Tip to bake cakes evenly

Today was  my oldest son's birthday and I made him a german chocolate cake. I'm not sure if it will make it uncut before he gets home! Happy  Birthday Nick!!

 An inexpensive tip for getting cakes to bake evenly, and not round up in the middle,  is to take a kitchen towel (I used flour sack towels) wet it thoroughly and wrap around the sides of the cake pans. This will keep the outside of the cake from getting done before the inside, and it will bake evenly. If you bake for more than 30 minutes, keep an eye on the towels to make sure they do not totally dry out. You may need to put new wet ones on just to be safe.  There are fancy silver colored cake pan strips that you can buy, they sell for around $10 each. Since I don't bake cakes everyday, the wet towel trip works for me and it uses things I already have!

Healthy Snack--Roasted Chick Peas

While looking for ways to clear out the surplus of chick peas/garbanzo beans in my pantry, I ran across a this recipe. As always, I have tweaked it to suit my own preferences.

• Rinse 2 cans of chick peas.
• Spray a baking sheet with olive or canola oil or coat with 2-3 Tbl of olive or canola oil.
• Pour chick peas onto baking sheet and stir to coat with oil.
• Sprinkle with spices of your choice- I used salt, pepper, onion powder, and paprika.
• Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.
• Let cool and store in the refrigerator.

This is a healthy alternative snack to SAD(standard American diet) junk food. Give it a try!

Summertime Facial Scrub

his is an all natural face scrub that I have been using and my skin feels amazing and looks so much better.

• First wet face with warm water to help open pores.
• Take a cotton ball or round cotton pad and saturate with lemon juice. (Lemon juice contains alpha hydroxy acids which help to slough off dead skin cells, promote elasticity of skin and encourages new skin cell growth.)
• Next dip cotton ball into sugar and rub in small circular motions on face. You will have to dip the cotton ball into the sugar several times to cover the entire face area.
• Rinse face with cool water when finished and pat dry.

This is a wonderful summertime scrub to leave your face feeling fresh and soft.  Not to mention (for us frugal types) it uses ingredients you already have in your kitchen! : )

American Family Association - Action Alert

Beet Jelly

I like beets, while not everyone can appreciate them I love 'em.  As I was opening up some beets the other day I hated to throw away the beautiful red juice so I decided to make beet jelly.  A simple recipe was found in one of my Amish cookbooks.  Now I have 6 more pints of jelly to add to my shelves for the long winter. I can almost taste it now on a steamy piece of bread fresh out of the oven.

I am also attempting to salvage yet another aloe vera plant.  I must be one of the few in the world who consistently kills aloe.  I thought I was watering it too much so I didn't water it all summer and it still rotted and died.  Hopefully the stems that I saved will root and live.

Thrifty Thursday

This was a thrifty Thursday. As I am focusing on lowering my utlity bills as much as possible, thrift is a great way to save money. Here are the things I did today to pinch the pocketbook:
***hung 6 loads of laundry to dry
using cold water on all but bedding and whites
***baked 2 more loaves of oatmeal bread instead of running to the store
***took round steak out of the freezer for supper and supplemented it with
what was in the pantry which was broccoli, mac and cheese and milk
gravy-powdered milk is great to have on hand for cooking
***let God wash my van with the rain, it was in bad need of a wash

My water bill has been a big area of concentration for lowering. It had gotten as high as $75 at one point. We live in small rural town and to me that is way too high. So to bring it down we are doing a few simple things:

-running cold water in a container until it gets hot for use when needing
hot tap water, this is used to water my outdoor plants
-my kids always leave half full glasses of water sitting in the kitchen so
use that to water my indoor plants
-use the water miser feature on my dishwasher, this saves water and
electricity as the cycle is shorter
-everyone gets a gallon shower
I read this tip from someone else. Fill a gallon jug with warm water
and use that to shower with. It sounds extreme but 1) we only have a
tub and no shower, 2) it is no different than getting wet in the
shower, turning the water off while soaping up and then turning the
water on again to rinse and 3) this way I know my boys are actually
washing and not just transferring water from the tub to the floor.
Granted this is an extreme measure but I EXTREMElY want to be out of
debt!!!
-filling a half gallon milk jug and placing it in the toilet tank to
make it a low flow flush.
-filling a dishpan to rinse handwashed dishes and using that water to
water the garden
-keep a pitcher of cold drink in the refrigerator to avoid running the tap
until it is extra cold
-using five gallon buckets and/or garbage cans out when it rains to
catch rain water to use outside. I don't have small children in my
house or neighboring me, but it is safe to use something with a lid to
keep accidents from happening. It's even better to attach a large
barrel to a downspout to catch the runoff.

Oatmeal Bread

We were out of bread and since the house was unusually cool I decided to make some homemade bread. If you notice a piece is missing off one of the loaves, I couldn't wait it was so yummy. Here is the recipe courtesy of Hodgson's Mill flour. I should say as with all recipes I substitute where I need to use what I have on hand. In this I used old fashioned oatmeal instead of quick cooking and it turned out fine.

Grandma's Oatmeal Bread

2 pkgs active dry yeast
1/2 c warm water
1 1/4 c boiling water
1 c quick cooking oatmeal
1/2 c molasses
1/4 c vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 c Hodgson Mill Oat Bran Flour blend
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/2- 3 c Hodgson Mill unbleached flour

Coating:
1 egg white
1 tbl water
1/4 c quick cooking oats

Add yeast to 1/2 c warm water and let stand for 10 minutes.

Combine boiling water, oatmeal, molasses, vegetable oil, and salt. Cool to lukewarm. Stir in 2 c oat bran flour blend and mix well (may use a mixer). To this add 2 beaten eggs and yeast mixture. Mix well. Add the remaining oat bran flour and unbleached flour to make a soft dough. knead the dough until smooth, elastic, and satiny, 10 minutes by hand or 4 minutes in an electric mixer fitted with dough hook. Put dough in greased bowl, turning once to coat evenly. Cover with a damp towel and allow to rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1 1/2 hours. Optional Second Rising: Knead down and allow to rise a second time until doubled, about 1 hour.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 2 equal portions and let rest for 10 minutes. Grease two, 9x5x3 inch loaf pans. Shape dough into loaves and put into pans, seam side down. Allow the dough to rise to just above top of the pans.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Brush loaves with mixture of 1 tbl egg white and 1 tbl water, sprinkle with 1/4 c oatmeal.

Bake for 30- 35 minutes until top is golden. Remove immediately from pans and let cool on racks.