38° here this morning.  More rain is moving in later.  I plan to try to squeeze in some more garden chores...like pull up tomato plants off the strawberry row.  I may not have any strawberries left.


I originally wrote this November 30 so I will have to check  to see if all is pertinent.

I have been reading my real food book by Nina Planck again and the article about coconut oil jumped out at me again.  I have been using Louana's brand from Wal Mart and knew it wouldn't be the best quality.  Minor research led me no where on it.  I decided to find the best alternative at the cheapest price I could.  I ended up on Amazon (how did I live before Amazon?) and found Nutiva Organic Extra-Virgin on sale.
I paid $46.86 for 108 ounces or .433 per oz.  It is made from fresh coconut, cold processed and unrefined.  The only worrisome thing is it smells and tastes like coconut...don't know how that will be in biscuits....I will soon know. It will be delivered in 6 days.


Bread

I wasn't as happy with the second recipe for Oatmeal Bread.  It tastes very good but is a heavier, denser bread.  I won't post the recipe.  It was in my Joy of Cooking book listed as Oat Bread Cockaigne.

My next test will be Hodgson Mills Oat Bran  bread using their hot oat bran cereal...I finally remembered to buy some.

DIY Detergent

I made up a full-size batch of the laundry detergent yesterday.  I used the box grater and then decided to see how fine I could get it with the food processor.  Here is the result:

I was short the second bar of Fels Naptha so I used an equal amount of my homemade and very strong lye soap and it grates like very fine cornmeal....be interesting to see if it would work as well as FN.

Farm News

Usually I breed Willow back after her second heat after calving but this year I decided to give her more rest and time the calf to be born after the worst heat of summer.  I hate the  flies of summer.

When I milked day before yesterday, she was way down in her milk and I thought  she might be coming into heat.  Sure enough  I heard her bellowing when I went out to plant the bulbs. DH said the young bull was running the fence next to her area.  We walked down and turned him in to her.  It is so funny to watch their ritual.  Lots of sniffing, her wanting to mount him, him circling her.....I finally got bored and left them to what they do best without an audience.....I am hoping to see signs on her this morning.  You cattle people will know what I am referring to.

Here is their  first encounter, note his head in sniffing mode:

DIY Laundry Detergent - The Winner!

Good Tuesday morning!  and it is a beautiful one, bright sun shining and very crisp and cold.

I did my normal early morning house chores, made the bed, folded some laundry, put fresh sheets on a guest bed, and tidied up the kitchen.

Over Thanksgiving I had laid out an extra pie crust to thaw in case we wanted a different pie....didn't have to use it so I made jam pasties this morning.  I never know what to call them, but Cindy over on Chickens in the Road posted her pastie recipe with meat filling and I thought they looked like my little ones with jam....so jam pasties they are!

I had a jar of over-processed peach jam where I had cooked down the sugar and peaches  with no added pectin and I overdid it on the cooking.  I thought this would be a good use of the jam and it was. I just roll out the crust pretty thin and use a can for the cutter.  I put a dollop of jam in the center, brush edges with water, fold over, crimp with a fork and sprinkle the tops with raw sugar.  I baked them at 400° for 15 minutes and they were done perfectly.



DIY Laundry Detergent

OK, so the real purpose of this post is to tell you about the laundry detergent.  I have thus far tried two or more DIY recipes, one liquid and we were never happy with how our clothes came out.  Now you must factor in that we are active farmers and we get some serious dirt both animal and mineral on our clothes and I am a messy cook and wipe my hands frequently on my aprons (but not my pink one!) which leaves greasy spots.  These never came out with the other trial soaps.

I found this one on Keeping a Family Cow forum .
It was originally posted by Mountainmama and the founder of the forum had made it and was very pleased with the results.

I had everything already on hand except the Oxyclean from my previous trials.
My husband does our laundry and it the resident expert on all things involved with keeping our clothes clean.  I defer to him on all things laundry and he is happy with this one.

Recipe:


2 bars grated Fels-Naptha
2 cups baking soda
3 cups washing soda
3 cups Borax powder
1 cup Oxyclean (buy the generic one; I bought Sun Oxygen cleaner at Wal Mart)


Use 1-1/2 Tablespoons for normal load and 2 Tablespoons for very dirty clothes.  We just use the scoop that came in the Oxyclean.

The added plus is the clothes feel like you have used a rinse, very fluffy and they have a nice clean smell.  We have very hard water and so far this has worked equally well as Tide w/bleach which is all we would use up to this point.

I just read that  Oxyclean is the bleach product in Tide!  No wonder it works so well.  I think it was the addition of it that made this one DIY one work.

I will give a report on the new Oat Bread Cockaigne that I made yesterday tomorrow...
and using coconut oil.