Salt and Sugar and Soft Hands, Oh My!

So about 2 weeks ago or so, I put together a Peppermint and Tea Tree salt scrub to go with Auntie Age's Best Foot Soak Ever. It still needs some tweaking to perfect the formula, but I was pretty happy with the results, given that it's only the second scrub I've ever made from scratch and the first one turn out to not have a very good shelf life even though the results were pretty awesome.

Tonight I tried another new scrub. This one is a Orange Spice Sugar scrub and I'll going to try it tonight before bed. (I'm nervous about the idea of trying a new scrub and then sitting down with the laptop, just in case it turned out too greasy.) I will post the outcome after I've tried it.

I'm thinking that if I can get the formulations right, I just might start to package and sell them. Any takers?

So I Guess I'm the Ice Lady now.

I stopped into to one of the places I grab lunch from sometimes and the clerk called me the ice lady. Great. Not only was I stuck in a sling for a week after I fell in the alley, now I've earned a nickname for it. On the plus side, I've gotten some good brainstorming in and have been working on collecting the ingredients for some new hippy treats.

I will be working to perfect my salt scrub formula as well as working on a sugar scrub base. And I got a great link from my cousin (Thanks, Manda!) for some homemade lip balm recipes, so I'll be playing with that over the next week or so.

Hopefully I can get back to crocheting before too long, but in the meantime, without the sling, I am one happy hippy. Even if I am getting called the Ice Lady.

One thing this hippy can't live without.

There's a lot of things that this hippy will gladly give up. I will divide food into single servings myself, rather than buying prepackaged snack, because it saves on packaging. I gladly gave up using pads or tampons in favor of my Diva Cup.

I'm in the process of learning to totally give up potato chips in favor of healthier options like multigrain crackers. I'm actually looking forward to getting organized enough that I can give up fast food. I happily gave up soda for flavored seltzer.

But there's one thing that I cannot live without and that is technology. I have been having a serious difficulty handling not having a laptop and I have finally gotten a new one! We broke down and bought a new Toshiba Satellite and I love it.

So get used to having regular doses of your Favorite Hippy. The only problem now is that since our router died, my laptop is the only computer that can access the internet. Which means trying to work out all the bugs of sharing it with my husband.

Toasty Delicious Pepitos

• raw pumpkin seeds
• 2-3 Tbsp butter, melted
• 1/2 - 2/3 cup brown sugar, not packed!
• cinnamon to taste (I love cinnamon and used like 1 1/2 Tbsp

When you pull your seeds from your pumpkin, clean them thoroughly and let them dry completely (3 or 4 days, usually). This is always the hardest part for me, finding the patience while they dry, I want to enjoy them NOW, dammit! Stir the seeds around a few times a day so they can all dry. Once they're dry, the seeds will no longer stick together, and if you've never handled raw pumpkin seeds before, you'll notice they feel a bit soft compared to the toasted ones you're used to.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place seeds on a cookie sheet or sheet pan. Pour melted butter over the seeds, stir until coated and spread into a thin layer. Sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar and stir a bit.

Place in oven for approximately 15 minutes or until seeds are just starting to darken in color. The brown sugar-butter mixture should be bubbly and gooey looking. Stir the seeds until well coated with the melted sugar.

Enjoy warm, or let them cool and enjoy them later. If any seeds survive long enough to cool, make sure you stir them occasionally as the cool to keep them from becoming one solid brick of pumpkin seeds.

My Review of Bob's Red Mill Creamy Brown Rice Farina

Originally submitted at Bob's Red Mill

Brown Rice Farina Cereal is freshly milled from the finest California whole grain brown rice. Rice is non-allergenic and therefore an excellent cereal for youngsters. Bob's creamy rice farina cereal has a very special flavor and quality of its own. Try some today!

Bob's Red Mill Creamy Brown Rice Farina

Great Morning, Noon and Night.

By the Tilghman Street Hippy from Allentown, PA on 11/3/2010

 

5out of 5

Pros: Easy To Make, Flavorful, Tasty, Unique, Healthy

Cons: Cooks over in microwave

Best Uses: breakfast, Snack, Cooking

Describe Yourself: Simple Tastes, Likes to personalize dish

I love this cereal. I first bought it for a fast, hot breakfast option for fall and winter. It's great, because you can change it to suit your mood. I like it best with pumpkin butter, apricot butter or cinnamon and agave syrup. The only trouble I have with it is that it tends to cook over in my microwave, but I'm not convinced it isn't the shape of the bowl I use.

(legalese)

Taco Soup

This is a quickie recipe with lots of canned ingredients, but it turned out great. We'll be making it again soon.

• 1 lb. (roughly) ground beef, browned, seasoned with salt and pepper to taste
• 2 - 15 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 1 - 6 oz can tomato paste
• 1 medium bell pepper, chopped
• 1 jalapeno, chopped finely
• 1 small can black olives, drained
• 1 packet Taco seasoning of your choice
• Chili Powder and hot pepper(s) to taste (I also used Ancho and Chipotle)
  
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Shredded Cheddar
• Sour Cream (optional)

Combine all ingredients, except cheese and sour cream in a 6 quart stock pot. Add water until broth is desired thickness. Boil until flavors are well blended and peppers and tomatoes are cooked.

Serve topped with cheese and sour cream. Enjoy the hell out of it!

This soup would also be very nice with fried tortilla strips floated in it, and would adapt nicely to a vegetarian dish by substituting something like Boca Ground Crumbles for the ground beef.

Um, wow.

I signed on tonight because I wanted to brag about my awesome homemade pumpkin butter I made on Halloween and the super good taco soup I made yesterday, I'm seeing that a few posts seem to have gone missing.

I've very confused by this, although, honestly not all that concerned, because I don't really remember them having been anything important. It's more that the two month gaps between posts makes me look like I'm an ass who doesn't bother to update.

Well anyway, the pumpkin butter was made from an actual pumpkin, not the canned crap. We steamed/baked it and then boiled the crap out of it. (Sarah helped keep an eye on this part.) Then I split it in half and made one half into a "No Sugar Added" with some Splenda and the other half got Dark Brown Sugar.

I borrowed Lisa's boat motor (immersion blender) to break up the pieces that I was too impatient to wait for. You know, the one's that were done but hadn't fallen apart yet. Then we added Saigon Cinnamon, Cloves, Allspice and Grated Ginger.

Awesome stuff. I'm actually eating some now mixed into Bob's Red Mill Brown Rice Farina.

Then there was the Taco Soup, which I'm going to post separately as a recipe.