Musings from the Junque Pile with a little Junque Food thrown in.

Nothing much happened in the gardens this past weekend. It was stormy and rainy and just blech-y.  I was hoping to get my tomatoes and peppers outside and into their warm and comfy wall-o-waters, but it was not meant to be.

Instead, I cleaned up after animals (you can't have 3 cats and a dog and have no smells in the house, I don't care who you are), did a mountain of laundry (that I still have yet to fold), and the hubster and I took turns shaving and trimming the dog (I swear she's part wookie, and smells like one too).

Sunday I concentrated on cooking for the week. I made an awesome pot of refried beans there's no frying don on them, so I don't know why they are called that, except it sounds much better than "Mushed Pinto Beans."  They were totally NOM. I say that, and I don't even like pinto beans. Or much of any bean-y type thing, for that matter. Except Green Beans, and even those can get bean-y if left on the vine too long. Trust me, I know.

But I digress....

I made 2 loaves of bread.  I wanted to make it handmade instead of in the bread machine. I guess I felt the need to knead, if ya know what I mean.  I used a 1/2 combo of whole wheat flour and white flour, with a few teaspoons full of flax seed.  I also covered it in sesame seeds while baking.  The loaves weren't as fluffy as I'd have liked them to be, but I don't think they are super dense either. I'll find out tomorrow when I make myself a sandwich, or toast.

I also made beef tacos for dinner. Seemed fitting, since I'd made the beans.  I love tacos in any form. Fish Tacos - have I shared that recipe with you guys? If not, I will...totally a great recipe, and quick and simple.

Back on track...

I also made a bowl of Tuna salad for lunches.

We are also defrosting a set of pork chops and I just had DaHubster get some hot dog buns, so pretty much all the dinners, with leftovers for lunches are all set this week.

I feel pretty darn good about that.

Not bad for a crappy rainy weekend.

And if you are still with me...I give you: KITTY CAM! Live kittens, go watch!

Musings from the Junque Pile

So, my steam mop bit the dust a little while ago, and man that bummed me out.  I had gotten so used to whipping it out to clean up after the herd.  It was a Shark model, before the pocket one came out, and I just didn't feel right about spending $125 for another one if it was going to break in less than 2 years.

The Shark mops have a problem with flimsy handles - you have to pump the handle as your mop in order to get the steam to come out, and as the handle is plastic, it tends to break easily. Shark even sells replacement handles for their product - they *know* it's a problem.

Unfortunately, the mechanism that releases the steam into the mop is what broke on mine, and there was no way to fix it.  :(

So after an exhaustive internet search, including extensive reading of consumer reviews, DaHubster and I finally decided on the

Eureka Enviro Hard-Surface Floor Steamer,313A. 

It has some great reviews, and a decent price - one that I can live with if it doesn't last the 2 years my old Shark steam mop did.


We also finally FINALLY bought the Tattler Reusable Regular Canning Lids and Rubber Rings - 12 Pack. I've been hearing about them for awhile now, and have heard some people that I trust (ie: Jackie Clay, from Backwoods Home Magazine), that yes, they do work. Year after year. We got both regular and wide mouth lids.

I cannot wait to start using these new re-usable lids this year. And we will have plenty off opportunity to, as we are finally adding the raised bed along the back fence, and at least one other raised bed in the "back 40." There will lots of great veggies growing in this years garden!

I love it when things finally come together.

You put that Junque on your Face?

I have the worst winter skin – alligator skin – crepe skin – whatever you want to call it, I have it.  It feels thin and dry and OH MY GOD itchy.  It has been suggested that I don’t scrub enough in the shower. The problem is that the more I scrub, the more my skin hurts and feels tender.  Most lotions make my skin feel heavy and suffocated, so moisturizing is a pain. And I’ve spent waaaaay too many $$$ trying out lotions and face scrubs and not liking anything.

So after a long time of trial and error, I’ve come up with a system that works for me. And the best part is, it’s cheap. My first love is Grandma’s Lye Soap. I find it at my local hardware store sells it, but I see it can be bought online (link to Amazon thru site.  Despite what you might think about lye, this soap doesn’t burn my skin. The only ingredients are: Lye, lard, water, and very little else.  My husband likes it because it doesn’t smell like anything, especially anything girly.  I like it because it doesn’t make my skin feel tight or like there’s any residue on it.

Step two in my attempt to ease the Winter Skin Blues, is my favorite product of all time: Baking soda. Is there anything this stuff cannot do??? (You might think me silly and immature to use multiple question marks, but when it comes to this miracle product, it’s totally relevant, and despite that I am sticking my tongue out at you right now).  Now, my first few forays into attempting to use baking soda resulted in skin that was scrubbed too raw, so I caution you to use in a gently swirling motion. And rinse twice. Anyone who has used baking soda to clean their tub knows that when it’s dry you always find a line or two of dusty leftovers. Don’t do that to your skin. And another note of caution: I really only use baking soda a couple of times a week, not every day.

And lastly is step three in my brand new winter regime - Glycerin. You can find it in at the drug store. I think this sized bottle cost me less than $2.00, and that was about 3 years ago.  I got it because I had heard that it was great for getting oil based stains out of clothing. Yeah, tell that to my favorite mock turtleneck that had a run-in with a dish of linguine and clam sauce. The turtleneck lost. However, I love it for my feet and face.  I slather in on my feet right out of the shower, and put on socks. I slather it on my face, let it sit there for a minute. It’s very thick and viscous, and it doesn’t really sink in. Then I rinse it off with cool water, and pat my face dry.  My face feels great all day.

As with everything, your mileage may vary.  I found that pricy products hurt my skin as well as my wallet.  Of these three things, Grandma’s Lye Soap is the most expensive at around $6.00 a bar. but I found it at Amazon for a little over $3.00 a bar...I'm buying it there from now on!

Junque Yard & Junque Food

I feel like it has been forever since I updated here.  I haven't because there hasn't been anything Earth shattering going on around here. My knee is healing well, and I'm off crutches and the cane I downgraded myself to last week.  So that makes me happy.

Yesterday I bought tons of veggies at the farmer's market - green onions to dehydrate, more garlic (homegrown tastes so much better than what is in the store, I cannot recommend it highly enough), more banana peppers (mine are still producing, but not the quantity I got last year, and I am running out of jars of pickled nanas at an alarming rate), cukes (I'm getting tons of flowers, but not so much are actually fruiting) for pickling. I keep picking and using the bell peppers I have, so they aren't turning red on the vine - however, I found a vendor that had an over abundance of orange and red bells for 75 cents a piece - SCORE!  Those will be chopped and frozen for putting into dishes.

My biggest score, and here's my nuttiness showing, was a 10 lb box of Michigan blueberries. A greenhouse I pass by on my way to work everyday has been advertising the blueberries for a couple of weeks now, and I realized that if I wanted to make jam and freeze a bunch for the winter, I had to get them NOW. So I did.

Now, I'm staring at the bounty in my kitchen, and wondering WTF was I thinking? Good thing I have tomorrow off, Imma be processing all this stuff for freaking ever.

I have my mother coming over today to help with the processing, which is greatly appreciated.

I have a friend from out of town coming over tomorrow, which makes me happy, too...She can yack at me while I'm chopping and canning.

It's a great thing that I work better under pressure. I have to finish cleaning the house, and then just dig in.

I couldn't be happier.  :)

To my East Coast peeps, I hope that Irene does you no harm. Take it easy out there...

Musings from the Junque Pile

I don't have a lot to talk about today. But I do have a general feeling of contentment that I'd like to share. DaMan and I spent the majority of yesterday deep cleaning the house, which is something I don't do enough of. Oh sure, I pick up, scour the basics, and basically try to make it so we don't live in filth, but I am not an enthusiastic cleaner.

But I have 3 cats, a dog, and a husband who works on engines for a living. Things get dirty. Yesterday we knocked back copious amounts of animal fur, scrubbed stuff that doesn't get scrubbed often enough, and it makes me feel calm. Happy. Satisfied. It's like free therapy. I should do it more often.

I've been slowly picking raspberries as they become ripe. Raspberries have an extraordinarily short time of ripeness before they go bad. Strawberries have a few days of hanging in there, so if you miss a few, or pick them and stick them in the fridge, they are OK for a few days. Not so raspberries. it's almost like they are daring you to get them before they turn. There are never enough to do anything with them but eat them immediately, which, I admit, I've done plenty of. But I wanted to try to make jam with them this year. Hard to do when you can only pick a small bowl full a day. So I've been freezing them. it is my hope that when I get enough to make a few pints of jam, they will not be too mushy. But hey, it's jam, right? you gotta mush to make jam. I'll keep you posted.

Musings from the Junque Pile

Happy Sunday! Happy Independence Day Eve! (???)

What a difference a day makes. The humid has ramped down, and it's a balmy 70 degrees this morning at the micro-mini ranch. A day when one might want to fling open the windows and let the breeze in. Well, maybe. I have to see how much the temps will climb later today. LOL

It seems that my weekends have become reversed. Saturdays are the days one usually try to get their cleaning and errand running done, with Sunday being the traditional "day of rest." I find that the older I get, the more Saturdays have become the day of relaxing and unwinding after the week of work struggles and drama. Sundays then become the frenzy of cleaning and cooking for the week.

I'm not saying I was a complete bum yesterday, but I will admit to a nap in the afternoon.

This being a three day weekend (YAY!), I don't feel as rushed as I would normally. However, if I want to relax and have some fun, today's the day for doing, if you know what I mean. I have a living room full of animal hair encrusted furniture that if they don't get vacuumed in the immediate future, will soon animate themselves and start shedding on their own. And probably begging for food.

I really need to take down the bird feeders, wash and refill them. Or I'm going to start losing some of my favorite birdie customers.

Weeding is always needing to be done out on the back 40 (that's inches folk - it's a micro-mini ranch for a reason). And I really REALLY need to move some of my colder weather crops (lettuce, spinach, sugar snap peas, etc) into a shadier location so that they don't die in the upcoming heat of summer.

And I need to come up with breakfasts and lunches for the week. If I don't, we will be sneaking off the fast food joints, and spending money that we don't have to fill the void.

I'm not complaining, but I am listing some of this stuff as a way to keep me honest. Everyone gets into a "I don't wanna do it" mood occasionally, and lets things slide. I've been there for awhile now - just doing the minimum to keep going, or "keep up appearances." I need to boot myself in the behind and get on top of things. Besides, I'm not such a psycho hose beast when the house is relatively clean, there's good food in the fridge, and more growing outside, and the place looks less like a tornado hit it (technically, it was more of a heavy duty windstorm that hit a few days ago, but unfortunately, I can't blame the weather for my lack of tidying, can I?...yes, I can.)

All right, then. Someone needs to come hide my Kindle, and yell at me if they see me playing games or posting delicious recipes that I find on Face Book.

 K?

Junque-ology - Cleaning Copper-bottomed pots

Cleaning Copper-Bottomed Pots

My mother-in-law knew that I coveted her ancient Revere-Ware copper bottomed pots. They were awesome for even heating and not scorching. She gave them to me when she bought herself some new cookware, and I happily took them.

At some point in time (in Happy Accident Land), tomato sauce overflowed one of these pots, and we'd noticed that the copper which was dull and dark, became clean and spiffy looking. Thinking we were geniuses, we would occasionally throw the pots in a shallow dish filled with some sort of tomato sauce. Spicy V8 was the usual fare, as we always had some around, but it never got used enough to feel bad "wasting" it to clean a pot, if you get my drift.

Anywhooooo, last week I noticed that my most beloved pot was getting reeeeeeally grimy on the bottom, and I knew that I'd have to get around to cleaning them. Since I started this blog, I thought it might might be neat to conduct a wee little experiment and see if tomato juice was truly the bestest, fastest, easiest way to clean a copper-bottom pot.

I went to my trusted old book, "Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean," by Linda Cobb. In the book, the author said to use lemon juice and salt to shine up copper. And I got to figuring, tomato juice and lemon juice...both are acids, so why not try vinegar, too? This works out well, because I have three copper pots to clean.  :)

As you can see, they are pretty dingy. Definitely time for a clean. I got out my trusty Pyrex casserole dishes, and loaded one up with each acid: V8 Juice, vinegar, and lemon juice. I dunked one pot in each for a minute, then poured salt on the bottoms, put them back into their respective acids, and swished each for a minute or so.

Here are the results, and let me say, I'm pretty surprised:

 I'm calling it a tie between the lemon juice and the vinegar.  The pot that the vinegar was in wasn't as dingy, because it doesn't get used as much as the two larger pots. However, the vinegar pot needed to be buffed as it got a a grey-ish film on it when it dried.

The lemon juice pot still has a few burn spots in the middle, that has since resisted being cleaned off no matter what. But these pots are ancient, so I'm willing to live with a few spots.

The V8 Juice just did not live up to snuff in this experiment.  I finished it off in the lemon juice, and was able to 85-90% of the black off the bottom of the pot.

There you have it! And now I have cleaned pots that I could hang on the wall, if I ever got my shaker shelf up....  :)

Junque-ology - Re-Stuffing my Comforter

Yes, I wish this was my bed. Alas,it is not.  The comforter shown in this picture, however, is mine. I love the reversible fabric. I love the plaid on one side, the lighter striped pattern on the other. I bought this from Overstock.com probably about 2 years ago for just under $50.00.  I figured it would give me a few years, then give out. Well, I was right.  The batting inside has torn and bunched badly The poor thing is pretty much unusable. However, it being the only comforter I have, I've had to use it - even in it's horrendous shape. 

I really didn't want buy another cheap comforter. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want another goose down duvet. Our last duvet met its nasty end when one of our cats decided it was a much better place to pee on than in the litter box. But she was old and sick, and I forgave her.

I had thoughts of turning the fabric from the comforter into a duvet cover. It wouldn't take much, but getting a new duvet is something I cannot afford right now. Have you priced them lately??? O.M.G. it almost makes you want to raise the geese yourself just for feathers.

Anywhoo...I needed to do something quick. The comforter desperately needed to be washed, but the batting inside wasn't going to be able to handle another washing & drying. It hasn't been warm enough to line dry, either, which I was doing in nicer weather to save some wear and tear. What to do? What to do?

If you remember from my blog-post about the necklace board I made...I tend to dither. I want to do something, but I can't because something else needs to be done first. And that can't be done, because of cost or SOMETHING that always manages to bog down the process. So I dither. I let ideas swirl in my head, and nothing ever gets done. Starting this blog is helping me to stop and say, "Do What You Can Now." Just do it, and do it better later, if you need to.  So I am.

I went to the craft store, and bought out their section of poly fiber-fill. I remembered from my pillow making days, that you generally 2x what you think you do when it comes to fiber-fill. So I got lots.

I dug out my old sewing kit, and hunted up my seam ripper.  The seam ripper and I used to be good friends, back in the old sewing days. Yes, together we've ripped a seam or two...hundred.  I sat down with my comforter, my seam-ripper, a large garbage bag, and whatever was playing on the History Channel (something about the Pope, but I really wasn't paying attention).

I carefully "ripped" about 2 1/2 inches of seam from the side of the comforter. I pulled out all the gnarly stuffing from inside. And I do mean GNARLY. If you have a dog, and you let that dog sleep with you on the bed, then you know GNARLY.  I carefully took out the laughable quilting stitches in the middle of the thing (seriously, there were maybe 6 one inch long quilt stitches for a king sized comforter), which is why the batting tore and bunched up in the first place.

I'm washing and drying the shell of the comforter, then I will stuff it with the new poly-fill, then I'll whip-stitch the side seam back up.  And Viola! One fixed comforter.

You might ask, why didn't buy new batting, and re-quilt the thing?  Because I *do* want to go back at a later date and make this a duvet cover - when I finally get my new goose-filled duvet. Re-stuffing the comforter now will tide it over until I get that new duvet (and oh yes, I will get it). Then I can open the foot of the comforter, take out the poly fill, throw in the duvet, and either put on buttons, snaps or Velcro, as a new closure.

See? It *can* be fixed for now...and made better for later.  :)

And the dog can't lay on it until she gets a bath...and I mean that sincerely.

Junque Jewelry

I wear a lot of necklaces during the week, most of which I’ve made over the years. There’s one necklace that I didn’t make, but has a great homemade flair to it. I'm sure that's why I like it. It is a silver wire-wrapped heart, suspended diagonally on a snake chain. You can tell the artist shaped the heart over some sort of form, probably something water soluble so it could be melted out by soaking. Or possibly using something flammable like cork clay, because the silver wire has been heat treated to become inflexible. This necklace was my grandmother’s, she and I shared the same passion for hand crafted wearable art.

 

I wear it fairly often and as a result, it’s become quite tarnished. 

it's hard to see the tarnish on the heart, but it's there, trust me!

Now, over the years, I’ve been giving various sorts of jewelry cleaners to try, and I hate messing with them. I don’t know the chemicals they have, and they usually still take a certainly amount of buffing or scrubbing to get clean anyway. I don’t know about you, but I hate spending money on a product that claims to be a breeze to use, and you still have to put your elbow grease into it anyway.  I’d rather pay next to nothing, use a more natural product that I know the ingredients of, especially if I’m going to have to use my elbows to clean it anyway.

 

So, I’d heard rumors about toothpaste, but never tried it before. but I thought it might be worth a try. Being cautious, though, I decided to check the interwebs to see if there were any warnings, and there were several. Toothpastes can have an abrasive reaction to fine silver, or silver-plated items, causing them to get scratched. While this might not be a problem for some things, it's better to be safe than sorry. So I decided to take a gander at other "natural" ways to take the tarnish off of silver, and I cam across  What I found was AWESOME! A quick, easy, safe, and CHEAP way to do what I wanted.


I spot-checked the method from a couple of different sites, and I'll list them at the end for you, if you want them, oh gentle readers.

How to Make a Silver Polishing Dip

• a disposable pie tin OR a glass baking dish with a sheet of aluminum foil
• 1 tablespoon of baking soda
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• at least one cup of steaming hot (but not boiling) water

1. Line the glass dish with aluminum foil (or if you are using the disposable pie tin, skip)
2. add the hot water, baking soda, and salt. 
3. Still until dissolved (it will fizz...no worries)
4. Drop your item(s) into the water
5. Check after a couple of minutes. Leave in longer of there's still more tarnishing to be taken away.
6. Remove, dry, and polish. Viola!

glass bowl & tin foil

heart pendant, getting dipped

all bright & shiny!

**Please be aware that this method of cleaning may not be appropriate for jewelry with precious or semi-precious stones in it. **



Sources:


Making a Silver Polishing Dip from About.com


Rena's Klingenberg's How to Clean Tarnished Silver Jewelry