Recommended Reading: Rosemary Gladstar's Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health

This book is a life-changer:

Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health: 175 Teas, Tonics, Oils, Salves, Tinctures, and Other Natural Remedies for the Entire Family

 I have always felt that we rely too much on chemical preparations, rather than the natural herbal remedies mother nature provides. And that a lot of herbal solutions have been lost in Western cultures (think witch hunts) whereas many Asian cultures know and still use herbal remedies. When I visited rural health facilities in Vietnam for example, they had lovely herb gardens which they explained were part of traditional medical treatments.
 I loved the author, Rosemary Gladstar's, writing style - teaching and encouraging at the same time. I want to try everything that she recommends.

Reuse Recipe: Tomato Sauce

Let me preface this recipe by saying - this is not a true re-use recipe, not like making use of the stale bread and sour milk, but it is a real money-saver! I was complaining once to my friend, Alissa, how I would never grow enough tomatoes in our (small backyard) garden to make a years worth of salsa and spagetti sauce for our family. She proposed this brilliant solution of buying large #10 cans of tomato sauce, crushed, and diced tomatoes. These are a great way to save money in general - like Money Saving Mom describes here.   They are about $2.75 per can at my local Costco - with 2 cans and some other ingredients I make approximately 12 jars of "healthy" spagetti sauce.  The same amount of spagetti sauce would normally cost about 20$, even on sale.
I cook by feeling/tasting more than numbers, but here is the general outline of my sauce recipe:

1. In a frying pan/non-stick sauce pan - cook 2 large chopped onions, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, and a bunch of chopped garlic (3-4 tablespoons). Add the spices you like/have on hand - a small scoop of basil, a big scoop of parsley, rosemary, oregano, and salt to taste. 
2. I like to add broth or a small amount of meat to give the sauce some body. In this batch, I used 3/4 lb of hamburger meat that I happened to have leftover from something else. But I have used turkey broth, chicken broth, or bouillon cubes.
3. Dump everything from the frying pan into a very large stock pot along with 2 #10 size cans of crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, or tomato sauce.  
4. Look around the freezer/fridge/garden for greens that need to be used.  I love growing kale in my garden, so easy and so productive. If it is summertime I might run out and harvest some fresh, but  I also blanche and freeze whatever kale or other greens (beet tops, spinach, collards), we don't eat fast enough.  In this particular batch I added half a gallon ziploc of kale, some frozen leeks that were looking a little freezer burned, and a small sandwich bag of parsley that I had frozen.  This is also a good way to use up that bag of spinach that is about to turn soggy.
5. Go do something else for awhile and let it simmer until you have a minute. Taste. Add a bit more salt, maybe a handful of sugar if it tastes too acidic, and let it simmer on. 
6. Just before dinner, break out your immersion blender and blend it all up. Use some for spagetti that night,  and let the sauce cool some with the lid on your stockpot. 
7. Pour into mason jars or recycle any (well cleaned) glass jars for the purpose. Allow about an inch of headroom.  Cool jars in the fridge over night - then put them in the freezer.  I lay them on their sides and then stand them up once they are frozen.  If you prefer plastic containers, those work fine too. We use about 1 jar of sauce/week - so 12 jars lasts 12 weeks. If you have a pressure canner, you can also can and store these at room temperature. 

Vintage Finds

Love this fabric. If I had the time, I would make it into a giant stack of cloth napkins -- about 50 of them.  In the meantime, I have listed it in my shop. If no one purchases it I won't be too sad.

Vintage Napkin Fabric

This fabric would make a great blouse or dress, but again, keeps sinking to the bottom of my priority sewing list, so I am putting it in my shop.

Cut'n Sew blouse or dress

Sew Special

I am still stuck on my cowboy quilt, not sure how or what to intersperse among the 20 bearpaw blocks... I guess we could call it "quilter's block"! Very bad pun. sorry.
Other projects are getting done though.  Here is my new blouse. Based on Lisette pattern #2211. I have a long torso, and I like my shirts long, so I made the tunic length and then hemmed it to fit.  After I tried it on I realised that I must also have wide shoulders. It fits great, just a wee bit snug across the upper back. Luckily, I found this great post from the lovely Sarai of Colleterie.  Will make those adjustments next time. Yes, I liked this pattern enough to make more of them!

Lisette blouse #2211

Homeschooling Summary of the Week

Our new homeschooling books came this week! They are:
Family Math for Young Children and Phonics Pathways.

They have both added a lot of fun and games to our homeschooling. Family math is a creative approach to looking at the math in our every day lives. This week we estimated numbers of large and small blocks in jars and counted them, played in and around shapes on the floor, and made comparisons. We are learning short vowel sounds from the Phonics Pathways book and playing the "short vowel shuffle" which my daughter can't get enough of. I heartily recommend both of these books so far!

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Reading	Phonics a	Phonics e	Phonics i	Sick day	Sick day
Writing	Letter a	Letter e	Letter i	“	“
Math	Estimating	Comparisons	Inside outside Shapes	“	“
Science	X	X	X	X	X
History/Geography	X	X	X	X	X

Recommended Reading: The Red Necklace

I am thinking that I should rename these posts about books. Sometimes I may not want to recommend the books that I read... so far not necessary though!
The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner was an excellent story. I would label it a historical fiction, since it is set during the French Revolution and includes a lot of accurate information about that brutal period of France's history. The only aspect that I did not like was the spooky black magic of the book's villain, Count Kalliovsky. It gave me the shivers!  I am a wuss about anything remotely scary.

The Red Necklace

The Silver Blade

When I finished the book I realised that their was a sequel and ordered it from the library.  The Silver Blade was a good conclusion, I liked it, although again, the villain was very spooky. Maybe these would be good Halloween reading recommendations.

Reuse Recipe: Sour milk

This past week I had a whole gallon of 2% milk that went sour. I am not sure how it happened since the expiration date had not been reached and it was unopened?  But it was a fun challenge to see how many ways I could use it up.  Usually, when/if milk goes sour in my fridge it is a much smaller amount.

First, I made my go-to recipes for when I have sour milk:

1. Sally Lunn Bread from my favorite bread recipe book: The Bread Machine Cookbook. It used only 2/3 cup of milk.
2. Far: which I learned to love while living in Brittany, France. I forgot to take a picture of it, but it looks like the photo below.  My family calls it custard. It is good warm or cold. Normally, it uses prunes and raisins, which sink to the bottom of the pan while it cooks. 

Photo From: http://pepsakoy.blogspot.com/2011/11/far-breton.html

Here is the recipe that I have been using for it lately (very easy to make):
4 c. whole milk ( I used 2% sour milk and it still turned out, but I have also added an extra egg to make sure it was thick enough)
7-8 large eggs
1 c. sugar
10 T. butter (melted)
1/4 t. salt
1t. vanilla
Blend it all up a little bit.
Then add 1 1/2 C. flour and blend it up until it is only slightly lumpy. Use a cold stick of butter to really thoroughly butter a glass casserole dish. My French host family told me that that was what makes it yummy. Then put a few handfuls of raisins and/or prunes in the bottom of the dish and pour the batter on top. Bake at 375F for about 60 to 75 minutes. Check it by making sure the center is cooked, "set-up" and not liquidy at all.


Then since I had so much sour milk, I branched out into some new recipes.  Here are the 2 cookbooks that I used it this week:

From the Betty Crocker cookbook, I made:

 1. Waffles: which normally uses 1 3/4 cup of regular milk, indicated that 2 cups of buttermilk and less baking powder could be substituted.  I made 2 batches and froze one for quick breakfasts later in the week. I have tried several waffle recipes over the years and this one is great.  Crispy on the outside, but moist inside.

2. Buttermilk Brine Fried Chicken: This used about 4 cups of sour/buttermilk. My first time making this recipe. I hardly ever make anything fried, but wow it was delicious! The buttermilk brine is like a marinate for the chicken (I used thigh meat). It calls for 1/3 cup of salt and a 2-4 hour soak. By the time I got around to making dinner it had been in there about 7-8 hours. It was nice and salty.  I think I might try to leave it in less time on the next go and see if it is even better/mildly salted. 

From the Boston Cooking School Cookbook: 

1. Doughnuts/sugar cookies - I love this cookbook because it is from the depression (1932) and it has a lot of good reuse/thrifty type recipes, including a whole section on toast and crumbs! The sour milk section of the index listed doughnuts, which is another fried thing that I have never made before.  They were delicious, no comparison to the insubstantial store bought version.  But the recipe made a huge batch - like 2 dozen biscuit sized doughnuts. I fried half and baked half, just for comparison.  The baked "doughnuts" were more like not very sweet sugar cookies. My kids loved both.