Laundry Detergent!

I had to make some laundry detergent today and thought I would share how easy and wonderful it is. It really is the easiest thing in the word to do and I have been using it for a year and half now. All of our clothes come clean, even if they have been threw up on, soiled, or covered in dirt!

**I use the same recipe that the Duggar family uses, so giving props to them for sharing it.**

Powdered Detergent:
1 Bar of Fels-Naptha Soap (or you can use Ivory, but I personally like the Fels-Naptha better)
1 Cup of Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda
1 Cup Borax

First, chop up the soap into small pieces.

Second, place into a good food processor and run until the soap has become a powder. The magic bullet works great, so if you have one, use it!

Add all your ingredients together into some sort of container with a lid. I use an old number 10 can. For a light load, use 1 Tbsp. and for a heavy or soiled load, use 2 Tbsp. You can get about 40 loads out of one batch. 

I have used both liquid and powdered laundry soap. I have no favorite and frequently go back and forth between the two. Also, I have found this detergent (I like the liquid better for the cloth) works great for cloth diapers, so big bonus!

Liquid Detergent: (Direct Copy from the Duggar Family website)

4  Cups Hot Water
1  Bar of Fels-Naptha
1 Cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.

-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

Super easy huh? If you have never used homemade detergent before, you definitely need to!

Homemade Pizza.....Yummm!!!

Tonight we had homemade pizza and boy was it yummy! One of our favorite meals around here! So, I thought I would share the recipe and technique I use.

First, the ingredients.

3 C Flour

3/4 tsp. Salt

2 1/4 tsp. Yeast

2 Tbsp. Sugar

2 Tbsp. Oil

1 C Water

1. In a large mixer, mix all the dry ingredients.

2. Gradually add in water and oil and let it mix for about 8 minutes or so.

3. Preheat oven to 500*.

4. Divide your dough into 2-3 balls, roll out, place parchment paper, poke with a fork. 
5. Bake for 4 minutes.
 The parchment paper allows a quick and easy transfer of the pizza (put pizza and parchment in the oven) if you don't have one of those pizza paddle things. I have a round stone that I put into the oven and heat up while the oven is preheating.

6. Take out of the oven and top with cheese, let melt, and add sauce and toppings. Bake at 500* for 10-15 minutes. 

Now enjoy!

 If you want, you can even freeze the pizza or crust for later for those nights you don't feel like cooking. After you bake the dough for 4 minutes, let cool and wrap up in plastic wrap twice and place into the freezer. For an already made pizza, just make like usual, but before you bake it (with your toppings on it) just wrap it up twice in plastic wrap and freeze. When you pull your pizza out to bake, don't defrost it. Just put it in the oven at 500* for 15-20 minutes and it will be great! Your crust should not be soggy at all because it has been partially bakes already. I hope you all enjoy this easy pizza as much as we do!

Organizing My Recipes!

So, I have decided to tackle organizing all of my recipes. A few years ago I had only a handful of recipes, now, I have easily 30 cookbooks plus tons of papers and post-it notes with recipes written on them. Slowly, one by one, I have gone through and picked out the best of the best recipes, the ones we eat at least once every two weeks, and have started getting them together.

In the past I have tried to organize my recipes in a binder and it did work pretty well at first. I had things divided out and in page protectors, all was great. My issue came when it was time to use a recipe. My binder did not fit on my cook book stand (it drops down from the top of a cabinet). It was to wide. Because of this, I had a tendency to take the pages out of the book and then never put them back. So, after thinking about it and doing some searching online, I came across this site and it has been very inspirational to me. I decided to try out Jill's recipe organizing system and it is working!

Here it is, my new system. It's actually pretty simple, which is a plus for me! So have taken the category pages from Jill's site and put them on an index card sized 5x8. Then I laminated them and put tabs. Easy right?

Then I just typed up the recipes, printed them, used some card stock paper to make it took nicer, put it on a 5x8 index card, and laminated it as well. Everything is easy to read and it won't get messed up if something splashes while I'm cooking. (And let's be honest, that happens a lot around here when you have little ones trying to help. :-p )

 I also have another basket that I am going to keep all the recipes I want to try in or are working on perfecting. Once they are tried and good/perfected, then I will type them up and laminate them as well and put them in this basket with the true family recipes. I still have a ton left to finish up, but I'm doing a few at a time so I'm not overwhelmed. How do you guys organize your family recipes? Do you find it is working for you or are you on the hunt for something else as well?

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011 everyone! I hope everyone had a great and safe New Years.

So what are everyone's resolutions for 2011? I have three for this year:

1.  Spend more time making memories with my kids. As you all know, Elijah turned 4 a few days ago and I'm just in shock. When did he grow up on me? He is such a good big boy and I swear it happened over night. I blinked and I have two kids who are growing up way to fast! 
2. Get our long term food storage taken care of. This is definitely a priority and the sooner it gets done the better. 
3. Get more organized in my life, mainly with all the paper laying around. I would love to purge every paper that is laying around the house, but unfortunately I can not do that. I need a better system to get it all under control. I came across Jill's website Controlling My Chaos. It has really motivated me to get up and start to take care of this stuff. I have already copied her chore charts for her kids and I'm working on the recipe cards and the tax binders. So go and check her out, I'm sure you will love her too.