Canadian Crafter

Testing Blogger, it's been a loooong time!

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 19:25:00 -0700

Well, well, well... I'm back! Actually I'm testing blogger to see if it will auto post to Facebook because I'm curious if it still does that now that Facebook is/has removed their Notes feature. And if it doesn't I wonder if there is an add-on to do it? Anyone know?

Make Yogurt using Raw Milk

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Tue, 20 May 2014 21:08:00 -0700

I usually make plain yogurt but, on this day, I was experimenting with flavour and culture. I used to use store bought skim milk but now that I have a milk cow (Belle) I have tons of super delicious whole milk. I used to use plain yogurt as starter but I don’t get to the grocery store much anymore and I find it much easier to keep on hand the little packets of powdered yogurt culture. They work awesome and I can keep them in my fridge for ages! A few years ago I did a blog post on making yogurt but things change so here’s my new updated version.

You will need:

One gallon of milk
Powdered culture (I use Yogourmet brand)
Skim Milk Powder
Agave Syrup
Brown Rice Syrup (or honey, sugar, more agave, xylitol, any sweetener you can add to fruit)
Frozen Fruit

I use this brand of culture. I have tried their other kind that has casein in it and I did not like it! My yogurt was jiggly and did not set well at all plus it’s more expensive. Stick with this box and you can’t go wrong.

One gallon of raw whole milk (or any milk you prefer). I skim off the cream and save it for other things, Belle gives me pretty good tasting milk so I’ll use the cream in my tea, or make butter, or even pour it over homemade cottage cheese- and the skimmed milk is still good on/in everything else. You’ll end up with a bit of cream on the top of every yogurt jar even if you do skim, you can mix it in or just eat it as is.

Pour the milk into a pot and heat it up to 175-180F.

Hold this temp for 15-30 minutes stirring so as not to scorch the milk. Holding the temp will make your yogurt firm up like the commercial brands.

After about 10 min add 1/2 cup of Agave Syrup if you want it sweetened.

Today I wanted to add frozen strawberry and raspberry fruit so while your milk mixture is heating get your fruit ready. I add a bit of fruit to a pot, sorry I didn’t measure but it was maybe 2 cups of frozen strawberries and 1/2 cup of raspberries.

Add 1/2 cup of brown rice syrup (or whatever sweetener you prefer) to the fruit and stir.

Brown rice syrup added to the fruit. Heat to boiling and then set aside to cool.

When the milk gets to temp add 1/2 cup of skim milk powder, this will help stabilize the yogurt.

Cool the milk down to about 110F. You can place the pot into a sink full of cold water to bring the temp down faster but I usually find something else to do while it cools, and believe me, there’s always something else to do! lol

While the milk is cooling get your jars ready. Today I used 7 Gem jars, 1 recycled jar, and one regular pint jar. Make sure they all have lids!

I used my Braun mixer to chunk up the fruit, I wanted it chunky and not total puree so don’t do it for long!

Add about 1/8th of a cup of fruit to each jar.

Now that the milk has cooled to below 115F take about a cup and put it into a jar. Add your powdered yogurt culture. The directions say to add one envelope for each quart but I add one envelope for each TWO quarts, two envelopes in total and it works just fine.

Stir well!

Add back to milk in the pot and stir again.

Keep stirring because you want the culture to spread throughout the milk.

Pour it into jars and put the lids on.

I use my dehydrator to make my yogurt but there’s lots of other ways you can do it; oven, yogurt maker, cooler, thermos… Google for more ideas.

Keep your temp between 110-115F. Anything over and your culture will die.

I’ve marked my dehydrator where my temp stays pretty consistent but I also added the electronic thermometer as well.

At four hours my yogurt was done! The longer you leave it in the more tart the taste, I like it mild so I turn off the dehydrator and let my jars cool for about 1/2 hour and then I put them in the fridge. The only time I’ve seen it take much longer to set is when I did blueberry yogurt, for some reason it took about 8 hours.

This was the first time I heated the milk and held it at temperature for that length of time, it worked out well and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

20 Pie Crusts or close to it!

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 08:56:00 -0700

I'm really starting to like Pinterest! So many ideas and so many different interests but one can't get carried away because I think you can spend more time at the sight than actually doing some of the ideas, lol.

I found this on Pinterest and went to the site: http://www.nuttnhoney.net/KimsKitchen/20FreezerPieCrusts.html
Some webpages come and go and I don't want to lose this one so I'll post the recipe below but if you go to the page you'll get step-by-step details on what she does to create her pie crusts.

My changes in red:
I used 3- 1 lb regular Crisco. Add them to your Bosch bowl first and mix, add salt, add flour/water alternating until mixed.
I ground up regular wheat kernels and sifted until I had about 5.5 lbs.
I weighed my dough out to 8.5 oz and ended up with 18 circles.

Pie dough

The Recipe:

3 lb can Crisco vegetable shortening (I use Butter-Flavored Crisco)

5 lb all-purpose flour (I sub. 1-2# of the a/p flour with white bread flour)
3 cups ice water
2 Tbsp. salt

Mix in a very large bowl or pan (I use my Bosch with the dough hook).
Blend flour, salt, and Crisco together (by hand if necessary).
Add ice water and mix all together just until blended.
Form into patties weighing approx. 7.6 oz. each (if you have a scale and want to get 20 out of the recipe).

Makes about 18 to 20.

Our Milk Cow Belle

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 08:58:00 -0700

Belle came to live with us on April 11, so it's been almost a week, and the only thing I regret is not getting a milk cow 10 years ago. I'm hoping I feel the same way when it's snowing and blowing outside!

Belle

Dallas and I drove over to Grinrod last Friday and picked her up and brought her home. It took her a few days to settle in but she quickly adjusted. She was raised in a dairy barn with Holsteins and the owner was getting rid of all of her Jersey cows to make room for more Holsteins, it was a pretty big operation and I'm sure Belle is missing some of her other buddies.

Jevan and Belle enjoying green grass and sunshine!

We're starting to get into a routine and on some days she gives me almost 6 gallons of milk. Hubby and a friend modified my battery operated goat milker to work for a bit longer and it's been a blessing, no sore hands for me!

Milk in the fridge

I ordered a cream separator and once that is in I can make lots of butter and ice cream, it's too tedious skimming cream with everything else going on. Twice a day milking is keeping me busy but the kids are great about helping, now I just have to teach them how to milk! :)

Milking the goats

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:43:00 -0800

Everyday the dogs and I set out to milk our goats Penny and Cupcake. Right now we are only doing once a day milking and I try to get out there at around noon each day.

Here’s Penny in the stand with Bella patiently waiting for milk. I use a small vacuum pump on Penny so milking her is quite fast. She’s such a baby and she likes to hang around and get petted before going back into the run.

After washing her udder I squirt a few drops of milk into a container and give it to the dogs. Mini, Popi, Chicky, and Bella have all learned to share, and believe me THAT was not easy for any of them!

After finishing up with Penny in comes Cupcake. She’s quite a character. I can’t use my little machine on her and have to handmilk her. It seems no one knows how to handmilk but me even tho’ I’ve tried to show everyone in this house how to do it!

Between Cupcake and Penny I’m getting about 1.5 quarts per day from them both. I use a coffee filter to strain out any impurities.

After finishing up the milking and collecting the eggs from the chicken coop I made Gummy Treats for Jevan. I really hope he likes them because they are sugar free! I made them with xylitol. Here’s a picture of them in the dehydrator.

Goat’s Milk Ice Cream

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:20:00 -0700

I’ve been getting enough milk from our goat Cupcake to make ice cream today! I got the recipe from “Goats Produce Too! The udder Real Thing Volume II” by Mary Jane Toth. The book sure has some great “tested by her” recipes. She lists everything from desserts to cheese to sausage and my next experiment might be French Style Chevre, a type of soft cheese similar to Philadelphia Cream cheese. I need five quarts of whole goat’s milk to make the Chevre so I’ve been thinking about buying a second milk goat, lol.

Strawberry Ice Cream

2 c goat milk

2 c goat cream (I subbed raw cow’s cream because I didn’t have enough goat cream)

1 c sugar (I subbed Xylitol I ground in the blender to make it finer)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 c strawberries (fresh or frozen) I used fresh that I put in the blender for a minute

**I didn’t follow the directions because my ice cream maker is a bit different. I’ll post what I did then follow with the directions from the book.

Place crushed strawberries in an 8 cup measuring cup, add milk and cream. Add fine ground Xylitol. Add tsp. of vanilla extract. Give the whole thing a stir and pour into ice cream maker (I have a Cuisinart) for 20 minutes or until done.

Book directions:

Place crushed strawberries in the ice cream canister. Stir in remaining ingredients, stirring to mix well. Freeze as directed.

Blogger, Google Doc, Images

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 08:27:00 -0700

I was going through some older posts and noticed most of my photos/images are gone. I guess when Google Docs did something it broke the link, yet when I go to Google Docs all the photos are there. It would be a huge job to get all the photos back so I’m going to skip that unless I really need to show something. It’s frustrating because I used Google Docs for quite awhile before switching over to Windows Live Writer, and now I hear they are doing away with that too. I’ve googled the heck out of this and can’t really find much info about it, gosh you would think more than me would have this problem?? I was hoping for a quick fix but no luck, hopefully I find something.

Goats on the Ranch!

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sun, 7 Jul 2013 21:51:00 -0700

It’s been awhile since I posted but in all fairness I have been busy and, before that, very sick with an abscess tooth! Tooth pain is not fun, not fun at all! Twenty-nine years ago I ended up in the hospital for five days with a very swollen face due to an abscess tooth… this past week has brought back a flood of memories but luckily I didn’t get the swollen face again, although the endless throbbing pain pretty much stops at that point. Luckily my dentist was in his office on Canada Day and he was able to do half a root canal, tomorrow I get the other half done. The antibiotics didn’t really kick in until Thursday, six days after the first hint of pain began, but all is well now and I do believe I will be able to chew on my left side again.

Other news (as you probably guessed in my title) is we have two goats on the Ranch! We picked them up on Saturday and they are Nubian Boer cross. Meet:

Cupcake

And her kid Muffin:

Cupcake has been quite a handful although she was great last night but today she was crying something terrible whenever we left and she couldn’t see us. She jumped the fence a number of times and has now just settled down for the night. As long as there is someone out near her pen she is fine but, boy oh boy, leave her and she’s crying like a baby! We have a ghetto blaster hanging out our window and an extra string of baler twine on the top of the fence and that seemed to help. Tomorrow we will increase the fence a bit more and hopefully that will help.

My son-in-law Duane has built the pen and shelter and today he worked on the milking station. It turned out really great and tomorrow he will finish it. I had Cupcake up on it and did manage to get a teeny bit of milk out of her and I think she’s doing great for never using a milk station before! Here her and Muffin are jumping and checking it out.

Well it’s late and I’m off to bed, super tired tonight! Have a great night everyone and I’ll post more pics soon.

Dishwasher Cubes

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:59:00 -0700

I'll admit I was a bit skeptical if these would work. A few years ago I tried a homemade dishwasher powder and I didn't like it but I have to say these homemade dishwasher cubes work pretty darn good.

I got the recipe from here: http://www.louises-country-closet.com/2013/03/homemade-dishwasher-detergent-cubes.html I pretty much followed the recipe except for the bottled lemon juice, I used real lemon that I actually squeezed because I didn't have a bottle of "Real Lemon," lol.

I had bought the silicone mini ice cube trays to freeze food I was going to use in my blender for smoothies and they were a tad small but they work great for the dishwasher cubes. I use one cube in my dishwasher and not only did all my dishes come clean but I didn't have the funky smell I usually get from my dishwasher, it was nice and lemony.

From the recipe I got 27 cubes, just make sure to really pack it down, let it dry overnight, and they will pop right out the next day.

Girlfriends!

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:02:00 -0700

Stewart, Russel, and Sam have girlfriends! We started with four peahens and Pops had them in Grandma's chicken coop for about a week. The boys were pacing and showing off all up and down the fence, it was ridiculous, but we all know boys when they are showing off for girls.

Pops let them out and they quickly migrated over to my house. They spent time perusing my garden a few times a day. After a few days there was only three and a body was discovered over in the Gully Field, sadly one had been killed but we don't know by what. If it were coyotes they probably wouldn't have left a body, and feathers would have been all over the place. I didn't see the girls for a few days, most likely they were hiding from fear, and now only two have come back, we haven't found another body. The remaining two are now sticking very close to my back deck and my newly planted garden (grrrrh) but I think they know this is a safe place.

Raw Vegan Banana Bread Biscuits

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:27:00 -0700

Ooooh these are tasty little morsels! They are uncooked and dried in a dehydrator. I found the recipe on YouTube and she got it from ANI PHYO’s dessert book. I had to make a couple changes to the recipe because Sydney and Hubby are allergic to cashews and pecans so I subbed out the cashews for peanuts and the pecans for almonds, I also added in about a 1/4 cup of chia seeds and a handful of dried craisins. I don’t know if this still qualifies as “vegan” but they taste good.

Here’s the recipe, the original recipe ingredients are in red.

2 cups unsalted blanched peanuts (cashews)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 ripe bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or add some real vanilla bean
1/2 cup almonds (pecans)
I also added:
1/4 cup chia seeds
a handful of dried craisins (you could go with raisins, or dates, or dried fruit of any kind)

Combine the peanuts and salt in a food processor. Blend until a small crumbled texture. Add bananas and vanilla, blend until well blended. Add almonds and pulse to mix.
Drop by tablespoon or use a small cookie scoop to drop batter onto dehydrator tray, I covered my tray with parchment paper. Dehydrate at 104 degrees until well dried, mine were in for at least 24 hours. Eat plain or with jam. Store in the fridge, they only last a few days but the drier they are the longer they last. Reheat them in the dehydrator if you like them warm.
If you don’t have a dehydrator you can drop them on a cookie sheet and use your oven on the lowest setting with the door open, but I haven’t tried that.

Here’s what they look like before you dry them:

New Labels!

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:38:00 -0700

I love my cougar cutter and vinyl. See how much of a difference it can make in my kitchen?
Before: boring, blah, not me.

After: Wow, red, me, me, me!

One of the nicest things is you can cut out labels that you can’t buy such as chia seeds or xylitol, etc. I use Make the Cut software to create the design, send it over to the cutter, and then use transfer vinyl to remove from the mat and apply to the canister.
Here’s the canisters I did today.

Ice Cream Maker

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:14:00 -0700

After reading about carrageenan, a carcinogenic derived from red algae, and finding out it’s in a lot of our foods, including ice cream, I bought an ice cream maker. It’s nothing fancy and I’m surprised at just how cheap they are. It picked it up yesterday but I couldn’t use it until today because you have to freeze the bowl for about 24 hours. I tried it last night but it just wasn’t cold enough so I poured the ice cream mixture into a glass jar and made it this morning. It turned out delicious, it’s vanilla with a handful of toffee bits thrown in. Oh but the fat and calorie content in this recipe is through the roof so I told the kids to enjoy it because they would never get it this rich again, ever!

When I was in town I stopped at one of our local grocery stores and they had cookies on sale for a $1.00 a box. They ended up as mini ice cream sandwiches with the homemade ice cream. Forgive the melting picture but my house is pretty warm and I wasn’t that fast with my camera. I also made strawberry-vanilla frozen yogurt popsicles, they are much lower in fat and calories than the ice cream and I substituted the sugar in both recipes for Xylitol, lowering the calories even more. Jevan loved them!

Remember the bird seed wreath I posted awhile ago? A downy woodpecker has made himself right at home with it. You’ll notice just how much of the wreath has been eaten and it’s still holding strong but I turn it every now and again. I also posted that you should keep it out of the rain but I really have no where else to hang it and it’s been rained on, snowed on, and had the wind banging it against the window but still seems okay. I’m not sure how long it will hold up to the downy’s claws but I guess we’ll see.

Smoothies

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:06:00 -0700

Want to get your kids to eat all kinds of veggies? Jevan hates celery but this morning he wolfed it back and asked for more. Little did he know it was in a smoothie I had made for breaky. Mwah ha ha, I feel like shouting “I’m SUPER MOM!” Lol, well that’s how I feel. There was no way I’d get him to eat this many fruits and veggies in a day let alone at one sitting until I started making smoothies.

Some people spell it smoothy but Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary lists it as: “smoothie : a creamy beverage made of fruit blended with juice, milk, or yogurt” and who am I to argue with Merriam-Webster?

This morning I added homemade almond milk, coconut water, coconut milk, homemade yogurt, chia seeds, carrots, apples, spinach, pineapple, pomegranate, strawberries, celery, cucumber, blueberries, blackberries, one whole date, and then ice on top. I’m pretty sure that was all. A lot of stuff is frozen including the coconut milk. I just pour it into ice cube trays and make up bags for when I need them. I even blend up spinach with a touch of water and then freeze cubes for later, I can’t wait for my wonderful neighbour down the road to bring me a bag of her garden spinach! You can take all kinds of frozen food and put them into individual freezer bags for individual smoothies instead of pulling out 5 or 10 different bags every time you want to make a drink; make up a week or a month of baggies at a time. Jevan can grab a bag, dump it in the blender, pour in some almond milk, sprinkle in some chia seeds and he’s ready to go, a healthy, filling after school snack.

Hit the smoothie button on your blender and in about 1 minute you have this:

Creamy, sweet, chock full of vitamins, and really filling!

Other fruits and veggies you can mix and match: bananas, sprouts, mango, pears, oranges, tangerines, orange or yellow peppers, lemons, yup pretty much anything. If you don’t think your smoothie is sweet enough add maple sugar, xylitol, stevia, a few dates, cane sugar, any healthy sweetener. Some times if I have leftover quinoa I throw in a few tablespoons for protein, or almonds, or cashews, or cottage cheese, or salad greens, yes I stand in front of my fridge and grab leftovers but my kids never know.

“No-‘Poo” Hair

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:22:00 -0700

It’s been just over a month since I stopped shampooing my hair. Yeah yeah everyone say ewwww. Okay got that out of the way? Now on a more serious note I have to say I am really getting used to it, that is once you get your hair type figured out, and then it’s a great thing. It’s called the “No-‘Poo” method and you use baking soda to wash and apple cider vinegar to rinse. No harmful chemicals, no expensive shampoos and conditioners, and eventually less washing of your hair, really a win-win situation.

The first two weeks I stopped shampooing I was still using a spray-on conditioner but now I have stopped using that so no chemicals at all now. The first few times I no-poo’ed I was just willy-nilly dumping a handful of dry baking soda in my hair and rubbing it all over, leaving it on for 5 or so minutes, and then rinsing. This is bad, really bad… well for me anyway because I have dry hair and it was drying it up faster than walking in a desert. Now I put one tablespoon of baking soda in a small tub (really it’s an old Philadelphia spreadable cream cheese container but who cares when it’s in your shower) add enough water to fill, and stir it up. Pour this over your head and let it sit for about a minute, then rinse. For my conditioner I have an old spray bottle of 1 part apple cider vinegar to 3 parts water and when I get out of the shower I towel dry my hair. I then spray the vinegar/water mixture and leave it on. Yes it smells vinegary but when it dries you smell nothing, really! Although if you go for a walk in the rain the smell will come back until your hair is dry again.

So far it’s been working for me, and working well. Many people go through a transition stage and you might get really oily hair but it will calm down and regulate because you have stopped stripping out the natural oils that shampooing does. For some people this could take from a few weeks to a month or more, everyone is different. My daughter Sydney is currently doing this and her hair was quite oily for the first couple of weeks but is starting to level out now. My oldest daughter Dallas has just started and is adjusting things already. The longer you can go without washing (with baking soda and vinegar) your hair the shorter the transition stage, you can still wet it just try to stretch out the time between the no-‘poos.

We shampoo because our hair gets oily and we strip out the natural oils when we shampoo. Our body then over compensates and produces tons of oil making our hair oily and we shampoo again, and strip out the oils again... well you get the picture. I’m no expert but for years I thought I had oily hair, for years I always bought products for oily hair, little did I know until the first week of trying the no-‘poo method I had dry hair! In fact my hair was so dry I had to reduce the amount of baking soda and leave the vinegar in. I also did a deep conditioning treatment consisting of coconut oil, shea butter, and a touch of honey, I let that sit for a few hours and then did the no-poo method. My hair is much softer, less fly-away, and feels wonderful but it is a little greasy on the ends because I put on way too much of my homemade deep conditioner, next time a little less but lesson learned. If I see my hair drying out again I’ll rub in some coconut oil but very very little and stick to once a month or so for the deep conditioning.

Dry hair: take it easy on the baking soda and use lots of vinegar and don’t rinse it out, try a homemade deep conditioner or simply rub (very sparingly!) coconut oil into your hair.
Oily hair; use more baking soda and less vinegar, you can rinse the vinegar out in the shower instead of leaving it on, and try putting it on only the ends of your hair and not all over your whole head.

It’s all trial and error depending on your water, your climate, your hair type, but you will figure it out eventually, don’t give up! Not only are you using less chemicals but you will find you can go quite a few days without washing your hair and it will still look great.

For helpful advice just google no-poo hair or check out these links:
http://no-poo.livejournal.com/
http://ashleysgreenlife.blogspot.ca/2012/12/how-to-wash-your-hair-with-no-poo.html
http://www.pistachioproject.com/2012/08/no-poo-faq.html

If you need a green hair gel after you've no-'poo'ed you could try this Flax Seed Hair Gel recipe: http://www.ashleysgreenlife.blogspot.ca/2012/12/how-to-make-flax-seed-hair-gel-video.html

Cheater Almond Milk

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:15:00 -0700

Do you want to make vanilla almond milk using any blender in about one minute without all the fuss and muss? Now I haven’t tried this, simply because I don’t have “raw” almond butter, and believe me you do not want to try it using “roasted” almond butter, blech (speaking from experience), but when I get some raw stuff I’ll certainly give it a try. I think it’s fantastic in a pinch when you forgot to soak your almonds the night before, or one of your children drinks up all the milk and leaves that scant 1/8th inch in the bottom of the jug and says “There’s still some left.”

Cheater Almond Milk
2 tablespoons RAW almond butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon of sweetener or to taste; maple sugar, honey, agave, xylitol, etc.
pinch of sea salt
4 cups of water
Add all ingredients into a blender and blend for a minute. Store in the fridge for about 5-7 days.

No soaking almonds, no straining the milk, no fuss, no muss but also no almond meal, which I like, but this is a great alternative.

Almond Flour

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:16:00 -0700

I was giving my almond meal, leftover from making almond milk, to my chickens until I found this blog http://detoxinista.com/ Wow the woman has a ton of recipes! I want to try making Grain-Free Shortbread Cookies so I needed almond flour. Have you seen the cost of almond flour?? Yikes!

Here's how I made my own almond flour. I quickly sewed up a rectangle into a nut bag. I found some old polyester material that works really well. I have since found sheer curtain material that I'll try next but for now the polyester does a good job. I think the sheer material will dry much quicker.

I squeeze the heck out of the bag until all the milk is gone. Then I’m left with the almond meal/pulp.

Spread it out on a dehydrator tray. I put down a layer of parchment paper because my tray has big holes. I set the dehydrator temp at around 110 degrees Fahrenheit but not higher than 115. This is the perfect temperature for making yogurt so I did up a batch of that too.

After about 12-24 hours it should be dry, you can give it a toss or shake during that time. When it’s thoroughly dry put it in your blender and grind it up. Here’s some I did the other day. I store it in a Ziploc baggie in my freezer. The cookie recipe I want to make only makes 8 cookies and I’d like to make more so I’m stockpiling until I get enough.

Homemade Almond Milk

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sun, 7 Apr 2013 11:57:00 -0700

Before you all run in the other direction I seriously have to say I like the taste of almond milk, well with a few additions; maple sugar or agave, vanilla extract, and a touch of salt. Oh it's good! Jevan is even drinking it!

Instead of buying it already made you can easily make your own, I'm talking real easy.

Soak about 2 cups of almonds in filtered water for at least 6 hours or overnight.

Edit: I changed the recipe a bit and you'll get another four cups of milk if you do it. The almonds swell when soaking so for every cup you get about a cup and a half so 2 cups of dry almonds soaked overnight will become 3 cups.

Put 1 cup of soaked almonds into a blender with 4 cups water. If using a Blendtec hit "whole juice" and let it blend. I have only tried this using a Blendtec and I'm not sure what setting to use on a regular blender but I'd say the highest would probably be good.
Have a juice jug handy and pour your first batch in, straining is optional but I like to. You can save the almond paste for other uses, give it to chickens, compost it, or turn it into flour; check out my blog post on how to do that here: http://kansasa.blogspot.ca/2013/04/almond-flour_11.html

Repeat above steps with the rest of your almonds, you should get about 12 cups of milk.

You can stop now or flavour up your almond milk. Put 3-4 cups of milk back into the blender and add:
3 tablespoons maple sugar (this is what I use) but you can also add agave or honey or 3-6 medjool dates or xylitol or any other sweetener but you might have to adjust to taste.
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Add back to the batch and stir.
It will last about 5-7 days in the fridge and it's great in smoothies!

How healthy is almond milk? It's high in antioxidants, heart healthy, high in vitamins and minerals, low in fat and calories, and I could go on and on but just go to this link and see: http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/pros-and-cons-of-almond-milk.html

Buying certain store bought brands is not healthy because some contain a carcinogenic ingredient, a substance derived from red algae called carrageenan. You can read up on that here: http://foodbabe.com/2012/05/22/watch-out-for-this-carcinogen-in-your-organic-food/

Make your own Soap Pump

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Tue, 2 Apr 2013 15:03:00 -0700

I do not like those little soap pumps I keep beside the kitchen and bathroom sink. To refill them is a nightmare with soap flowing all over the place, the hole is much too small. I came across this idea on Pinterest and thought "wonderful!" I made one last night. A standard canning jar with a hole in the lid (I used a Dremmel to cut the hole), super heavy duty glue (I used Gorilla Glue), I think the pump part came from a Costco Kirkland shampoo bottle I've had it for ages, let it dry overnight. Fill up your canning jar with soap and put the lid on, you can glue the two piece ring but I didn't. I cut the vinyl letters out with my cougar cutter. Someone suggested spraying the ring with a clear coat sealer to keep it from rusting but I didn't have any.
The original idea came from here: http://www.goodgirlstyle.com/2013/01/weeknight-project-mason-jar-soap-pump.html

Homemade Stick Deodorant

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:42:00 -0700

homemade deodorant, scroll down for the recipe

I just had to try it! Have I gone completely hippy? Well not quite but who defines "hippy" anyway? Homemade deodorant, it's good for you. The bought stuff not so much. Here's a quote from the National Cancer Institute.
What do scientists know about the ingredients in antiperspirants and deodorants?
Aluminum-based compounds are used as the active ingredient in antiperspirants. These compounds form a temporary plug within the sweat duct that stops the flow of sweat to the skin's surface. Some research suggests that aluminum-based compounds, which are applied frequently and left on the skin near the breast, may be absorbed by the skin and cause estrogen-like (hormonal) effects (3). Because estrogen has the ability to promote the growth of breast cancer cells, some scientists have suggested that the aluminum-based compounds in antiperspirants may contribute to the development of breast cancer (3).

If you read the whole article you can clearly see they aren't positive but why take the chance? I pretty much had all the stuff to make deodorant except for the most common ingredient arrowroot powder, but that's the town I live in! So while waiting for our health food store to get the arrowroot powder, I tried using just baking soda for a week. Surprisingly it worked, just dip your wet fingers into a jar of baking soda and spread it under your arms after a shower. But I like the "stick" stuff so I made some and it's now cooling in the freezer. The recipe I used was taken from here but I modified it a bit.

Homemade Deodorant Stick Recipe
1-2 tablespoons beeswax (I really guess at this because I just break off a chunk or two)
4 tablespoons coconut oil
1 tablespoon shea butter
4 teaspoons arrowroot powder (You can substitute cornstarch or the original recipe called for clay)
20ish drops essential oil (I used lavender but you can use whatever you like)
An old deodorant container, mine was a 75g Dove container, well washed.

Melt the beeswax and coconut oil over low heat. Beeswax sticks to everything so if you don't have dedicated equipment you can melt everything in a glass jar. I set the jar into a pot of hot water on the stove, I have a picture of that here. Save the jar for making your next batch. I use a bamboo skewer for mixing. Once the wax and oil have melted add the shea butter and stir. Remove from heat and continue melting. Sprinkle in arrowroot powder and stir. Add essential oil. ~~Let it set up a bit by placing the jar into a cool water bath, it doesn't take long to cool down. Use a plastic spoon and fill up a clean deodorant container.~~ I just let it cool a bit, not much, and pour it into the containers, seems to work. Place in your freezer for 20-30 minutes until hard. If it ever softens up in your bathroom toss it back into the freezer.

After going through the cupboards in the bathroom I found lots of containers, some were trial deodorants I had never used. Dump the deodorant and wash well before using.

Lots of different containers I washed out including two trial ones.

Tip of the Year!

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:35:00 -0700

I see lots of tips and tricks on Facebook, and some seem like a good idea, but when you try them they are a big bust. Last week we all had a good laugh over the bunny rolls, and if you didn't see it there, well here it is again. They actually look kind of scary! This is not my photo, it was posted on FB last week.

And then there was the "grow your own lettuce and celery again" instead of throwing out the ends. I tried this with both the lettuce and celery and yes they did grow but not into what I expected. Instead of large leaves of romaine lettuce I ended up with small shoots of green things that would barely cover a sandwich. And forget the celery if you are expecting something to chop into a salad because you will end up with those little leafy things on the ends and that's it.

But every once in awhile you see something and think "hey that looks like it will work!" I saw this a couple of months ago, grabbed a few bread tabs, and it is working well. So this is "tried and tested" and passes. :)

Homemade Chapstick

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:53:00 -0700

Today I made 41 tubes of chapstick, about 20 cherry and 21 cinnamon flavoured. The recipe I used was okay but I think I'll keep looking for a better one.

Here's the mix I used:

4 tablespoons coconut oil

2 tablespoons beeswax (rough estimate: about 25 grams, melted and strained)

1 tablespoon raw honey

essential oil (I used cherry and cinnamon)

I found I needed to keep everything pretty darn hot and keep stirring or it would separate and not set in the tubes very well.

Live and learn. :)

Mini Surgery on the Ranch

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:20:00 -0700

My poor Doolittle! He had what we think was a epulis in his mouth, and I'm talking a HUGE one! How we never noticed it in the last couple of weeks is beyond me? I spoke with Pops about it last night and we decided to cut it off this morning. Well as busy as Pops is he gave the emasculator pliers to Tom and we got at it. Hubby and I held Doolittle and Tom was to wrap the epulis in the pliers and sort of hold it for a bit before snipping it off in case of excessive bleeding. Well thankfully there was no excessive bleeding because it was just a quick snip and that epulis was lying on the table! It was very hard and quite lumpy taking up quite a bit of room on Doolittle's gum but not much was attached. It's been a few hours and he seems quite happy, even eating a cookie.

A few shots from the last couple of weekends:

A newborn calf soaking up the sun.

One of the peacocks with his head tucked in tight.

A view across from Kirby's Flats high up the power line road.

Golden Cariboo Honey Beeswax

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Mon, 4 Mar 2013 11:57:00 -0800

Bob and Leigh, from Golden Cariboo Honey, stopped in today and brought me some beeswax! I've known Bob since I was a kid (I won't say the actual years, lol) so it was great to have a chat with him and Leigh. I had just finished milling about 8lbs of flour and vacuum packing salmon that I smoked yesterday so we did a trade. I can now make more cayenne salve, also some ultimate beeswax balm, and as soon as my lip tubes come in I'll be making homemade chapstick. Hubby goes through it like crazy and have you ever read the non-medicinal ingredients they put in the store bought stuff? It's insane!

Cayenne Salve

kansasa@gmail.com (KansasA) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:11:00 -0800

This was pretty easy to make! I had a harder time finding the tins and beeswax than actually doing the making of the salve. At first I called our local honey guy, he has hives out here on the Ranch and I often see him collecting. I called but didn't hear anything back for a few days, turns out he's out of town and won't be back until March 1st, bummer, because I really wanted to stick with "local." I'll hit him up when he gets back but for now I searched Google and was able to find a place in Burnaby and ordered some supplies, I picked them up today.

Cayenne salve works on many different types of pain, from diabetic neuropathy, shingles, migraine headaches, backaches, arthritis, menstrual cramps, and bruises. If you'd like the recipe visit: http://www.learningherbs.com/news_issue_92.html#

Bob's hives out here on the Ranch.