Easy Beeswax Lotion

'Nana Puddin'

I wanted to find an easy lotion to make that required few all natural ingredients, and after searching I finally found on A Sonoma Garden blog.
I cut the recipe in a quarter as I don't go through lotion too fast. I also used Jojoba oil instead of olive, but I think a mixture of the two would be lovely. Mine came out very yellow so I call it "Nana Puddin" cause it looks like banana pudding.

Its really as easy as 1-2-3

Ingredients in Nana Puddin~
1/4 cup Organic Jojoba oil (purchased on ebay)
2 Tbs Organic coconut oil (Earth Fare)
.5 oz Organic Beeswax (purchased in 1 oz bars on Amazon)
2 caps Vitamin E oil (any store)
5 drops essential oil

I mixed the lotion already in the glass Ball jar by placing a wire rack directly over a pot of boiling water. You can also try a double boiling method and pouring into your container, or follow the directions on A Sonoma Garden. Once its all melted and combined, remove from heat and allow to cool until room temperature. Whip it with a fork every 15 minutes or so to keep it all combined. Once its at room temperature add the vitamin E oil and essential oil for fragrance.

The batch I made today has 5 drops of Sweet Orange essential oil but usually I leave it scent free and enjoy the honey coconut scent it naturally has.

I chose jojoba oil because it supposedly has properties similar to oils naturally found on our skin, so its easily absorbed and good for sensitive skin. So far its great for my skin, which can be very sensitive.

DIY Toothpaste

6 parts baking soda + 1 part hydrogen peroxide + 1 part vegetable glycerin + flavor

I used peppermint extract. Brushing my teeth with this makes them squeeky clean, when I ran out I felt duped after brushing with a commercial brand~ I still felt plaque on my teeth. After using this recipe I do not have any plaque on my teeth after brushing, same tooth brush and all.

Soothing Deoderant

I've had a deodorant recipe from the Bust magazine sitting around for about 3 years, so I finally made some. I ordered organic cocoa and shea butter online, the rest I had at home.

In a double boiler melt 3 Tbsp Shea butter, 3 Tbsp baking soda, 2 Tbsp. cornstarch or arrowroot powder, 2 TBsp cocoa butter and 2 vitamin E oil gel caps together. Mix it together good and when its liquified remove from heat and cool in the refrigerator. When it is at room temp (before it hardens) add essential oil of your choice I added 15 drops, you can add anywhere from 10-20.

Be careful with changing the recipe to a smaller amount. I scaled it down to a quarter amount to put in a decorative tin I had. I must have squeezed a little bit too much vitamin E oil as my armpits turned red and irritated. This did not happen with the above batch. Vimatin E and the essential oils act as preservatives, which can irritate skin (esp sensitive skin) if used too much. I've had the above batch a month and a similar recipe found online yeilded about 3 to 4 months of freshness. So I would scale it down to half if using alone, and to the full amount if sharing.

My first batch a mixed 10 drops Eucalyptus with 5 drops Lemon grass for an androgynous scent which both my boyfriend and I enjoy.

Tuna juice & handmade cards

I've been a busy bee lately. I have made taken the canned tuna (Remember: that "Tuna" is a name for the Pricky Pear Fruit) syrup and been mixing delicious drinks out of it~ some syrup, lemon lime soda and either tequila or vodka! white rum may even be good too~ or coconut rum! The possibilities are endless. If someone were to have a ladies night sort of party this would be a PERFECT drink to have mixed up.
I have also been taking the juice, which I have in a mason jar in the freezer, scraping some "Tuna" ice off and mix lightly into drinks to add a pink pizzaz! Then I took the thawed juice and added a bunch to some orange juice I had from concentrate. It is so delicious, but Trey won't drink it! I think the fabulous fuchsia turns him off. Adding just a tiny bit of the juice adds the color, but not so much the flavor. So you could add it to orange juice for an interesting twist on the orange color of orange juice, with only adding a very slight hint of another taste.

you've heard of pink lemonade~ but pink orange juice?

I got some cardstock from target ($7 for 75 colorful scrapbook sized pages) along with patterned gift wrap for a $1 a roll. I got a bit of gift wrap from my parents too (for embellishments). I used a glue stick to glue the wrapping paper on the folded cardstock (I was able to get 4 cards from each page: 2 large and 2 small). I hand painted some with "noel" and "joy" while others got a Santa. One got a snowflake my friend made. I went through magazines I got for free and found pages that had little to no words and were pleasing to the eye. These ones went to some of my family members in Massachusetts.

I still need to photograph the rest of the cards and their envelopes. Now I can make nice cards for an occasion from wrapping paper, magazines, old posters... the possibilities seem endless!
Oh and I harvested some broccoli and lettuce~ yum!

Amish White Bread

I just have to post a photo of the Amish white bread I have been making from this recipe. It turns out great every time I make it. This loaf I had frozen for a few weeks before thawing out to use. I keep it stored in the refrigerator, so it has last over a week after thawing and hopefully a bit longer for me to finish off this loaf.

Rice Vinegar Success

After 5 weeks of fermentation I tasted my rice vinegar I created following these instructions. I peeked in my closet a few times during the weeks and noticed no bubbling and was worried something had gone wrong. However it tastes good and very sweet. I heated the vinegar over a double boiler to set the flavor (kill the yeast) and stuck it in the fridge. Now I just need to finish up my bottle of extremely delicious home made French salad dressing so I can experiment with rice vinegar dressings.

Home Made Mayo is easy for a beginner

To go with all this bread I made mayo to make chicken sandwiches. I am not a huge fan of mayo and I have purchased just one tub of miracle whip in my life, none of mayo. Recently I had olive oil mayo on a sandwich and I just loved it! Knowing that everything tastes better made fresh at home I looked up some recipes. I followed Alton Brown's recipe on making mayo, but I made some changes to go along with what I had at home.
I used just regular white vinegar and added just a smidgen less. I also used olive oil, which gave my mayo a nice light green color (the mustard color came out more in the pic though).
When adding the oil I added it a teaspoon at a time while I was whisking quickly the whole time, towards the end I slackened a bit and added the oil a little quicker because the mixture had "emulsified." This is easy to do with just a whisk but I did have to switch arms a few times, because you want to keep the quick movement of the whisk so it the mayo doesn't turn out runny. I used a bit less than a cup of oil also, because others had theirs come out runny. It came out perfectly and although I am not brave enough to try it on its own, I mixed it up into some chicken salad tried a bit on my Amish white bread, died and went to heaven. :)

Rice Vinegar easily made at home

I've been interested in making vinegars lately. Not the cheap white vinegar, but vinegars more suitable for marinades and dressings. My boyfriend makes home made red wine and once this batch is done I will be making red wine vinegar.
But until then I am experimenting with Rice Vinegar. Not to be confused with Rice Wine Vinegar, simple Rice vinegar is made with just rice, water, sugar, and yeast.
I searched around online for recipes and some were varying. So I went for the middle ground, but also did some things a bit different.
I soaked the rice for 12 hours or so, in the fridge, covered.
Then I strained the rice out with cloth, and measured the murky water that resulted. I had close to 3 cups, so I added a bit of water to get exactly at 3.
Then I put it in a pot with 3/4 C sugar per 1 C water. Stir til sugar dissolves completely.
Cooked it 20 minutes over a double boiler~ one pot sitting on top another slightly smaller pot of boiling water is what I use, some people might actually have a double boiler, but I really don't know what that is.
Then I let it cool, but I let it cool for 8 hours because I left the house and didn't come back until later. My mixture was now at something like 4 cups because of the added sugar.
I added 1/4 TBS (almost 1 tsp) of yeast to the mixture and stirred well. Poured in a glass jar with a coffee filter on top secured with rubber band, the yeast can ferment the rice syrup and breath and release gas. Yuck! I set it in my closet in my house on a top shelf, since "heat rises"- even though my apartment is a steady 68degrees...
Going to bed I wondered if I should have heated the rice mixture a bit so it was warm to activate the yeast... So when I made green tea with breakfast this morning I set my glass jar close to the burner. Then with gloved hands I held if over the steal with the bottle just in the water, only for 30 seconds or so. If it gets too hot it will kill the yeast. I did that twice, with a break in between and set the container close to the burner after.
It appeared to work~ now there were little bubbles all in the container, whereas before there were just a few near the top. My Yeast is aliiiiive! It's Alliiivvee!

Happy Halloween

Pindo Palm Jelly

Also known as the Jelly Palm, the Pindo palm produces small orange fruits in the summer time. Each front of fruit ripens at a different time, giving you fruit all summer long. The taste is similar to apricot, mango and peach; but with a different (yet delicious) twang. The other day I picked a few fruits, just enough to cover the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. Then we had a massive storm that picked the rest of the fruit for me, and threw them in the bushes. Now I am more prepared for the next batch. (Photo: Six 8 oz jars Pindo Jelly and Two jars Banana pepper rings.)
I followed this recipe:

2 cups prepared palm fruit juice

3 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup liquid fruit pectin

Remove pits from palm fruit, barely cover with water and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes. Crush fruit and strain through a jelly bag. Measure into a saucepan. Add sugar to juice and mix well. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. At once stir in pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, skim off foam and pour quickly into hot, clean jars. For long term storage, the USDA recommends heat processing all jams and jellies in a waterbath canner for 5 to 10 minutes. Yield about 4, 8 ounce jars.

As far as the "Jelly Bag" goes, I made mine ghetto style and just tied up my fruit in a handkerchief and dangled it over a bowl to catch the juice. Once it cooled more I crushed them.
The amount of fruits I picked yielded me about 4 cups of juice so I can make another batch probably.
I also bought the liquid pectin, as specified, and used just one envelope of it, which looked to be about 1/2 a cup.
I also cut the sugar down a whole bunch, just measured 3 almost full cups of sugar. I put it all in a one quart jar, but I didn't fill it all the way up, I poured the rest in a small mason jar as a "tester". This is my first time making jelly EVER, so hopefully it turns out good! It sure smells wonderful.

Here is my set up to drip the juice out, thinner fabric may work better)

EDIT~ Aug.9
This morning my jelly is still a bit too liquid. I understand that some jellies do take a few days to set, so I am going to sit this one out until tomorrow or the next day and remake it. Luckily it is easy to fix jelly! you can find out how at here (How to Fix Runny Jam or Jelly), at pickyourown.org. So either way I come out winning! Looks like the next front is ripening, if I get good at this I can send jars of Jelly to my friends. I missed a majority of the fruits that fell, and the amount I collected gave me a good amount of juice. If i play my cards right I could make several dozen cans of jelly this summer! Now that's the kind of work I like!

Edit~ Aug 11
Today I fixed my jelly. I also made another two 8 oz jars since I had just enough juice and pectin left over. They are still setting but I can tell that this time probably worked. The mixture became very firm and gelatinous towards the end. Also the bit that remained on the bottom of the pan was jelly~ and delicious! I added lemon juice the second time around, as I added this in when I fixed the first batch.

I also canned Banana Pepper rings while I was at it. A farmer at the farmer's market was selling Banana Peppers for 5 cents each! I should have bought them all. But instead I bought just enough to make Two 8 oz jars. I boiled two jars of filtered water and one jar vinegar. Meanwhile I crammed banana peppers, cut into rings, into sterilized jars. In each jar I added a pinch of sea salt (regular table salt may discolour the fruit and/or water), 1/3 of a huge garlic clove, and some black pepper corns. In one I added a pinch of sugar, but I wanted to see what difference would be to leave it out. Then I poured the water/vinegar mixture to fill the jars most of the way.

Everything got processed (canned) in boiling water for 10 minutes. You can probably get away with just doing it for 5 minutes, but I wanted to make sure I did it right. You know you are doing it right when the cans Pop! when they are cooling, this is when the cans seal. Pretty neat!


Who wants some jelly??