We bought a front loading washing machine a few months ago, and ever since then I’ve had a jug of laundry detergent sitting in my laundry room, mocking me with it’s sudsy, not for HE machine bubbles.  So I Googled, because really, what else are you going to do when cleaning products taunt you? I think I’ll just clean the carpet with it.  And I mean that in a literal way, not a gonna-mop-the-floor-with-yo’-momma kind of way.  I don’t do trash talking.  I’m way to socially awkward for that.

I didn’t find out how to adulterate the detergent so it won’t scare my washer, but I did find out that I’m supposed to be checking and fishing junk out of the rubber gasket of the door seal.  Who knew?

So I checked it. For the first time in many, many months.  It wasn’t pretty, y’all.  That gasket thingy?  It’s like a lint trap.  And apparently our family is walking wounded, because we all have bandaids stuck to our clothes.  And our ears are dirty, because all the q-tips are stuck to the washing machine.

That’s the glamour of a stay-at-home mom.

What wild and woolly, wacky and weird, or just plain gross thing did you do this week?  Post your Glamour of a SAHMer (actually, all bloggers are welcome, not just SAHMs), link back to this post, then post your link below.  Let’s commiserate, ladies (and gents!)

My kids are crazy for ice cream cakes, but they run $25-40 a pop and they are not dye free.  So, I made my own.

I’ve used two techniques – one called for sandwiching  ice cream between two cake layers, and one was a simple cake/ice cream/frosting layered construction.

The two cake layers is definitely easier to frost.

I used simple whipped cream for the frosting.  These cakes are frozen and many other icings simply get too hard.  And it is not graceful to be hacking away at a rocky, sugary layer with a knife while party guests look on in horror.

Whipped Cream:

1 pint heavy whipping cream

4 Tablespoons sugar

optional: vanilla extract or other flavoring such as orange, coconut, or peppermint.

Put chilled cream into a large bowl.  Use your mixer on high speed to whip the cream.  Sprinkle the sugar over the cream as it whips, and add any flavoring.

Makes enough to cover a 9×13″ cake.  If your cake is dark/chocolate, you may need a little more.  The ratio is 1 c. cream, 2 Tablespoons sugar.

Whipped cream is so easy my 7 year old has made it.  Oh yes, I teach them about important culinary skills as soon as I can.  First, eggs so they can make me breakfast, then whipped cream.  I don’t need a reason for the whipped cream, do I?

Mr S wanted a Lego cake for his birthday, and he wanted white cake with strawberry ice cream.   Do this a day ahead of time, in case you need to refreeze the cake while frosting.  Please heed my words; if you can’t be the good example, be the horrible warning.  My ice cream started to melt while I was frosting but I didn’t have time to refreeze, so it came out messy, not smooth at all, and looked like a Lego that had been experimented on in the microwave.

Still tasted good, though.

Instructions:

1.  Bake your cake of choice in a 9×13″ pan, let cool, then turn out onto a cake board (or, in case, a cookie sheet covered with foil).  Place in freezer.  Optional: For a large cake, make two cake layers.  Stack the second layer on top of the ice cream, like an ice cream sandwich.  You’ll end up with tall, skinny slices and can easily serve 20-30 with it.

2.  Wash the cake pan.  Line with waxed paper.

3.  Soften 2 quarts of ice cream on the counter.  Leave the lid on the carton so you don’t turn around find the baby trying to gobble it up with her bare hands.  Using a spatula or large spoon, fill the lined cake pan with the ice cream and smooth it so it’s flat.  Place in freezer for several hours to freeze hard.

Assemble the cake:

4.  Remove cake and ice cream from the freezer.  Carefully invert pan of ice cream over the cake.  Gently tug the waxed paper if the ice cream won’t come out.  Make sure ice cream is centered on cake.  Remove the waxed paper, because your family is still talking about the Great Giblet Incident and you can’t live down serving paper wrapped foods twice in one year.  Place back in freezer  while you make the whipped cream.

5.  Make whipped cream (see above recipe).  Or make one of the minions do it, but remember, then you’ll have to let them lick the beater, too and that leaves you out cold.

6.  Frost the cake, refreezing if necessary.  Whipped cream will keep beautifully for a few hours in the fridge if you make it ahead of time, but if it separates just whip it together again.  Whip it.  Whip it good.

For the Lego part of the cake, cupcakes were the wrong size so I used giant marshmallows.  Marshmallows have food colroing in them, but they are easy to pick out.  Also, you only need 8 marshmallows which leaves you, the cook, with the rest of the bag to dispose of at your leisure.  Ah, the perks of cooking!

Yes.  It’s lumpy and bumpy, please see above warning about not waiting until an hour before the party.

Doing it myself and saving $20? Works for Me!

Linking up:

So I’m sure you’ve heard about the massive egg recall.  Eggs are contaminated with salmonella, and hundred of millions of dozens have been recalled.  Over 1500 cases of illness have been confirmed.

What you don’t know?  The owner of Wright farms, ostensibly a god-fearing Christian man who gives tons of money to  the Christian institution Hyles-Anderson College, has a long history of safety and labor violations at his farm.

In order to get us the cheapest eggs possible, he uses migrant and illegal workers, who are forced to labor in appalling conditions.  Ammonia so strong that Department of Agriculture workers were hospitalized.  Asbestos exposure.  Denying workers access to doctors. Rape.

How cheap are these eggs, then?

He’s been fined.  Because that’s all the government does in these cases- slap on a fine but don’t actually follow up on the requirement.

What are we eating?  All I want to do is serve my family a nice, wholesome, frugal breakfast.  All I want to do is bake up a pan of brownies  or mix up some mayonnaise.  But at what cost?

Eggs are healthy, and a staple around here.  Eggs are one of the first dishes I teach my children to cook, around age 6 or 7.  My 9 year old daughter cooks up eggs even better than I do (I’ve never mastered sunny-side-up but she is a whiz!)

But, it’s not healthy to eat foods that come at such a cost.  It is not healthy to feed my children eggs from an empire built, in part, on the illegal labor of other children (oh, that’s another fine he was levied.  Child labor violations.)

Animals are food, but that doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want with them.  We must be good stewards and ever respectful of God’s creation, even if that creation is ultimately destined for our tables and our stomachs.  And, aside from the human cost, the cost to the animals is too high.

Hens are fed ground up feathers and bone meal.  At Wright farms, they are kept in battery cages.  Because their daily living conditions are so appalling, they are given antibiotics to help them grow and keep them from dying.  Now the USDA is talking about giving chickens salmonella vaccines.

Salmonella is not the problem, but rather the symptom.  Feeding chickens unnatural feed (and eating bone meal is not natural for chickens), farms so big with working conditions so poor that eggs sit in rat droppings, tended by overworked, undertrained caretakers, with no regard for the chicken as a creation, not just a commodity, are the problems.  And no vaccination program is going to fix those problems.

So where does that leave me?  I haven’t been buying the battery farmed eggs.  My eggs are cage-free vegetarian fed, antibiotic free.  But I’m pretty sure that they are factory farmed, too.  Cage free doesn’t mean the birds frolic in pastures, eating bugs.  I’m still working out the ethics of food consumption. Balancing what I wish for with our budget reality. Frankly, I cannot pay $5 for a dozen eggs.

But we can’t afford salmonella, either.  We can’t afford to look the other way when we know people are being hurt by Wright farms, their employer.  We can’t afford to ignore what is right in favor for what saves us the most money.

I have been trying out Ener-G egg replacer, a vegan egg substitute, in my baking.  I bought it as part of our emergency supply, and once I did the math I’ve found that Ener-G is cheaper than an egg.  One box is the equivalent of 9 dozen eggs.  So, in a way we are reducing our consumption.

What kind of eggs do you eat?  Has the recall changed your buying habits, and is that for ethical reasons, safety reasons, or both?

I made this recipe up, inspired by CheapHealthyGood’s Balsamic Tomatoes.  I wanted to try that recipe, but I only had  three tomatoes and I knew that wouldn’t be enough for a side dish for the whole family.  So, how could I make this recipe work?  Here’s an example of how I take inspirational recipes and tweak them to make them just right for our family.

I thought about adding a grain or pasta.  Carbs are my friend, my sweet, sweet BFF and I love me some macaroni salad.  Except, pasta doesn’t keep well with vinaigrette dressings.  The noodles absorb the dressing and all you get the next day is a blob of mush with the slightest hint of flavor.

On the other hand,  I’ve been wanting to try a cold barley pilaf, because, well, I just did, OK?  The barley will be a good match for the vinegar and tomatoes.

Barley has a chewy consistency, more firm than rice, like al dente pasta.  I like chewy.  I like to use my teeth when I eat.  I didn’t pay for two root canals so I could gum my food.  See folks?

That’s being frugal and using what you have.  I just realized I made barley sound like Wrigley’s gum.  It’s not, I promise. It’s chewy and toothsome but not in a Doublemint kind of way.  I’m sure that cleared things up.

I am always on the lookout for new twists on beans and rice because grassfed beef and pastured poultry is expensive, and beans ‘n’ rice is so cheap even Dave Ramsey knows about it.  Could I make this into a vegetarian main dish?  Yep!  I added white beans for protein.  Navy beans, cannelini, or even Great Northerns would all be perfect.  Should you be living in the lap of luxury, and have actual meat available, this would pair nicely with poultry sauteed in olive oil.  Whoo hoo, looky there.  Another recipe for using up leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  See what added value I bring to your kitchen?  You can thank me with brownies.  Because carbs, especially chocolate carbs, are my BFF.  I think I mentioned that.

Now, if it’s a one-dish meal, what about a vegetable?  Yeah, yeah, tomatoes, but we usually have at least two veggies at dinner (preferably different colors, to maximize nutrition.)  And everyone knows that vegetables have to be green in order to count, ketchup notwithstanding (you listening, USDA?)

So I chose green beans, because they would add color to the cream colored barley and beans, I thought they would complement the summery tomatoes, and, most importantly, they were in my freezer.  I killed my garden this year so it’s freezer veggies for us.

I used a yellow onion to liven things up a little, but a red onion would be festive and green onions would be nice, too.  I guess I should encourage you to use something fancy and totally Martha, like shallots and pearl onions, but around her, a plain old yellow onion is my friend (but not my BFF, see above).  My friend that I whack into a million pieces then fry in oil.  Mmm, I like my friends with layers.  Like an onion.

If you think all these references to friends and food are weird, please recall that I am pregnant.  Knocked up women get emotionally attached easily.

A note about barley.  Pearled barley is available in 1# bags at most major stores – Kroger and HEB carry it – but it can be in different places.  No one seems to know where to put it.  Kroger keeps it by the bagged beans.  One HEB carries it by the soups, and another stocks it near the rice.  Barley cooks up just like brown rice.  Add 2 1/2 c. of water for every cup of pearled barley, bring to a boil for a minute, then turn to low for 45 minutes.

Tomato Barley Salad

Crazy cheap at 89¢/serving

Serves 6. (I doubled this recipe for my family and we had lots of leftovers)

2 c. dry pearled barley cooked in 5 c. water (I didn’t measure how much this actually made when done.) ~ $1

4 c. white beans, cooked.  Season beans generously with garlic and onion while cooking.  (1/2 pound package of dry beans, cooked, or two cans, drained) ~ 50¢

2 largish tomatoes ~ $1.50

12 oz. frozen cut green beans, thawed $1

1/2 small onion, finely diced, or 3-4 stalks green onions, minced ~25¢

Dressing:

1/4 c. balsamic vinegar (Cost varies greatly.  I buy the cheaper stuff, so 30¢ for me.)

1/2 c. olive oil ~80¢

Salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder to taste.

Chop the tomatoes into bite sized chunks.  Dump everything into a big bowl and mix it all around.  In a measuring cup or smaller bowl, mix olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Give it a good whisk with a fork.  Pour over barley mixture and toss well to coat.  Check seasoning, adding salt if needed.

Can be served warm or cold.  Keeps well.  Very tasty over a bed of spinach or lettuce the next day for a refreshing lunch!

Tip! Be smart and cook up the whole bag of beans, saving half of them to make white bean dip with lots of garlic for snacking the next day.  Or freeze them for a convenient meal later one.

Make it faster! Use canned beans instead of prepped dry beans.  But don’t forget, you can cook up a huge batch of white beans and make them as convenient as the canned stuff.  You can also make and freeze batches of barley for busy nights.  If you had prepped beans and barley from the freezer, thawed in the fridge all day or heated up in the microwave, this meal would take about 5 minutes to toss together – just the time to chop the tomato and onion, and mix the vinaigrette.

You could also substitute instant brown rice for the barley, although it would have a different texture.

Make it cheaper! Grow your own veggies, or use whatever is on sale.  Blanched fresh green beans would sing in this dish!  Cucumbers or fresh spinach would be wonderful here, and leftover roasted or grilled eggplant would be excellent.

Disclaimer: Husband thought it was very good, even though it was meatless and too many meatless meals make him go a little berserker.  Mr X, age three, only ate two bites and refused to try any more.  The other kids ate their usual amount and Baby A ate some too.  Though she rejects anything green on general principle, so she ate around the green beans.

Need more cheap ‘n’ tasty eats?  Check out all pf my Crazy Cheap Cooking posts!

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Don’t forget!  I’ve got a giveaway coming up and some other things in the works… you’ll want to stick around!

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Last week Mr S had his 8th birthday party, and he wanted an ice cream cake.  They’re expensive, though, and we also needed it to be dye free.  Most bakeries can’t even comprehend “dye-free”, so that meant making our own.

The cake part went well – I’m an old pro at baking cakes – but the ice cream part was more difficult.  To make an ice cream cake, you have to fill a cake pan with ice cream.  Even though my ice cream was half melted, the core was a solid chunk of ice and refused to spread.

So I washed up and used my hands.  It worked well, much better than the spoon and icing spatula I had been using.  I was able to feel my fingertips again eventually, too.

Up to my elbows – literally- in ice cream?  The Glamour of a SAHMer.

Shared joys are increased, and shared sorrows are decreased.  And sometimes, when  are mom up to her elbows in the third body fluid of the day, you just want a shout out from someone who understands.

Link up and tell us what the dirtiest, weirdest, or worst thing you did last week.  Grab the graphic and link back, or you can just post in the comments.  I’ll be posting a new one each week on Thursdays so mark your calendar and come share your trials and tribulations!

When you are making a recipe, especially a complicated or fussy recipe, it’s really helpful to pull all of the ingredients out first.  Then, as you use them, put them away.  You’ll be cleaning as you go and you’ll never wonder if you’ve already added that.

An even bigger bonus is that you’ll make sure you have everything you need before you start, instead of finding out you are low on sugar after the cake is already half made!

Linking up!

I haven’t bought cream of cr*p soup in years.  Sorry, that’s what I call it.  This is why I don’t have my own cooking show.  I disparage packaged goods with vulgar, yet catchy monikers.

Anyway, why buy when you can make?  And make without all the fillers, MSG, and odd chemicals?

Here’s the master recipe:

Put butter in a pan.  Melt it.  (Measure how much you put in)

Add an equal amount of flour.  Stir it around untl the flour is absorbed and it looks like playdoh, about 1 minute.

Add 8 times as much liquid as butter.  So if you used 2 T. butter, you’ll add 16 T. of liquid (which is a cup.)  Whisk it in and heat until smooth.  I find this goes better if you stir in a little liquid at a time, letting the flour absorb it.  If you dump in a cup of cold milk then the butter/flour makes a million little globs that you’ll have to try to delump.

Cook and stir about 3 minutes, until smooth and heated through.  The longer you cook the thicker it will get.  Salt to taste.

Variations:

Cream of chicken – add half milk or water, and half chicken broth.  You can add chicken bits if you like.

Cream of mushroom – cook up some chopped mushrooms in the butter, then sprinkle with the flour and proceed.

Cream of celery – soften finely chopped celery in the butter, then proceed.

Let’s compare.

MY CREAM OF CHICKEN: butter, flour, milk (or water), chicken stock.

CAMPBELL’S: Chicken Stock, Water, Wheat, Flour, Modified Food Starch, Cooked Chicken Meat, Cream (Milk), Contains Less Than 2% Of Chicken Fat, Salt, Monosodium Glutamate, Soy Protein Concentrate, Dehydrated Cooked Chicken, Yeast Extract, Lower Sodium Nautral Sea Salt, Flavoring, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Vegetable oil, Potassium Chloride, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Huanylate, Spice Extract, Beta Carotene For Color, Soy Proetin Isolate, Sodium Phosphates, Chicken Flavor (Contains Chicken Stock, Chicken Powder Chicken Fat), Chicken Flavor, Butter Milk, Cream Powder Cream Milk, Soy Lecithin, Enzyme Modified Butter Milk Nonfat Dry Milk, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean And Cottonseed Oil, Lipolyzed Butter Oil,, Oleix Acid Butter Oil, Lactic Acid, Butter Flavor

Lipolyzed Butter Oil? MSG?  Sodium Phospates?  That’s not good eats!

MY COST: 1/2 c. milk, 10 cents.  Chicken stock, free (I put my bones in the crock and simmer away).  2 T. butter, 20 cents.  2 T. flour, laughably cheap.  Total: 30 cents, give or take.

CAMPBELL’S COST: $1 – $1.50

MY TIME: 5 minutes

CAMPBELL’S TIME: 3-5 minutes to heat on the stove, stirring until smooth.

Linking up!