How to Drain Hamburger Grease

I may have mentioned how smart my kids are. Well, this is one of Javan's ideas. When you need to drain grease off a pan of hamburger, use a turkey baster. How brilliant is that?  Just be sure to hold it straight up and down or else you'll end up spraying grease all over your stove. Ask me how I know. Or maybe don't!  Also, do not attempt to siphon off the grease while the pan is still on the burner or you could melt your turkey baster.  Don't ask about that either!

How to mix up natural peanut butter

Natural peanut butter has a tendency to separate.  You will see a layer of peanut oil floating on the top.  When we first made the switch to natural peanut butter I would use a knife to mix the oils back in.  This was a slow and usually somewhat messy process and I just knew there had to be a better way.

One day it hit me to use the dough hooks on my hand mixer!  Now, I have to tell you that I usually laugh when I call these dough hooks.  I own a Bosch mixer with the American Dough Hook.  Now that is a dough hook, these are just plain wimpy by comparison.

But, I digress, here is the mixer with the attached dough hooks.  They fit nicely into the jar.  Push them in just a few inches and be sure to hold on tight to the jar when you turn on the mixer.  Start it on low and gradually increase it as you go deeper into the jar.  Be sure to scrape the sides and especially the bottom of the jar.  Let it mix until no more oil is visible.  If you do it right, you'll be incorporating air and making the peanut butter nice and fluffy.

This is what mine looked like right after mixing.  You should always keep natural peanut butter refrigerated after opening and this is important after mixing because it will keep it from separating again.

Here is the same jar after it has been in the fridge.  Can you see how fluffy it looks?  It also stays on the knife much better because it isn't runny when cold.

"Eggs"periments

This morning we did a couple of experiments with eggs, hence the title of this post.

While we were home visiting the folks we saw a commercial for a new product called "Eggies" which are basically little containers that you crack your eggs into, then boil and end up with boiled eggs that you don't have to peel.  My brilliant daughter, Chloe, came up with the idea to crack eggs into a glass container with a lid and then boil.  I modified this to using a jelly jar with lid and it worked great!

We took the precaution of putting a small rack into the bottom of the pan of water.  This required a large than necessary pan because it had to accomodate the rack.  Also, this pan wasn't quite big enough and the rack wasn't flat on the bottom.  Note to self, use larger pan next time.  The benefit of this pan was the vented glass lid which I left on during the entire cooking process.

I cracked two eggs into the jar and put on the lid.

Here is the jar sitting on the rack.  Because I wasn't concerned about cracking eggshells, I put it on high until it boiled and then allowed it to cook for 10 minutes after it reached boiling, which is how I usually boil eggs.  Using an oven mitt, I lifted the jar to find the middle still gushy, so I put it back in the pot and checked every few minutes.  It actually took 20 minutes to cook.

 Here is the cooked egg in the jar.  Notice that the level it pretty much the same as before cooking.  I didn't know whether to expect them to expand or not.  I guess not!


The lid did "pop" and seal, as canning lids are supposed to do, so I held the jar with the oven mitt and used a knife to pop the lid off after having let it sit for 3 or 4 minutes.  

Here is what it looked like inside the jar.

I used a case knife to loosed the sides and it poured right out into a bowl.

I cut it in half and behold, perfectly cooked boiled eggs!

I also took a picture of the empty jar so you can see how much cleaning needed to be done.  I just put water in and used a spoon to scrape the sides, much easier than trying to peel farm fresh eggs!

I'm wondering if greasing the jar would be better.  I'll have to try that next time.  I think you could fit three eggs into the jar, but it would depend on the size of the eggs.  And, I'm not sure how that would affect cooking time.

We are so happy to have a new, easy way to boil eggs for egg or potato salad!

Did I mention how smart my kids are?  ;)


The other experiment was poaching an egg.  It didn't work out very well, we'll have to play with that more another day.

Keeping up with laundry on a long trip

I just flashed back to the days of having only 5 kids and one on the way.  We were moving across the country from Delaware to Washington and opted to drive.  Lots of clothes to keep up with and our oldest was only 8, so most of the laundry duty was up to me.

The way I kept up during the trip was to pack a clean outfit for each of us in a trashbag with a twist tie.  Each night, we would carry one bag plus the toiletries kit in to the hotel.  Everyone would shower/bathe and the dirty clothes went back into the bag and we would tie them shut to keep clean and dirty from getting confused.  When I had the chance to do laundry, we'd repack the clean clothes and put the twist tie back on. 

This kept us from having to carry a suitcase/backpack for each family member in every night and really helped to maintain my sanity.  Plus, it helped me to stay on top of the laundry situation knowing how many clean outfits we had left and when we'd need to do the washing again.


Oh, in case you're wondering, we never minded letting our kids sleep in their clothes!  ;)

How to Stop a Cough

My aunt, JoAnn told me a while back about putting Vick's VapoRub on the soles of your feet to stop a cough. Of course, you put on socks to keep from making a mess. I don't know how, but it really works. The active ingredient is eucalyptus oil. So, we experimented with essential oil and found it to be as effective without the goo. Hali currently has a nighttime cough and last night I tried eucalyptus lemon essential oil, which smells way better. She gave one last, awful cough and then sweet, sweet silence for the rest of the night!

Fancy Dinner Rolls

Chloe and I will be making 200 whole wheat rolls for the Kent/Goforth wedding this weekend.  The mother of the bride simply requested rolls that are about 3" in diameter.  I wanted to try and find a way to make them pretty.  So, we made a few last week and slashed the tops in different ways to see how they would turn out.  I wasn't satisfied with the results.  So, I went to the internet to find a "fancy" roll method and came up with Kaiser or Rosette rolls.

So that I would remember what we did, I decided to make a few videos to show the process, rising, and finished product.  I posted them on FaceBook directly from my iPod.  If I can figure out how to do it, I'm going to share them here. Unfortunately, the videos require a flash player, so those using iPods are out of luck. You'll just have to come back and visit from your PC when you get the chance.
 

A New Blog

So, I've created a new blog where I intend to record trials (things I try as well as things I go thru), tips (some original, some gathered from other resources but all neat things I want my kids to know), and tricks (unique ways to do things), hence the name of the blog.  I hope you'll learn something useful and have fun visiting me here!