Cooking with Cast Iron

I absolutely love cooking with cast iron!  To me, there is nothing more enjoyable than using a well seasoned cast iron pan to cook dinner for my family.  Tonight I used my flat bottomed dutch oven to make stew on the stove.  I have shared this delicious recipe with you before on a previous post titled Prospectors Stew where you can find the recipe.

I like using cast iron for a few reasons.  A well cared for cast iron pan will last you your lifetime, and can easily be passed down to future generations.  They are very durable when treated well, and easy to care for.  I wish I had known the value of cast iron when we were first married.  I would have sought out cast iron and bought nothing else.  They are a pan to last a lifetime.  We have gone through several sets of inferior quality pans in the past twenty years.  We have tried expensive pans and nothing has held up even in the most gentle of use to cast iron.  The final straw came for me a few years back when I saw a piece of nylon coating from a skillet in our food that was cooking in the pan!  The nylon coating was breaking down from use and flaking off into our food.  I do not want chemicals in our food and was deeply concerned about the chemicals leaching into our food from a heated plastic surface.  This began my journey of slowly replacing inferior pans with cast iron.  I do have a very nice set of stainless non coated sauce pans that I will continue to use which I foresee lasting many years.  Until cast iron I had yet to find a skillet that would hold up to continued use.  Cast iron not only holds up, but gets better with age.  The more you cook with it, the more seasoning it has and it has a better non stick surface that any brand I have tried.

Cast iron is very easy to find here, I find pieces in antique malls and flea markets.  I recently picked up four pans of various sizes that I reconditioned and will soon post on how to clean and re-season cast iron.  The four pans I picked up cost me around $20.00 and they will far outlast any new pan for that amount!

As our dinner simmered away on the stove, my husband mixed up a batch of his famous Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. (secret family recipe)  I baked Chocolate Chip Cookies in one of my newly re-seasoned pans. 

Did I mention that Cast iron is also versatile?  They can be used on the stove top,  open fire, hot coals, or oven with no problems.  It all depends on your cooking style and methods.

 Yum!  Look at those delicious cookies fresh out of the oven!  They lifted right out of the pan.  Another great thing about cast iron is that they retain their heat and cook with a nice even temperature.  I cook on a fairly low heat with my pans because once they heat up they stay hot and do not require a very high temperature to maintain.  They heat so evenly, that I prefer to bake my bread in a large cast iron dutch oven.  The bread is delicious each and every time!

Before I used cast iron, I wasn't sure about how to care for my pans.  I had heard they were "high maintenance" and hard to use.  I assure you they are not.  I will soon write a post on the cleaning and care of cast iron.  I want to rid you of any concerns that might make you apprehensive about joining the growing list of cast iron lovers who are discovering what cooks have known for hundreds of years  about the durability and versatility of cast iron.

In our home, when I need to replace things, I am looking for things that I can obtain that will not wear out.  I would rather buy something second hand, save the money and never have to replace that item again.  I am not as concerned with fashion as I am concerned with quality.  My goal on our homestead is to be self sufficient and purchase as few things over time as possible.  Using cast iron fits these goals perfectly because it is a one purchase item.  With proper use and care, I will never be replacing my cast iron and never have to worry about replacing a cheap or inexpensive nylon coated pan that will go into the trash dump.  Cast iron is a win/win in my book!

Melt your Heart Crayon Cookie

What better day to return to blogging than Valentines.  The day set aside in America especially to show how much you care to those special people in your life.  In our home we do not need to be given a day set aside to show we care, but we have fun with it anyway as a family:)

 I have been away researching and learning about diet and nutritional needs which I will share with you another time.  It has been an interesting and exciting journey and I had no intention of being away from my blog for so long!  I really felt that it was very important to fully immerse myself in what I was learning.  It is going to be ongoing for a while,  but initially I really needed to focus.  What an exciting adventure our family is taking with food. 

Today though, I am sharing a fun craft and a way to recycle your broken and crumbled crayon's into a fun and healthy valentines treat, or any other time treat.  I have seen these made by putting the bits into a muffin tin to create a crayon cookie too! :)

 My youngest dd and I peeled all of her broken bits of crayons.

After peeling off all the paper, we broke the bits into very small pieces to ensure an event color distribution of the colors.  I placed a heart shaped cookie cutter on a piece of aluminum foil.  I then pulled the outsides of the foil up around the cookie cutter to make a heart shaped tray for the wax to melt inside of and not drip or leak out underneath while in the oven.  I preheated the oven to 350 d. Fahrenheit.

We placed all of the broken bits in the heart shaped tray we made.  She carefully arranged for the silver crayola to be on top :)  We placed this in the oven for about 10 minutes or until the crayons became liquid and smoothed over.  I removed it from the oven as soon as it was liquid to the oven top to cool.  After about 15 min. I was able to remove the foil and I let it cool for another 15-20 min.  I then carefully and gently pushed the crayon free from the cookie cutter. 

 Now we have a melted heart crayola for special Valentines Day coloring :)  A wonderful way to recycle crayon bits, and a fun project to make with little ones.  Happy Valentines Day!

Recyling Bath Towels into a Bath Mat

Happy Monday!  This weekend I worked on a much needed project in our home.  We usually use a bath towel folded in half as a bath mat when stepping out of the shower.  I wanted something a little tidier but knew I didn't want the traditional bath mat.  You know, the fuzzy carpet type with the rubber stuff on the back.  I have had those before and they do not hold up well.  The rubber stuff peels off over time and it's a mess.  I have seen several nice alternatives but decided there is no reason to purchase a bath mat when I could come up with a solution at home.  I have been trying to find solutions to our home, at home as much as possible.  When I was putting towels away the other day, the idea hit.  We had two tattered and worn bath towels in our linen closet.  One had a stain that looked like motor oil it is on the reverse side of the towel on the left. I didn't think to flip it over for the photo lol. The other was ripping and frayed.  We have plenty of other towels, so I set out to repurpose them.

I measured the width of the towel folded in half.  This is how we lay the towels down for a bathmat when getting out of the shower and is a comfortable size, so that is the size I planned to make the new mat.  Here you can see the dye stain.  It does not show through onto the other side of the towel.
I am using two towels cut down to get a two layer bath mat when finished.  First I cut off the band that is causing the towels to be gathered on the ends to get a nice straight edge.  I cut both towels to size and placed the extra which you can see folded up to the side, to make into cleaning cloths later. Hmmmm maybe even hand towels for the bathroom?

I turned the worst sides of the towels so they were wrong sides together.  Then I pinned the towels together to baste them just like basting a quilt, the tutorial with further explanation is found here.  Next I machine quilted the two towels together just as you would machine quilt a quilt.  If you have never machine quilted you can simply straight stitch lines all over in whatever direction you would like.  The only purpose of quilting the mat was to help it lay flat and to keep the two layers from shifting around causing potential falls from an uneven surface when exiting the shower.

 The last thing I did was ad a border from my fabric scraps to the outside of the rug to give it a nice finished  edge and to keep the edges from fraying and making a mess.

Here it is in the bathroom.  A bit wonky at the moment from all the sewing but will settle in after use and a wash.  It is nice and tidy and best of all....free!  All the materials were re purposed and already in our home.  I'm very pleased with how this turned out and even more so that I didn't have to spend any money for a new mat. By the way... it worked perfectly this morning :)

Toy Box to Blanket Chest

This old chest used to be my toy box when I was really little.  My mom offered it to me on a recent visit and I  decided it would be a good size for all the lap blankets we have in the family room.  Previously I used a very large clothes basket as a temporary solution until I could find a big enough basket or some other container.  I really did not like the clothes basket in the family room because for some reason I always felt like it looked like I had my laundry beside the television :)

 These are old transfers of Holly Hobby that my mom put on the chest.  It is a very rustic chest and I couldn't bring myself to sand them off so I decided to just leave them on.  I don't mind that I will be able to possibly see their outline after I repaint it.  I measured for the center on  three sides and traced around the raised wooden applique' so when the glue was applied to the back side I would know the exact placement of the applique'.

After the glue dried for the applique', I turned the chest and put smaller applique's on the two sides using the same method.  The back would be against a wall so there was no need to apply an applique' there.

Here is the finished chest.  I scrubbed the inside but left it the original mauve color.  I didn't want the blankets to smell like paint and nobody will see the inside except us.  It's a bit "shabby chic" anyway so I don't mind. It is very sturdy as well.  I remember at one point in time this held a large twenty gallon fish tank!  The chest works perfectly as a blanket chest and is fairly full!  It is just what I was looking for and very rewarding as it is a "found" item that was able to be recycled for a new purpose and I like that I am using something from my childhood even though I don't remember it very well as a toy box.   :)

Making a Change

Every store I shop in  uses plastic bags to hold my purchases for me to take home.  When I get home from a large shopping trip to stock up our supplies for a long time I can have several bags.  These bags below are from a recent such stocking up trip.

That is a lot of bags!  For our house we have only one trash receptacle that these bags would line and it would take me  more than a year to use these in that trash can.  I do use them for other uses like donations of food and clothing so they are very handy for those uses.  However, it still takes quite a while for us to use the bags we accumulate and often times we end up taking them to be recycled in a near by town.  I do not like using plastic bags at all.  I began receiving recyclable grocery bags here and there from different events and recently was given a very large amount.  I decided that tonight was the last time for a long time that I would use plastic store bags.  If I forgot them when I headed out the door I would turn around and go back for them.  I see in disgust the plastic bags floating around everywhere I go.  I see them floating in fields, on fence lines, in ponds and lake shores and it is horrible.  I am going to commit to using only  my recyclable bags for shopping keeping only a few plastic bags for transporting donations.  After returning home from my trip I decided to gather up all the bags I could find around the house.

I knew I had quite a few bags but was surprised at how many I could gather up.

I folded and placed all the bags into one to make it convenient and easy to bring along with me shopping.
I am really excited about doing my part in reducing plastic bag usage and hope as others do the same we will see a drastic reduction in the plastic store bags literally floating around our earth.  I am committed to making this change and encourage those of you that haven't to join me.

Out With The Old, In With The New

I have been making a special effort to provide as large of a variety of fresh healthy foods to snack on as possible.  Sometimes we just get stuck in a food rut and purchase the same types of foods like apples and banana's as snacks.  The children especially grow tired of this limited selection and I like to change things up a bit anyway to give them more experience and knowledge of different foods. 

 I purchased a large bag of delicious looking grapefruits and decided to enjoy one as a morning snack. I reached for the sugar shaker on the left to sprinkle a bit of sugar on my delicious grapefruit. The sugar was clumped together and I decided to refill the container and could not for the life of me get the top to budge!  This has happened too many times and a "new" antique cream and sugar set flashed in my head that I had purchased a few years back for when we have guests.  Needless to say if you read my post about our dish set you would know that I am tired of saving the good things for company.  So I went to the cabinet and took out the antique sugar bowl filled it up and it's so much prettier and easier to use than the old shaker style sugar dispenser.  Out with the old in with the new is actually a play on words in this case as the "old" shaker is a modern replica and the "new" sugar bowl is antique and purchased more recently.  Once again I encourage you to use what you love and enjoy and don't save everything for a special occasion.  Life is special each and every day.