Homemade Liquid Hand Soap

One of my new favorite ways to pass the time (mostly when I am stuck on the couch nursing!) is to cruise Pinterest. All of the DIY crafts, home design and recipe ideas are so compelling, I want to try them all! One idea that seemed pretty approachable was homemade liquid hand soap (over one gallon made from a single bar of soap!) Here is a link to the original blog post: http://familyoffarmers.blogspot.com/p/diy.html. 


I chose to try it out with a bar of Green Tea scented French-milled soap with Shea Butter. It is more expensive than Dove or whatever, but I thought it was okay to splurge when you can turn it into a gallon of hand soap! 

This turned into a wonderful hand-soap:
it has a nice light scent that even my
husband loves, and leaves hands super soft.

The recipe was pretty straightforward. Grated up the soap just fine with the cheese grater, although it took forever to wash the chunks of soap caught in the grates. I found the glycerin from a natural health food store in town called Capella Market (I couldn't find the liquid glycerin in any regular grocery or drug store that I went to). The soap dissolved into the glycerin and water fairly quickly over the medium-high heat, so I turned it off to let it sit and start to cloud up. 

My batch didn't take long at all (just a few hours) to cool and harden into a stiff gelatin consistency. Working in batches, I added more water and used a hand mixer to get the soap into a consistency that I liked.

I bought a pretty glass container with a pump for our bathroom (cost about $5), and then reused an old handsoap container for the kitchen. The liquid glycerin cost about $7 for a medium-sized bottle, but the recipe only calls for 2 T. to one gallon of water. The soap cost about $6. Overall, about a $20 investment for a never ending supply of hand soap! 

Breakfast Mini-Quiches with Sausage & Spinach

Today is Monday, and on Thursday I go back to work after a 3-month maternity leave! Been thinking of some last minute things I can make ahead to relieve the stress of feeding myself and our family during what I expect to be a slightly hectic transition.

I came across this great recipe for mini-quiches made in a muffin tin on another blog called "Eat. Drink.Smile". Her recipes are pretty great! 

I pretty much followed her recipe found here: Breakfast of Champions, but I did my own variation of ingredients and spices. This individual size servings are great for portion control, and for freezing and storing then popping into the microwave for a quick and super nutritious breakfast.

These guys are easy to make up 
on a Monday and eat all week!

Substitutions:

Instead of 16 eggs, I used 8 eggs and 2 C. of Egg Beaters.

To the egg/onion/green pepper mixture, I added one package of frozen spinach that had been thawed and drained really well. 

I used about 1/2 pound of my homemade pork sausage instead of a full pound.

For the seasoning, I used 1 t salt, 1 t black pepper, 1/2 t red pepper flakes, 1 t. dried thyme and 1/4 t. nutmeg and 1 t. of minced garlic.

I also used 1 C. of 2% reduced fat shredded Mexican four cheese blend instead of regular cheese.


Note: I have made a batch of these before and sauteed the vegetables first. They turned out pretty juicy and deflated a lot when they cooled. Putting the veggies in raw is my preferred method, since they still get cooked in the oven, and the muffins have a better texture.

These pop out really easily if you 
remember to use a liberal coat 
of cooking spray!

These little guys ended up only being 3 Pt.+ each in the Weight Watchers program, which I just signed up for this week! Looking to skip the holiday pounds this year, and work on getting back in shape after having my baby girl.

Homemade Sausage

I came across this recipe by Lucinda Scala Quinn to make your own sausage in the October issue of Martha Stewart Living. Unless you have a KitchenAid mixer and a meat grinder accessory, making your own sausage always sounded too hard and not worth the effort. But this one seemed doable since you only need a food processor and a little room in your freezer. I tried it out, still skeptical, but it worked great and the spice mixture for the sausage is soooo good.  You could also just add this spice mix to already ground chicken or turkey and not even need the food processor!

You start with a 4 lb. Boneless Pork Shoulder Roast (per LSQ, this has the best ratio of meat to fat for sausage):

I found mine on sale for only $3 
per pound- much cheaper than
 a $5 package of Jimmy Dean!

The next step is to cut up the roast into 1/2 inch cubes, which can be a little time consuming, but also a little cathartic if like working at your cutting board like I do. Place the cubed meat on a parchment lined baking sheet and freeze for about 20 minutes.

I froze the meat in batches, 2 pounds at a
 time so that I could keep it in a single layer.

While the meat is hardening up in the freezer, put together the spice mixture. Lucinda's recipe calls for fresh herbs, but I cut costs (fresh herbs are $4 a piece at my grocery store!) by using a 1:2 ratio of dried to fresh herbs, i.e. one T. of dried thyme instead of 2 T. fresh. I did use fresh sage because I really like the taste of it fresh. I was also surprised that this has so much nutmeg in it! 

Lucinda Scala Quinn's Sausage spice mix: 

2 T. Fresh Sage

2 T. Fresh Thyme (I used 1 T. dried thyme)

1 T. plus 1 1/2 t. course salt

7-8 cloves of garlic, minced

1 T. nutmeg

1 T. cayenne pepper

Take the meat from the freezer, and working in four batches, add 1/4 of the spice mix (a little less than 2 T.) to 1 lb. of the frozen, cubed pork in a food processor. Pulse on high until only small pieces of fat remain, about 1 minute. Transfer to a piece of parchment paper and shape/roll into a log. Use fresh or store in the freezer for later. 

The sticky, almost whipped texture of the sausage 
doesn't stick to the parchment paper,
 even after you defrost it.

This tastes delicious in a pasta sauce, in an Italian lentil stew, or sliced into patties when the log is slightly defrosted. I like having this on hand in my freezer because you don't need much of it to add a lot of flavor to a meal!

Sweet & Hot Corn Dog Muffins

My husband has two favorite foods in the whole wide world: Nathan's hot dogs and Frank's hot sauce. Tonight, in honor of game night, I put them together in one dish! We didn't have any buns or bread to make chili dogs, but I did have a box of Alber's corn meal on hand.

I started with the recipe for Sweet Corn Muffins off the side of the corn meal box (http://www.food.com/recipe/albers-sweet-corn-muffins-300405), added some Frank's hot sauce (about 2 T.) to balance the sweet with some heat, and then added cut up pieces of the Nathan's straight to the muffin tins. They baked up really great!

We topped them with turkey chili and shredded cheese, and a few more dashes of Frank's to taste.

CrockPotRoast with Fresh Herbs, Apple and Oatmeal Stout

Pot roast and the Crock Pot were made for each other. If they got married and had a baby they would call it CrockPotRoast. It is so simple and easy to get it going in the morning and come home to a smelly house and a warm meal.

I like to buy pot roasts when they are on BOGO (buy one get one sale)and then freeze them for later. I'll defrost it a day or two before in the fridge, and cook it on a day I know I want a quick meal for dinner.

Cooking a roast in the crock pot is pretty versatile in terms of ingredients. You basically throw some vegetables in the pot, add some herbs and other aromatics to flavor the meat while it cooks, place the roast on top and add some liquid to keep it moist. You can be creative with the ingredients, or just use whatever you have on hand like I did this morning.

Here is the recipe I came up with things I had on hand in my kitchen. I think adding the apple brought a nice sweetness that complimented the other strong flavors. Using the oatmeal stout instead of water or broth added an earthy flavor and kept it extra moist. I used Oatis from Ninkasi, a local brewery here in Eugene that has really great micro-brews, but you could use any kind of beer.

Pot Roast with Fresh Herbs, Apple & Oatmeal Stout

1 C. of baby carrots

1 onion, chopped in large segments

1 apple, peeled and chopped in large segments

4 whole cloves of garlic, peeled

Sprigs of fresh Rosemary, Oregano and Sage

salt & pepper

1 3-4 lb. Pot Roast

3/4 C. Oatmeal Stout

Place the carrots, onion, apple, garlic and fresh herbs on bottom of crock pot. Generously salt and pepper the roast on both sides and place on top of vegetables, then pour in the stout. Cook on low for 5 hours. Serve with a side of roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes or squash (which is in season during the fall and likely to be on sale). I like to roast veggies in the toaster oven with olive oil and sea salt on 375 degrees for 30 minutes (no need to wait for the big oven to heat up).

Breakfast Sandwiches for the Freezer

I came up with these as a quick and easy breakfast for my husband to take to work with him in the mornings. It saves us money since he doesn't have to get something at the cafe at work. You can make up a whole bunch at a time, and then put them in the freezer to be reheated later.

What you'll need to make 16 sandwiches:

2 packages of 8-count bagel thins or english muffins

16 slices of cheese (your choice)

1 quart of Egg Beaters or generic brand egg substitute

2 lbs of sausage (we use a chicken sausage)

First, make up the sausage patties. To keep the sausage from sticking to your hands, dip your hands into a little bowl of water before you roll up each ball. Press the balls onto a baking sheet that has been lined with foil and sprayed with cooking spray, making sure that the patties are as thin as possible, since they shrink when they cook. Get a griddle hot (350 degrees is good) and cook the patties for a few minutes on each side, until no longer pink in the middle. Set aside.

Next, make the eggs rounds. Get a frying pan hot over medium heat, spray with cooking spray, then add 1/4 cup of the eggbeaters. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook for about a minute on each side, pushing down the edges with a rubber spatula to help it flip easily. Set aside to cool.

Next I toast the bagel thins and get an assembly line all set up to put together the sandwiches.

Once the sandwiches are cooled, place in individual sandwich bags, then in a large gallon sized freezer bag and then straight into the freezer.

To reheat, put in microwave for 90 seconds on half power. (If you cook it on regular power, the cheese will melt too fast and get extremely hot, while the egg stays frozen inside.)

My husband loves these! and they are way better for you than the fast food versions. I think this version is under 300 calories per sandwich.