DIY Laundry Detergent

I've been eagerly waiting to run out of laundry soap so that I could make my own, I found this recipe quite some time ago and it seemed to be the simplest one to make. I actually halved it though just because I only had the one container to store the soap in and it takes me a good 6 months to go through the contents of it anyway. It only took about 10 minutes total to make so that was a plus for me as well!

Here's how you do it!

Orange Cleaner- Made From Orange Peels!

Here's an awesome idea for a non-toxic cleaner that I got from one of my favorite blogs Penniless Parenting, her post on it is here.  check out her site, she has a ton of money saving ideas as well as recipes and other things.

I started buying Bio-Life products, similar to Method products when I was pregnant with Alice and couldn't stand the smell of most cleaning products. Not to mention that I didn't want to subject myself to any potentially dangerous fumes while Ladybutt was still on the inside. The Method products are fairly expensive though at over $5 a bottle and still had a weird chemical smell. I rinsed out and kept the bottle when it was all gone because I intended to use it for a different cleaner recipe but still hadn't been able to find essential oils near where I live.

The orange cleaner recipe is simple, just orange peels and vinegar. So you're actually making use of something that would normally go straight into the garbage.

All you have to do is pack your orange peels into whatever container you would like to use and fill it up to the top with vinegar. Then let it sit for a minimum of 2 weeks, the vinegar will pull all of the orange oil out of the peels, that's the good grease-busting stuff. I just had this small container, if you use something bigger you can keep adding peels and vinegar to it until it's full.

Here's mine after nearly 2 months of steeping, I could have topped it up with vinegar along the way but I honestly kind of forgot about it. I wasn't really in a rush to get to it anyway since I was still using up the last of my "bad" cleaning products. No use in throwing them out and wasting the money!

Pour the liquid out into an easy to pour container such as a bowl with a spout or large measuring cup. I let mine sit for a couple minutes so it could all drain out and then squished at the peels with a spoon to try and squeeze out as much as I could.

I ended up with just under 3/4 of a cup of concentrated cleaner. Not too bad!

I poured it into then measured out about 1 1/2 cups of water and added that. My cleaner still seemed pretty strong and dark colored so I went ahead and topped the bottle up with more water until it seemed right to me.

And here's the finished orange cleaner! Nearly a full bottle of it for the price of less than a cup of vinegar! It has a nice orange smell and you can't really smell the vinegar at all which is great for me because I can't stand that smell.

So far I've only tried it out on a stinky metal diaper pail, the garbage was changed but the smell wouldn't go away. We sprayed it down and wiped it and it got rid of the smell no problem and made the metal nice and shiny. I plan on taking all of the burner plates off of my stove at some point and seeing if this will get rid of the burnt and caked on grease that was left for us by the previous tenant. Hopefully I can get to that within the next week, I'm just always using the stove so I haven't had a chance!

Make Your Own Makeup Remover

So the day has come that I've finally run out of makeup remover. My Walmart brand bottle has lasted me over a year especially since I don't even wear makeup every day anymore. I've already used up the cash I set aside every month for fun/other spending so buying a bottle would have to come out of the grocery money and I didn't really want to do that. So I checked out the DIY section on Pinterest and found a link to  this "recipe" that uses things I already have at home.

Here's what you need:

• 1 cup water (I used the cold Brita water)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons baby shampoo
• 1/8 teaspoon olive oil

That's it! Just mix everything together and you're done. This made enough to fill my entire bottle as well as a baby cube, I didn't have any tiny jars around to store the rest.

This worked really well, it got all of my mascara off pretty easily. And I wear A LOT of eye makeup!

I realize that not everyone has baby shampoo around but you can get a teeny sample bottle from most pharmacies for just $1 or from the dollar store and each bottle has enough to make probably 2 or 3 batches. Sure beat the $5+ that it costs to get a small bottle of store-brand makeup remover.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

Lady LaLa (Alice) just turned a year old. Of course I made her a cake, I wasn't about to go out and buy her something from the store. I find that store bought cakes tend to have a way too sweet, greasy feeling frosting that seems like it's made with lard instead of real butter and usually only come in 2 flavors: white or brown. Not to mention the preservatives and whatnot they may contain, not something I want to give to a one year old. I could have made her a cake from a box but I wanted something with real veggies in it.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies!

It's true, these really are the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. I was pretty sick of the recipe I had for chocolate chip cookies, they never turned out the same and most of the time they were all thin and spread out and weird. I Googled and this recipe kept popping up over and over again. So I made it and it was awesome and made really soft, chewy cookies.  I will use this one forever. I've even cheated and made it with margarine when butter wasn't a decent price and it was still pretty good. I recommend using real butter though, they just taste better!

Start by preheating the oven to 325 and gathering your ingredients:

Stuff you need

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup melted unsalted butter (if all you have is salted butter or margarine skip the salt in the recipe!)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla 
• 1 egg
• 1egg yolk
• an entire bag of chocolate chips (I used this bag of Caramilk thingies I had in the freezer)

Butter, sugar, vanilla and egg

Start by melting the butter and mixing it with the sugar and vanilla for a few minutes until it's nice and fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to the mixer. Mix until just combined ( it should look pebbley) and then add the chocolate chips and give it another quick mix. You don't want to overmix it, the dough will be tough and the cookies will be hard.

Dry ingredients added and just barely mixed

Your finished dough

Chopped Frozen Tiny Caramilks

Grab a good sized handful of dough and lightly flatten it into a "cookie patty", no need to roll it into a ball or anything.  Bake at 325 for 16-20 minutes.  Make as many as you want and freeze the rest of the patties for whenever you get a cookie craving.

Handful of dough

Squish!

4 cookies for us to nom right away about to go in the oven

The rest can go in the fridge or freezer

Hot cookies!

OM

NOM!

Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

This is an excellent and quick pancake recipe. It tastes just like the expensive Aunt Jemima Complete buttermilk pancake mix but since I'm making it myself I know it has no weird additives and it doesn't have that slightly powdery taste.

This makes 6 medium pancakes which is perfect for 2 people, or 5 medium and 3 teeny baby sized pancakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups flour (I used 1 cup all purpose and 1/4 cup whole wheat)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
Start by making your buttermilk if you don't have any. The buttermilk has to sit for a little while so do this first, then start heating your skillet or frying pan.

Mix together the buttermilk, sugar and margarine. Beat in the egg. Add all of the rest of the dry stuff on top and mix until just combined.

Scoop onto your hot grill or frying pan. The batter is pretty thick so you might have to spread it out a bit with the spoon. I cook mine on 4/medium. You can tell when the pancake needs to be flipped when it gets all bubbly on top.
Add syrup and enjoy!
 

 

Homemade Sweet Cornbread

This is great for breakfast or as a snack with tea. It's quick and easy to make and you can make it sweet or savory. This time I went with sweet but next time I may do savory with some cheese and green onion to go along with soups and chili that are coming up on the menu later in the month. Sorry, no photos of the process this time.

• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 egg
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons baking powder

Start by making a cup of buttermilk if you don't keep any in your fridge, pour it into your bowl or mixer and add the cornmeal. Let the cornmeal soak for a couple of minutes while you get the other ingredients ready and preheat the oven to 400.

Now add the sugar and oil, mix for a bit and then add the egg and mix. Now add all of the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. The batter should be quite thick, pour into a lightly greased pan and thump the pan on the counter to even out the batter a bit. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes. Mine baked for 22 minutes and was perfect.

For savory cornbread:

• Only use 1 tablespoon of sugar instead of 1/2 cup, you could also up the salt to 1 1/2 teaspoons if you like
• Add 1/2 cup cheddar cheese and a chopped green onion as well as a shake or 2 of cayenne pepper
• Try cheese and diced jalepenos

Be sure to add these things in with the wet ingredients so that they are well mixed.

Make Your Own Vanilla Extract

I am always out of vanilla extract. I never remember to pick up a bottle when I do the rest of my groceries since I don't need to go down the baking aisle for anything else. A little bottle of the fake stuff will cost you over $3 while a teeny bottle of the real stuff runs around $10. I think the bottle is under 100ml. You might get a dozen uses out of one just using 1/2-1 teaspoon per recipe. I've been using a splash of vanilla flavored soy milk when I bake but it's just not the same.

I remember seeing a post on Punk Rock Domestics where someone made their own vanilla extract but it was a few years ago and I couldn't find it. Google came through, there were tons of posts on how to make it, lots of different ways. I picked the method that seemed easiest and closest to what I remember seeing on PRD.

This is super easy, you just need a little patience. So here's what you need:

Cheap Vodka

• Mickey of Vodka, 375ml. I bought the cheap stuff since I wasn't going to be drinking any. This one cost me about $13.
• Vanilla beans. I didn't shop around for these because I had to walk down Hastings with booze and a baby, I just grabbed the first ones I saw and got outta Dodge. These cost me $6.99 and are Madagascar beans. I saw them later at my local market for $3.49. I'll know for next time, if I ever manage to run out of vanilla again.
• Cutting board
• Sharp knife. This is my cute little fruit knife.

 You need to slice down the middle of your vanilla beans so that you expose the innards and so that all the nice little flecks of vanilla bits can get into your vodka. I left the ends attached so that there are less big pieces to worry about when I go to use it.

Slice the beans through the middle

Now open your vodka and add the vanilla beans. Now give it a good shake. If you don't have room to shake then you know what you have to do, pour yourself a shot.

Grab a sharpie and write the date on the bottle, I peeled off the label to make this easier and so that nobody accidentally takes a swig of vanilla extract thinking it's some fancy vodka. That would probably be pretty gross.

Now comes the hard part. You have to wait at least 2 months until you can use this stuff. I was bad and used a bit today for some coconut macaroons. I only made it a week ago, it smells like vanilla booze but thankfully the boozeyness baked off in the oven. It didn't have a really strong vanilla flavor yet.

The color after 7 days

If you're an avid baker you can have a couple of these on the go, maybe a month apart so that you always have one ready. If you don't go through it that fast you can keep topping the bottle off with more vodka! I'm not sure how many times you can fill it up before it starts to get weak, you could probably just taste it every so often.

So there's 1/3 litre of pure vanilla extract for $20! ($15 if you shop around for the best price)

Chicken Pie Filling

This one is super easy and if you have any that won't fit into the pie it counts as chicken cream soup! You could also use turkey or any other meat for this if you wanted.

I'm assuming you have your pie crust ready to go or at least a frozen one waiting! If not then I guess you could just eat it as is!

Pie crust

Oh man, why did I decide to make such a labor intensive and oven using meal last night when it was so hot? Sigh. Oh well. We had a chicken pie last night to use up leftover chicken. It was awesome. There are leftovers for lunch sometime in the next couple days.

This dough makes 4 crusts, enough for 2 complete pies.

• 4 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 brick of Crisco (about 1 1/4ish cups)
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup cold water