Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Everything You Need to Make Vanilla Extract for Christmas Gifts

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There’s nothing like talking about Christmas while we’re dripping sweat off our foreheads this summer. The only reason I bring it up in July is that many have been asking about the specifics of making Homemade Vanilla Extract for Christmas gifts. Now’s the time to get this project going if you’re planning to put it under the tree or in stockings in December. Just think – if you get this going now, your busy holiday time preparations will be just a little bit easier! It takes 4-6 months to make strong, flavorful vanilla extract. Therefore, beginning anywhere from May to August is ideal if you want your vanilla to be ready by Christmas.

How to Make Vanilla Extract

I have a detailed post showing you how to cut your vanilla beans and how to get your vanilla extraction process going. You will not believe how easy it is to make homemade vanilla!

Where to Buy Vanilla Beans

I have tried vanilla beans through the years at a few different places, but none of them compare to Olive Nation. Their quality and price is the best, hands down. When we contacted Olive Nation about promoting them here at Heavenly Homemakers, they were quick to give all of you an ongoing 15% discount (when you use the code home at checkout and click through this link). Plus, they always offer free shipping on vanilla beans.

How to Finish Your Vanilla Extract

After 4-6 months, you’ll simply strain the vanilla beans and bottle your deliciously wonderful liquid gold. Here are the details about how to finish your vanilla extract.

Where to Buy Bottles for Vanilla

I’ve searched many websites for good prices on dark colored bottles for my finished vanilla extract. When I add in shipping costs, the best price I’ve found has been through Mountain Rose Herbs. Here are more details about where to buy bottles for vanilla.  You may be able to find a better price locally, but since I live in a small town with no dark bottle options, I have found it’s best for me to order online.

Fun Labels for Your Vanilla Bottles

You can print your own labels to decorate your vanilla bottles when giving them as gifts, or you can have my friend Char custom design some for you. I love her work!

What have been your homemade vanilla experiences? Have you gifted it to others? 

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Having Company? Prepare Food Ahead of Time. {And My Hostess Confessions}

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Having Company Prepare Food Ahead of Time.

Little known fact about Laura:  I can start a load of laundry, brush my teeth, plan dinner, write a grocery list, and instruct four different children on six different chores all at the same time, but for all of my multi-tasking abilities, I cannot talk and cook simultaneously.

I try to fake it. I’ll stir together cookies while chatting with a friend in the kitchen, and attempt to sound intelligent when answering a question. This works not at all. She’ll ask how long we’ve lived in this house, and I’ll look lamely up from my cocoa powder and answer, “blue.” She’ll try again, asking where I got my lovely serving platter. I’ll blink a few times in an effort to pull myself into the conversation, and come up with “last week at a soccer game.” You think I’m kidding. God bless our house guests. 

Occasionally, I will actually answer questions correctly while cooking (and even ask a few brilliant ones) only to realize later that I forgot to stir important ingredients like oil or eggs into our breakfast muffins. We already know I struggle with remembering to put bananas in my banana bread – and that’s when I’m all alone in the kitchen holding only a conversation with myself (don’t ask). It’s rather scary and a wonder friends and loved ones still eat my food and declare it to be good.

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Because I love extending hospitality, but I also love not looking and sounding like a dimwit, I work to prepare as much food ahead of time as possible before guests arrive. It is my number one hospitality survival tactic. This also helps insure that I will not be working in the kitchen the entire time my company is here. I love to cook, but when guests are here, I’d much rather play games, watch the kids play, or sit around and visit intelligently. (Eleven. We’ve lived in this house for eleven years. It was a wedding gift. The platter, not the house. Try to keep up.)

In addition, prepping food ahead of time means that the worst of the dirty dishes are cleaned up and put away. I’ve also found that when some of the guests are children who eat as much and as frequently as mine, having snacks and meals prepared is helpful in avoiding melt-downs and grumpiness. As we all know, a grumpy hostess melting down in the kitchen is ugly. (Right. You thought I was talking about the kids.)

One more thing to note:  Beyond preparing food ahead of time, I feel it is important to keep meals simple. Guests don’t need gourmet, they just need food served with love. They don’t need fancy, they just need tasty. A fruit platter is beautiful, nourishing, and delicious. A lettuce salad tosses together quickly. Veggies steam in no time. Put those together with a casserole or another main dish you’ve prepared ahead of time, and you’ve got a perfect, simple meal to serve to guests.

So just in case you find yourself like me, with the inability to cook and talk at the same time, do the best you can to prepare food ahead of time. If all else fails, remember to keep a smile on your face at all times. You might respond to your guest with “in the refrigerator behind the peanut butter” when asked where your bathroom is located, but at least you’ll look cute.

Can you talk and cook at the same time?  (If your answer doesn’t make sense, I’ll assume you’re adding spices to your sauce.)

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Keep Your Maple Syrup Cold (Because You Don’t Want to Pour Mold On Your Pancakes)

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maple_syrupI made a sad discovery last week:  Mold in my maple syrup. {wahhhhhh-aah-aahh}

The label on real Maple Syrup says “keep refrigerated or frozen.” There’s a reason for that. :(

I know this. I’ve told this to others. Keep your maple syrup in the fridge or freezer.  But over the winter, our storage room is as cold as (if not colder than) a refrigerator – so our bulk maple syrup is stored there to save freezer space. Somehow I forgot about it and left it in the storage room even though – surprise, surprise – it is no longer cold in there. (Note to self: It is summer. It is hot. The storage room takes on the temperature of the outdoors. Put your maple syrup back in the freezer to store during the summer.)

When I opened the jar last week, ready to pour some into my serving bottle, I was greeted by an ugly smell and an even uglier green fuzz. Hoping I could salvage at least some of the syrup, I attempted to scrape the mold off the top.

Ever tried to scrape mold off the top of sticky liquid?  You can imagine how well it works.

In addition, the contents in the jar no longer smelled sweet. So even if I could have skimmed mold off the top, it wouldn’t have mattered. The entire jar was toxic.

Sooooo…woe is me. I had to dump it out. (Don’t picture it. It may cause you too much pain.)

I’m writing this to remind you all not to try this at home. Do not let your real maple syrup go bad. Keep it in a cold place! At all times. Especially in the summertime.

Bonus Tip:  A bowl of half-eaten applesauce will also turn green if left in the corner of the Lego Room for three weeks. This message brought to you by my eight year old.

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Getting Food Prepared for Company

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I love having these Raw Cookie Dough Bites from The Nourishing Home on hand for snacking. 

We are very excited to have two different families coming to stay at our house – the first for a few days beginning this weekend, and another next week, staying for three whole weeks!! The boys are looking forward to playing with their buddies, and I am looking forward to catching up with great friends I don’t get to see nearly often enough.

So that I can enjoy our visits and not spend all my time in the kitchen, I’ve tried to get a little bit of cooking done ahead of time. Here’s what I’ve made (or plan to make tomorrow):

One of our guests this weekend needs to eat gluten free, and then the following week, one guest has a peanut allergy. As long as I don’t get my weeks/guests mixed up, we should be just fine. :)

Our local Farmer’s Market hasn’t had much to offer yet in the way of fresh produce. We’ll get there, it’s just still early in Nebraska! Thursday night, I was able to get some fresh greens and two heads of broccoli. We ate all of the broccoli at lunch today. So good!

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I got stocked up at the store tonight on loads of fresh fruits and a few veggies, plus a few treats to share with our guests. I love all the fresh produce available this time of year. (And no, not all of it was organic. This is all I have available to me right now, so I’m cheerfully going for it!)  Hopefully by the time company comes, we’ll still have some of this available. I mean, when there are fresh peaches in the house…

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What are some of your favorite meals to feed guests?

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What to Do With Coconut Flour

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There’s been some conversation over on my facebook page about what to do with coconut flour. After all, if you take advantage of this great deal on coconut flour at Amazon, you may need a few recipes to go with it!

Coconut flour does not substitute one-for-one with wheat flour. Coconut flour is quite dry, therefore recipes usually require quite a bit more liquid (such as milk, water, or eggs) and less flour than you may be used to in wheat flour recipes. For instance, in my Coconut Flour Muffin recipe, I use just 1/2 cup of coconut flour to make 12 muffins. For a typical wheat flour muffin recipe that makes 12 muffins – I typically use 1 1/2 cups of flour. This means that even though coconut flour costs more than wheat flour, it will go much farther, keeping the overall cost quite similar! (Especially when you can get it for just $2.23 a pound. I am so thankful to know about this deal. Thanks again for your email, Heather!)

Here are the coconut flour recipes you’ll find here at Heavenly Homemakers:

And if you head over to the Tropical Traditions website, you’ll find tons and tons of recipes that include coconut flour.  From pancakes to chicken fingers to crepes to pizza crust – and everything in between. That page is a great resource. One more reason to love Tropical Traditions!

If you have any great recipes or links to recipes that use coconut flour, please share them in the comments of this post.  I’m excited to play with all of my coconut flour and to discover more great ways to eat it!

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How Many Times a Day Do You Run Your Dishwasher?

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I know some of you don’t own a dishwasher (the electric kind with buttons that does the work for you). We didn’t own one for the first ten years of our marriage, and since I didn’t know the difference, I didn’t mind at all. Today, if our dishwasher were to break, I would go right ahead and do all of our dishes by hand and be just fine.

But I have to say, I am very thankful that I have a working dishwasher. I use that thing like crazy, and find that it saves me a lot of time. We do have to rinse our dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, but I’d have to do that before washing them too, so the dishwasher definitely saves me a step.

With the kids gone last week, I found that I only needed to run the dishwasher once every other day. Wow! That felt so strange to me. Why? Because I run it a minimum of twice a day on a regular basis, and if we have company or I’m doing extra cooking for the freezer, I sometimes need to run it a third time. And trust me, the dishwasher is crammed full each time I run it.

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Here it is this morning, ready for our boys to unload (and reload after breakfast!).

Plates, mixing bowls, stainless steel pots and pans, utensils, jars, casserole dishes, glasses – we go through a lot of dishes each day. It made me curious…how often do you run your dishwasher? 

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My Weekend Baking/Cooking Marathon

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Some people soak in the tub. Some play a sport. Some read a book. Me? When I am worn out and need some refreshment, I find that cooking is just the pick-me-up I need.

Okay, yes – sometimes cooking is the last thing I want to do and passing out on my bed of pillows and quilty comfort is all I want. I’m not that tireless (or crazy). But over the weekend, travel weary though I was, I couldn’t stop myself from running into the kitchen to get some recipes made ahead for the coming weeks. I think it had something to do with the fact that I had suffered some kitchen withdrawal while being out of our home for eight days. And it may have had something to do with the fact that we’d eaten a few too many fast food french fries on our way home. Therefore I felt the need to grind flour, toss salads, and slice strawberries.

Anyway, I was magnetically pulled into the kitchen on Friday afternoon. I stood there for hours – cooking and baking and having a blast.  And then I passed out on my bed of pillows and quilty comfort long before my family went to bed. (They, of course, were playing a lively game of soccer in the living room with their Dad because they are all of the “some play a sport” variety of refreshment seekers. Yes, the ball was soft. Yes, one picture did get knocked off the wall. No, I don’t care. Yes, I slept through it all.)  But back to my kitchen time which happened before I passed out on the pillows.

I changed my plan just a little bit from the original list I shared on Friday. I was thrilled with what I accomplished in just a few hours and now have lots of healthy, prepared food ready to grab and serve. I hate that some of these pictures are ugly. Raw egg casseroles just don’t look pretty. They can’t help it. Bless their heart.

I started my marathon by getting several pounds of Turkey Sausage cooking in a pot. 

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While it was cooking, I started mixing up Giant Breakfast Cookies. I decided to make the Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookie variety since we loved those so much last time I made them.

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While the cookies were baking and while the turkey sausage was cooking, and while Justus chopped tomatoes for dinner (irrelevant to this post, but hey, there are tomatoes in the following picture) – I mixed up two Easy Breakfast Casseroles. As soon as the sausage was done, I stirred some into the casseroles. I put the casseroles into the freezer with a note to add cheese before baking. (I didn’t feel like grating any that night, what can I say?)

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Remember how Asa made a batch of no-bake cookies a few weeks ago, and it turned into Peanut Butter Chocolate Granola, so I posted the recipe? Well, this time, I made the granola and it threatened to turn into no-bake cookies. The nerve! I just smooshed it all into a platter and we’ve been breaking off pieces to eat all weekend. I think I should maybe bake it in the oven for a little while to crisp it up. Maybe I’ll do that later this week.

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Somewhere in there, the family came in to help me finish making dinner, I got out my Whole Wheat Quick Mix to make the crust for a Fruit Pizza (which we ate the following day), and I mixed up a double batch of Pancake Sausage Muffins. Shucks, I had the turkey sausage fresh and ready after all. And by the way, I referenced my Oh, For Real: Real Food, Real Family, Real Easy book about twenty times during this cooking session. Hope you’re loving your copy as much as I am enjoying and using mine!

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After dinner, I decided to go ahead and make a triple batch of Chicken Patty Sandwiches. I figured if I just got it done, I could then get the kitchen all clean and not worry about finishing my list the following day. We had fresh spinach from our garden, so I decided to grind some up and throw it into these sandwiches along with the carrots, onions, garlic, and chicken. 

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I ended up with 31 Chicken Patties for the freezer – full of all kinds of veggies and deliciousness. Unfortunately, I was on about sandwich number 27 before I remembered that I had not added one egg to the mixture. Ah well – the patties turned out great anyway. (And now you know that you can make this Chicken Patty Sandwich recipe without eggs and with spinach. Awesome.)

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Once all the food cooled, I bagged it, labeled it, stuck it in the freezer, loaded the dishwasher, started it, (took my vitamins, brushed my teeth, yada yada) and went to bed. My hair smelled a bit like a fried chicken patty sandwich – the kind with no eggs and fresh spinach.

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Want to Follow Along While I Have a Baking Marathon?

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Since we just got home from a big trip, I’m finding that I don’t have a lot of ready-made foods on hand. It’s only 71° today (super nice!) and the temps are supposed to start creeping up during the next few days. Therefore, I decided to have a spur of the moment baking/cooking marathon before my kitchen gets too hot. In other words: Look out, kids. I’m getting ready to dirty lots of dishes for you to wash.

I’ll take pictures to post Saturday so that I can share how this goes. 

Here’s what I have in mind to make, based on what I have on hand in my freezers, fridge, and pantry:

I’ll either make all of it, some of it, other stuff instead, or all of the above. How’s that for being non-committal?

Doing any extra cooking this weekend? Or are you traveling instead?

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What I Served at Bunco Last Week

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It just so happened that I was scheduled to host my 11 Bunco friends last week the day before leaving for our trip. With lots to do before taking off, I decided I’d better keep refreshments super simple. You know, because otherwise I would have done something really fancy and elaborate. (Yeah, right.)

As I was putting out the spread, I thought all the colors looked so pretty. And so, out came the camera.

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Here’s what I made:

It was easy, fun, and yummy. What are your favorite snack foods to serve at a get-together?

 

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How Many 9×13 Inch Dishes Do You Have? (In other words: Laura, are you as addicted to Pyrex as you appear to be?)

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Okay, it’s time for true confessions.

What? Like I typically tell a bunch of lies on my blog?

Side note:  I always kind of laugh inside when people use the phrase, “To be completely honest…” or “To tell you the truth…” Why do people say this? Because usually they are not being completely honest or not telling me the truth? Oh, we are funny people are we not?

But seriously. I’m  not gonna lie. It’s time for true confessions. I am not even kidding.

(Somebody stop me.)

I am often asked, “How many 9×13 casserole dishes do you have?” I can’t be sure, but I am guessing that they ask this when they read about how much freezer cooking I do, how many people I feed at one time, or how many lasagnas I make in one afternoon. It makes sense. A person can’t make eight lasagnas without eight 9×13 pans to put them in, right?

I counted, because while I had a guess, I wasn’t completely sure how many I actually have. It turns out that I have nine glass 9×13 pans (with lids), two stone 9×13 pans, one 10×15 glass dish, plus a nice variety of smaller glass dishes that I won’t even take the time to document. I also have two metal 9×13 pans, but I rarely use them because they aren’t stainless steel and are kind of junky.

Seem excessive? Maybe kinda. But I believe it would only be ridiculous to have this many casserole dishes if I didn’t actually use them all. If you can believe it (and you should, because I am, after all, being completely honest here), I use all of these so often that sometimes I don’t have any in my cabinet when I need them. They are all in use, in the freezer, or at a friend’s house because I delivered meatballs there last week.

How do I store this many casserole dishes? I find it easy because they stack and/or nest together in my cabinet. I slide the lids toward the back of the cabinet and just reach behind to find the right size.

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Yeah, I got lazy the other day and just put my stone casserole dish on top of the stack instead of nesting it. To tell you the truth, I do it that way quite frequently. Just wanted to be completely honest.

And now it’s your turn to share. Tell the truth:  How many 9×13 casserole dishes do you have? Do you feel that you have enough? Do you love Pyrex like I do?

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