homemaking

What to Do With Lemons

We have a lemon tree that produces an abundance of lemons every year. That would be great except we don’t care for lemons (or homemade lemonade) and even if we did, who can eat bags and bags of them? I hate to waste them so I’m constantly trying to figure out what to do with them. I normally give away as many as I can, juice some of them and freeze the juice in ice cube trays to have for baking or lemon water. After that, I’m lost and my compost heap is well fed.

Lemon Tree My sister-in-law gave me two great ideas! One was cookies – while I’m not a fan of lemon flavor, the rest of my family loves it. SIL found a cookie recipe and made them for us. They were actually pretty good….so I made a batch and they came out just as good! There are actually a bunch of recipes on her site that use lemons…I may have to try some of them out too.

Lemon cookies

She also found a recipe for dishwasher soap. I’ve made homemade laundry soap and use it from time to time (I’ve been finding great deals on my favorite brands at CVS so I haven’t made laundry soap in ages!). I made dishwasher soap once and it was a flop! It hardened and was a pain to measure out. This time, I only made a single batch and I followed the directions carefully. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now and it works just as good as the name brand I normally buy. Plus it’s a whole lot cheaper! I didn’t have to buy anything (I had the coarse salt leftover from last time and the other stuff I had on hand). I will say that I did NOT strain my mixture. I don’t have a strainer, so I just blended it really, really well!

Making dish washer soap from lemons

I’ve been juicing lemons and freezing them in egg trays (I think my ice cube trays met with an unfortunate end), I’m going to chop up some lemons for future batches of dish soap, and I’m freezing some lemon peel for the cookies. I still need more ideas (seriously, we had at least 5 shopping bags full!), but I’m not putting as many lemons in my compost heap this year!

Juicing lemons

Do you like lemons? Any great ideas for what to do with an over abundance of them? I really do hate feeding them to my compost.

Lemon Tree

What to Do With Leftover Turkey

What to do with Leftover Turkey

At Christmas, we were given a precooked turkey. I didn’t need it since we already had plans for Christmas dinner so I put it in the freezer. A couple weeks ago I pulled it out (it was taking up a lot of room!) and let it defrost in the fridge for a whole week (it was frozen solid!). We grilled it (and by we, I mean my parents). It was almost 18 pounds and even with nine people eating, there was a lot leftover. We reheated some of it, but some people are not fond of reheated turkey. *coughcough*DH*coughcough* I love it cold! When I can convince my kids to try it, they like it too. This time they finally tried it while I was grinding it up.

Eating cold turkey

I’ve had this grinder forever. It was my mom’s and she decided that I used it more than she did, so it’s mine now.

Old fashioned meat turkey grider

After picking most of the meat off the carcass and grinding it all, I ended up with a nice bowl of ground turkey.

Ground Turkey

If you like turkey meatloat, then you’re all set. However, my family is not into blonde meatloaf, so I mix it with ground beef and then freeze it. Sometimes I make a turkey salad with it – add a bit of Miracle Whip, some onion salt, garlic salt, maybe some celery seed. Sometimes I also add some pickle relish to it. Mix it up and put it in a pita. Mmm!!

Longing For Paris – Book Review

This post contains affiliate links.

I was honored to be chosen to receive a preview copy of Longing for Paris: One Woman’s Search for Joy, Beauty, and AdventureRight Where She Is by Sarah Mae. I love the title because it expresses how I feel so often! I love my life – husband, three kids, four cats – but I frequently find myself waiting for the next big thing to happen. Not Paris – I’ve never dreamed of going there, it’s not on my bucket list, it’s not even someplace I’ve ever considered going. I tend to get bored with everyday life. I’m always looking for the next thing – moving to Florida, fostering kittens, moving again (that’s another post), camping. Just day-to-day life? Bor-ing. I don’t want to feel that way, but I know that my middle child feels that way too. He’s always asking when we’re going on our next adventure and every adventure gets compared to this time we went hiking in the PA State Game Lands near our house looking for Robinson Falls, a waterfall that I had read about in a magazine.

I had read an article about several waterfalls in western PA and thought it would be neat to check them out. Robinson Falls happened to be the closest so that’s why I picked it. Well, I missed the part of the article that said it’s for the truly intrepid. Oops!! The kids were 6, 4, and 20 months at the time. It was a somewhat spontaneous decision to go that day. Looking back, I’m sure my middle child doesn’t remember that he barely made it – by the time we got back to the car he was almost asleep on his feet. He doesn’t remember that his feet were soaked from wading through two streams. He remembers the fun parts.

I dream of owning the empty lots behind us so my kids can have more room to explore.

I dream of having chickens (even though my husband tells me they’re horrible creatures to take care of).

I dream of selling everything and living in a camper (not our current pop-up) for a year (as a side note – I’m living vicariously through Take That Exit).

I dream of an etsy shop that provides a livable income.

I dream of a blog that provides a livable income.

I have lots of dreams (obviously), but they don’t all fit together. I can’t sell everything to live in a camper if I want chickens or extra lots. My etsy shop requires a sewing room which doesn’t work with living in a camper, but traveling the US in a camper sounds very adventurous! What am I to do with all these dreams? God cares about my dreams, but I need to give them over to him. Sarah says, “where we go wrong is when we hold so tightly to our dreams that we neglect to fully trust God with them” and then, “The other trouble we run into with our dreams is when we take our very good dreams and try to walk them out before their time, which can bring frustration and/or neglect to our families or where God has us.”

So, dream, dream BIG, but make sure you hand them over to God and let Him guide you.

Buy the book – it’s currently only $8.37!!

This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure policy.

Using Applesauce for Eggs plus M&M Cookie Recipe

I recently bought four bags of M&Ms because there was a free movie ticket rebate…which I think I mailed in too late. *sigh* Anyway, I figured I should use them before we just munch through all of them! I wanted to make M&M cookies, but my recipe called for two eggs…and I only had three – two of which I needed for breakfast the next day and I did NOT want to run to the store for just eggs! So, I decided to improvise. I had some plain applesauce that needed to be used up and I’ve used it making other things (meatloaf, for instance) and the flavor didn’t come through, so I tried it….they were really good! So good that I decided to make another batch. I didn’t tell anyone about the applesauce either! If you’re like me and taste the cookie dough as you mix, it will taste a little applesaucey, but after the cookies bake, you’ll never know.

1/2 C Butter
1/4 C Oil
1 C Brown Sugar
1/2 C White Sugar
2 Eggs (or 1/3 C Applesauce)
2 1/4 C Flour
1 t Baking Soda
1 t Salt
1 1/2 C M&M’s (or a whole bag)

Blend butter/oil and sugars. Add vanilla & eggsÂ (or applesauce) and mix. Add remaining dry ingredients and mix well. Stir in 1 cup M&Ms. Drop by teaspoon to ungreased cookie sheet. Decorate top with remaining M&Ms. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy! And don’t mention the applesauce! 😉

Homemade Dishwasher Soap

I’ve been wanting to try making dishwasher soap for a while and finally got around to buying the necessary ingredients. There are a lot of recipes out there, but I went with simple – Borax, washing soda, coarse salt, and citric acid. All items that can be found at your local store. I paid about $9 for everything but the Borax (which I already had). Borax is around $4 for a box.

The citric acid came in a 7.5 oz container which is almost one cup. So, I doubled the recipe (the original used 1/2 cup citric acid) because why just make a little bit when you’re testing something, right? Since I doubled it, it didn’t fit in my handy peanut butter jar. So, I had to rummage for another container. This one doesn’t seal very well so as soon as I use some up, I’m going to transfer it. If there’s a next time, I’ll only make a single batch.

It was really quite easy! Just dump all the ingredients together, stir them a bit, and it’s ready to use.

Recipe

1/2 C Citric Acid

1/2 C Coarse Salt

1 C Washing Soda

1 C Borax

Use 1 T per load.

When I figure out how much it cost to make it, I get about $2.45 for a single batch or about $.05/T. I’m not sure it’s any cheaper than the Palmolive Eco gel I normally buy.

What about you – do you make your own or buy it? Why?

Update – I didn’t like this as much as I wanted. It may be that because it wasn’t in an airtight container, it clumped up and made it hard to use. It wasn’t really any cheaper than my normal detergent so I never made it again.