Room Air Freshener – Make Your Own

The best make-your-own room air fresheners recipe that I have found, is also the simplest to make.

1 cup water

1 Tablespoon white distilled vinegar

1 teaspoon baking soda

Essence oil (optional...if you want it, add as much or as little as you desire)

Mix above ingredients together and pour into a spray bottle. Use as needed.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)

Herbal Remedies Using Daylilies

One of my Daylilies beds in my garden this year.

 

For hundreds and hundreds of years, Chinese traditional medicine has used a tea made from the flowers of the daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). While this has not been verified by Scientific research, it is reported that the daylily tea helps to cause forgetfulness concerning the traumatic event for the victim.

The tea from the daylily has been also used as a pain killer, fever reducer, sedative and for childbirth. However, there is no scientific research, that I have found, to back these claims up. To my way of thinking, the tea tastes good, so no harm can be done in trying it to treat the above conditions.

Some warning: While all parts of the daylily are edible, make very sure it is a daylily that you will be eating and not it's poisonous look alike...the Iris. Eating to many of the flowers can cause diarrhea. Also, there are reports that eating to many of the leaves, can cause hallucinations. Although, I have never found any documentation, that this has actually occurred or a reason why this would occur.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)

Disclaimer: (Legal stuff my lawyer said I should include in this section of my blog.) I am not a doctor or a member of the medical community. The content of this post is solely from my own personal research and use and the information provided here has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This post is intended for educational purposes only and not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any condition or disease. Be sure to consult with a medical professional regarding the treatment of any condition or medical symptom you may experience. 

Cheese Made from Powdered Milk

If you never made cheese before, and are wanting to try it, this is an excellent recipe to start with. It is fast, easy, and if you follow the directions, you will probably succeed. While the finished product is good, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being excellent) I would give the taste a 6. My hubs gives it a 7. Most likely, that is because as with any homemade thing, homemade always tastes a little different than store bought. Either way, it is a good recipe to have on hand in case one needs/wants cheese sometime and cannot, for whatever reason, get to the store.

Cheese from Powdered Milk

Makes about 2 pounds of cheese

3 cups hot water

4 ½ cups non-fat powdered milk

½ cup oil

1 ¼ cup vinegar

additional hot water

cold water

additional oil

• Lightly grease a medium size pan with oil by rubbing oil on sides and bottom of pan with a paper towel.
• Put pan on a hot burner til oil starts to smoke.
• In a blender add powdered milk to the 3 cups of hot water. Mix well.
• Add ½ cup oil to the milk (this is so the cheese will melt in cooking like store bought cheese does) Mix well
• Once the oil in the pan starts to smoke, remove pan from burner and add milk mixture all at once and quickly. (Otherwise the milk will scorch and it won't make for good cheese.)
• Add the vinegar to the milk DO NOT POUR IN MIDDLE OF PAN Pour the vinegar around the outer rim of the liquid.
• Gently stir until the curds separate from the whey. When it is totally separated, the whey will be a yellowish color and the curds will be white.
• Drain the curds in a colander that is set over a pan.
• Rinse the curds with hot water to rinse more of the whey off of the curds.
• Then rinse off the curds with cold water to set the curds.
• Consistency of the curds will depend on how long you let it drain. For a spreadable cheese, let set for 3 minutes. To be able to slice the cheese, let it set for 10 minutes. To be able to grate the cheese, 1 hour. (more on letting it set one hour further down.)

If you are wanting this to be mozzarella cheese, simply add ½ teaspoon of salt, and mix well. Place cheese into either a cheese cloth, or the toe of nylon stocking. Squeeze out any remaining whey and place into a dish. Set some kind of weight on the top of the cheese. (This is to press the curds together.) Chill in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

If you want to have cheddar cheese flavored cheese, add 3-4 Tablespoons of cheddar powder. (Cheddar powder can be found at Amazon.com or numerous other places on the Internet.) You can either eat it right away, or if you are wanting to slice or crumble the cheese,  place cheese into either a cheese cloth, or the toe of nylon stocking. Squeeze out any remaining whey and place into a dish. Set some kind of weight on the top of the cheese. (This is to press the curds together.) Chill in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)

  

Bunny in Garden Problem Solved

Click on photo to enlarge

 

For some reason this year, we had (notice past tense) a horrible problem with bunnies eating the leaves off of our green bean bushes. They wouldn't eat the lettuce (which is right next to the green beans), or the white clover (which is very plentiful throughout our yard) or any other plant in our gardens. They would only eat the green bean leaves. While they didn't kill any of the bean plants, they ate the leaves off of the plants, so that only the stems were left. Lucky for us, the beans recovered, but we knew we needed to do something to stop “Thumper” from killing the plants.

What we finally ended up doing to stop this from happening was to go to one of those “big box” stores and we bought enough decorative border fencing that would go completely around the outside of our raised gardens. Then we took some plastic window screens that we had in storage, and cut into 12 inch wide strips. We then attached the strips of window screen to the border fence using twist ties. Problem solved!! It is hardly noticeable to look at and the Bunnies have not bothered our garden since then.

Another way that would work, is to buy lattice decorative border fencing and put that up around your garden.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)

Gravy Mix Recipes...Make Your Own

When I was growing up, having gravy at every meal was an expected thing. It was poured onto everything...potatoes, biscuits, vegetables, noodles, you name it and gravy was on it. Which was fine except for the meals when we would either grill out, or at breakfast when no meat had been fried. When those meals happened, we used a gravy made from one of the following recipes that my Grandma had for making gravy mixes. Personally, I like the chicken one best, but the beef one is pretty good too especially if used for a base to make a stew.

[Shirley's Notes:]

• You can use bouillon cubes rather than the loose granules. To do so, substitute the three Tablespoons of granules with 6 cubes. You will need to smash the cubes and break up the chunks before adding them to the mix.

Chicken Gravy Mix

1-1/3 cups of nonfat powdered milk

¾ cup all-purpose flour

3 Tablespoons chicken bouillon granules

¼ teaspoon ground sage

1/8 teaspoon ground thyme

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Mix together and store in an airtight container.

To Use:

• In a medium size sauce pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.
• Combine ½ cup of gravy mix with butter and slowly add 1 cup water, whisking mixture continually.
• Cook for 2 – 3 minutes until thick and smooth.

Beef Gravy Mix

1-1/3 cups of nonfat powdered milk

¾ cup all-purpose flour

3 Tablespoons beef bouillon granules

1/8 teaspoon ground thyme

¼ teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon sage

Mix together and store in an airtight container.

To Use:

• In a medium size sauce pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.
• Combine ½ cup of gravy mix with butter and slowly add 1 cup water, whisking mixture continually.
• Cook for 2 – 3 minutes until thick and smooth.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)