Macaroni and Cheese Casserole.

Growing up, my mom used to make a macaroni, egg, tomato and cheese casserole.  I have no idea exactly how to make it, only that the cheese went on over the tomatoes and it made a good dinner.

I can't find the exact recipe I used, but it was good and my family all gave it a thumbs up!

Yum!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

It's very easy to make your own homemade laundry detergent. While not necessarily more environmentally friendly, it certainly is much cheaper and cleans just as well as store bought detergents. You only need four ingredients:

1. 1 bar Fels Naptha Soap
2. 1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax
3. 1/2 cup Washing Soda
4. Water

The first three ingredients are usually stocked in the laundry aisle of your grocery store, Wal*Mart, etc.



Step 1

Grate the soap. I use an old grater kept just for this purpose.

Step 2

Add soap to saucepan and add 6 cups water. Heat over medium/high heat. Stir until dissolved. If you use higher heat, watch CLOSELY because it bubbles up really quickly like milk.

Step 3

Add borax and washing soda and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat.

Step 4

Add about 2 quarts boiling water to a 5 gallon bucket.

Step 5

Add soap mix to bucket and mix well.

Step 6

Add a further 1 gallon of water to the bucket (can be cold water.) Mix again.

Finished product:

Now you can put the lid on the bucket and let it sit overnight. By the next day it will have formed a gel. If it goes more solid you can just stir it so it becomes a chunky gel. Use 1/2 cup per load of laundry.

I use an old powdered washing detergent scoop to measure mine into my washer. I fill the scoop halfway.

Gem Squash

Want to try something new in your garden next year?

Try get your hands on some gem squash seeds! If you can't find any drop me a line, I'd be happy to share a couple seeds with you :)

Gem squash is grown in South Africa and very similar in taste and texture to acorn squash, but half a gem is a perfect serving size, unless you happen to be in my family, then you'll need one squash per person!

Gems are round and smooth. You can pick them at any stage of their development. If you pick them when they are still very little then you can cook them whole and eat them seeds and all. If you let them get big but still green then they will be very tender and the skin will also be tender enough to eat if you want (like my kiddos!) Once they start getting a little orange then the skin becomes thicker and you can store them for a long time.



This is what gems look like as little bitty baby veggies.



And here they are, halved and ready for the oven. You can see the difference in the ages of the gems. The very yellow ones were allowed to riped and the skin to thicken. They make a good side dish no matter what their age!

Our favorite (indeed the only way we do!) way to cook them is to halve them and then place them cut side down on a cookie sheet with a little water in the bottom. Put in the oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes. You should be able to easily stick a fork through the skin once they are cooked. Don't let the pan dry out, top up with hot water if needed.... but don't mess cold water on the glass of your oven door in the process! The glass *will* crack very prettily, and this will happen just before Thanksgiving, leaving you without an oven. Ask me how I know! Ha!

Talk about getting sidetracked. Anyway, once the gems are done, you will remove them from the oven and then scoop out the seeds. If your gems are tender enough then the seeds will still be edible, so you can eat them if you like. We scoop out the seeds and then add a pat of butter and a teaspoon of sugar to each gem half.

A true taste of South Africa!

At a loss on what to do with all that zucchini?

Well, you're not alone! We're just about ready to start blanching ours and freezing it for the winter.

I saw an ad on craigslist this week for free zukes. We shared some with our neighbors today. I spend a lot of time visiting recipe zaar for zuke recipes and trying out new dishes.

Thankfully most of our family LOVES summer squash, so I can serve it in various ways and they will glady eat it - with the exception of our four year old who doesn't care for it too much.

One of the simplest ways we eat it is to simply roughly dice it and then fry it up in our cast iron pan, add some seasoned salt, black pepper and garlic and then cook 'til just tender. It's prettiest if you have a mixture of summer squash, like yellow ss, zukes and white scalloped ss. Throw in a few pieces of ripe tomato for a splash of red.

Good eating!

Useful Kitchen Gadgets: Part One: Tupperware Hamburger Press

There are so many kitchen gadgets available on the market today, many of them quite useful, many more of them not. I thought I'd write every now and then about some of my favorite kitchen gadgets.

First up is my Tupperware Hamburger Press system. As far as I know you can't get these new anymore, but there are many available on Ebay and other sites. Now, of course you can make patties by hand, but when you have seven people to make patties for these make the work a lot quicker, easier and cleaner!

The set includes a press, sleeve/ring, patty freezer keepers and lid(s).

Start off with your ground meat mix. A perfect mix is made of either ground beef or turkey, egg and spices.






Insert sleeve/ring into one of the patty freezer keepers. Scoop out some of the meat mix (about 1/3 cup) into the keeper.





Get your press....








And press and turn gently.








The result :)








Remove sleeve/ring.








Snap another keeper onto the bottom keeper.








Repeat, and then snap on the lid. If you plan on using the burgers immediately, put them in the freezer for half an hour or so to firm them up before grilling. Otherwise, put in the freezer and remove when needed.

Bulk Yeast

For those of you who bake a lot with instant/active yeast but are still buying it in sachets or those little bottles.. there's a better way!

Costco and Sam's Club sell bulk yeast bricks. Sam's has Fleischmann's sold in a package of two 1 lb bricks and Costco has Red Star sold in a 2 lb package for $3.39. The bricks feel SOLID as they are vacuum packed but once you open them up they're granular and exactly the same as the yeast in those little sachets.

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast = 1 yeast sachet

I keep some in a small jar in the refrigerator and the rest gets kept in the freezer. It doesn't lose its potency.

In case you don't know what to look for, here's what the Costco yeast looks like (milk in there for size reference) and you can find it on the bottom shelf under the spices, right around the area you'll find the Vanilla extract.