(Sorry for not catching it sooner. My life is already so full as to strain credulity, but last week I was called to be the president of our local branch of the Church. I am glad and grateful for this call [I enjoy Church work more than anything else on earth], but it does mean that my attention is somewhat scattered.)

Well, last week was the annual ritual known as Missoula Childrens’ Theater. This year’s production was Jack and the Beanstalk, and we had four kids participating (Emma as pianist, as usual). We were coming home late from a rehearsal and remembered that the poultry had not been “put to bed” (our term for locking them safely in at night). I stopped the BGF at the garden driveway to drop off Emma and Becca,, so they could put the birds to bed and then come up to the house. But as soon as they opened the car door,

Hoo-EE! Skunk bomb.

Judging by the strength of the smell, Jess and I was sure that the skunk had sprayed (as opposed to merely walked by). We thought we knew who the lucky winner was. And sure enough, for the fourth time in his young life, Hank had received the honors.

Fortunately Jessica knew what to do. Hank smelled so bad that she wouldn’t even let him in the house for his bath, as previously. So she brought a bucket out to him filled with the following potion:

2 gallons warm water
1 T dish soap
1 bottle hydrogen peroxide
1/2 box baking soda

Those are the precise scientific measurements (I think). The amazing thing is that this potion works. When washed thoroughly with it, not only will a dog not smell like skunk—he won’t even smell like a dog. He smells like nothing. The stench is utterly neutralized.

Well, it worked again. We’re just hoping Hank doesn’t encounter any porcupines.

It’s a modification of my old bread recipe. After lots of practice and many mistakes, I’ve found some things that work. No doubt I’ll come up with other shortcuts in future, and probably ruin it in the process, but for now it works pretty well. And for somebody who isn’t much smarter than bread himself, well, I like it.

Put 6 cups hot (116°) water in a measuring bowl and add 1/4 cup (4 T) yeast. Then combine the following in the bread mixer:
12 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups white flour
1 1/2 T salt
1 cup brown sugar (I like mild honey instead, but we ran out)
1/3 cup oil
3 T dough enhancer (this is the ticket, friends, to good soft bread)

Pour the yeast mixture in and mix the whole schmere for 10 minutes. While it’s mixin’, grease 6 bread pans. When it’s done mixin’, grease your (immaculately clean) hands and divide the dough evenly among the pans. I twist the lumps of dough a little to smooth them out. Set the pans in the oven to rise (don’t turn it on; but flip on the oven light so you can see when it’s riz). It takes less than an hour for the bread to rise up big and puffy (at least I think it does; I’m always off doing something else while the bread rises). At that point, turn the oven on to 375° for 30 minutes or so, and remove when the loaves sound kind of hollow when flipped with a fingernail. Slather with homemade butter and enjoy.

See, it’s not an exact science. You may want to divide this recipe in half or even thirds (I tripled the batch from the cookbook, along with other modifications). But hey, our forebears didn’t have timers and thermostats to make their bread. Just kind of wing it, learn from your mistakes, and enjoy. I sure do!

One pint o'homemade sour cream. Would you like fries with that?

I promised you Homemade Week last week, and I made good on that promise by staying home on Friday. So no post. Actually I wasn’t home much that day, having accepted an invitation to spend my day off first at the local high school career day, talking up my career (such as it is), and later at the elementary school, losing a battle with the 4th grade class as to how to draw their self portraits. I had lost my voice. It is useless to go to war with 4th graders when one has laryngitis.

So it’s a new week, and I have to tell you about homemade sour cream. Jess made some last week and put it on potatoes she made, and wow! I was impressed. It was not as thick as the store-bought stuff, but I figure just about everything we make, grow, or raise at home will be different somehow from the store-bought variety.

Here’s the ree-sype. Or, I should say, the dee-rexions.

Get one pint of the thickest possible cream off your gallon of raw milk. Better yet, get one pint of cream off of two gallons of milk, to ensure that you don’t have any wimpy cream (or, horrors, actual milk) in your future sour cream.

Place the pint jar o’cream in a bowl of hot water to warm it up. When the jar is warm to the touch, add 3-4 tablespoons of buttermilk (“the fresher the better,” we’re told), depending on the desired consistency. Mix buttermilk with cream, cover, and let it sit out on the kitchen counter overnight. In the morning, you’ll have sour cream.

Once it’s sour cream’s sour, you’ll have to put it in the fridge. Otherwise you’ll have a Bad Thing.

The first time we did this, we had sour cream. And behold, it was yummy. The second, third, or tenth time, we do it, you never know. I’ve learned to make better bread by defying my own recipe, and Jessica produced yogurt the other day that had the consistency of actual yogurt (instead of yogurt-flavored liquid), simply by breaking the rules that came with the yogurt-maker. That’s how these things go. Practice makes perfect. If our recipes ever kill me, I’ll let you know.

Grate up the soap with a cheese grater, then throw it in the pot of boilin' water

Well a few months back I mentioned my homemade laundry detergent and bragged about what a great job it did getting our clothes clean. There was only one problem: it was lumpy. This must be because I used half a bar of Fels Naphtha soap ( which I completely forgot to use this time). I made some more laundry soap on Saturday, and this time it’s smooth as silk. This is because I used a whole bar of Dove soap, which Jessica doesn’t like becuase it makes her feel greasy. Maybe because it’s one-quarter moisturizing cream? Hopefully it doesn’t make our clothes feel like that, but it’s SOAP for heaven’s sake. Soap is supposed to remove grease. How they ever make soap out of one quarter moisturizing cream I’ll never know. Of course I also add borax to the mix, and if Dove soap is sweet and fluffy moisturizing cream, borax is the sandblaster of the detergent world. (At least I hope it is.) Dove vs. sandblaster? Borax wins. I’ll let you know if I feel greasy.

Here’s the REE-sype (adapted from The Simple Dollar, thank you!)

1 pot boiling water

1 bar o’soap (as discussed above. Also, Jess and I save all those thin little soap slivers from when the bar of soap gets too small to use in the shower. They dry up and we keep them in a box until soap making time. Better’n wasting them.)

1 cup borax

1 cup baking soda

Grate the soap on a potato grater. (The grater gets all soapy, but you can just throw it in the dishwasher when you’re done.) Sprinkle the soap particles into the boiling water and stir them up into mush. Use a metal spoon—easier to clean. When it’s all stirred in, turn off the heat and go fill up a 4-gallon bucket with hot water in the tub. Throw in the borax and baking soda while it’s filling.

Leave enough space at the top for your pot o’soap, dump that in, and cover it up. Trent says to let it sit for 24 hours, but who has time for that? I used mine on a batch of laundry the same afternoon. Nobody’s mentioned greasiness yet.

This makes enough laundry soap for 64 loads of laundry if you use a cup per batch, but at our house we’re cheapskates who also have a front-loading washer so we don’t need much soap to begin with. Maybe 1/3 cup, maybe 1/4. The former will stretch the bucket of soap to 192 loads, the latter to 256 (1 gallon = 16 cups). Granted, with 9 people living in a house surrounded by animals and dirt, we probably do more laundry than some people, but still. Cheap covers a multitude of sins.

And thanks for your input on the frequency of posts. As you’ve noticed, I’m moving to three posts weekly for now. Thanks for your comments and support.

Friends of ours are now up to four cows and milk hasn’t been selling well for them lately, so their milk is piling up. They’ve agreed to sell it to us for $2.50 a gallon, about what you’d pay at the store. But this is Jersey cow milk, so there’s a lot of cream. And you have to skim every milk bottle before you put it on your Cheerios. (Mm mm good!) And the quart jars of cream have been piling up in the fridge. So Jess and the kids each grabbed a jar yesterday and started shakin’.

And look!

The secret, we think, is to let the cream warm up. When we tried making butter last year, we took it straight out of the fridge and threw it in the mixer, and it would take up to 45 minutes to congeal. Yuck. Because it was cold, wethinks. And yesterday she left the cream out all morning and it was butter within 7 minutes.

Last year we also had a problem with the butter going rancid in a few days because we didn’t know to drain the buttermilk and rinse the butter. Ick. So Jess has rinsed this batch out thoroughly. I was hoping to get some on my (homemade) muffins this morning but no dice; she wanted to rinse it again.

That’s how we learn. But I’m glad to be getting raw milk again, and glad for the cream that comes with it. Sour cream is next.

Poppy Seed Dressing (great for spinach salads)

3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp grated onion
1 tsp ground mustard
1/3 cup vinegar 1 cup oil
1 Tbsp poppy seeds

Add all ingredients to a quart jar and shake for at least a minute, until sugar dissolves. Refrigerate.

Blueberry Sauce (we use with powdered sugar or whipped cream on crepes, German pancakes, waffles, French toast…)

2 cups blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2 Tbsp cornstarch plus 1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp lemon flavoring, optional

Put berries, sugar and water in a saucepan. Heat on med-high until boiling. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes. Stirring continually, add the cornstarch-water mixture. Cook just until thickened, stir in lemon flavoring, and serve.

Tartar Sauce (we like lots of pickles and pepper in it)

2 cups mayo (you can substitute 1 cup with sour cream)
3/4 cup dill relish or chopped dill pickles
3 green onions, chopped
dill seasoning (I use It’s a Dilly)
pepper

Mix all together and refrigerate.

Oatmeal Muffins
Combine 1 cup flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 3 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 cup oats (quick or regular). Add 1 egg, 1 cup mil and 3 Tbsp oil. Mix until all combined, pour into greased muffin tins, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (if desired), and bake at 425 for 15 min. Makes 12.

Wheat Muffins (from my mother-in-law)
Combine 4 tsp baking powder, 1/2 cup white flour, 1 1/2 cups wheat flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp salt. Add 1 cup milk, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup oil, and 1/2 cup nuts if desired (we don’t desire). Mix until all combined, pour into greased muffin tins, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (if desired), and bake at 425 for 15 min. Makes 12.

Brown Sugar Muffins (from Taste of Home)
Combine 1 cup brown sugar, 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt (and I added 1/2 cup oats just for fun). Add 1/2 cup oil, 1 egg, 1 cup milk, and 2 tsp vanilla extract. Mix until all combined, pour into greased muffin tins, and bake at 400 for 16-20 min. Makes at least 12 (usually 16 for me).

Happy muffins!

Pixie’s Pine Bark

Spray a jellyroll pan with cooking spray. Line with tin foil, so it
goes up over each end (and the sides if you have the time). Spray the
foil. Line the foil with as many saltines as it takes to cover the
pan.

Heat oven to 400. In a saucepan, melt 1 cup butter and 1 cup brown
sugar over fairly high heat. Stir frequently until sugar has
dissolved, and mixture is bubbly. Remove from heat and stir in 1/2 tsp
almond extract (optional, but good!). Pour over crackers, trying to
cover most (as they bake the caramel will spread). Bake 5-10 min, or
until bubbling. Remove from oven and sprinkle with 1 pkg. semi-sweet
choc. chips. Bake one more minute. Remove from oven, spread chocolate
with a rubber scraper to cover all the caramel, and cool completely.
Lift foil up, one corner at a time, and break the bark into chunks.
Enjoy!

Here is essentially my friend’s recipe, except that I found another recipe with half the butter. Still tastes the same. It is really good. Don’t eat the whole pan yourself!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

1/2 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 cup peanut butter (I like crunchy)
2 cups chocolate chips, semi-sweet

Line a 9×13″ pan with foil (so it hangs over the sides a little) and spray lightly with cooking spray. Melt butter in microwave. In a bowl, combine butter, p. sugar, g. c. crumbs, and p. butter. Mix well, and press into prepared pan. Melt chocolate chips in a bowl in the microwave (in mine I can cook on high 1 minute, stir, and cook 1 minute more to have it be just right). Stir until smooth. Cool slightly and spread over p. butter mixture in pan. Cool. Cut partially
through with a knife to mark squares. Refrigerate at least an hour. Lift from pan, using foil handles. Cut all the way through to divide into squares.

Lemon Supremes

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup + 1 Tbsp flour, divided
1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
grated rind of one lemon
2 large eggs, beaten
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar

Heat oven to 350. Cream butter, 1 cup flour, and powdered sugar in a large bowl. Press into 9″ square baking pan (I always coat pans with cooking spray just in case; and you can use a 9″x13″ pan if you need to have more servings–they will just be a little thinner). Bake 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. In a bowl whisk together lemon juice, lemon rind, eggs, baking powder, 1 Tbsp flour, and sugar. Pour over crust. Bake 25 minutes. Cool in pan. Cut into squares. They can be a bit sticky, so can be served in cupcake liners.

*Just a side note. By accident, someone I know combined all of the above ingredients instead of doing it in two steps. If you are short on time, but want something lemony, you can do it that way–it tasted really good. It just didn’t have the jelly-ish quality of the original recipe.