Domestic Goddess

Good grief and good lord!

What have I done?
I found myself looking up recipes on line for bread. It all started because I thought it would be nice to have a 'Bread Machine'.  I watched the videos on how to use certain ones and then Rich and I decided that since the machines were big and my kitchen is still small, that I'd try it the old fashioned way.

I haven't been a fan of baking or doing any cooking for years. Simply put, I didn't have time and I didn't have the space in my teeny tiny kitchen. With the new kitchen [which I love!] I did do more.
However it wasn't until I wasn't working those odd and strange shifts back to back and all over the map, that I decided to actually put my 'new' kitchen to use.

This summer found me canning jellies, tomatoes, making salsa, chili starter, and dehydrating everything I could get my hands on. Rich commented one time that he would have remodeled the entire house if he'd known I could cook like...this!

Ugh. When the weather is warm I prefer not to cook. But when it is cold? I guess I am finding it ... not so terrible.
I took Morris for a nice long walk, we did nearly 3 miles on the gravel road. Yes, Morris was bouncy and happy to sniff and mark anything he could. I was surprised at the amount of coyote droppings on the road.

So, when we got back, I helped with chores and then began.
Rich stood behind me watching in awe and subdued wonder.

He kept pinching himself and then me to see if we were dreaming. I threatened to toss flour in his face if he didn't stop with the Peanut Gallery comments.

I found out that I haven't forgotten how to make the bread. My hands remembered it well. I used the quick rise yeast to make things a bit easier and had pulled a basic bread recipe off from Fleischmann's website. I was concerned that it would hurt with the painful arthritis in my fingers and wrist. The kneading wasn't bad, the clean up was painful.

However I do have a devious plan.

Rich really went crazy for the fresh bread. He attacked the smaller loaf with a hungry vengeance.
If I get him 'hooked' on fresh breads, he would purchase the smaller of the bread makers. Well, he may.
The only drawback is I do like the hands on approach. And I don't want to keep an appliance like that on the counter all of the time.

It gets worse.
I am looking at making cheesy dinner bread for this weekend and recalling with great fondness how I used to make cinnamon and sugar bread so very long ago.

How long?
1978. That long.

I may even break out those mixing type things with little measuring type thingies I found when unpacking the boxes from the remodel.

This could be a wondrous thing.

But shhhhhhhh
don't tell anyone!

It would ruin my reputation.

Tomatoes.

I used to hate to cook and try to prepare anything in the tiniest Kitchen in the world.
Since I no longer have THE world's smallest kitchen any longer....

....I managed to buckle down and make some spaghetti sauce.

I went out to the garden to find more tomatoes. The bird nest I had found a few days ago now had eggs in it!
I picked the tomatoes as well as I could without disturbing the nest.

I peeled the tomatoes and prepped them in an olive oil mix of spices that I pre-sauteed. I was following a recipe I'd found on the internet and thought it sounded interesting.

Since I used olive oil in the base, the sauce would not be a candidate for canning.

The recipe said to squeeze the tomatoes after peeling them. 
I thought that was odd, but decided to try it.

I did this with two small batches of tomatoes. 

As I cooked the sauce, I poured the tomato juice into containers. I asked my husband if he liked tomato juice. I surely didn't want to dump it out. 
I don't like waste.

He said yes, but this tasted bland. Back to my Kindle to look up how to spice up plain old tomato juice.
I found a lot of recipes, but in the end used a touch of Worcestershire Sauce and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Viola! It was tasty!

The recipe for the spaghetti sauce called for simmering it for an hour and a half.

It smelled divine and tasted even better. I'd followed the directions on the cooking site, but didn't have the spices and cloves of garlic, so I made up my own concoction.

I plan on adding some Italian Sausage to it and we'll probably have it for supper one of these next days. Well, when I am off my noon to midnight shifts, that is.

I will probably can plain tomatoes as the season gets ramped up. I always seem to find a way to use them in soups and sauces in the winter.

And now I have a nice basement once we get some shelving put up to line up beautiful canned goods!

I'll be getting crab apples next in preparation for making pink beautiful crab apple jelly.

And now that it has cooled off, I'm thinking that Siera would really like to saddle up and go for some evening rides.

Oh, she really had nothing to do with this post about tomatoes, but heck I threw a photo in here just...because.

Vinegar.

I AM a skeptic.  Really I am!  I was told by our neighbors that Roundup was bad and they ordered special weed killer vinegar over the internet and that it worked.

Pooh.

Then I read that you can use household vinegar to spray weeds. 

Um, okay...so I experimented.  I used household vinegar, table salt, soap, and a touch of mineral oil mixed it all together and went out to spray some of those pesky weeds like burdock and thistle.

In less than 30 minutes they looked very sickly.  In two hours they were brown.

Imagine my delight in finding that vinegar actually worked.

It didn't do as well in the shade, but still wilted the heck out of the burdock.  

I tried apple cider vinegar and regular vinegar.  

I used the mineral oil in the mix so that the solution would stick to the leaves better.

I also use either type of vinegar in my homemade 'horse' fly spray.  It doesn't do quite as well as the $22.00/quart of certain kinds of commercial fly spray, but it does knock those pesky flies down.

I used some left over white vinegar in one of my sinks that was looking kind of crummy.  I let it soak for about half an hour.

I drained it and wiped the sink spotless.  No comet cleanser used here. Just stupid vinegar and water.

Last night I soaked my poor feet in vinegar and water.

Why?  Mom the 80 yr old wonder lady told me too.  My feet were itchy from wearing my hot boots. They had a heat rash from sweating and I thought...well, why not? 

My feet felt like heaven.

The heat rash died and went away...

Two days ago I mixed vinegar and cool water and used it to ease the pain of Ariel's sunburn.

Yeah it worked.  

I'm not a chemical engineer, but I do know that vinegar has a 5% acidic value to it.  I'm sure that is what helps kill the weeds and cleaned the sink among other things.

I think when 'Googled' uses for vinegar, I was very surprised.  I didn't really think I could use it in so many ways.

One of the things I have been trying to do and I can thank my neighbors for that...is try to lessen the use of chemicals in cleaning and around the house.

I've found that there are so many things that I can use instead of harsh chemicals, and perhaps I won't make a dent in the world, but I surely am enjoying trying other things.

One exception to the vinegar weed killer is going to be poison ivy.  It grows generally in the shade and I purchased some special spray for it. Although, I think I will experiment and try some vinegar and salt on it just for kicks.

I'll take before and after photos to make a comparison.

PS~ for Equine enthusiasts, a wee bit of apple cider vinegar in your equine's grain per day and it will make a fur coat shine.  It has been said that it aids in repelling bugs also.  Not sure on that one, but I can say that it works on the coat!