long gone, but I did impress him. We've been married a long time now. Our next anniversary will be our 27th. Now while I can't give the bunny cake complete credit, who knows what might happen if we ALL baked one this Easter?

Anyway, while reading my favorite message board this morning, I saw that someone was looking for an Easter cake idea. So, (don't you love the internet??) I searched for a very short time and found not only this picture but instructions.

Found them here: BunnyCake

If you don't like coconut, it's pretty easy to use a decorating tip and regular icing to do the face and ears with some fancy little design, too.

You can't screw this up. Really.

I've been asked by a few of my online buddies to send them my 'can't goof it up' pie crust recipe.
I use this every year for pumpkin and apple pie, because those are the ones my family loves.
The recipe is supposed to make four crusts, but I usually get three out of it. Which works out very well considering a pumpkin pie takes one crust and an apple pie takes two. I don't use cheap shortening, I use Crisco, because it DOES make a difference. I also use unbleached flour because I prefer it. I've use bread flour in the past with great results, too.

1 1/4 Cups Shortening
3 cups flour, plus additional for rolling it out
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1 TBS vinegar
5 TBS Ice water

With a pastry blender, work shortening into the flour and salt until the pieces are the size of small peas. In a separate bowl, beat the egg well and mix in the vinegar and water. Drizzle the liquid into the flour a little bit at a time and use pastry blender to combine. Form into a ball and chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes until rolling out. Divide dough into 3 or 4 parts, depending on what you're going to use it for. This crust can be frozen for later use if you're only going to need one or two crusts. I freeze mine in a Food Saver bag, but a regular zipper freezer bag will work, too, if you're going to use it within a month or so.
Use the crust in your regular recipes and bake as the recipe directs.

Oh. My. God.

When I went to bed last night, I didn't sleep. I dropped directly into a sugar-induced coma. It's about 6 in the morning now, and I am wavering between going back to bed and being unconscious for awhile or taking a shower and doing a little more baking. Found a recipe for 'Southern Pecan Bars' and thought it sounded good. Yesterday morning, I baked them. I've changed the name. They're now called Oh. My. God. If I ever bake them again, I must make plans to give them away, because I will weigh 400 lbs.