Update

First--if you are part of Cornerstone Church, you have until July 1 to submit up to three recipes for the Cornerstone Cookbook! Check the program or email me for the submission email address. I submitted Energy Bars, Stuffed Shells, and Black Bean Sweet Potato Burritoes.

Second--I have tried several of the recommended products from the last post.

Blood meal to repel rabbits--this sort of works. I found I needed to apply a lot of it, quite often, to each plant that the rabbits liked to eat. After a while we decided it was easier to fence in the vegetable garden and just give up on a couple perennial flowers that they love to eat.

Citrus infused vinegar--I love this and use it with Borax to clean my toilets most weeks. It smells much better than most cleaners, although I do use super strength toilet cleaner every month or so to get it really really clean. I did also make a spray bottle of Citrus Disinfectant and I enjoy using that to clean countertops. I must say, though, that Clorox Green Multipurpose Spray is still my favorite spray cleaner. I haven't decided if I'm going to shell out for a new bottle once mine is gone!

I'm still updating my goodreads--feel free to check it out for recommendations--or just visit me at the library to get some personal recommendations for you, your kids or your grandkids!

Home products you can make

I am saddened to note that an entire quarter year has passed since I have posted to the blog. One reason this has come to pass is that I have misplaced our cute pink camera. It was last seen in mid-December, and we hope it comes to light soon, but until then there will be no new pictures of food. :(

However there are still things I'd like to share. First, I continue to record and review all the books I'm reading using goodreads.com--you can see small book covers on the right side of this blog and you should be able to click on any of them to see my review. I add several books a week, so there should often be something new to read.

I've also been spending a lot of time reading blogs--mostly food blogs, but some library and book blogs as well. My current favorite is smitten kitchen. Today she is featuring granola bars that look amazing!

And for today's main event, I'd like to share the following tips. These are taken from Homemade (click to see the book in the Ames Public Library catalog), a book produced by Readers Digest that provides recipes for foods, cleaning solutions, and gardening products that you can make yourself. In general I thought this book was informative and clear; most of the recipes were made of cheap, easily available ingredients. I typed out the ones I want to use sometime (and bolded several that I mean to try in the next couple months). Please forgive the shorthand I used, and let me know if you don't understand my abbreviations. Do share if you try any of them; I'm curious to know what works.

Homemade by Readers Digest—Recipes for food, green cleaning, and garden products

In the Kitchen

• Strawberry Frozen Yogurt: Combine 16 oz plain yogurt, 2 c pureed strawberries, 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk, 1 c milk, 1T vanilla. Pour into ice-cream maker, no more than 2/3 full, freeze in batches. Firm in freezer before serving; thaw 30 min before serving.
• Orange Cream Pops: Combine 3 oz orange jello pack in 1 c boiling H20, dissolve. Stand till room temp. Add 8 oz yogurt, ½ c milk, ½ t vanilla. Stir to blend. Freeze in molds or 3 oz cups for 2 hours; insert sticks or plastic spoons. Freeze 4-8 more hours. Makes 10.

Around the House

• Bubble Bath: 2 oz dishwashing liquid, 6 cups water, 1 oz glycerin. Swish in bucket and pour into tub.
• Citrus disinfectant: In a quart jar, combine peel from one piece of citrus fruit and 3 c white vinegar. Close and store for two weeks, shaking occasionally. Strain. Store in the jar. Pour 1 c vinegar in 32 oz bottle and fill with water for spray cleaner. Add 1 c vinegar to 2 gallons water for floor cleaner.
• Multi-purpose cleaner: 3 ½ c hot water into 32 oz bottle. Add 1/2c white or cider vinegar, 1 t borax, 1 t washing soda, 1 t liquid castile soap and shake. Spray (counters, kitchen app., tile, painted things) and wipe.
• Oven cleaner: ¾ c clear ammonia in a small bowl overnight in closed oven. Wipe down using damp sponges w/ baking soda. Or use my method and wipe up with dish deterg. on sponge.
• Scouring powder: equal amounts baking soda, borax, salt. Sprinkle, scour, rinse, dry.
• Soft scrub: Combine ¼ c borax and ½ t oil soap. add ½ t lemon juice, stir. Apply to sponge, clean surface, rinse, dry surface.
• Nontoxic toilet bowl cleaner: Flush toilet. Sprinkle 1 c borax on bowl; drizzle 1/2c white vinegar on top. Let sit for 3 hours; scrub with brush. or leave overnight; no scrubbing needed.
• Stronger toilet cleaner: combine 2/3 c borax with 1/3 c lemon juice to make paste. apply to toilet bowl with rag. let sit 2h then scrub off.
• Drain opener: Pack drain with ½ c baking soda, pour in 1 c vinegar. Cover for 10 minutes; flush with boiling water.
• Upholstery shampoo (for car interiors): 6 T grated soap flakes and 2 T borax mixed in large bowl; slowly add 2 c boiling water, stirring well. Cool. Whip to foam. Brush dry suds onto furniture; wipe off with damp sponge.
• Goo-be-gone: dip cloth into white vinegar and rub on goo. rinse and dry.

In the Garden

• Weed killer: 5% bleach, 95% boiling water in spray bottle. Douse weeds. Check the next day—increase concentration if necessary. Place bottomless plastic bottle over weed to isolate from nearby plants.
• Anti-Rabbit: sprinkle blood meal over soil around edges and in garden beds. reapply after heavy rains. (Fencing needs to be as small as chicken wire and at least a foot deep.)
• Anti-Deer: Tie white grocery bags or rags to fence posts at deer-nose height to flutter in wind and simulate deer tails.
• Insecticide: Puree 10 garlic cloves with 1 T vegetable oil. Strain into quart jar. Add 3 c hot water and 1 t dishwashing soap. Close and shake to mix. Put into spray bottle. Spray plants infested with aphids, whiteflies, etc., making sure to get both sides of leaves. Apply every 3 days for a week. Repeat after rains or as needed.
• Insecticide for aphids and mealybugs: Combine 1 c rubbing alcohol and 1 c water in spray bottle and shake. Test on a leaf—if it browns, do not use. Otherwise spray whole plant—undersides of leaves, flower buds, but not open flowers. Repeat every other day for 3 days.
• Aspirin insecticide: Stir 3 regular aspirin into 5 gallons water in can. Treat plants twice monthly.
• Bug blaster soap spray: good inside and out for caterpillars and other soft-bodied insects. Add 1 T dishwashing soap to 1 gallon water, stir. Test spray on plant. Next day, coat entire plant. Repeat twice a week until no longer visible, then as needed.
• Ammonia plant conditioning spray: 1 part household clear ammonia, 1 part liquid dishwashing soap, 7 parts water combined in large container. Spray on garden plants and lawn for fertilizer and insecticide.

Saving money on groceries

So, I've thought a lot about how to save money on groceries over the years, and particularly by following my mom's example. But I never got around to writing it out to share. Paige over at Team VanVoorst had a great post recently listing out the basics. I highly recommend checking it out, although I must admit I'm not as disciplined as she is--I just don't have the time right now. Let me know if you have other favorite tips.

New Year's Resolution--Weight Loss

The title of today's post links to an informative article about 10 principles to consider when working toward weight loss or weight maintenance. I thought since we're still in the spirit of keeping resolutions, I'd offer some thoughts on the subject.

Over the years, I've gone through a few periods of weight gain, most notably the freshman 15 (as a result of eating french fries at every meal they offered them--which was most of them!) and twice during my life when illness has caused a long period of inactivity combined with medicine that made me gain weight.

After those times, the principles I used to get the weight off were as follows.

• Exercise. I put it on my schedule--I usually take scheduled aerobics classes (step is my favorite) so I feel obligated to go and don't have to decide whether or not to go. I also like working out with people and having someone tell me what to do.
• Calorie log. This is time-consuming but valuable. I learned a lot about what foods "cost" in terms of calories by looking them all up and totalling the day's amount. I've heard recently that just writing down "1 medium baked potato" or whatever you had to eat, even without the calorie amount, can be helpful.
• Being careful of what you eat. For one month, I gave myself a green star for each day I made good eating choices.
• And the new one this year: strength training. I'm including strength/toning exercises in my workouts twice a week (I do three total), and it's helping with weight and general slim-lookingness, which is a big part of the motivation, isn't it? ;)

Green cleaning

My adventures in green cleaning continue. I found another website with many great ideas of nontoxic substitutions for cleaners. My oven floor was a mess because of these great pizzas that we bake right on the rack--crispy crust, messy oven. I was pondering what to do--it's a self-cleaning oven, and all you do is set it up and it does the work, right? But then I remembered the last time Mom and I did this--it got so hot and smelly in the house I just couldn't stand it.

So I thought I'd try this. And turns out, it's even easier than the self-cleaning. All you do is remove the racks, sprinkle 1/2 inch of baking soda all over the bottom, spritz it with water, and go to bed. In the morning, scrape off the baking soda and junk with something like those great Pampered Chef scrapers and a sponge. No sweat, no smell! I'll never be afraid to clean my oven again.

Eliminate pesky fruit flies!

2007 was a bad year for fruit flies. We had so many last July that I decided I wasn't going to just put up with it anymore. I got on the Internet and found a very useful site (http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef621.asp) that tells how to make the above fruit fly trap. Basically you take a glass jar, put cider vinegar in the bottom, and then put a paper funnel in the top. The vinegar attracts them, the paper keeps them from flying back out. A few will drown, but most of them you can release to the outdoors if you so desire. As the website notes, you must also remove all overripe and rotting fruits and vegetables (in our case, an old onion) from your kitchen or else they just come back.

Hope this helps someone else this summer!

Green Cleaning

Here's my first attempt at creating a home cleaning solution. I've been using baking soda to clean for a few months now, since SoftScrub stopped making a non-scented liquid cleanser. This week though I wasn't sure if just baking soda would cut it--I wanted more of a disinfectant. So I whipped this up:

Disinfectant: Mix 2 teaspoons borax, 4 tablespoons vinegar and 3 cups hot water. For stronger cleaning power add 1/4 teaspoon liquid castile soap. Wipe on with dampened cloth or use non-aerosol spray bottle.

(http://eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_solutions.htm#substitutions)

It worked great for getting through scum on sinks and cleaning the toilet. On the stubborn scum in the tub, though, I had to pull out the baking soda to have enough grit to scrub through.

I'm still not sure about all this, though--like there's a recipe for vinegar and baking soda you mix up and use as toilet cleaner--what do you mix it in before you put it in the toilet? And can you use your regular measuring cups for this stuff?

Is anyone else trying this? I'd be curious to know of others' efforts.