I followed this really easy recipe today to make my own black beans in the crockpot: Black Beans. I bought a 2lb bag of black beans to make this. First, you soak them in water overnight, then rinse and put them in the crockpot with a lot of water. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Rinse again and put them in bags. I ended up with 9 snack sized bags of beans and put them in the freezer so I can use them as needed. I’m glad I won’t be buying canned black beans for a while!
Today I made my own laundry detergent AND my own dishwashing detergent. I decided to just go for both at the same time since they require about half of the same ingredients. I found the recipes for both of the detergents here: laundry detergent and dishwashing detergent. She has really nice pictures for you to follow along too! I actually made half batches of each and each recipe still ended up filling a one gallon container. I did some math beforehand to make sure it was really worth it to make my own detergents. I know people say it’s cheaper, but I wanted to be sure….
Laundry Detergent – made about 12 cups
12 cups = 192 tbsp…So with 1-2 tbsp per load we’re looking at 96 loads on the low end or 192 loads on the high end (we’ll average it out to 144 loads)…I do laundry once a week so that is 144 weeks or 2.8 years. Yep, that’s when I’ll need to buy laundry detergent next. Or make it. Almost 3 years from now…
Dishwashing Detergent – made about 10 cups
10 cups = 160 tbsp…So with 1tbsp per load we’re looking at 160 loads…I run the dishwasher about 2x per week so that is 80 weeks or 1.5 years until I’ll need to buy or make dishwashing detergent again.
So once I determined that this is definitely worth it I ventured out to my local dollar store and Walmart to buy the supplies. Here’s what I got:
Laundry Detergent
1/2 box or 2lbs Borax – $1.69
1/2 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda – $1.62
1 small or 1lb box Baking Soda – $0.52
1 1/2 bars Fels-Naptha Soap – $1.46 (I’m using the remaining half as a spot remover)
TOTAL: $5.29 or $.03 per load
Dishwashing Detergent
1/2 box or 2lbs Borax – $1.69
1/2 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda – $1.62
12 packets Unsweetended Lemonade Mix (I got kool-aid brand) – $2.40
1 1/2 cups Epsom Salt – $0.75 (dollar store!)
TOTAL: $6.46 or $.04 per load
Plus I got these really cute containers from the dollar store for just $1.00 each! Obviously…it’s the dollar store. Yay!
So overall this was definitely a worthwhile project! I’ll have to update on how these work as soon as I have the opportunity to use them. If they work well then I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t make my own detergent in the future!
This is my last week off before I start my new job! So I’ve been trying to do something fun and at least semi-productive (and usually from Pintrest) every day. When I saw my pin from a while ago about homemade tortillas I knew that I needed to try it. We’ve been grocery shopping on a budget for the past 2 months and I ran out of my budget about a week ago. We also ran out of tortillas about a week ago….unfortunate timing. With leftover Chipotle Pulled Pork still in the refridgerator we’ve been desperately wanting tortillas. (The pulled pork is just too spicy to eat without something bland on the side.) Here’s the original recipe for Tortilla Mix. The idea is that you make a huge batch of the mix and then just make the tortillas once you need them. (PS- she says it’s about $.25 per 10 tortillas!) I will admit that I wasn’t entirely sure this would work so I made 1/4 of her recommended recipe. However, it turned out great and I will probably make a full batch next time! As long as I can find a large enough jar to store it in….
My small batch made enough for 10 tortillas now and enough mix to store in a small container for about 10 later.
Ingredients
4 cups Flour
1/2 tbsp Baking Powder
1/2 tbsp Salt
1/4 cup Shortening (I used plain Crisco)
Directions for the Mix
1. Combine the dry ingredients then blend in the shortening with a pastry blender, your hands, or in my case a whisk.
2. If you just want the mix, go ahead and stop here. Store it in an airtight container.
Directions for Tortillas
1. Place 2 cups of dry mix into a medium sized bowl.
2. Add about 3/4 cup of warm water to the mix, stirring until you have a soft, sticky dough.
3. Put plastic wrap over the bowl and let the dough rest for about 15 minutes.
4. Preheat your pan over medium heat. You don’t need to grease the pan at all.
5. Pull off a golf ball sized piece of dough and roll it in flour. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough until it’s very thin.
6. Transfer the dough (carefully) into the skillet and wait until it bubbles up. Flip the tortilla and cook on the other side for another 30 sec or so.
7. Continue to make tortillas with the remaining dough. Easy enough!
We asked our waiter to take this picture. Too bad it’s blurry…you can tell it’s a good picture!
Last week I was able to meet up with two of my good friends who I’ve known since kindergarten and all of our moms for dinner. One of my friends is leaving for grad school in NYC in a few weeks and we wanted to be sure we all got to see her before she left. We were joking about how when we were little we would purposefully sit at a different table, away from our moms. I guess it made us feel more grown up. Now that we are all grown up it’s fun to get to catch up with everyone, even the moms!
We have a picture in this same spot from when we were 13!
This recipe resulted from several corn salsa recipes that I’ve made before. Today I really really wanted a salsa like this and I wanted it ASAP. No running to the store or cooking something on the stove, etc. So I super simplified these recipes and made it into my own. It was really good and I didn’t miss any of the extra ingredients that are often added to salsas like this. I guess sometimes simple is really the best way to go.
Ingredients
1 can Corn, drained
1 can Black Beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1/4 cup Lime Juice
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp dried cilantro
1/2 tsp chili powder (or to taste)
Directions
Combine all ingredients and mix together. You can eat it right then but it’s even better if you let it “marinate” in the refrigerator for awhile first.
This recipe is very simple and doesn’t require all of the expensive components of real tiramisu (one of my absolute favorite desserts!) I’ve been wanting to try it out for a while now but knew that a whole 9×13 of anything tiramisu would be dangerous in our home. So when we had all of our company over this weekend I knew it was the perfect opportunity! The original recipe can be found here: Tiramisu Cheesecake. Although a few modifications made this dessert even better than the original…I might be biased though…
It even has layers like in the original recipe picture!!
Ingredients
Directions
1. Heat oven to 325 degrees.
2. In an ungreased 9×13 pan use about half of the bag of Nilla Wafers to cover the bottom. Don’t worry if there are spaces between the cookies, you won’t even notice later.
3. Using about 1/3 of the coffee, soak the Nilla Wafers in the pan. I used a spoon and poured the coffee over several cookies at a time. The cookies should be thoroughly soaked – enough to pretty much fall apart if you touched them.
4. Beat cream cheese and sugar in large bowl with mixer until well blended. Add sour cream and mix well. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Remove about half of the batter and set it aside in a medium sized bowl.
5. Add about 1/3 of the coffee to the batter that is still in the mixer and mix until just blended. Pour this batter with the coffee over the layer of Nilla Wafers in the pan.
6. Add another layer of Nilla Wafers using the rest of the bag (I even poured the crumbs in) and soak them with the remaining coffee.
7. Cover this layer of Nilla Wafers with the remaining “plain” batter that you set aside earlier.
8. Bake 45 min then remove from the oven. Allow it to cool almost completely on the counter. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Top with Cool Whip and cocoa powder shortly before serving. Enjoy!
This weekend we had both of our families over “officially” for the first time since we’ve been married. It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a while but things kept coming up. You know how that goes…Anyway, I wanted to make a meal that everyone would like and something simple that I couldn’t mess up too easily. I couldn’t help but think what would happen if I burned the chicken right before they arrived? Take out? But it turned out great! My family even brought me these beautiful flowers!
Here’s what I made for dinner (click on the link for the recipe):
Having everyone over for dinner was a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to having more people over in the future! It was a little squishy at our tiny dining room table but I would definitely do it again!
This is what I’m making for dinner tonight. It smells sooo good right now! It’s one of our favorite recipes and one that I’ve made several times since we got married. I love that it cooks in the crockpot and that it’s a great meal for all seasons. The original recipe can be found here: Spicy Shredded Pork.
Ingredients
1 Medium Sized Pork Roast
1 can (11 Ounce) Chipotle Peppers In Adobo Sauce
2 cans Dr. Pepper, Coke, or other dark soda (Dr. Pepper is my favorite)
1/4 cup Brown Sugar (or more to taste)
1 Onion
Directions
1. Place pork roast (mine are usually frozen), can of chipotle peppers, soda, and brown sugar in crock pot.
2. Cook on low 6-8 hours or until you get home and are almost ready to eat.
3. About 1 hour to 30 min prior to dinner take out the larger pieces of pepper that you can still see in the crockpot (unless you want it to be super spicy) then pull or shred the pork using two forks. Add the chopped onion then allow to simmer for a little bit longer before serving. Make sure the sauce covers all of the pulled pork. If you don’t have enough sauce you can always add another can of soda.
4. Serve like you would pork or chicken tacos – with lettuce, tomato, sour cream, etc. on a warm tortilla.
I’ve been home a lot lately since I haven’t started my new job. So in order to keep busy I’ve been organizing and trying other fun looking things from Pintrest. I had to share what I’ve been doing with Mason jars (and other jars too!) because they are so useful and look cute too! I could think of tons of stuff to store in jars like this!
1. Refrigerator Iced Tea: I used my largest jar (I think it’s a 1 liter) to make iced tea. Just fill the jar with water, add one family sized tea bag or a few smaller tea bags and leave it in the refrigerator overnight.
2. Organization: I put popcorn kernels in one and coffee in the other. Looks better in my cabinet than bags and makes it more easily accessible.
If you don’t have Mason Jars…I had a leftover sauce jar that I cleaned out so it could be used for something as well. I used black acrylic paint to paint the lid of the jar (so it didn’t say things about sauce) and now it’s ready for use!
This recipe for Oatmeal Breakfast Muffins was super easy and modified from another recipe I found on Pintrest for Banana Oatmeal Muffins. I’ve had several so far and they are pretty healthy and keep me full for quite a while. Great for busy mornings!
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 cup Plain Vanilla Yogurt (the original recipe calls for Greek, however this is what I had)
6oz cup Cinnamon Applesauce
3/4 cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Cinnamon
2 Ripe Bananas (I pulled mine out of the freezer and let them thaw prior to use)
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 and spray one muffin pan with cooking spray. Without flour in the recipe the muffins won’t do well in paper cups. (Mine came out of the pan just fine without the cups.)
2. Add all of the ingredients into a bowl and combine together with a wooden spoon until just mixed.
3. Distribute the batter into the muffin pan and put it in the oven.
4. Bake for 15-20 min or until a toothpick comes out clean. Keep an eye on these, they can burn fast!
Grand Adventure 