Queso Blanco

Queso blanco is a very basic cheese.  All you need is:

-1/2 gallon milk (any kind except ultra pasteurized)
-2 to 4 tablespoons white vinegar or lemon juice
-1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
 -large pan
-thermometer
-strainer
-cheese cloth or flour sack towel or old t-shirt (that is clean:)

Put milk into large pan, heat to 185 degrees.

Remove from heat, add 2 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice, stir gently until curds appear, if curds don't appear right away add another 2 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice. Let set for 5 minutes.  Put a cheese cloth, flour sack towel or t-shirt into the strainer to cover it, put strainer into another pan or bowl to catch whey. Gently pour the curds and whey into the covered strainer. Let sit for 10 minutes.

Put curds into a bowl and add salt, gently mix. Return to covered strainer and gently squeeze more whey from it. Put strainer on a plate and put into the refrigerator to chill.

Put onto a plate and slice.  It is a mild soft cheese. It will not last long so eat with in a day or two. 

You can add the whey to smoothies, pet food or drink it.

(I am sorry there are no photos. I couldn't find my camera. I will try to add some next week when I make some more, hopefully.)

 

How to Make Essential Oils

Homemade Bread

I have been searching for years for the "perfect" recipe for whole wheat bread. I have tried and tried and tried MANY different recipes and used my poor family as guinea pigs. My husband likes a nice light bread for his sandwich, not the dense, heavy stuff that I kept putting out. Well, last May I held a home school Mom's retreat and a lady was invited by one of our local home school Mom's. This lady, Trisha, knows how to make GREAT homemade whole wheat bread. I begged for the recipe and she was gracious enough to share it with me. I was so hesitant when I made it for the first time. I had had so many promises from other women and their recipes, and they had all been failures for me. So when I made Trisha's bread the first time and the dough raised double in less than 20 minutes, I was floored (most of the time it takes a minimum of 60-120 minutes for it to raise the first time). I then shaped them into loaves and let them raise the second time, this time it only took 8 minutes (again, it usually takes at least 30-60 minutes the second time around). I then put them in the oven and they continued raising a little more. When it was finished baking I had two beautiful loaves of bread. But I was still skeptical; until my husband tasted it and approved, I would not be satisfied. So I gave him some that evening and he REALLY liked it. I was ecstatic. I have since made it into hamburger buns and adapted my pizza dough recipe also. Thank you, Trisha, you have saved me from a life long failure of making bread. We now really enjoy our bread, buns and pizza crust.

Pay It Forward

On one of my favorite and most inspirational blogs to read, Paula has posted a fun activity that is going around the blogs called Pay It Forward. How it works is that the first 3 people who sign up for it are sent a handmade item from me. After signing up, they post about Pay It Forward on their own blogs and do the same, making and sending a handmade item to 3 people who sign up. And so it continues on with each person.

Pay It Forwards can be any handmade item or craft that you choose to send. The items do not have to be large, just something that you have made. According to the rules, you have 365 days to make & send the PIFs but most send them out much sooner. If you are interested in signing up, send an email or post a comment saying so. Once I contact you to let you know that you are one of the first 3 to sign up, you can then go ahead and post on your own blog about Pay It Forward. It sounds like a lot of fun and I am looking forward to doing this.

Anyone interested in signing up? I can't wait to begin making and sending these items out.

Our November Happenings!

Hannah making her brothers favorite pie

Making the crust for the pie

Ralph cutting and weighing soap

Christopher returning home for a while,

"What did I get in the mail?"

Filling capsules with Spirulina

Alicia cutting out handkerchiefs

Our dog

A tower of Peppermint Treat soap

Hannah shrink wrapping soap

More shrink wrapping of soap,

it was a busy month for our soap business

Alicia making cookies for Daddy and Christopher

Mom, finally finished my coat, just in time for cold weather!

Hannah wearing her new coat that I made her

Christopher, being silly when the girls wanted to take his photo

(Our camera broke so we have no photos of our hunting/fishing trip, target shooting or Thanksgiving. We hopefully will get one soon though.)

Making Clothes Soap

Yesterday we made another batch of clothes soap, so we decided to take photos of the process and put it here. It is really easy and much more afforable than store bought soaps and much better for you.

Grate fels naptha laundry soap

Any borax will do, and super washing soda

Five gallon bucket

Melt the fels-naphtha laundry soap (2/3 of a bar) in 3 pints water on medium high heat, then add 1 cup borax and 1 cup super washing soda, stir thoroughly until all ingredients are dissolved, turn to medium heat and stir for 15 minutes, it will become the consistency of honey, then put 2 quarts hot water in the 5 gallon bucket and add the soap mixture, mix well, then add 11 quarts of cold water. Let stand for 24 hours before using. I stir it about once a week or so. (I have used it before the 24 hours and it worked fine.)

The finished product (four gallons). Use 1/2 cup in a regular washing machine and 1/4 cup in a front loader.

Pictures of Soaps We Have Made

We have been working on increasing our supply of homemade soaps. We are hoping to get some advertising done before the Christmas and also go to at least one craft fair. So here some pictures of what we have been making.

First will be our glycerine soaps.

Here are lavender bars, these were the very first soaps we made

Isn't this a beautiful presentation (Alicia set this up and shot it herself)

This is Plumeria (think Hawaii, Alooooooooooooooooha!)

Here is MelonCucumber, quite refreshing

Next is Peach Jubilee, smells almost good enough to eat!

This is Lavender Rose with some small rose petals in it

(not sure if we will do this again)

Here we have Ylang Ylang Vanilla, very romantic smelling

Finally in the glycerine soaps, we have Rose Vanilla, again with little pieces of rose petals in it

Now we have our lye soap collection.

This was our very first lye soap, we call it TeaTreeMint, it has already become pretty popular. It is made from Red Palm oil, coconut oil, and olive oil; for the scents we used, Tea Tree, Sweet Thyme, Peppermint and Clary Sage. It has a wonderfully clean, refreshing smell, that is not overpowering.

This is Almond, one of my favorite scents

Here is my experiment, it is Coconut Chocolate, it smells absolutely delicious!Here is one that was just made yesterday. This is what it looks like before it is cut. (it made about 40 bars of soap) This has become my new favorite. I call it Sandlewood Bay for Men. I can't wait to have my husband use this.

If you have any suggestions for different soaps just let us know. We are always looking for new ideas for scents. If you would be interested in any of our soaps please contact us .

Making Clothes

Well, it is that time of year again for us. We go through our closets and drawers and see what fits and what doesn't and then where we need to fill in the gaps. We decided to start today, as we will be going to Florida in September to visit Ralph's Dad (he will have his 75th birthday while we are there) and we wanted to make sure we had enough clothes to last us while we are there and that it was all presentable.



Anyway, Alicia, Hannah, and I took stock of our clothes and saw where we needed to fill in the gaps. Both of the girls are growing, so there was quite a need this year. This afternoon, I cut out three skirts and 6 blouses. Hannah cut out 10 handkerchiefs. Tomorrow we will cut out 2 dresses, 1 jumper, 2 vests, 3 aprons, and 3 nightgowns. Hannah will cut out about 2 dozen more handkerchiefs. She enjoys doing embroidery work on them.



Next will come the fun part...the assembling. I love to sew and the girls are learning to enjoy it too. I will try to take some photos as we work and then maybe have the girls model some of the finished clothing.

Once we return from Florida we will have to make some more winter clothes too. But that will have to wait until late September. :)



Psalm 45:13"The King's daughter is all glorious within; Her clothing is interwoven with gold."

Banana chips, Bread, Soap

This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. We had such a wonderful day today. The sun was shining and the rays were so warm. We started our day early. We weren't able to do laundry (our machine has been broken for 5 days), so we decided to just get to work doing our kitchen work before we headed outside. We started by making bread, we were fresh out so needed to get it made first thing.

Then we made some banana chips. We really enjoy bananas, but can't always find them, so we buy them in bulk when we can, then dry some, make some into smoothies and sometimes freeze them too.

My young ladies making banana chips

Once the bread was rising and the chips were in the dehydrator, we headed outside with all the makings for soap. This was a first for us, we have never made lye soap before. I was a little nervous, so I took a lot of extra time getting the ingredients and supplies together, and still I had the girls running in and getting things that I had forgotten.

I am melting coconut oil and palm oil

Here I am adding GSE for preserving

I am taking the temperature of the lye

I tried to take good notes so I could see exactly what I did, in case something went wrong, or even went right!

Here is the finished product. It will set for 24 hours, then I will hopefully cut it and set it to cure for 6-8 weeks. Isn't that a beautiful color!!

Well, it went smoother then I expected, except for the fact that I had gotten the oils TOO hot and had to wait for about 2 hours for them to cool down. Thankfully the lye stayed warm enough in the interim so I did not have to reheat it. Tomorrow I will open the soap and see how it is doing. I hope I will be able to cut it and set it to finish processing.