Canning Grapes

Thanks to all who chimed in and gave me advice on canning grapes!  I, after some people mentioned canning grapes without peeling them (which didn't sound like a fun day to me *laugh*) went and looked it up in my Ball Home Preserving Book and sure enough you don't have to peel grapes to can them and they are REALLY simple to can!  So, I figured I'd share really quickly how to do it!

Canning Grapes (Paraphrased from "Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving" 2006 edition)

You will need:

• 1 batch hot light or medium syrup*
• 8 lbs grapes, stemmed, treated to prevent browning (I just put them in a big bowl of water with a couple of nice big squirts of lemon juice) and drained

Procedure:

1.  Prepare canner, jars and lids to canning safety specifications.

2.  Ladle 1/2 cup syrup into each jar.  Fill jar with grapes to within a generous 1/2 inch (1 cm) of top of jar.  Gently shake jar to pack grapes closely without crushing.  Add hot syrup to cover grapes, if necessary (I always found it necessary), leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbles if needed and adjust headspace, adding syrup if needed.  Center lid on jar.  Screw band down to finger tip tight.

3.  Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring to a boil and process pint (500 ml) jars for 15 minutes and quart (1 L) jars for 20 minutes.  Remove canner lid.  Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

*Light Syrup (yields 6 1/2 cups syrup)

You will need:

• 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar (550 mL)
• 5 1/4 cups water (1.3 L)

Procedure:

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan over medium-high heat until mixture boils and sugar is completely dissolved.  Reduce heat to low and keep warm until needed, taking care not to boil syrup down.

Notes:  A lot of times, if I'm not sure I'll have a proper weight of, say in this case, grapes for a recipe like this I'll just make up a full batch of syrup and can what I need and just throw away any syrup that is left over.  Luckily, I did end up using a good portion of the syrup anyway, so that worked out.  I canned some in 1/2 pint measures to throw into things like fruit salad (well and I ran out of pint jars that I could find, sooo I adapted *laugh*) and I will process those as long as the pints just to be on the safe side since they didn't include 1/2 pint processing times.

A Gift a Day Gift Eighteen: A Potholder

Last year, after I had given the customary home canned goods to my son's school teachers, aides and therapists, I decided that I didn't want to sacrifice any more canning jars on the behalf of gift giving, because I needed all I had left.  So, for my daughter's teachers and student teachers I made potholders instead and that seemed to go over well, so I was going to do that again.

Well, instead I ended up trading some pot holders for boots (not complaining mind you!) so I decided to finish up the one pot holder I was currently working on for my son's speech therapist (she's divorced and has her daughter living with her, thus the pink) and then I'll come up with something else for the teacher gifts (running low on cotton yarn).

I have been wanting to share how I make these with you all, so I guess this is a good opportunity to do so!

I make pot holders with cotton yarn like they make for dish clothes and such.  I like to buy a big spool of yarn at Wal-Mart or a huge skein at Jo-Ann's on clearance.  I've been using the same colors of yarn from those spools and such for YEARS and I've made a lot of dish clothes, wash clothes and pot holders.  Trust me, that yarn will go further than you think.

If you don't want to use two colors, or can't afford to buy 2 colors of yarn, just roll the one skein you have into two balls and use the same color.  They come out looking just as nice that way.

Simple Knitted Potholder Pattern

You will need:

• 2 strands/skeins of cotton yarn 
• Size 7 Knitting needles 
• Size H crochet hook (optional)

Procedure:

1.  Using double yarn (2 skeins at same time) cast on 26 to 28 stitches (if you aren't going to crochet a border around the pot holder at the end, definitely go for 28, or even 30, just to be sure the pot holder looks right).

2.  Knit for 36 rows (no purling here).

3.  Cast off and tuck in ends.

4.  Using one ply of yarn this time, crochet a border of your choice around the pot holder for 2 rows and then make a chained hanger on one corner of the pot holder.  Secure the hanger down and cast off.

5.  If you don't crochet, once you are done casting off and tucking in ends for your pot holder, braid three pieces of the cotton yarn (four inches long would be more than long enough) and then tie the braided yarn to one corner of your pot holder for a hanger.  

And tadaa!!!  You now have a simple pot holder pattern.  I can make one of these in about two hours of uninterrupted time.

And yes, before you, ask, these work great.  I use these in my own household all the time and I've yet to burn myself using them.  And trust me sometimes it takes me a few minutes to figure out where I can put something down *laugh*.

Total Cost to Make Gift:  I've had the yarn for years, so I'm going with free as I can't remember how much the yarn cost.

Total Time to Make Gift:  Two hours.

How I Menu Plan (and a Free Printable!)

I've had a couple of people ask me of late if I could share my system for menu planning every week as they feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start.

So, I decided that I'd do a post on it for you.  And hey, I even made my first EVER printable for you to print off if you want (it's down below!).  Cool huh?

Now, if you look up menu planning on Google or your favorite search engine you are going to find a lot of blogs that tell you to menu plan around the sales are available that week.  This is not one of those blogs.

Menu planning that way, honestly, worries me as it means that most people don't have a week's worth of food in their house and are dependent on the store to make their meals for the week.  As someone who strives to have six months to a year's worth of food around in the house for fear of cash flow problems or something else going on the idea of just doing a menu around the sales at the store every week goes against the grain.

Oh don't get me wrong, I tried it when I started liking the idea of a menu plan.  And I'd fail miserably at it as my family would decide in mid-stream that we wanted something else for dinner in the middle of the week.  Next thing I'd know, I'd have food that went bad in my fridge and feeling awful that I'd wasted food.

Nope, my system now a days goes like this.

I sit down on Saturday and start to figure out my menu plan for the next week.  This revolves around what I have in the freezer and pantry first and foremost.  If I have no creativity that week I'll go for a system based on what I KNOW I have and just allow myself some sitting and staring off into space drooling time as I try to figure out more than a vague baseline for the menu to build from.

For instance my menu plan for this week started this way, due to my son being sick on Saturday so I was distracted.

Monday:  Beef or Pork
Tuesday:  Chicken (in crock pot) because I knew that we have an appointment to make tomorrow and we're going to be busy during the day.
Wednesday:  Pork in crock pot (therapy day)
Thursday:  Pasta
Friday:  Pizza (Thursday during the day I'll put what I have of my ripe tomatoes and put them in the crock pot to make sauce so I have them for pizza on Friday).
Saturday:  Leftovers or casserole (leftovers if we have them and I know I have the makings of casserole in the pantry if there are few leftovers to choose from in the way of meat)
Sunday:  Lamb chops

And that's it.  Side dishes are left to my imagination until I start working out the details in my head and the specifics can be left up to me looking through my cookbooks, letting my culinary imagination run for a while until I come up with something or hitting some of the cooking sites like All Recipes or something to see if I can find something to spark my imagination.

You'll also notice if you look at my meal plans some days of the week seem to be pretty consistent in what we are having.  That's because I know I'm busy that day (like right now Wednesday and Thursday and Monday are more likely to be crockpot nights as I know that I'm busy those days and might not have time to cook).

I've also tried to do the "set day of the week for this certain meal" type of menu plan too and had decent success with it.  Like I had a set day for Taco day for a while when I could get good deals on hamburger (Fridays) and such.  There's a reason why "Meatloaf Monday" has been around forever.  Some people just like to keep the same schedule week after week.  My advice though is you do Meatloaf Mondays do one week beef meatloaf, one week spiced turkey meatloaf, one week a Thai themed meatloaf or something just to break up the monotony.   It not only gets boring for you to cook when you make the same thing week after week, but it also bores the people who have to eat it.

Sunday rolls around and I sit down and look at the Fred Meyer ad for the week.  The only thing I do with the store ads is to see if there is something I need to stock up on or if there is a fresh ingredient I'd like to add into a dish on the menu plan that I know I can't substitute out with a pantry item.  Otherwise I just look for sales on the foods my son normally eats as he won't eat home cooked anything yet.

Monday and I have a pretty good idea on what I want the rest of the week to shape up like, but sometimes Monday is still up in the air.  Like this morning I really didn't want to eat pork, but I don't have much beef in the freezer so I was trying to figure out the details, but was at the store buying milk and found beef ribs on sale 50% off (read cheap for beef) and I grabbed them to make them into our main dish for tonight.

Usually once I get Monday done and cooking the rest of the menu plan starts to fall into place.  Once I get one meal figured out it's like the other meals in the menu start to come into my head on what would "compliment" that day's menu.  Side dishes are either seasonal items (like during the summer we have a lot of salads during the week) or pantry items (like you'll notice green beans used a LOT as a side dish with meat around here as green beans are one veggie both my husband and daughter will eat without complaint, so we have them a lot).  I try to do meals based on one meat, one veggie/fruit and one starch.  Meat is self explanatory, but starches we'll either have rice, potatoes or bread and butter/some type of toast around here for the most part.  Every once in a while I'll mix it up with stuffing or something, but those are pretty much our staple items.   But, if your family likes baked beans use those as your starch with dinner.  It all depends on what you like, so go with it!

On Tuesday I look at the Carrs ad and do the same thing as I do with the Fred Meyer ad.  If I want to have salad during the winter, for instance, I tend to schedule it for Friday as salad can go on sale cheap at Carrs on 5.00 Friday or I can stop by Fred Meyer for their weekly sales at that time or look for reduced salad to use.  Well that and my weekly shopping is normally done on Friday (pay day), so I just revolve fresh produce usage around that day.

So, there you are folks.  My "system" as it were.  Now onto how I actually STICK to a menu plan every week.

I've tried so many different  systems it's pathetic.  The home keeping binder.  Didn't work for me.  The weekly print out to put your menu on and on the same page write down your grocery list.  Didn't work as I never remembered to look at the menu because I couldn't see it easily or I'd forget my grocery list as it'd be up on the fridge with my weekly menu.  It just frustrated me.

This is the system that finally worked for me.

This, as you've seen on every weekly menu post is my weekly menu board.

And this is also my menu board...

It's a DIY dry erase menu board and it's so easy!  I finally found the original tutorial I used for mine (if you can call it that as it is THAT simple) HERE.  I found the idea originally on Pinterest and loved it, but I lost track of the link (I should have...you know...pinned the pin!).  I made mine with scrapbooking paper from a kit I had and a thrift store 10x14 frame (thus why I have the blue on the bottom and top of the board) so it's nice and visible.

I LOVE this thing!  I hung it up on the wall in my kitchen, write my menu on it every week and it really does help me to stay organized.  If I'm not sure what I'm going to have for dinner that night, I just look over at the menu board first thing in the morning and I have my answer.  I'll even make little notes on the bottom for what my baking list is going to be if it is something out of the ordinary so that I remember it.  It was super cheap to make, keeps me organized, and if I get bored with the design I'll just switch out the paper and voila!  New menu board.  For a FRACTION of the cost that something like that would cost you if you bought one commercially.

In case you are one of those "write things down every week to stay organized" types on print outs, or if you want a nice template to stick in a frame to make your own dry erase menu I made this for you...

I even included some blue snowflake pattern that's found on vintage Corelleware (because, well it's me making it so I had to make it "me" ;).  I thought I did pretty well for my first attempt at a printable, if I do say so myself.

Just click on the image of the menu plan and it'll bring you to a new "page" where you'll view the image (since the above image is smaller than the original is, of course).  Right click with your mouse and save the file as whatever you'd like on your computer and print it off however you like.

Enjoy!  And good luck with the menu planning!  It really will help you to stay organized in the kitchen, keep better track of what is in your pantry inventory (more on that later) and make things a little less stressful on a day to day basis when it comes to the kitchen.

The Birthday Bedroom Reveal (Redoing a Room on a Zero Budget)

Well, despite having to blow my nose about once every three seconds yesterday and having a son home sick, I put together his new room for him.  Mainly because we are expecting guests for his actual birthday later in the week and I didn't want to feel pressured to do too much at one time.  This also allows him to get used to the room before he has to deal with guests too.  So far he loves his new room, so score one for me ;).

So, first here's the room that I had to deal with before...

The shelf above, by the way is actually a toddler bench I got on Amazon for 10.00 when my son was really tiny (like 6 months old or so) in preparation of getting a house so we could give him his own room.  Unfortunately the bench didn't get much use as by the time we found a house and moved to our new place, my son was just too darn big for the bench anymore.  So my husband converted the bench into a shelf for the wall (and yes, it's straight in case you are wondering in later pictures.  I kept taking the photo of the shelf at an angle, so it looks wonky.  Sorry).

The wooden bedside table needed to go.  It's sturdy and we love it to pieces, but my son spent most of his time standing on it to pull all of the trucks my husband put up on his shelf down on top of his head, so it was time for a changing on the proverbial guard there.  There are some things missing from these photos too.  I pulled a gigantic rocking horse out of the bedroom and put it into storage that my husband had made a couple of years ago and I took a huge car race track thingy that my son spent most of his time standing on and put it into storage too.  So, the room wasn't QUITE as sparse as the photos make it appear.

Please excuse the very dirty mirror in the photo.  I was in a hurry and was also sick, so I just left the effort to clean the mirror until after I was done setting up the room.

And now for the after pics!  I'm quite proud of this room.  Considering the ONLY money I spent out of pocket was for 7.00 for some quilt binding for the quilt and 1.00 (that I dug out of spare change we had around here to pay for) for a shelf, I thought I did pretty darned well.

My son LOVES cars (all those moving parts you know), so I went with car racing as the theme for his room.  Formula One racing to be more exact :).

Tadaaa!!!!

 When you first enter the room you see this.  I got this car mat at a used store for 1.00 probably about six years ago.  We've had it in the kid's rooms on and off throughout the years, but my son for the longest time liked to sleep on the floor and since he sucked on a bottle...well there was always a lot of milk and mess on the mat and I finally just threw it into storage because I got tired of cleaning it on TOP of the carpet underneath it.  I pulled it back out of storage, ran the carpet cleaner over it a ton of times to clean it up and now the kiddos have a place to play cars.

Here's the quilt I made for him.  The black quilt binding is where the 7.00 I was talking about went.  The blue border material was a very nice quality twin sheet I picked up at a used store a while ago. When I cut the material up to make the quilt I then used some of the left over material to make a matching pillow sham. 

I then embroidered this design on the pillow sham.  I thought I did pretty well for a gal who is usually pretty inept at drawing machines.

I made a racing themed bunting for the one big wall (it's the only really BIG expanse of wall without anything like closets, windows or shelves interrupting the space).  I used scrap material and ribbon I already had.  My inspiration was all the different flags used in racing (green for go, white and black for the checkered flag, red for warning, yellow for caution).  I thought it turned out pretty cool myself especially since I eyeballed the spacing on the flags as I was sewing along.

The prints on the wall were from the good ol' internet.  I was looking for Formula One types of vintage posters to print off and I ran into these Cars 2 promotional posters.  I loved them, printed two of them off (there are four in the series) and put them in frames that I had in the house already.  And voila!  Formula One themed prints :).

If interested you can find the prints here.  Just page down to the gallery and look for the prints in the mess of photos.  They're pretty cool!

I hope to dig up a couple of more frames at the used stores or hiding around here somewhere so I can print off the other two prints, maybe for Christmas for my son and put them in other areas of his room.

Here's a view of the shelves on the other side of his bed.  The wire shelf was from the used store for 1.00.  There were two shelves there and I had two dollars in pocket change and immediately bought them both.  The picture doesn't really do the shelves justice.  They are pretty well built.  The other shelf I put in my bathroom to put things on to replace the shelf I had taken out of it for my daughter's room.

The other wooden shelf has moved with us since we moved into our previous home (another hold over from the previous owners).  It's rotated around.  Most recently it housed my limited collection of Pyrex casseroles in my kitchen, but I cleaned it off and put it in here instead. 

On top of the shelf I put these.  I had bought some all natural hand made wooden cars at a used store for .25 a piece a long while ago and placed them in the "gifts to be" pile.  They were so cheap because they had pen graffiti from the previous owners (read: doodles) all over them.  I used some acrylic paints I already had around the house from previous projects, looked up Formula One color schemes that would match the colors I had (with a bit of help from my husband) and I ended up with two Formula One cars in American blue and British green.  I think they turned out really nice myself.

And here is the new beside table, of which I'm extremely proud of having come up with this idea.  I had an old barrel that my husband's grandfather gave us years ago.  Originally the two barrels we brought back housed dishes to give to my mother-in-law.  We gave her the dishes but kept the barrels.  This is the bigger of the two.  It originally had a vintage type of wallpaper on the outside of it that had seen MUCH better days.  The paper was flaking off the sides bad and the top of the barrel was rusting.  It had been sitting in the garage taking up space and so I figured I could use it for a new bedside table. 

I wrapped the barrel in white drawing paper (the kind that comes on the roll) and then printed the Mobil logo onto photo paper off of the internet.  I then wrapped as much as I could of the barrel in laminating paper to stop my son from hopefully causing much liquid damage on it.  I tried to match a vintage looking oil drum as much as possible.  My husband thinks I did a pretty good job, so that's good enough for me.

Then came the lid.  I took sand paper my husband had and sanded all of the rust off of the lid.  I then took a can of silver spray paint my husband had and gave the lid a couple of coats (it's a rust resistant paint too, which is a good thing as the lid is going to take abuse I'm sure).

This is probably my son's favorite part of his new room thus far.  Because the barrel is empty he can hit the lid and it's essentially like a big drum.  He LOVES the noise *laugh*.

Next to the "oil drum" is an empty five gallon bucket or "waste oil" container that is currently housing dirty laundry.  Total coincidence that it worked out the bucket would go with the theme, but I'll take it ;).

And above the bedside oil drum is the new contents of his shelf.  I had empty coffee cans that I hated to just throw away.  I looked at them and thought they'd make cool old oil cans if I could find labels to put on them.  I thought I would have to try and draw them by hand, but the internet wowed me again when I found this template and tutorial.  I only printed off the automotive oil labels and only printed off three of them (seeing as how I had three cans).  I put the labels on with packaging tape (once again for protection to the paper to help save them from abuse by my paper eating son).  My husband loves these.  I think it's his favorite part of the decor. 

I then put some of my son's books on auto racing and machines on the shelf and placed his little rubber band run race car on the shelf too.  This gives him less motivation to get into things on the shelf as his trucks are now more on his level in the room below.  He checked out the shelf for a few minutes and then shrugged and went back to playing on his bed. 

On top is his Speed Racer Mach 5 nightlight my husband found at a used store ages ago and a gasoline truck coin bank my brother-in-law gave to my son for Christmas, I think it was last year. 

Over by his closet didn't change much (thus the lack of pics of that wall).  All I did there was take down all of the old and outdated artwork I had hanging up of his and put this piece up of his I had framed.  I always thought it was really cool splatter painting and it reflects the colors of the space well.  So, I hung it up in his room instead of in my stairway.

I always try to incorporate pictures the kids have made themselves into the house and their spaces.  Sometimes the best artwork is the artwork you do yourself :).

Overall, for a non-budget makeover, I thought I did pretty decent.  And my son loves the new room, so double bonus there.

Lesson here folks?  NEVER let being broke dissuade you from at least trying to do something.  Sometimes you might just surprise yourself.

Mending 101: How to Darn a Sock

And ode to my days at therapy where I darned a million socks!

Okay, so as lines of poetry go, that was kind of crappy.  But, seriously, it seems like all I do at therapy anymore is darn socks.

I'm not sure why, probably from being on his feet all day and having a history of not taking care of his feet very well, but my husband has heels that resemble cheese graters.  And his socks have always suffered for it.

This last year, we haven't had the money to buy him new socks every two months like we have had to do in the past, so I have learned the lost art of darning instead in desperation as I stared at piles and piles of holey socks.

Once you have darning down it can save you a lot of money, actually.  I've repaired dish towels, sweaters with holes that had tears in them from the washer and other things.  But, I want to start out with the most useful of darning techniques (at least to me) and one of the easiest to learn.  Darning socks.

I am new to the idea of teaching anything sewing related, so bear with me here as I try to walk you through this as easily as possible.

First, you are going to need a few things.  One:  Proper needles.  There are such things as darning needles.  If you do not have these and don't have the money to buy them, don't despair.  Just use whatever needle you have with the largest eye (as you're going to have to fit some pretty beefy thread through it).

Next up you are going to need some round object that you can fit into your sock to help you work on the hole without you pulling the fabric too tight, thus puckering the sock and making it uncomfortable as all get out to wear (I actually started by darning a few of my husband's socks that were beyond hope of repair to get this process down before starting on socks he'd actually wear).  A lot of older books suggest a lightbulb or actually a Darning Egg or Ball.  Me?  I use a play ball from my son's ball pit.  You can use anything round and relatively smooth.  An incandescent light bulb would work fine...personally I just can't stand the idea of something really breakable transporting back and forth to therapies and such in my knitting bag, so I stick with the play ball *laugh*.

One last thing you are going to need is the proper thread to do this.  Embroidery thread would work alright if you are pretty easy on your socks overall.  My husband quickly destroyed it with his cheese grater feet when I tried it on his socks, though, so I switched to this...

Twisted embroidery thread (much tougher stuff).  This stuff goes for about 2.00 per thing of thread at JoAnn Fabrics, but if you sign up for coupons you can use your 40 and 50% off a regular priced item coupons on these, or wait for them to go on sale (which is what I tend to do).  Either way one 2.00 thing of thread does quite a few socks, so it really is still pretty cost effective.

Okay and now the procedure.

1.  Take the ball you are going to darn with and work it down into your sock so that the hole is nice and centered on the curved surface.  Like above.

2.  Load your needle with thread (I go for a decently long amount) and start well beyond the hole in the sock.  Weave your thread in and out of the sock and working in straight lines (once again be sure to start well beyond the hole in the sock and then keep weaving your lines around and get closer to the hole).  Once you hit the hole do NOT sew the hole shut, but instead make lines of thread where the original sock was.  This is the first step to weaving a new piece into the sock.  See figure one for more detail...

3.  Once you are well beyond the hole in the opposite direction, weave your thread around the other way and create a cross hatch pattern to the sock.  When you reach your hole and the lines of thread, weave the thread in and out of the lines of thread you put down previously, creating a new woven piece to the sock.  See figure 2.

4.  Once the hole is woven shut and you are well beyond where the original tear was you can clip your thread, admire your handwork and realize you've now darned your first sock!

I realize this looks difficult, but it really isn't once you get the hang of it.  Yes, once you have a pile of things to darn this does get to be time consuming as you find yourself fixing all the holes you once thought unable to be fixed.  But, it actually is a kind of relaxing way to spend your evening as you sit watching a movie.  And it gives you great practice with your straight stitch in hand sewing *laugh*.

Hope this tutorial is found useful by some.  Good luck with your darning endeavors!

Note:  The graphs above were originally printed in the British pamphlets "Make Do and Mend" series for use during WWII.  I do not claim to be the artist who originally made them :).