FREE Stuff from The Great American Pie Festival!!

  This weekend we family made our first visit to the annual "Great American Pie Festival" presented by The American Pie Council.  The festival has been held in Celebration, FL for the past 12 years & is a local hit!  Sponsored by Crisco (shocking right?) it's jam packed with fun for everyone!  Oh, and did I mention, there's PIE, all kinds of PIE!!!

For just $10/adult & $5/kids 6-12, we purchased tickets for the All You Can Eat Pie Buffet!  Yummy!  With 8 different pie vendors, plus Smuckers toppings, Cabot Cheese, and Dunkin's iced coffee, it made a yummy lunch!   After we were full of pie, we wandered out of the buffet & checked out some of the other festival vendors.  The kids spent some time in the bounce houses while we adults relaxed under a tent.  We also found time to stop by the Crisco booth & get some cool FREE stuff!  I'm particularly excited about the rubber scraper!  (I know, I'm easily amused!)  Wandering the festival, we also picked up Dunkin Hines frosting mix-in.  Luke is very excited to try those!!!   Maybe in the next few days you'll find cupcakes on my kitchen counter, but today it's my Piefest swag! :)

Blueberry Smoothie Time!

I was so happy to set a yummy blueberry smoothie down on my kitchen counter this morning!  Not because I love the flavor SO much (although I do) but because my youngest son has been begging me to make yogurt (yes you read that right) to make smoothies since i made the first jar of this season's blueberry jam!  Last year, a friend told how she makes her own yogurt in the crock pot.  Even though we don't eat much yogurt, I though I'd try just to see if it worked!  You guessed it, ti did!  So, because I needed something to do a half gallon of yogurt, I pulled some of my blueberry jam from the fridge & plopped it into the blender with the yogurt & and some ice cubes.  Taaadaaaa, delicious smoothie.  To make things better picky Luke liked it!  YAY!

Here's the recipe for my smoothies:

-1c homemade yogurt 

-1/4 c blueberry jam (there is enough sweetener in the jam that you don't need to add any more)

-About 8 ice cubes (this will probably vary depending on the size of you cubes & how thick you want your end result.

-Into the blender it goes & blend until desired thickness!

If you want to try your hand at homemade yogurt, this is the recipe that I used yesterday.  http://www.themakeyourownzone.com/2011/03/homemade-crockpot-yogurt.html

A few tips: 

-I have already established that I'm not blessed with large amounts of patients. That being said, I prefer to start my process at around 5pm & let it set overnight.  Then I don't have to spend all day resisting the urge to peek!  

-If you want organic, simply choose organic milk & yogurt starters.

- Looking for a thicker end product?  Strain your yogurt through cheese cloth or a colander lined with coffee filters after its finished!

A Pyramid of Blueberry Jam!

On my kitchen counter this morning was a pyramid of blueberry jam.  You can add making jam & canning to the loooong list of things I never would have though of doing five years ago, but about three years ago I saw a water bath canner on sale at Target and I was intrigued!  I considered it, but by the time I made up my mind to purchase one they were sold out!! When I saw them the next summer, I didn't even wait for them to go on sale! I snapped one up without even a clue about what to do with it!  I also purchased the Ball Canning recipe book, which didn't do much more than completely overwhelm me!  There were SO many recipes to choose from!  I did make the decision that I would start with strawberry jam. So, my canner had to sit idle through the summer waiting for Plant City strawberries to be in season.  My first canning endeavor was strawberry jam to be given as gifts for Christmas 2011. It was a hit & I was hooked!  The strawberry jam was followed in May by blueberry jam, and then in June by seedless blackberry jam!  I also canned blackberry lemonade & blackberry chipotle BBQ glaze!

 So far this season I've canned 44 jars of strawberry jam & 32 jars of blueberry jam!  Blackberries will be in season in mid-May & I can't wait to get picking & canning!  I'll also be ordering a Foley food mill to help with those pesky seeds!

The stuff I'll need!

Five pints of handpicked berries.

Organic sugar going in!

Ready for jars.

In the canner.

A Pyramid of Blueberry Jam!

Soap! Yes you CAN make Soap!

A couple of years ago I never would have guess I could make my own soap! And in my crock pot no less!  Of course, I knew that long ago people made their own soap, but I figured it was long forgotten much like washing your laundry in the creek with a wash board! (Side note here, I have recently discovered non-electric "washing machines" that you use in the bath tub!  NO I don't want one! LOL) Back to the soap... About a year or so ago I was cruising the Pinterest & saw several recipes of homemade soap!!  Seriously, you can make this stuff with oils that you can easily find at your local store, lye (100% lye drain cleaner is in home improvement store plumbing section) and water or other liquid.  Plus, for those visual learners, like me, there are TONS of videos out there on YouTube!

  After some research and supply gathering, I decided to jump into soaping.  I won't lie, but working with lye scared me a little bit at first. I had a lye burn when I was a small child & the feeling stuck with me!  But, I'm a homeschool mom of THREE boys, so I figured with the right safety equipment I could probably handle it!!   

  I decided to make hot process soap to start with.  This process cooks the soap making it ready to use immediately!  Since I'm not particularly gifted in the area of patience, I chose hot process over cold process because cp soap requires you to wait SIX weeks for the soap to cure!!! To this day, I've only made one batch of cp soap!  While hp soap is fast, cp in my opinion, is prettier!  The texture is smoother because the soap sits quietly curing. Then, a couple of weeks ago I discovered cold process/ oven process soap making!  This process offers a more smoother texture with the speedier curing of hot process!  The best of both worlds!  YAY!

Today the pictures On My Kitchen Counter I have my latest batch of homemade soap.  This batch was made with chilled red wine as my liquid in my lye solution instead of distilled water.  I was planning to add fragrance oils, but I like the way it smelled with the wine & cocoa butter that it was made with that I didn't add anything!!

Soap ready for the oven.

Finished soap!

Where I started: Laundry Detergent

  Today on my kitchen counter you'll find the makings for homemade laundry detergent.  This is where my journey of "What can I make myself" began.  I was tired of spending $10-$15 (it's been so long I really don't even remember how much exactly) a pop on bottles of laundry detergent!  Plus I was buying the dye free, fragrance free variety & I was paying more to get the companies to leave stuff out!  HELLO?! I had heard that you could make your own laundry detergent, but that sounded a little radicle to me.  (Says the woman who mow makes her own soap!)  I finally got fed up & did an Internet search only to find that it didn't look radical at all, but really simple!  Three ingredients were ALL that were needed and they were CHEAP!

  There are tons of recipes out there, and you have to find the one that you like, but here is my favorite.

Ingredients

--1/3 Bar Fels Naptha Soap grated 

(A food processor attachment is great for this step!)

--1/2 Cup Washing Soda 

(This is different than baking soda!)

--1/2 cup Mule Tem Borax

All of the above ingredients can usually be found in the laundry aisle.  I find all of them at my local supermarket (Publix) and at Walmart, but I have yet to find the soap at Target.

The process

-- Combine soap & 6c water in saucepan & heat until the soap melts

-- Add washing soda & borax & stir until it is dissolved.

--Remove from heat

-- Pour 4c HOT water into 2 gallon bucket 

(In the winter I heat this water in the microwave, but the rest of the year I just use the hot from the tap.  I have a solar hot water heater, it's plenty hot most of the year!)

--Add soap mixture & stir

---Add one gallon plus 6c cold water & stir.

I don't take credit for this recipe I found it here:

http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm

But I have made a couple of tweaks to it:

-- I use scraps from my own homemade soap now, so I use 1c of grated soap instead of the 1/3 bar

 --When I started ordering fragrance oils for my homemade soap, I began adding 1/2 ounce of fragrance to my laundry detergent.

Why the name?

Why "On My Kitchen Counter"?  Well, I've noticed that MOST of the pictures I've taken lately of the fun things I've been making (soap, candles, jams) also feature My Kitchen Counter.

Now there's a little story behind this counter.  About 7 years ago, when we were remodeling our kitchen, my husband & I went to the local home improvement store to picked out the color & texture that we would be planning to live with for several years.  We even took the door off of one of our cabinets so that we could try match as well as possible since we were only doing the counters & not the cabinets.  After what seemed like HOURS, we finally agreed on a tan colored Corian counter with a slightly darker seamless sink.  We ordered the counters and scheduled for someone to come out & take the measurements.

  About a week later, the scheduled crew came out to measure the kitchen.  Of course, they came as my husband was having his breakfast & getting ready to leave for work. I was just getting out of the shower when he knocked & the door and asked if i thought we should go with a lighter color. WHAT???  So, out I came in bathrobe & hair in a towel, NO contacts & I don't even think I wore my glasses, to start doing color comparisons AGAIN!  In my haste, I allowed myself to get talked into the lighter color counter AND sink, which is a real pain to clean!  (I do take secret JOY in my husband's grumbling when the slightest little thing smudges it!)  But it takes nice pictures!  LOL 

So join me to see what's been sitting on My Kitchen Counter.  Hopefully there will be more than just clutter!

Today's selection:  The flowers my son gave me last year for Mother's Day!