Honey BBQ Chicken Glaze

Summer is right around the corner and that means firing up those BBQ grills for some fabulous outdoor cooking.

I've been tinkering around with the glaze for awhile and I think it turned out pretty yummy and of course, it is super simple.

Ingredients:
BBQ Sauce
Honey
Brown Sugar
Bacon (optional)
Water

I don't really have an exact recipe for this, it just depends on how much I'm making and how strong I want the taste to be. If I had to guess, I would say:
1 cup of water
1 cup of BBQ sauce
1/2 cup of honey
1/4 cup of brown sugar
a few pieces of bacon (chopped)

Again, all guessing, but I'm sure you can figure it out. I just mix it all up, throw the chicken breast into zip lock bags, pour the glaze in, shake it up and let it sit for at least 3 hours - but usually I let it sit in the fridge overnight.

Then you can just throw it on the grill and cook it to perfection and enjoy! We've had it just as chicken breast with corn on the cobb or I've made it into chicken sandwiches.. both are delecious!

Happy Birthday, Nicole!

Nicole~

I have been so honored to get to know you this past year. It's funny, as I've been thinking about our growing friendship I've realized that we became friends after you left work. How funny! I find it hard to believe now that I worked next to you and Sondra all those months and it was only later that we became such good friends. I love that you are always ready to lend a hand, always read to recommend a good book, let us make soap in your kitchen, taught me how to play guitar hero, and that you are just an amazing person. I'm always in for a good laugh and a great time when you're around. I love spending time with you and still feel like I know you a little better after each time I see you.

Have a Happy, Happy Birthday Nicole!

Love,
Meg


Happy Birthday, Nicole!

2 years ago I would have never imagined being such good friends. And good is a really poor definition of one of the best, sweetest and most fulfilling friendships I have. When we're together I know that I'm in for side-splitting laughs, heartfelt conversation and always learning and experiencing something new. I love how you always roll with the punches; especially when our lye experience turned much more volatile than the first one. You have one of the sweetest spirits I've ever met and am so blessed to be able to consider you my friend.

Love you,
Mere


Dear Nicole,

I can't begin to tell you what a blessing you've been in my life. I was really nervous to leave Meredith and come down and work on the other wing of the building 3 years ago, but it turns out that it was one of the best decisions I could have made. I still think its crazy that we worked at the same place for a full year before becoming such great friends. Working with you was so much fun, and being friends is truly amazing.

I love that you live so close! Even though it requires a short car ride to get to you, I still think of you as a neighbor! I love that we can get together on the fly or just drop over/in eachother's place to say hello or borrow things.

I also love that you make me feel better instantly, no matter how upset or outraged I am with something at the time :)

I love you... Happy Birthday!!
Sondra

Lemon Icebox Cookies

Cookie Ingredients:

• 2 cups Crisco
• 2 tbs lemon extract
• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 4 tsp cream of tarter
• 3 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp baking soda

Directions:

• Cream Crisco, sugar and lemon extract
• Add eggs and beat until dough looks like ice cream
• Sift flour, baking soda and cream of tartar - add to mixture
• Mix well
• Back at 350 for 10 minutes. Do NOT over bake, usually 8 minutes on light pan
• Cool Completely

Cookies:

Icing Ingredients

• 1 1/2 sticks butter (softened)
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 lbs powdered sugar

Icing Directions:

• Cream softened butter with lemon juice
• Add the powdered sugar and mix well
  

Icing:

Iced Cookies

These cookies are a perfect mix of lemon and sweet and each time I make them and invariably eat a few, it's like a little bite of summer!

Baby Food Bliss

A few years ago if you would have told me I'd make my own baby food I would have thought you were nuts! Not because I didn't want too, but just 'knew' I wouldn't have the time. Back then I was already into the organic, all natural and green living lifestyle, but I was also aware of how little time I already had, so to spend time making baby food when I could just buy organic baby food in the store, well, it just didn't make sense.

Enter a co-worker who made her daughter's baby food. Out of curiosity I asked how she did it and I was astounded by the simplicity of it all. Could it really be as easy as steaming the food and blending it? What about storing it, I wondered. How long would it last? Oh, you freeze it! And in a five minute conversation, making my own baby food seemed so manageable.

The Process:

Starting off: a bag of frozen (and of course organic) green beans. In the pot:

On the stove (and a cameo appearance by baby Gabe as he checks out his food)

Steamed up and ready in the baby food blender!

Still a little clumpy.....

Finished product! All done and ready to eat, or be frozen!

Ready to go in the freezer (of course I covered them with plastic wrap!)

And now my freezer full with an array of fruits and veggies. Note the ice cube trays on the left - they do not have ice in them (a surprise to some of our ice foraging guests, hehe) but are filled with a rotating assortment of newly frozen fruits or vegetables.

Tips & Tidbits that worked for me:

• I was a bit too busy when Gabe first came home to think about baby food. Had I thought ahead to the time that he needed to begin eating solids and that it would be in the middle of winter, a time where finding fresh vegetables would be difficult I probably would have started earlier. But I didn't. So I chose to use organic, frozen vegetables.
• After steaming Gabe's food I would save the water I steamed the veggies (or fruit) in to use as an additive if the food needed to be a little thinner.
• You do NOT need a baby food maker, just use your food processor. As I don't have a food processor and thought it'd be a little unusual, albeit tacky, to put on on Gabe's gift registry we went with the KidCo Baby Food Blender.
• Some foods like bananas, avocados and sweet potatoes don't even need to be blended. Using a potato masher worked perfectly for me.
• You can make different combinations of food to suit your baby's taste buds and your nutritional desires. (Example - everyone knows corn has almost no nutritional value but it is in all of the store bought baby foods mixed vegetables. So I just combined frozen beans, peas and carrots and voila, corn-free mixed veggies!)
• The baby food I make contains no preservatives or GEI's (genetically engineered ingredients).
• You do NOT need the baby food trays that the stores recommend. Ice cube trays work just as efficiently and cost a lot less!

Speaking of costing less; making your own baby food is a substantial money saver! Even if you choose to use only foods that are organic or all natural. Gabe started eating solids at 6 months and is now a week shy of nine months. Besides the cost of his oatmeal and yogurt, I have spent approximately $44.00 on all of his food! And what I have right now should last him at least another 2 months. If I bought him jars of baby food, I'm estimating that I would have spent at least $100.00 (approximately 80 days of solids starting at 1 jar a day and now up to about 4 jars a day, with baby food costing 50 cents a jar and that's not using organic baby food.)

So in summary making your own baby food is not only easy; it's also inexpensive, non-time-consuming and will provide you with the piece of mind of knowing exactly what your baby is eating (the good stuff) and not eating (the bad stuff - chemicals, GEI's).

I love living (and eating) green... and am grateful I can keep Gabe eating foods as natural as possible for as long as possible. Or until his Dad gets his hands on his eating habits!

Snack Mix for Goofing Off

For my next installment of Random Recipe, I was going to blog about Shakshuka, a wonderful new recipe Carl and I recently tried out, of Israeli origin. When I looked at the calendar to determine my next posting date, I realized it would fall while I'm on vacation and out of state! To prepare for it, I'm writing it early and posting it later, but you know how it is days before you go on a trip...you're so anxious and giddy for the time to be at hand that you start getting in "vacation mode" and are cheerful and light-hearted in all avenues. As much as I'm confident I could blog about the lovely and delicious Shakshuka right now, I'm not sure I'd have as much fun with it as I would if I blogged about....yes...you guessed it...The Snack Mix for Goofing Off!

I whipped up a huge batch of this a day or two ago in preparation for the road trip Carl and I (and my cousin Kim) will be taking. I've also concocted it and taken it to a Lake House in Maryland, where it provided snacks for lots of people. (I have vivid recollections of Carl's younger cousins walking along the dock at the lake and grabbing handfuls of this from baggies) It would be a great snack mix to bring to the movies with you and, let's face it, summer blockbuster season is upon us. I'd also take it with me to munch on while watching fireworks, or have a bowl out during a cookout. In short, this is for fun occasions. More to the point: this isn't your average snack mix. By which I mean, it won't be gaining plaudits from any health organizations. Not that it's horrible for you...it's just not great. But granola and trail mixes are for everyday. This is what you eat when goofing off!

Megan once used a term to describe a recipe to me. She told me it had "trashy ingredients" but that the end result was pure bliss. I admit that I'm a pretty big snob about food, but my snobiness comes with qualifiers. I usually won't eat cake that originated from a mix, not because I frown upon the short-cut taken instead of making it from scratch (when mixed with the right ingredients, like in Megan's Italian Love Cake, even cake from a box tastes heavenly) but because, on its own, I just don't think it tastes like cake. After tasting cake made from scratch and enjoying the process of making it, I just don't taste anything in a cake mix to resemble a proper cake. Same with the frosting that comes in those scary little tubs that can sit on your shelf for years and provide sustenance during environmental catastrophes. That doesn't taste like proper frosting to me. On occasion though, as in the case of the Italian Love Cake, an admittedly "trashy ingredient" can meld with other ingredients to form bliss. That's how I feel about this snack mix. The base of it is Cap'N Crunch Cereal.....shudder. It upsets me that I even had to spell it that way, instead of using "Captain." When I eat cereal, I go for muesli or shredded wheat. However, in a snack mix, this Cap'N Crunch delivers a taste bonanza!

Here's the Recipe, which was adapted from a Rachael Ray blurb from about 6 years ago. She uses the peanut butter flavor of the cereal, but I go for plain:

Snack Mix for Goofing Off

1 box Cap'N Crunch cereal
1 bag chocolate chips
1 bag peanut butter chips
1 bag dried cranberries

Mix all ingredients, distribute into various tupperware containers or baggies for consumption while goofing off and having the time of your life.

We're Just in Cleaning Heaven Over Here!

My plan was to come on here and blog about my new window cleaner (homemade with my fellow HHH ladies, of course) but I thought I'd save it for another time since it is yet another homage to vinegar!! I guess it goes without saying that we're obsessed with vinegar here at HHH, but it just works so well. I use it on my hair as a conditioner, I use it as a primary ingredient in my window cleaner, I use it on laundry cycles to disinfect towels, I run it down the drain with baking soda to clear back-ups in sinks AND I mix it with baking soda to form a volatile little paste, which I then scrub into carpets to remove stains. This last use comes in very handy in Ohio winters and springs, when it's nearly impossible to enter the house without dragging mud or dirty water onto the carpets from your shoes, even if you do take them off right away! I'm sure, if pressed, I could think of other uses for vinegar that I happily engage in.

My endorsement of vinegar notwithstanding, I thought I'd talk about the lovely and wonderful All-Purpose Spray Cleaner I recently made. Without being melodramatic, I'm in love with it! It cleans so amazingly that I just made a second bottle of it. Another perk along that same line...it is insanely cheap to make. It requires 2 teaspoons of Borax (and Borax comes in a ginormous sized box at the store...so far I've used it for several batches of laundry detergent, and there's still a ridiculous amount in there) and 1/4 teaspoon of Dr. Bronner's Liquid Castile Soap in peppermint or lavender. This soap usually comes in huge bottles as well, but while at Target the other day I spotted them in travel sizes. These are perfect! They're only $1.99 each, and a 1/4 teaspoon is an insanely tiny amount. Even after using it to make my bottles of cleaner, it looks like I haven't even broken into it properly. From a very cheap investment in the materials, you can easily make a bajillion batches before running out! (yes, I used science to calculate that end number)

This cleaner is the opposite of commercial cleaners. After reading Megan's post about how she cleaned her newly-acquired house with water and vinegar, I remembered back when Carl and I bought our condo almost 7 years ago. The first day we got the keys, I went crazy and scrubbed the whole place down. The woman we bought the place from was a smoker AND a cat owner, so I was determined to erase all traces of grime. On numerous occasions, I would have to actually leave the room I was cleaning, coughing up a storm with my lungs burning and my eyes watering. It's crazy that the chemicals in those cleaners are so strong that they can induce that type of reaction in a person. Not worth it! I wish I would have used vinegar and water, or even this All-Purpose Spray.

This spray truly fulfills the All-Purpose requirement in my house and environs. I keep one bottle in the kitchen, another in the guest bathroom. I use it to wipe down all surfaces in the kitchens and bathrooms, and the other day I ventured into my car and used it to wipe down the dashboard, seats and panels. Worked like a charm! And do you have any idea how amazing it is to thoroughly clean a room and have it smell like lavender after? Instead of coughing and being exposed to toxic levels of chemicals, it smells absolutely perfect. You can create how it smells by adding a different essential oil at the end of the mixing process. I used lavender for both bottles, but lemon would be a good choice for a kitchen cleaner. Vanilla would be great, peppermint too. The possibilities are endless. Without further ado...

The One-and-Only All-Purpose Spray to End All Others

1 16-oz spray bottle
2 tsps Borax
1/4 teaspoon Dr. Bronner's Liquid Castile Soap (I've used lavender and peppermint versions...again, check out Target to get these in travel sizes)
Hot water
Essential oil, if desired

Mix the borax, the tiny amount of liquid soap and the hot water together vigorously. If desired, add 10-20 drops of essential oil. Shake/mix vigorously again. You are ready to clean!

So you didn't believe Megan?

You read Megan's post here about how wondrous the cleaning powers of Vinegar were but still were unsure. Well to further validate Megan's post and for a whole slew of ways to use vinegar to clean your house, Yahoo had an article on cleaning with vinegar today.

Now even if you disputed the oh-so knowledgeable Megan, can you truly argue with Yahoo? I think not!

And now I'm going to go try #11 on the ugly looking pot sitting on my stove top!

The Wonder Cleaner

Okay, so here's the thing. I'm tired. Dog tired. Way past my bedtime tired. Cranky tired. But, I still love all of you, so here is my RR for the week! I hope you enjoy the many facets of......Vinegar!

My husband and I recently purchased a house...recently as in we just got the keys on Friday (woot woot!!!), Long story short, houses are messy. Especially ones that you are going to be living in and that were previously occupied by little old ladies. I'm a bit finicky about other peoples dirt, my own dirt I don't mind so much. This week I have been learning all about cleaning with two super simple ingredients: Water & Vinegar. These two are miracle workers.

Our new house was completely covered from floor to ceiling in....wallpaper! (Did you hear my sharp intake of breath?) We took off the top layer of wallpaper and then sprayed the paper layer with a water/vinegar combo and the backing came off unexpectedly well. Then we went around again and sprayed the leftover glue with the same vinegar/water combo and that scrubbed right off the walls as well. Finally, soap down the walls with a little soap and lots of water. We're ready to paint!

We cleaned the entire kitchen with vinegar and water. Floors, walls, and all of the cabinets and Drawers.

Downstairs in the laundry room we wiped down the inside of the dryer with a damp towel (damp with, you guessed it, vinegar), then I sprayed the outside of the dryers with vinegar/water and presto - clean! We scrubbed the inside of the washer with vinegar/water and ran an empty cycle on hot, hot hot with some vinegar - clean! (Also, did you know you can pour a little vinegar in the place where you would normally put fabric softener? It'll do the same thing only in a much more natural, earth friendly way.)

How much do we love using vinegar to clean, you ask? So much that my Mom and I went to Costco and bought eight giant, giant containers of the stuff. And we're almost out.

So here's an actual recipe instead of me just telling you to mix vinegar with water and clean your whole house.

Microwave Cleaner

1/2 C. Vinegar
2 C. Water.

Combine in microwave safe bowl, heat on high for 3-4 minutes, remove bowl and wipe down inside of microwave.

And another one just for kicks!

Tub & Tile Cleaner
Apply vinegar full-strength to a sponge and wipe.
Scour with baking soda.

Happy cleaning friends! Also, if you're looking for a house to clean... ;-)