Tag Archives: home-made

Thanks so much for following this new segment, Natural Living Tips which you’ll find here on Tuesday’s. My friend Rosemary Nickel (Motivating Other Moms) and I have paired up to bring you these weekly tips on living a more natural life. They will be fun, quirky and informative, just like us, ha. We hope you join us here weekly for a new Natural Living Tip! Enjoy!

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Finally, I made laundry detergent, yay! Part of my delay is that I wasn’t completely satisfied with the recipes I was finding on-line. Most of them called for either a bar of Fels-Naptha, or the use of Dawn dish detergent. These products do not sit well with me. Why?  I did, in my excitement to purchase all the products, purchase two bars of Fels-Naptha. I was in and out quickly without thought (this is bad), and I hadn’t even returned home when I could smell the overbearing perfumey odor in the car. UGH! Yep, the Fels-Naptha. It says it right on the label, Perfume. Nice. Well, I knew right away that wouldn’t work for me, my head was already swelling with the ickiness of the fake chemical scent. Since then I’ve also found out that the Dial Co. says it should not be used directly on the skin, it’s an irritant. It also contains some ingredients which are known to contaminate the oceans, lakes and to harm wildlife. Not my thing. You can read more here.

The other recipe I was seeing on-line was non-grate version which calls for Dawn dish soap. Nope, can’t do it. It comes in plastic, (you know I’m trying to eliminate plastic as best I can) and is loaded with cra*, like the sulfate sisters, and It’s owned by Procter & Gamble, a company that I don’t particularly approve of (trust me, I have enough trouble with arm & hammer, still test on animals, but can’t yet find an alternative), lol. So…. Anyway, many of you won’t be quite as picky as me, ha.

Armed with this information I knew I needed to slow down and get the right bar soap. I wanted something a bit more natural. I found this soap called Verve at Whole Foods. It’s vegetarian (no tallow or other animal ingredients), cruelty free, fragrance free, no BHT, comes in planet friendly packaging, perfect, and the price was right too, $3.99/3 pack.

*No Whole Foods nearby or don’t shop there? Many of these recipes I’ve seen use Ivory Soap as well or you can use a natural herb bar soap found at many farmer’s markets.*

So, natural bar soap it is! Here’s my recipe:

1 cup Washing Soda
1 cup Borax
1 bar natural soap (grated)
75 drops essential oil (I used 50 drops sweet orange, 25 lavender) You can have so much fun creating new natural fragrances here.  (I did find that I didn’t smell this upon drying, so I may eliminate the essential oil all together in future batches.

Mix together, viola!

Yields about 32oz. I placed the mix in empty  Charlies Soap (a wonderful alternative to home-made) containers, my previous laundry detergent.

Use 1-Tbsp per load or 2-Tbsp for heavily soiled laundry.

Note: I have a HE front loader. This recipe worked fine, it’s low suds and no problem. I’m also on a septic line, it’s fine for this too.

Peace!

Thanks so much for following this new segment, Natural Living Tips which you’ll find here on Tuesday’s. My friend Rosemary Nickel (Motivating Other Moms) and I have paired up to bring you these weekly tips on living a more natural life. They will be fun, quirky and informative, just like us, ha. We hope you join us here weekly for a new Natural Living Tip! Enjoy!

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Lemons - Italy, spring 2010.

I’m sure there is no more perfect a time to begin thinking about Greening your clean than this month of April. It’s Earth month, so let’s all begin using more earth friendly cleaning products! And remember, I support baby steps so don’t get overwhelmed, just pick one thing and move on from there.

Let’s begin with a list of items  you should have on hand to make your own cleaning products:

Baking Soda, a naturally abrasive product with mild alkaline properties, a natural deodorizer and stain remover, completely non-toxic. One of the most versatile cleaners on the planet!

Lemons, acidic and can provide some antibacterial and antiseptic properties for cleaning *Add a cup of lemon juice to the wash cycle to boost the whitening action of your laundry detergent.

Distilled White Vinegar, a great natural cleaning product, a disinfectant and deodorizer, an all-purpose cleaner.

Essential Oils, I like to have lemon, lavender, rosemary and tee tree on hand.

Liquid Castile Soap (Dr. Bronner’s) a vegetable based soap, not petroleum. It’s completely non-toxic and can be used on your body as well as in cleaning products.

Hydrogen Peroxide, non-toxic, safe for people, pets, plants, the environment. Many uses.

These next three weeks of April I’ll be sharing with you how to use these ingredients to make safe & effective home-made household cleaners. So stay tuned:-).
Peace!

Thanks so much for following this new segment, Natural Living Tips which you’ll find here on Tuesday’s. My friend Rosemary Nickel (Motivating Other Moms) and I have paired up to bring you these weekly tips on living a more natural life. They will be fun, quirky and informative, just like us, ha. We hope you join us here weekly for a new Natural Living Tip! Enjoy!

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The last few weeks I’ve been researching the benefits of Coconut Oil,  there are many.  I do promise to cover them in the next couple of weeks, but I’ve been distracted by all the yummy things you can make with other coconut products, the milk, water and juice.  These also have many health benefits including they’re loaded with Lauric Acid which is naturally found in mother’s milk. Lauric acid has been shown to have negative effect on many microorganisms in the body including yeast, fungi, and bacteria. It also has anti-carcinogenic and anti-viral properties.  You can read more about the benefits of coconut products and lauric acid at The Weston A. Price Foundation.

Here is a wonderfully refreshing way to add coconut to your diet.  This coconut tonic is also a nice substitute for cows milk if you’re sensitive to lactose or simply trying to reduce cows milk in your diet.

This is so easy peasy! You can purchase Coconut water and/or juice in most grocery stores or health food stores, as well as the coconut milk.  These two products are very different. The water is found in a young coconut, it’s the liquid you hear when you shake it. The milk comes from the white meat of the nut and is so yummy to cook with.

You simply take a can of each, dump them into a blender and blend. Viola!  Store in the fridge and serve over ice.  They may separate a bit, so give a little shake before serving.  Use this tonic to make the following green smoothie I found on Pinterest by Delicious Obsessions.

Ingredients:

1 ripe avocado
1 cup Coconut Tonic
1/2 cup coconut water or juice
handful greens (I used spinach)
honey or other sweetener of choice – optional

First pit avocado and scoop out flesh. The easiest way to remove the pit is to whack it with a knife and twist, it pops out.

Add all ingredients to the blender and blend until smooth.

Enjoy!

Warning: If not used to drinking coconut milk smoothies, they are extremely filling, you’ll want to share the love!

Peace!

This here is the Perfectly Flawed weekly round-up, so if you missed me on Pinterest & Facebook, this is where I’ll be sharing some of that LOVE on Fridays. Enjoy!

Butter, Uganda & Road Trippin’!

Earlier this week I stumbled upon this perfectly funny blog post. Do you, would you, could you? Hee hee!

After the very dramatic day of posting the Kony 2012 video, I found a very beautiful way to help support the women of Uganda in a much less political way!

Oh yes! White butter:-)

I made butter with my kitchen aid. Beginning with fresh cream from the Dam Ranch, our neighbor. It’s whipped until it collapses, pour off the buttermilk (use it in home-made pancakes:-) then add ice cold water and re-whip until the liquid pours off clear. Look it’s WHITE!!

A goal in life is to have a pantry like this, NO plastic!

My friend Rosemary and I launched our new blog segment Natural Living Tips this week. We even made videos, check out our debut on how to make a home-made coconut oil body scrub, then try it yourself! What essential oil combinations do you love? (See her blog here)

Have been continuing the planning of the kids and I’s Summer 2012 road trip, 8000 miles, 60 days. It’s starting to come together. Here’s a peek, it’s not complete. Makes me want to have one of these or these someday, well I’ve wanted one for a long time actually, ha.

Summer 2012

I’d love some must see’s, if you’ve done this before, tips, etc. Thanks!

And since I’m thinking of travel, I’ll leave you with this!

Happy Weekend,
Peace!

Thanks so much for following this new segment, Natural Living Tips which you’ll find here on Tuesday’s. My friend Rosemary Nickel (Motivating Other Moms) and I have paired up to bring you these weekly tips on living a more natural life. They will be fun, quirky and informative, just like us, ha. We hope you join us here weekly for a new Natural Living Tip! Enjoy!

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Coconut Oil Body Scrub

In my never ending quest to be as plastic-free as possible, I’ve been taking a closer look at the products our family uses on a daily basis. Which of these, if not all, can we DIY to eliminate the need to purchase yet another plastic container? Well, while researching the endless amounts of things that one can do with coconut oil, I came across this recipe on Pinterest for a Body Scrub. I decided to tweak it a bit and go for it!

Ingredients:

1 cup organic raw brown Turbinado sugar
1/3 cup dead sea salts or other sea salt
1/2 cup organic coconut oil
2 tablespoons almond oil
1/2 tablespoon Vitamin E Oil
1/2 cup crushed Lavender Flowers (optional)
5-7 drops Lavender Essential Oil

Combine sugar and salt, then add in oils one at a time checking for consistency. If too dry at the end, add a bit more coconut oil. Then mix in any dried flowers and essential oils. I also love to combine Sweet Orange essential oil with Lavender or for a pick me up scrub use a combination of Peppermint and Rosemary!

This scrub is wonderful in the bath or shower, use it on all your edges and rough parts. Or by the sink as a nice hand softener. Just rinse with warm water and you’ll have yummy soft skin.

Watch Rosemary and I make the scrub:-).

Have fun!

Coconut Oil Body Scrub

I have a friend, Rosemary Nickel founder of Motivating Other Moms. We met many years ago, once upon a time when I was a Pampered Chef Consultant. Yep, I was. We’ve paired up to bring you weekly Natural Living Tips or Tips on how to live a more natural life. Beginning next Tuesday I will be sharing with you tips Rosemary and I have learned on a particular topic.  Our first topic, which we’re very excited about, is Coconut Oil and other coconut products. There will be beautiful photographs and video too. So please check in next Tuesday, I’ll be showing you how to make this Coconut Oil Body Scrub, I know you all want in on that action!!

Peace!

Eggs Benedict with Meyer lemon dressing.

One of my goals for 2012 is to cook more at home, with fresh ingredients, using what’s on hand with less waste. I love to cook, I love cookbooks, so this year I’m making it more of a priority. This past weekend our close family friend, Britt, spent the night on New Year’s Day. We had made Grilled Salmon and a Fennel salad with Meyer Lemon Dressing from my new X-mas gift cookbook, Big Sur Bakery Cookbook, (I highly recommend by the way). I was so excited to make this at home. PFMan and I spent a few days in Big Sur in July and fell in love with the Bakery. Though all the food we had in our 9-day trip to Northern California, my absolute favorite meal was the simple salad of fennel, greens, herbs and Meyer lemon dressing at the Bakery! So I’ve been itching to get the cookbook and PFMan didn’t let me down for the holiday!

Anyway, we had plenty of dressing leftover, as well as a French Baguette, some greens and a hunk of ham in the freezer so I whipped up a beautiful new recipe for Eggs Benedict on Monday morning.

Believe it or not, I’d never poached an egg before. So I got on-line, of course, and had that figured out in under five minutes.  I have to say I was very pleased with my first try at poaching.  Anyway, the Benedict went like this. Cut baguette into slices, lay on cookie sheet, brush with olive oil, toast in oven.  We plated four slices per plate as the base of our Benedict. Then we placed the ham, which had been previously cut into thick slices and heated in a skillet, on top of baguette slices and then a dollop of salad greens. Next came the poached egg, a drizzle of Meyer lemon dressing and some chopped fennel tops to garnish.  It was a crowd pleaser.

On a cookbook note, I’m also really enjoying Jamie Oliver’s At Home Cookbook.  It’s about his garden and the recipes inspired from the beautiful bounty that grows there.  Very inspiring to eat healthy, fresh and sustainably.

Salute!

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Merry Christmas!  This is a cherished ornament that has been passed down in my family!

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This is our Kahlua Cake.  It’s a Trifle and is sooo easy and delicious!!

Make two boxes chocolate pudding, one box chocolate cake.  Bake and cool cake, cut into squares, this is the first layer.  Sprinkle some Kahlua over cake pieces.  Mix Kahlua, to your liking, into pudding and spoon over cake.  Repeat layers, top with large container Cool Whip and sprinkles….  HELLO~!!  YUM & HAPPINESS!!:-).

Most Sunday mornings PFMan makes the family blueberry pancakes.  This has been going on for some time now.  Several months ago, in the process to use more natural and organic ingredients, I started buying unbleached flour.  I didn’t understand using a product that used chemicals to bleach something simply for aesthetics. I mostly think things look better in their natural form anyway.  Well, the pancakes were different.  The taste was there, but the consistency was denser and it seemed as though they weren’t cooking all the way through.  He started changing up the amounts of ingredients, cooking them longer, went back to the recipe to make sure he wasn’t messing something up.  So I finally delved into the differences between bleached and unbleached flour, seeing as how this is the only thing that had changed.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Both bleached and unbleached flour goes through a bleaching process.  Bleached flour has bleaching agents such as benzoyl peroxide or chlorine gas added to aid the process along more quickly, where as unbleached flour will, over a period of weeks, undergo a natural chemical process in much the same way in which a sliced apple turns brown.

The agents which are used in bleached flour also alter the protein content, making it less than that in unbleached flour making bleached flour best for baking cookies, pancakes (aha), pie crusts and waffles.  Unbleached is better for yeast breads, Yorkshire puddings, cream puffs, Danish pastries, and popovers.

So I guess I’ll give into bleached flour for some things now and use unbleached on others:-)

There is a lot more information to be found about different flours at this link by Cooks Illustrated.  And another good reference here!

Mangia!

Sundays have become a day we can count on. Sleep in, hubby makes his now infamous blueberry pancakes, we all play in the pool. Mostly a lazy day, just the four of us. You can usually count on some talk about our future travel plans or past vacations or both. We love to talk about places we’ve been and want to go. It doesn’t matter if it rains all day, we find something to do together. It might be running out after dinner for a walk on the beach or to get ice cream. Ultimately it’s just family time, something we all should make time for.

A couple of Sunday’s ago my daughter Addy and I made Blueberry compote to spoon over home-made biscuits, topped with home-made whipped cream. Mmmmmmm, dessert for the next three evenings. Just a little something I’m trying to do more often… HOME-MADE with fresh and/or organic ingredients. The kids like it and it makes me feel good too.

Our Blueberry Shortcake

The recipe for Blueberry Shortcake