Kid-Safe Insect Repellent

Here is a link to an insect repellent recipe that is deet free. It's made with an herb mixture and cider vinegar. You can buy the herb mixture or separate herbs from this store and it has a legend to go with it (I'm a sucker for a good story). I'm in the process of making it and was pretty excited to be able to use all herbs from my own garden except the wormwood.

Peach Jam

So I thought I'd show a little tutorial about making peach jam. I just made a batch and it was yummy if I may say so. 1 batch is about 8 half pints or 4 pints of jam. Here goes:

Wash your peaches and if they're not organic use some soap. Rinse well.

Blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes till their skins split open.

 Using a slotted spoon place them in prepared bowls of ice water. Then slip off the skins and discard them. Chop peaches into small pieces (I skipped this part because I was lazy. I will have very chunky jam.)

Mash peaches with a masher. 

Put jars and lids in pots and heat them. Don't boil the lids! It ruins the seals. The jars don't have to be completely submerged but make sure they are nice and hot all over.

Follow the directions on the package of pectin you bought and I mean this seriously. Each pectin is a little different about amounts. Stir in pectin and then stir till you hate stirring...er I mean till the jam boils. Don't stop stirring but add sugar. I like low sugar pectin and only put 1-1 1/2 cups of sugar in one batch. ( for comparison, regular pectin has about 6 cups of sugar a batch.) Stir some more till it boils again and starts looking a bit thicker and kind of glossy.

Ok this is where you need to move a bit quickly so things don't cool down too fast. Pull out a jar with tongs from your pot of hot water. Get out a jar funnel and pour the jam in leaving about this much head space.

Stick a knife in it to get out air bubbles and wipe the top so it will seal well.

Get out a lid with the fun magnetic lid lifter thingy you get in a canning pack ( it's my favorite canning tool!) and stick on a lid. Twist a ring on but not too tightly just fingertip tightly.

 

Cover your jars with a towel as you work because my neighbor told me this helps them seal and she is an awesome canner so I do it.

Harvest

It's time to harvest finally.The beets were delicious and look at my pile of chard. we have been eating a lot of greens lately. I have already frozen some collards and will probably do some chard too.

The pickles and rhubarb came from a friends garden. I think I'll freeze the rhubarb and make jam or pie later. We almost have enough cucumbers to make a salad from our garden and the tomatoes are turning red.

Extract Experiments

I had such good success with making vanilla extract that I tried orange and peppermint extract. You make the orange (or lemon) extract by using a veggie peeler to scrape off the skin of the orange but not the white bitter part. Then you stick it in vodka for a few weeks. It has been 2 weeks and mine smells nice and orangey. I also tried peppermint but it was trickier and I am not as sure about the results. I used fresh mint leaves and put them in vodka for a few days then strained them. But I think I needed to either cook it or use dried because it doesn't quite smell minty enough. I kept worrying the leaves would rot or something.

Homemade Popsicle Time

 We went to IKEA this week to get Ward a mattress and the kids all brought a little bit of money with them to see if they could buy something. When they realized $2 was not going buy very much they started to get disappointed. Then I spotted the homemade popsicle containers. George bought it with his money (the other two had a bit more and got candle lanterns.) he was very excited and wanted to make them at breakfast time. I held him off a little while then we made strawberry lemon ones. So yummy!!

Homemade Day

I have been working on DIY home repair projects all week and needed a break. I have to have glass panes cut again ( 3rd times a charm) because I mismeasured ( can I write that? Spell check says no, but raspberry on that!). The drywalling is done no matter how lumpy it is because I am tired of sanding it 5 days in a row.  So enough of my grumbling....I decided to do some easier handmade projects today:

Homemade granola

Homemade toothpaste

 Homemade vanilla extract

I did them all in less than an hour. That is my idea of production.

Sunday breakfast

On Sundays I like to try to make the meals special- it's our feast day, but not too complicated-it's also our rest day. I try to make a more exciting breakfast for the kids than eggs and crackers or oatmeal (our usuals). So often I make cinnamon rolls the day before or pancakes or waffles, but I get tired of all the sweet. It's hard because I love omelets but the kids don't so I only make them occasionally. This morning I decided to make eggs and cheese biscuits. Not too much work and we all loved it.  I just added cheese to a normal biscuit recipe and used butter instead of shortening in the biscuits because it is sacrilegious to use shortening if you have butter.