Green Cleaning - with a hint of Yellow

"Green" is all the rage now. Building green, driving green, etc.

I like to EAT green! I use a lot of fresh lemon juice, so there are those nice yellow rinds left over. One can eat only so much grated lemon zest.

Here's the perfect "GREEN" solution: clean the garbage disposal using the lemon rinds!
I cut up the rinds into 1-2" pieces, keep them in a little bowl on the sink. A couple times a day, several go down "George the Gobbler" to keep his gullet clean and smelling like - well, lemons!

Cleaning Green was never so easy. Or so Yellow.

Filling the Food Storage Shelves

It's no secret that Mormons are the champions of food storage - in closets, under beds, every nook and cranny - we even know how to make furniture with the uniformly-sized boxes from the Bishop's Storehouse!

Long a principle of our family stewardship, food storage is encouraged to provide not just for catastropic events, but for the increasingly common loss-of-job scenario, or for possible loss of income due to long-term illness, adult kids having to return to the nest for a bit, food becoming so expensive it's difficult to provide for outselves, etc. Just the ordinary events of our modern lives that can impact income and ability to feed the family.

We are counseled to build a deep storage of basic items such as wheat, rice, pasta, beans, augmented by sugar, oil, salt and then whatever we deem necessary for our family. A year's storage is ideal, but sometimes a more do-able goal is for a month, or three months. Whatever you can work on. The trick is - don't wait. Begin now, even if it's just buying two cans of cream of chicken soup instead of one, and tuck that extra one on the shelf.

I just taught a fun short class on starting a basic practical food storage built upon what your family eats daily. We're encouraged not to wait until the emergency to begin using our storage items, so we will know how to cook with stuff like whole wheat. You don't want to scare the children with strange food!

Recently mom and I were able to add to our stores by canning some of our chosen items. The church has home canning equipment in the form of #10 cans and the gadget to seal lids on them. Our local branch took bulk orders of goods, and brought the machine from the storehouse in Oregon City to the coast. This once-a-year project helped many of us increase our provisions.

We are grateful for our generous friends Carl and Cheryl Boucher who always offer their space to set up, fetch the hundreds of pounds of food and equipment from the storehouse, and help each of us with the canning.

Some of the goods can be purchased already canned, from the storehouse. We can buy large amounts of bulk items either from the storehouse, which has the best prices and great quality of products, or find our own sources for special items. We wanted to have Krusteaz Pancake mix, which only requires water - a good buy in large sacks at Costco. Transferred to cans, with a desiccant packet, it will keep for a lot longer. We found basmati rice for a good price in 25-pound sacks at the local Mexican market. It pays to shop around!

So now we have a number of cases, holding 6 cans each - easy to stack and store. We also have a good supply of our "everyday" type meal storage in the kitchen pantry. Our garden is providing fresh greens, peas, root veggies, onions, green beans, and with fingers crossed hopefully ripe tomatoes before long!

It's a good feeling, to know we have provided for ourselves, and our neighbors if necessary, come a time of need.

We have been taught a true principle, and see the value of it daily.

The Wisconsin Farm Family - June, 2011

They clean up good, don't they?!

From left back: Collin (14), Brent, Carrie, Than (16); from left front: Max (7), Jayden (9), Lee (12).

That's my gang! (double click on picture for a larger view - then hit "back arrow" to return to blog)

Soapy

Boy, this stuff could give Jello a run for it's money!



After setting 24 hours, the laundry soap did indeed "gel". The instructions said it would be lumpy soup-like. I don't know what I did, other than not stirring it at all, that it turned out so solid. But - it was very easy to stir with a whisk, breaking it up and making it more homogenous.

Then it was suitable for ladling into storage jugs. In the some of the jugs, I included several drops of lavender or lemon essential oil (Young Living).

Using the Lemonade jug worked well, easy to handle. But I made SURE to label it.

It does look lemonadey, eh? The white vinegar goes in the rinse. Soft, fluffy towels, and no it does not leave a vinegar odor.

So now I have borax, washing soda and Fels Naptha bars in my year storage.

And besides, it was fast (about 10 min.) and fun to make a couple month's worth of really nice, environmentally friendly laundry soap.

Give it a try!

Tiny bubbles, in the....

This probably isn't what you were expecting, after a loooooong break, which included 3 weeks with grandpunks. Should be some photos of THEM, eh? Give me a minute, here. This is cool STUFF!

Lemon pudding?? Nope. Banana Cream Pie filling? Nope.

'Tis SOAP!! Laundry soap, specifically. I'm teaching a little class on Provident Living, which involves food storage and such. I've made other kinds of soap over the years, but never tried this. So, in preparation to teach, it is best to know of which you are teaching. Works better that way. This is my "learning how" batch.

Simple ingredients. A bar of Fels Naptha Soap. Some 20 Mule Team Borax. And some Arm & Hammer Washing Soda.

Grate the bar of soap, melt it in 12 cups of hot water over medium heat. Then stir in 1 1/2 cups EACH of the borax and washing soda. Pour 8 cups HOT tap water into a clean (of course!) 5-gallon bucket, then stir in the soapy mix. Add another 2 gallons of hot water to the bucket, give it a stir, and let set for about 24 hours. Stir it once in awhile if you just can't stand leaving it alone...

Oooooooo.

Yikes. Looks like cat pee. It will semi-gel by tomorrow. Then I get to try it out. I think I'll add some lemon or lavender essential oil to it, just for kicks and giggles. It just smells "cleanish" right now, like good soap usually does.

Report will follow. Soon. Promise. With pictures of the punks.

Mango Banana Tango

If you've any passion at all for a ripe MANGO, this is one to try. And so simple.

You don't even need an ice cream maker.

Pop 4 ripe (that means FRECKLED SKIN, folks, no greenies here) bananas into the freezer. I usually peel and cut them up first. Some folks freeze with skin on. Run them under some water to defrost the skin, they'll peel fairly easily.


Likewise, with a couple of ripe mangos - peeled, cut into chunks and into the freezer. You want about 2 cups of mango. Or fetch some from the frozen food department at your market.


Question of the day: how can you tell if a mango is ripe? IT WEEPS for you! Truly. Look at the stem end. If you don't see some shiny sticky nectar marks around the stem, sometimes even running down the side, it ain't ripe!

ANYWAY. Back to ice cream. Oh yes, we're making ice cream.

When the fruit is frozen, put it all in your food processor with the S-blade. Blitz until it turns into a frozen ice cream confection. You may have to push it down a few times.

Purty stuff, eh? I borrowed the photos, not to mention the recipe, from one of my fav blogs, http://rawon10.blogspot.com/ .

Those are marigold petals. Yep, you can eat marigolds. Some are tastier than others. Or just use them for garnish to prettify a dish. Won't poison you, and sooo easy!

OK. Thhhhhats all, folks. Go forth and gather you some RIPE bananas and mangos.

It ain't spring 'til the Springers run...

My brother Chris has only one set-in-stone priority in his life: when the Spring Chinook hit the bay, don't expect to see him until about July.

Springers are the Grand Prize for those of us who love salmon. When they come in from sea for spawning, they are fat from winter feeding, whereas the fall chinook have dallied around and lost that good cold-water fat. You just can't beat the Springers for flavor, deep color, and a nice tussle on the line.

Since Chris loves to fish but doesn't care to eat much of it, he is generous with sharing his catch. We are very spoiled. Sometimes he drops off a few slices, sometimes a whole fish, and when the stars are lined up, we get his outstanding smoked salmon!


Salmon fishing is an art and a science. Chris has fished the Tillamook bay and rivers all his life, and we swear he "thinks fish". He catches them when no one else in surrounding boats have any luck at all.

This week, after a slow start, the Springers have finally started showing up. Here's Chris' first catch of the season...

Oh oh. He forgot, in all the excitement, to take off his leaders and stash that hook set-up in his special box. Now anyone who knows what they are looking at will know he was fishing with herring - the double hooks are a dead give-away. NFL playbooks and signals have nothing on the secrecy of fishermen...don't expect a straight answer from ANY of them if you happen to ask, "Where'd you catch that one?" And beyond strategy are secret techniques for handling bait, for tying hooks, weight of line, and on and on.

Here's one of Chris' special little rituals: he rinses his hooks in soapy water. He has a special container in the boat, which as far as we know no one else packs along. And not just any soap. It's lemon Joy. Chris swears the fish like lemon. We're not arguing. Actually, he does it to get the salt water off the hooks, so they don't rust or dull the tips. As he commented, the hooks are so sharp now that all a fish has to do is get close, and it's a goner.

Speaking of secret formulas. This bucket contains bottles of special scents and other stuff that we were fearful to ask about - if he told us (which he wouldn't - not even his mother), he'd have to cut our tongues out. It's amusing to watch guys casually strolling by boats, eyeballing the gear and whatever else they might spy out.

But when the results are nice fat hen Springers, you can see why the competition gets a little heated. And goofy, at times.

This is Chris' "I got one!" grin!

As he motored up the bay to the Kilchis River launch where hauled out, he had to pass a number of other boats. Everyone knows everyone else out there, and they love getting the best of each other. So when they ask, as he goes by, "How you'd do?" , Chris says very offhand, "Got two." Boo hiss from the unlucky empty boats!

Chris reports that one fellow on the dock was saying it was pretty bad fishing, no one had caught any yet. Then he saw the two shiny Springers in Chris' fish box. "Guess the season has officially started now, Griffin caught the first fish!"