Prayers please

I'm rather distracted today and tired from a long morning. More on today's morning in a post tomorrow. But for now, could I ask you to pray for my niece? She had surgery on Saturday to remove a mass. Now the pathology report is back, and it was cancer. My niece is a young 24 years old. She still needs to meet with her doctor to talk about next steps. So I don't know what else is in store for her. Thank you, friends. You're some of the most kind and compassionate people that I know.

The Frugal Approach to Shortages

This should not come as any surprise, but when us frugal folk run out of something, what is it we do? It seems to be a frugal reflex for many of us that we simply make do. This frugal technique is really being put to the test in my house this week. Here are some things we're running out of and how we're managing:

• laundry detergent -- I melted some bar soap in water on the stove and mixed it with the remaining detergent in the bottle. This should get us through a week.
• vegetable oil -- an obvious substitution, we're using more of saved meat fats. After my daughter cut a raw chuck steak off the bone the other day, I rendered the swath of fat from it. This gave us about 3 to 4 tablespoons of cooking fat. We also have saved other fats in the freezer to draw from. I'm not completely out of oil, but we're saving what we have for for recipes that really do better with oil.
• hair conditioner -- I have several practically empty tubes of conditioner that have come with home hair dye kits. I have squeezed most of the conditioner out of the tubes. However, there's always more product stuck to the inside walls of the plastic tube. While standing in the shower, I blew each tube up then held it under the stream of water from the shower head. I could shake enough product up with this water to make a watery conditioner. I did this with each tube several times and was able to get my hair fully conditioned. I have enough other practically empty bottles and tubes to get through at least one more shampoo.
• my "chill pills" -- these are a supplement containing Lemon Balm, L-theanine, and GABA. L-theanine is  found in green and black tea. And Lemon Balm is an herb that I grow in my yard for tea. I've been making an infusion to drink from some decaf green tea and Lemon Balm leaves each day. I can't replicate the GABA, but I'm doing okay with much less of the stress supplement. I previously took 4 dummies per day (2 in morning, 2 in evening). I'm taking half that for now. 
• natural peanut butter -- a favorite lunch for me is an open-faced peanut butter sandwich on homemade bread. I noticed we're almost out of natural peanut butter from WinCo. So I was wondering if I could make a sandwich-worth of peanut butter with roasted peanuts and my mortar and pestle. 

To make this I first chopped a handful of peanuts. This is crucial to speeding up the process. I use a serrated bread knife to chop nuts. The serrated edge catches the nuts so they don't go flying.

Next I pummeled the chopped peanuts a heaping tablespoon at a time in the mortar with a pestle. This took some elbow grease, that's for sure. But after a couple of minutes I had a dry paste. 

I added a couple of drops of vegetable oil to the paste and worked the mortar and pestle until I had a good texture. I repeated with the rest of the chopped peanuts until all done. I also added a drizzle of honey to the final batch. 

The finished product is akin to crunchy natural peanut butter. It's a bit gritty and thick. I mixed it with soft butter when I made my sandwich at lunch. Delish and I have a favorite.

Tomorrow I'll make a larger batch using the small cup with the smoothie blender. A pitcher blender can also be used for larger batches, adding a bit of oil to help it come together.

I'm making do as best as I can. What are some ways you've made do recently? Have you ever made peanut butter? What tools did you use?