I've got the remnant of wax in the jar set inside a drawer and am pleased that it gives just a hint of fragrance to my pjs. I'll eventually melt the wax and combine it with wax from similarly-fragranced candle remnants. But until then, it makes a nice "sachet".
We have 6 hanging baskets for plants for our house (5 are matching). In 2018, I had them all filled with flowers. Then in 2019 I thought to fill them with nasturtiums for edible blossoms. In 2020, I planted them with red leaf lettuce. Unbeknownst to me, one basket had a hitch-hiking nasturtium seed in the soil and gave me a very pretty little plant alongside that basket's lettuce. At the end of last season, I thought I'd like to grow several types of plants in each basket. That's what I'm trying this year. Here's a photo that I saw online that I'm trying to imitate.
Pretty and edible -- that puts a smile on my face!
If you remember, a couple of years ago I patched my oven mitts. That fix lasted a good two years. So, I'm satisfied with the work done then. However, my oven mitts have now developed actual holes (not just thin spots as before) right where my fingers need to be when I grab a hot baking pan out of the oven. In fact, I got a sharp surprise about a month ago when grabbing the pizza out of the oven. Ouch!
Anyway, I've been looking at oven mitts in stores and online for a few weeks. Most of what I find in the stores are all made in other countries. As I'm still trying to buy from my preferred countries, this left me with shopping through Etsy. As we all know, Etsy can be a bit expensive.
One afternoon, I just thought, "utilitarian items don't need to be pretty. It's okay with me if utilitarian items look utilitarian." Thinking in this way gave me the freedom to just sit down and sew a potholder, using some of my fabric scraps.
If you're practiced at making over blue jeans, you know that you wind up with lots of denim pieces like lower jean legs (jean shorts anyone?). A cut off lower leg of a pair of jeans is just the type of thing that a packrat like me will hold onto for years. Because, well, you know, you just might need that piece of denim.
I used one denim leg (along with other scraps as an insulating layer) to make this denim potholder. Using scraps that I had on hand meant little risk should it not turn out and no expense. The whole project took less than an hour and was ready to use that very night when making dinner.
It's nothing special to look at. But it is a utilitarian item, after all. Why am I telling you about my new potholder made from blue jean scraps? I know that sometimes I have a hard time beginning a project because of fear of failure. In sewing projects, that failure might be not turning out as well as my mind envisions. In these cases, I have to give myself permission to fail before I even begin. Using scraps that were free to me is just such "permission." Nothing at risk, but a lot to gain -- makes me think of the Nike slogan, "Just do it."
Now that I've actually made this one (and solved our potholder problem), I'm wishing I'd done this several weeks ago. Having a usable potholder would have saved my family members a burn or two.
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| If you look really close, you can see my beet sprouts. These are from seeds I saved from a beet plant last year. I wasn't sure if they'd sprout or not and began to think not after 3 weeks. Then one day, they surprised me! |
Easter is like many other significant holidays for me. Every year, I put a lot of work into pulling the entire holiday together for my family. I know many here don't "do" holidays to the extent that my family does, so I don't tend to post all that I do. Anyway, we had a wonderful Easter. I hope that you did, too!
Anyway, just updating. The plants are looking healthy. I hope they will size-up a bit more before planting time.
So, a cost analysis -- I bought seeds this winter, spending about $3 for enough seeds for two seasons, so estimating $1.50 for the seeds for this batch of plants. I also bought potting soil in which to start the seeds and have been using electricity for the grow lights. A high estimate for a batch of 10 seedlings (some to give away and some to plant) is around $2.75 to $3.00, or 28 to 30 cents each plant. In some past years, I've bought a 4-pack of small seedlings for around $2.50, or about 60 cents per plant. And in other years, I've bought the much larger plants for about $2.50 to $3.00 each plant.
Starting from seeds -- 30 cents each. Buying small seedlings -- 60 cents each. Buying large plants -- $3.00 each.
The happy side bonus is that I get to watch the plants grow bigger and bigger with each passing week. You can't put a price tag on happy moments, can you?
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| Mounce, Grace. Easter Watercolor. 2021. Watercolor and gouache on paper. 7 in. x 10 in. |
Just wanted to show you my cute (and itty bitty) pom pom chick friend. He looks like he's ready for Easter.
It was mentioned in the comments last week that doing a post on our worst cooking or baking fails might be fun. So, I'll share mine, and you can add yours in the comments.
I was 19 and sharing a house with two girlfriends for the summer, while we all did local farm and cannery work. (I know, I used to live such a glamorous life. Aren't you envious?!) My roommates worked the day shift driving combines while I worked 3rd shift (overnight) packaging asparagus. My sense of time was askew all summer long. I slept in the day and was up all night. I did my grocery shopping literally at the crack of dawn, after my shift ended. On my days (nights) off, I was often at a loss for something to do. If I tried to sleep during the night, it would throw me off for my next shift. So, I just stayed awake on my nights off, reading, playing solitaire (with actual cards), going to the 24/7 laundromat in town, going for midnight bike rides, and baking or cooking.
One night, I had a thought to try baking yeast bread. I'd never baked yeast bread before, but had baked a lot of biscuits, cookies, and cakes growing up. I went to the grocery store and bought a small bag of whole wheat flour and yeast. It was around 3 AM when I came home, and my roomies were sound asleep.
Being young, stupid, and impatient, I thought something like this, "oh, you don't need to really follow these instructions to make bread. I'll just mix up the dough and bake it." I used all whole wheat flour and didn't knead the dough at all. I don't think I even knew what kneading bread dough looked like. I just stirred together the flour, water, sugar, salt, butter, and yeast, then plopped it all into a loaf pan. The recipe on the bag of flour said that this made 2 loaves. We only had one loaf pan. So into the single loaf pan that dough went. I didn't allow the dough to rise, instead I popped it into the oven as soon as the oven was hot.
I decided to lie down on the sofa and listen to some music, quietly, while my bread baked. Our range was really old and didn't have a timer function. So, we'd have to keep an eye on anything we were cooking. I bet you can see where I'm going here. I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew my roommate was yelling at me to wake up, saying that the house smelled like smoke. (no smoke detectors in those days) I was able to retrieve my blackening brick of whole wheat from the smoky oven. Was that thing ever a brick! It was not sliceable. It was not at all salvageable. I did learn a lesson on following instructions. I wouldn't try making yeast bread again for another 9 years after that disaster.
This was the one cooking/baking that I would give myself a grade of a complete F. F, not only for the result being a failure, but also to myself for thinking I didn't need to follow instructions. Oh well, we're all young and stupid once, right?
Your turn. Share your biggest cooking/baking fail ever.
I'm going to finish this up for the month a day early. For March, I had roughly 3 1/2 grocery trips. Early in the month, I piggy-backed on my daughter's shopping at Target for 1 gallon of milk, spent $2.59. A few days later I was shopping at Fred Meyer for garden items and picked up a bag of ground flax seeds for $3.29. Mid-month, I did a pick-up order at Walmart to begin restocking a couple of things, spending $46.20. Because I'm also shopping in person at WinCo now, I also shopped there mid-month to pick up regular food items to get through the month. I spent $62.99. And finally, the other day, I did another pick-up at Walmart to restock flour. I spent $37.70. My monthly spending for March came to $152.77.
I pressed these on a whim one afternoon, with no particular end purpose other than to preserve them. However, there are many crafty things that can be done with pressed flowers and leaves. A couple of crafts that I've done: framed "prints" made with pressed leaves adhered to art paper, as well as greeting cards and gift enclosures made with card stock and pressed blooms. I've also seen more impressive projects, such as pressed flower phone cases, pressed leaf candle lanterns, and lacquered pressed blossom trays.
While pulling weeds from pots, I noticed that I have a nice Johnny Jump Up plant in one of my deck containers. The plant looks healthy and will hopefully provide a lot of blooms for me this spring.
I pressed leaves and flowers every summer growing up. I had almost forgotten about that simple pleasure, then last year I pressed just a couple of blossoms. I'm so glad that I remembered to try this again, as pressing flowers is such a beautiful way to celebrate spring and summer. And I'm equally glad that I found these pressed flowers when I did. Otherwise, I might have forgotten to press more blossoms next month when the Johnny Jump Ups bloom in my area.
How about you? Do you ever press flowers or leaves?
I was thinking that sometimes the foods that I prepare are not all that attractive. If I were to grade my meals, I think they'd be B-students on average. I rarely produce something that is A-level, and have only produced a complete F item, once. I should say that my grades would be based on several factors: appearance, taste, economy, and nutrition. Most of the time, I do well on economy and nutrition. Taste ranges from so-so to pretty good. Appearance seems to run the gamut. I've produced some remarkably unattractive meals before. And I've also produced a few really nice-looking meals.
My pie fell in the less-attractive category this time. Here's a comparison:
A Pinterest pie
My pie
But here's the thing, it doesn't matter to my family one bit that I made an ugly pie, so long as it was tasty. And that's why I say an ugly pie is better than no pie. My family is smart enough to value mediocre-looking meals rather than have no meals at all.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with these thoughts. Perhaps I'm thinking about the futility of perfectionism in some areas of our lives. The pilot of my next airplane flight -- yes, I want perfectionism. The next time I need dental work that involves a drill -- yes, I want perfectionism. But the appearance of our daily meals -- hmm, I think my time may be wasted on perfectionism in that area.
Anyway, the pie was delicious!
So, I have 2 updates on frozen apple juice concentrate. I had reached out to Tree Top customer service to ask if every step of production for their frozen concentrate apple juice was USA. The reply I received was that, yes, all apples are grown in the USA and all bottling/packaging is done here in the USA as well.
In addition, I picked up WinCo brand frozen apple juice concentrate last week and it, too, is a product of the USA. (The lids of frozen juice concentrates are stamped with country of origin.) I now have 2 USA frozen apple juice concentrate brands to choose from in my area. The bonus with WinCo's product is it was actually less expensive than Walmart's product of China frozen concentrate.
As with the frozen blueberries from Dollar Tree, "made in the USA" doesn't always means "more expensive." In an ever-increasing spiral of grocery prices, that's a good thing to know.
I know some of us use bread machines regularly. I use a stand mixer to mix and knead the dough. I still have to form the loaves and bake them in an electric oven. But that's nothing compared to how bread was made in the home for century after century.
Imagine if you had to dedicate an entire day of the week to baking bread. That isn't so far-fetched. This was typical throughout the 1800s. Housewives would set aside one day of the week just for baking. Baking day may have produced bread and maybe a pie or two. Baking those items alone really would take the better part of a day. The yeast would have to be proofed before adding flour. The dough was mixed and kneaded by hand. A fire would have to be built for baking. Loaves would be formed, risen and baked. Perhaps a pie or two would be made to take advantage of the prepared oven. The clean-up would surely take much longer than today. Perhaps water would be hauled from a well or nearby creek. The water would need to be heated on the cookstove or over a fire. Bowls, pans, and boards would be scrubbed, perhaps using a homemade soap that may or may not have cleaned all that well or perhaps scouring with sand or cleaning with a combination of vinegar and ash. Pans would need to be thoroughly dried before putting away to prevent rusting. On top of baking bread and a couple of pies, the housewife would also need to prepare 3 meals from scratch and do some housework. That sounds like a full day to me.
We were out of bread, here, so I baked a week's worth on Tuesday. My yeast was instant, so no proofing was needed. As I said above, my dough was mixed and kneaded by an appliance. I did form it into loaves, myself. Modern ovens start with the push of a button, so when I want to bake again, for a pie or other items, I can easily do so. No need to add extra baking work on this day. After my loaves were baked, my dishwasher cleaned the pans for me. And because they're not made from tin, I let them air dry.
In addition to baking bread, I was able to complete several other tasks, go for a 1-hour walk, and take a brief afternoon nap. We really are quite spoiled.
