Blog - Page 3 of 12 - Simply Me DIY - Make it instead of buying it.

January 15, 2020January 15, 2020

Happy New Year

Happy New Year and I really hope the first part of January has treated you great. I know I’m a little late, but better late than never.

You may or may not have noticed, but I’ve been missing for a few months. Sorry about that. The end of the year stuff gets crazy.

We had family stuff and home stuff and grandkids’ stuff and on and on. I’m sure you all did too.

What’s been happening?

Let me know what’s new and good in your life. I’d really would love to hear.

Let me tell you what I’ve been up to recently.

So, I’m starting this business.

I’m making handcrafted skin care products as well as handcrafted herbal tea blends and spice blends. These products have the least amount of ingredients to make an excellent product for your skin.

Right now I’m making lotions and creams, salves and infused oils, facial scrubs and body scrubs. I have ideas of adding more products later.

Enchanted Herbals

For the lotions and creams I’m starting with the basic lotion/cream recipe I’ve posted here. I’m boosting it by infusing oils with specific herbs and infuse the water portion with those herbs too. I guess you could call it a kind of turbo cream.

Those infused oils will make the salves and be the oils as well.

I’m consigning my stuff out of a local shop in a small town near where I live right now and will try and find a few more local shops for that as well.

I’ll start going to the local farmer’s markets and craft shows and such when spring starts. The markets and craft shows are what scare me most.

I’m kind of a home body, not a real fan of busy public places. While I love to teach, I’m just not real great around a lot of people. So the thought of that much interacting is a bit scary for me.

I’ll get over it and do okay, but I’ll have to work at it.

The up side is I have a niece that loves social media. Social media is not my forte. So she’s volunteered to help me. YAY!!! I love my niece.

She’s created an Instagram page and Facebook page so I can write stuff and put it together and then just put those things where she can get to them. Then she can post pick and choose where and when to post something. That works for me.

I’m excited to see where this takes me.

Plans for the coming year.

My plan for the year is to get back to this website more. I’m terrible about taking pictures. I’ll start a new project and get half way through and realize I haven’t taken any pictures. My goal is to get better with that.

I have some stuff in mind I’d like to get together for later. Admittedly, most of it is cooking. That’s because I’m cooking more than doing anything else right now.

My grandkids come over and we do crafts, but because most of my cooking is from scratch, I still do a lot more of that than anything else.

I’d like to add some gardening stuff. My plan is to grow as much of the herbs for this business as I can. So there will be a lot of that.

And my husband and I would like to grow as much of our own food as we can. My goal, in time, is to grow and can all of our own veggies. That goal will probably take a few years to get to, but we’ll be working on it.

I’d like to ask a favor, please.

Let me know what you would like to see. Is there anything specific you would like me to try? Any specific recipes, or canning or anything else. Your suggestions would really help me see where I need to go with this to give you want you want.

I’d love to hear from you.

What are your plans and goals for 2020? Do you have some fun things happening? Are there big plans for your new year?

I look forward to hearing from you and having conversations with you about your plans for the new year.

So, here’s to 2020!!! May it be the best year yet for all of us.

Until next time.

Health, Wealth & Blessing~

Tracey

October 8, 2019January 20, 2020

The Uses of Basil

Basil (Ocimum basilicum), sometimes called sweet basil is another herb from the mint family, that I enjoyed this summer. It’s a culinary herb that smells absolutely fabulous and it tastes pretty good too.

Basil plant — A cool fact about the mint family plants is that they have square stems.

A few basic basil facts.

Basil is an annual. That means it dies off every year.

At the end of the season it’ll bolt (flower). Once the flowers dry they drop their seeds. reseeding itself for the following spring so it can start all over again.

There are several different varieties. Some are green and and some are purple and some that are a mixture of the two. But all of them have those amazing oils which causes that amazing aroma and awesome taste.

It likes both heat and sun. Mine sat in full sun all year and as I picked it over this summer, it only got bigger and bigger.

Don’t forget to keep it watered though. You’ll know when it needs water, it’ll look really sad.

If you only grow it so you can walk by, run your fingers through it and smell it daily, that would be okay. There were plenty of times you could find me standing over my basil while I watered it, just messing with the leaves so I could smell it.

But wait, there’s more. Basil has so many uses.

First and foremost, we all know it’s great for cooking. The flavor and aroma is divine. Especially fresh. Just pick a leaf or two and munch on them, if you have any doubt.

Go ahead, give it a try. I’ll wait….

There’s nothing better than fresh basil in your tomatoes sauce or on your morning eggs or even on your pizza.

I hear it’s great made into pesto too, but I’ve have to confess I’ve never tried presto.

I’ve used it all season as a fresh herb and I picked it and dehydrated it for the winter months.

As the end of the season gets here, it’ll begin to bolt. But, you can make it last a little longer by picking the flower buds off. As the plant flowers the leaves will begin to die off. If you pick the flowers, more leaves or whole stems will grow.

I’ve let mine go on to flower now, because they are I’ve already got a good supply dried to use over the winter and…..well…..it’s just a pretty plant.

I’ll just let it continue to flower and reseed for next spring.

Some benefits you may not know about.

Did you know basil is a great herb to add to your tea blends? If you haven’t read it yet, you can learn about making your own herbal tea blends here.

Basil has been shown to be mildly soothing and sedating. It’s considered to be an expectorant so as a tea it’s a good way to relieve a cough and get rid of that wet yucky stuff in your throat and lungs too. And it can help relieve a sore throat.

It’s really good for the stomach. There’s a reason it’s always been used in so many foods.

It’s been shown to relieve belly cramps and gas and it’s even been used for colic and to help prevent nausea.

And it’s even been used as an antiseptic.

Basil even has it’s own folklore.

In Greece basil is believed to bring good luck. So it’s planted in front of homes to bring the family luck.

The Greek Orthodox Church uses it in their holy water and it’s devoted to the Hindu Gods Krishna and Vishnu and is often cultivated around the temples where they were worshiped.

I hope you learned something new about basil and that you’ll look at it with a new prospective, with new ideas in all the ways you can use it.

Make a cup of tea with it after supper and relax. Pay attention to how it makes you feel. You might just find your new favorite after supper drink.

If you have different ways to use basil or an awesome recipe you’d like to share, leave it in the comments below. I’d love to know how you use basil.

Until next time.

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

October 1, 2019September 30, 2019

Aroma Therapy and Pickling Spices

At first glance you wouldn’t think these two things have anything to do with each other. How can aroma therapy have any relation to pickling spices?

Yeah, I was kinda surprised too. I’d never pickled anything before the refrigerator pickles I learned about this summer. If you haven’t seen that, you can find that recipe here.

But this pickling is different than the refrigerator pickling.

I found a recipe for picking in a book I’ve had for years, but hadn’t really ever used yet.

The reason for the need

The okra in our garden this year has exploded. By the end of the week, I’ve got 2-3 gallons of okra that I have to process. And while we’ve discovered we love fried okra, you just can have that every night.

We’ve never grown okra before, so we had no idea how much we would get.

I finally counted my plants last week and we have 21 okra plants. I think that’s about 19 plants too many, unless you plan to sell them at the farmers market. That might just happen next year.

So I’ve been drying a ton of it. I’ve frozen a few gallons of it, but I need to save freezer space for after hunting season. So I’m sticking to dehydrating.

But I wanted to try something different.

A friend of mine suggested pickling it. I’d seen some recipes, but really wasn’t sure about it. She kept telling me how good it was. She told me how her mom used to make it when she was a kid. And she also remembered how long they had to wait for it to be ready to eat.

Pickling spices in a jar. — Just sitting around in open jars would be great too.

So I got my books out (I love cook books and have a ton of them) and started looking. I found one pretty quickly.

The recipe called for pickling spices with a recipe for making your own pickling spices mix in the book too. I knew I didn’t have any pickling spices in the house, so I checked the recipe. I had almost everything called for and hoped the few things I was missing wouldn’t be a big problem.

The recipe talked about making adjustments for your own tastes, so I figured it’d be fine.

I put the recipe together in a mason jar and shook it to mix it all up. Then I opened the jar. Holy smokes!!!! Does that ever smell awesome.

I’ve used the spices twice now to make pickled okra and will probably try it with something else in the future, just not sure what yet. But I think what I’ll actually use it for next is to boil in water on the stove top for the incredible aroma of it.

The aroma therapy of pickling spices

This stuff smells like Thanksgiving Dinner and pumpkin pie all wrapped in one. It’s warming and homey and the smell alone will make you feel cozy. Like you’re wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold day.

I’m pretty sure you can pay money for stuff from the store that smells like this. But I say, why not make your own.

It’s really simple. You probably have most, if not all, these spices in your kitchen cupboard already. It’s easily adjustable, if you want to make any changes, although I think it’s great just as it is.

Pickling Spices Recipe Mix

This recipe is from the book Food in Jars, Preserving in Small Batches Year Round, by Marisa McClelan. This book has some really great recipes.

3 TBL black peppercorns
3 TBL crushed bay leaves
3 TBL whole allspice
3 TBL corriander seeds (I didn’t use this)
3 TBL mustard seeds
3 TBL juniper berries
1 TBL whole cloves
1 TBL dill seeds
1 cinnamon sicks, broken into pieces.

Shake herbs and spices. — Shake your jar to mix.

Put all ingredients in a jar and shake to mix.

I’ll be trying this to scent the house when it cools off a little. Probably should wait until we aren’t running the air conditioner on a regular basis.

I hope you check this out. I was greatly impressed and I think you will too.

Let me know what recipe you have a recipe like this. Sometimes a little aroma therapy is all it takes for a relaxing evening at home after work.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

September 24, 2019January 15, 2020

Homemade Snack Crackers

Every time I go grocery shopping, I look at snack crackers that I can munch on that will side track me from something sweet. Everytime I refuse to buy them telling myself I can make my own homemade snack crackers.

I looked for all kinds of recipes and found several that looked good, but just kept putting it off, because, well, you know, it was just so much easier to just buy them.

One night while watching YouTube I came across a channel called Living Traditions Homestead and they were making homemade snack crackers. He kept talking about how easy and quick it was.

After watching it several times I found that it really is pretty easy, just like he said it was. It’s also pretty easy to change it up if you want.

I’ll give you the recipe he gave and then I’ll talk about how you can change it up.

Homemade Snack Crackers

Ingredients:

1 Cup oat flour
2 Cups all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
4 TBL oil
1 Cup warm to hot water.

Instructions:

Combine flours, salt, and sugar. Mix together well. Add oil and mix. I used my stand mixer for this, using the whisk attachment.

After the above was mixed well, I changed the attachment to the bread attachment.

You may or may not need an entire cup of water. So add about 1/2 to 3/4 of the water to the flour mixture and blend until well mixed.

I only used about 3/4 of a cup of water for this batch.

Rolled out dough. — Rolled out dough on wax paper. Helps keep the mess down.

From here add any additional water you may need a tablespoon at a time. You want a dough similar to bread or biscuit dough.

It’s easier to add water than it is to remove it. So go slow in how much you add at a time.

Roll out your dough on a floured surface as thin as you can get it.

Use a pizza cutter to score the dough into the size of crackers you want.

Bake at 425 deg. F for 7 minutes. Then remove them from the oven and spray or brush oil on top of the dough and sprinkle with salt or sesame seeds or whatever else you like. Then put them back in the oven for another 7 minutes.

After you’ve removed them from the oven, let them cool. If you scored them they will break at those scored lines.

Here’s some lessons I learned.

Scored dough. — Scored dough, ready to make.

I didn’t get the center thin enough, so the center wasn’t as crunchy as I would have liked. Around the outside of the dough it was nice and crunchy though.

When I make my next batch I’ll roll it out in much smaller batches so I can get the inside much thinner.

I’ll also score the dough all the way through next time. It seemed to cook better that way.

The other thing they mentioned in the video, that I actually tried, was to add dried herbs or spices to the dough along with the dry ingredients.

You can add herbs and spices to mix it up a little.

Powdered ingredients with spices and herbs. — Powdered ingredients with spices and herb.s

I used 1 tsp garlic powder and 2 tsp oregano.

There’s so many things you could add. You could add basil, dehydrated tomatoes, thyme, rosemary, onion powder, etc, etc. Be creative.

After all was said and done they really were good.

Previously, I tried this recipe using whole wheat flour and they were really hard. Either whole wheat is too dense for crispy crackers or they were too thick. Honestly, I think it was a little bit of both.

Since this mixes different flours, I think I’ll change that mixture up next time, trying something different. Maybe using some coconut or almond flour. That might add some good flavor too.

You can make your own oat flour if you don’t have any.

Oat flour is not something I have hanging out in my cabinets, so I had to make it. The Living Traditions Homestead video showed how to make it.

I used quick oats but you could use whatever kind of oats you have in the cabinet. Then just blend it using a blender, a bullet, a ninja or one of those personal smoothy makers.

I put a cup of quick oats in a regular mouthed mason jar. The mixer blade fits perfectly on the regular mouthed jars.

So I attached the mixer blades and just used it on the blender for make an oat powder or flour.

Let me know if you give this a try.

Tell me how you liked them. Even the uncrispy (is that a real word?) ones taste good, they just don’t have the crunch.

Let me know what herbs or spices you used. I’d love to hear what you come up with.

Hope to see you next week.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

September 17, 2019September 17, 2019

Never Enough Time

Do any of you feel like there’s just never enough time? Between the day job and taking care of the garden, taking care of what comes out of the garden, keeping up laundry and the house, oh and cooking some supper and having dishes to eat on, that leaves about 30 min to sleep.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but sometimes it feels like it.

Last weekend, I took one day with my grandkids. We played, watched moves and then went to my company party.

Me and the grandkids at the co party. — Having a snack at the company party.

We had a ton of fun just hanging out and watching movies, brushing hair and just doing “stuff” last Saturday. They always make my weekend, no matter what we’re doing.

That left Sunday as the only time I had left to get stuff done over the weekend.

Many jars of infused oils. — Infused oils. I love just looking at them.

Calendula infused sweet almond oil. — Calendula infused sweet almond oil

I started by straining the infused oils that were ready.

These oils had sat and infused at least a month and some of them as much as 3 months.

I think they turned out beautifully. Most of the golden ones are calendula and sweet almond oil, 1 pint is calendula and coconut oil and the green one is lavender and coconut oil.

I’ll make some salves, lotions and maybe some chap stick with these. I’ll probably leave a little bit as it is and use it just as an oil too.

We discovered this year that we really like breaded, fried okra. I grew up with the old boiled okra, and had learned I hated it.

After the boiled stuff, I never had the nerve to try it any other way, until this year.

So this year, we grew some okra for my daughter-in-law and decided we had to try it. Wow, is that better than the boiled stuff.

This weekend we had about 6 gallons of okra that needed to be processed. My plan was to dry some and bread and freeze some for use in the winter.

That way we could just use however much we wanted at a time.

I only have chest freezers so I could only freeze one tray at a time. They need to freeze in a single layer. So that took all day.

Left over fried okra. — Guess what was for supper tonight. Well, at least part of it.

While the breaded okra was freezing, I cut and set some up on the dehydrator. I filled 8 of the 9 shelves in my new dehydrator.

Using the time I had tonight to get a couple more things done.

Freshly made sweet pickles. — Making more pickles.

Tonight I made more sweet pickles for my husband’s sandwiches. Boy, did I start something. He loves those things and reminds me regularly when he’s getting low.

From the dehydrator I jarred up a little under a gallon of dried okra.

I now have enough okra to probably last us the winter. But…..it’s still growing. I’ll be giving some of that away this weekend.

This dehydrated okra makes a pretty decent snack. If you salt it a little before you dehydrate it, it’s a nice crunchy snack. My mom would have really like it.

Time or the lack thereof.

Anyway, my point here is, once the garden starts coming in and you have to start putting up the goodies, time runs away from you. It feels like there’s just never enough time.

I try really hard with “to do” list, to make sure I’m not running in circles. I’m even crossing stuff off my list. But it feels like I’m adding as much as I’m crossing off.

I guess that’s just how it goes. Mark off 1, add 2.

Extra days

I’m taking off this coming Friday to catch up on things that I can’t get done on the weekend. I’ve done this several times this year.

It used to be taking vacation time to work, even at home, would have really irked me. But not anymore. These days it makes me smile.

I really enjoy putting it all together, trying to put up more and more of our own food every year. And I really don’t mind just getting stuff done here at home, whatever that might be.

Now if I can find a way to ditch the day job…..

How do you get everything done. Or do you? If you have a secret on how to find more time, I hope you’ll share here. I know there has to be some kind of cool method out there…..maybe.

Let me know what you’re up to in these last days of summer.

I’m really hoping to get back to some kind of trial and/or error next week. Maybe a cracker or maybe even some mustard. I’ve been working on both.

Until next time-

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey