Why buy it if I can make it?

After some delving into recipies in cookbooks and on line, and after various forms of inspiration I adopted a new slogan this past weekend. "Why buy it if I can make it?" My new mantra is formed by a desire to be frugal, to avoid preservative saturated foods, and to rise to the challange of making things with my own hands.

So, with my megarly equiped kitchen I made the following on Saturday: butter, multi-grain bread, cinnamon rolls, coca-cola cake, spagetti sauce, dog treats, and dishwasher soap. All without a food processor or stand-up mixer.

So here's the recounting of how my aspirations turn out.

The butter:

The recipe is simple: cold heavy cream & shake until it's butter. It actually called to put it into an empty jar with a lid and shake until the butter forms. Who actually has an empty jar with a lid around? I even looked in our recycling bin - but had nothing. So I used what i did have: a coctail/martini shaker. It seemed like a good fit to me - but i learned after about the 15th shake that it there's a reason you need a secure lid: pressure builds as the cream turns to butter. So much pressure that it will explode the top of a cocktail shaker right off. I had a buttery/creamy covered kitchen. Ellie was happy to help clean up. In the end I used my hand mixer (an updated butter churn) and I made some great butter!!

The bread:

The Ingredients


The dough


Rolled Dough


The finished product

With some recipe subsituting (after not wanting to back to the grocery for the fourth time) it was actually relatively easy. It requires a lot of patience though! All in all the bread took about 5 hours from start to finish. About 3 of those hours are spent waiting for the dough to rise. I did learn that making bread is a great stress releaver. You get to punch the dough and kneeding helps push away all those troubles :)

Cinnamon Rolls:

The yummy in my tummy filling


Pre-cooked - they looked even less professional once finished

Serisouly - I'm never buying refrigerator pre-made rolls again. The recipie i found was so easy! I did learn to read how many rolls a recipe yeilds - i ended up making about 16 rolls when it was all done - way too much for the too of us. They didn't look pretty or perfect but they tasted great.

Coca-cola Cake:

The hand-mixed cake batter

Finished Cake

The closest I came to failing in my baking extravangza. The failure came in not having a 13x9 pan - oh and the only pan i had to use was one of those stupid floppy pans. Whomever invented these is a demented sadist. It seems like a good idea - your baked goods won't stick - but the pan flops hot cake/icing onto my arm, my counters, and anywhere else it desires. The cake was too sweet for Kevin so now I have a cake to force-feed to people.

Spagetti Sauce:

Peeled - in the process of being seeded, fresh from the Kroger Vine tomatoes


The Finished Product

FROM TOMATOES ON THE VINE! I peeled and seeded about 3 pounds of tomattoes to my my sauce. I have to say in the end I think canned tomatoes would have tasted as good. It took about 45 minutes to peel, seed, & chop all the tomatoes. Tasty sauce, but not sure it was worth the chop time. (Maybe if I had a food processor and didn't have to chop by hand I'd have a different story.) The sauce turned out great though, and gave us less heart-burn than the typical sauce we buy.

Dog Treats:

Pre-Cooked Dog Treats

Ellie is a HUGE fan of these. She literally parked out by the oven, sniffing the air waiting for them to be done. They were supposed to dry out over night to be crunchy but she sat and whined for one and LOVED it hot out of the oven. I'm definetely not buying dog treats any more. The total cost for about 3 dozen treats was maybe a dollar, maybe. So easy too!

Dishwasher Soap:

A fairly simple mixture of baking soda, borax, & washing soda. It works well, but the open boxes of Borax & washing soda next to the bleach & vinegar in my cleaning cabinet make it look like I'm making bombs. The smell from the Borax & Washing Soda are slightly overpowering so I've had to bag them up and hide them away. Again though, for the frugal at heart this solution is very inexpensive for about $1 I have enough dishwasher mix to last for about a month.

So all in all I think my new mantra just might stick. Why buy it if I can make it?

Connected

You don't really know how much you love someone or something until it's needlessly taken away. When we moved to TN we "borrowed" an Internet connection from a neighbor. Ok, we stole it - don't judge we were really poor!!! Then that neighbor moved away and took with them our internet. So, we broke down and decided it was time to pay for a connection. We had our very own bonified connection to the internet - wireless even. Then within a week our network card got "crispy fried" as the nice man at Geek Squad told us. Good thing we bought the warranty. Finally, now after nearly 3 weeks (who knows how long it actually took - it was like i was living in another dimension) our dear sweet computer came home with a new network card. It's all shiny and new feeling.

Seriously though, I LOVE the internet. To be honest I spend most of my time on line staying connected with my scattered friends. I've felt cut off and disconnected from the world. And now it's all back - so watch out! Soon my dumb comments will creep into emails, blogs, and of course the Facebook.

Welcome home little internet. You will be cherished here.

no internet = no updates

We've had no internet at home for what seems like a month! So no internet = no updates. I'm actually staying late at work to write this little tid-bit.

I love Donald Miller! Read his blog - it's in my blog list. The most recent one about riding across America really just slapped me upside my head. He says, "I think the inability to think rationally begins when we believe we know more than we are actually capable of knowing, and do not think objectively because our identities are tied to our ideas." How true is that! How often to we get upset when people don't agree with us. I think it's less about having to be right as much our ideas usually compile our identity so when people disagree we take it as a personal attack. I try
not to do this too often but i know i have more than i like to admit. How great would it be to live in a world where you are not known by a profession or your list of ideas, but are simply known for you - all the quirky things that make you you.

I have nothing profound of my own to write - only that we are alive and will begin to blog again once we have internet at home.