Tackle it Tuesday -- Butter is Better

The cows have come home for the winter and we once again are getting fresh milk every morning. Caleb and Jessee took off at 5:30 a.m. to go help milk our friend Ramon's cows, so I figured I should get busy skimming off the cream from yesterday's milk.

That done, my cream jar (a one-liter yogurt container) was now full. Time to make butter.

I do hate to buy butter. First of all, it's expensive...and I'm a cheapskate.

Secondly, I can't buy unsalted butter here. It's not that I don't like salt in my butter -- oh no! I like salt. A lot. There's some conspiracy, though, about iodized salt here. It's all they have. Even the butter "sin sal" has flouridated (is that a word?) salt in it. I don't know about you, but I have issues with flouride. When we were little, didn't the dentist always tell us to make sure we didn't swallow the flouride? So, why are they putting it in our salt?

Anyway, enough of that soapbox. On to the task at hand...

Pictures being worth as much as they are, I've included a ton. This is a SUPER EASY process -- made easier if you own a Kitchenaid, but very doable even if you only have a hand mixer.

I start with raw milk, strain it, add a tablespoon or 2 of peroxide and let it set for a day in the fridge so the cream will come to the top. Skim off the cream, store it in a "cream jar" in the fridge. You'll need about 4 cups of cream to make about 1 1/2 cups of butter.

Ready? Let's do it. Start to finish, this took me an hour with no kids (or husband) underfoot. You can stop in the middle, so don't worry if you don't have an uninterrupted hour. (Who has an uninterrupted hour during daylight hours?)

Put the cream in the mixer bowl and add a bit of PLAIN salt (imported from the States). Today I put in about 1/8 tsp. I'd rather have it a bit bland than overdo the salt. Attach your wire whisk and turn on the mixer. I bring my Kitchenaid up to power level 6. At this point, you can watch if you want to, but it's going to be a while, so you might want to go do something else...like write a blog post.

After a few minutes, your cream will start to expand...keep whipping!

At about 7 minutes, you'll have a wonderful, fluffy whipped cream. Keep whipping!
At about 10 minutes, the cream will start to reduce and get thicker. You're getting closer. Keep whipping!

At this point, as clumps begin to form, the liquid may splash a bit.

Here's my solution...

Keep whipping, you're almost there!!!

When the lumps separate, turn off your mixer and get out your trusty wooden spoon.

Push all the lumps together into one ball and then strain off the buttermilk.

WARNING!: This Photo Was Posed!!! Don't try to pour the buttermilk off with one hand while balancing the strainer over a Mason jar and taking a picture with the other hand. Using two hands I still managed to make a mess.

Put your lump of butter back in your mixer bowl, grab your wooden spoon again and let's smoosh. Smoosh out all the excess buttermilk by pressing the butter against the side of the bowl and then pour it off. Pour yourself a glass of drinking water.
Pour about a half a cup or so of water over the butter and repeat the smooshing process. Dump off the expressed water. Then do that again.

And again.
The goal here is to remove all the excess buttermilk which has been trapped in air pockets inside the butter. That residue will cause the butter to spoil over time. Of course, in our family the butter doesn't last that long, so I'm not overly picky. Two rinses is usually enough for me. If I'm planning to freeze it for later use, though, I'm a little more careful.Your butter is now finished. Press it into a bowl or container lined with plastic wrap -- or a butter crock, if you happen to have one -- and stick it in the fridge.
Honey's comment this morning, "Hey! The butter doesn't have that weird aftertaste today. What's different?"

My answer: It's homemade.

Tackle it Tuesday -- More than I Bargained For

We started school on Monday and are getting back into the rhythm of life here in Las Glorias. One of our main projects for Monday was to be cleaning the school shelf thoroughly, but I threw my back out on Saturday night, so we had to put off the serious bending and lifting until Tuesday.

No, I have no idea what I did to my back. I think I sneezed wrong or something. Age is creeping up on me. At any rate, I was able to finish a novel I've been working on, so something good came of my enforced down time!

So, on to my Tuesday's tackle:

Ta-Dah!!!!

I'm happy with the way it turned out; but it took about twice as long as I'd hoped. I didn't take any "before" shots. Too embarassing! Of course, it's not ALL my fault. The shelves are, afterall, the kids' responsibility. I just let it slide too long.

What took so long? Well, first I had everyone pull all their stuff off of their shelves and pile it on the table. Then they went through their old notebooks and etc. and threw away the garbage. Then we reassembled the shelf. After they were all finished, I took everything off the bottom shelf and found this...

This why we don't like to be gone during storm season. Mold. My poor encyclopedias are toast. I guess that will be on my list to replace next furlough. The "Your Reading Power" looks great on the outside, but inside all the story folders were melded (or molded) together and completely ruined. Sigh.

So, everything came back off the shelf, the books were scrubbed, the shelves were carted outside to be scrubbed and left in the sun and the floor was scoured. I was glad I had bought some Febreeze while we were in Arizona last month! By Wednesday, we were mold-free and back in business.

Notice that the shelf is now up on bricks. We're hoping that the added ventilation will keep things drier. Someday, oh someday, my house will be weather proof. If it doesn't happen in this lifetime, I've already put in my request for my celestial mansion: no leaks, please!!! ;^)

Praying that your week is blessed!!!

It Keeps Going and Going and Going...

Memory Verse: 1 Timothy 4:15 (NIV)
Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.

Intro: It keeps going, and going, and going…

(Marketing credit: Energizer)

Housekeeping: That household mess, it keeps going and going and going. It’s a perpetual chore that we diligently need to keep going on to stay on top it. We all have different ways of keeping ourselves energized.

Assignment: How do you keep energized so you can get it all done? bouncy music? treat it like a workout? Do you use a schedule?, a housekeeping binder system? luck of the draw system?.. or is this an area where you need encouragement? Do you need God’s help to keep order and beauty in your dwelling place? Take this week to tell us how You diligently keep going with your housekeeping chores.

Picture ideas: Show us some before and after pictures of a space you’ve been working on /show us your favourite tools / share a youtube of your favourite housekeeping music that keeps you energized.

Well, it looks like I'm writing that "Chore-Chart Post" sooner rather than later!!!

As an opener let me just say that while homeschooling 6 kids there is NO POSSIBLE WAY I could EVER keep up with housework if I wanted to do ANYthing besides clean, cook and put away stuff. I tried for several years, and I beat myself up thinking that the silly Proverbs 31 woman was in heaven shaking her head at me, wondering when I'd finally get it all together.

I had a sort of epiphany about 10 years ago. Two things I realized. One -- the Proverbs 31 woman is not one woman. Proverbs 31 is about a type of woman. (Insert sigh of relief here.) Two -- I wanted to be a homemaker, not a houseslave. OK, I realized 3 things. The third thing? With six kids, I had more work that needed to be done, but I also had 12 more hands to help do it!!!

Thus began the creation and evolution of...(drumroll, please)...The Chore Chart.

I posted this photo for BFS already, but it's relevant, so...

How did I come up with this? Trial and error. We've revamped the chore chart probably a dozen times in the past 10 years. As the littler kids got bigger, they were able to do more involved jobs. When we moved to Mexico, we no longer had a dishwasher, dryer or carpets to vacuum.

So let's go step by step through the birth process...

• Write down the different areas in your home that need daily attention. For instance, in our house we have the Kitchen, Living Room, Bathroom and Outside, plus the kids' bedrooms.


• Make a list of the chores in each room that need to be done. Don't worry about who will do what yet. Just make a list. In the Kitchen, we need to clean and wipe the counter, wipe down the outside of the fridge, pick up the floor, clear the table, wash the dishes, take out the trash and cook the meals.
  
• Now, let's divide the chores we have so they're a little more evenly distributed and so we have the same number of groups of chores as we have kids. Do you notice something? It's actually easier if you have more kids. All those times those well-meaning folks have said, "Oh, MY! All those kids!!! How do you get it all done???" Answer: I don't. We do.


• What if you only have 2 children? Well, the same chores still need to be done, right? Just divide it all up! Everyone will do a little more than if you had 6 kids, but still not as much as if you were trying to do it all yourself!

Let's look at my example for a sec...

• I have 4 areas in the house (not including bedrooms -- those are separate and everyone is responsible for their own space) and 6 kids, so I take some of those extra kitchen jobs and make a new "area": Dishes. Face it: dishes is a big job. If you're washing dishes for 8 people 3 meals a day, you don't want to do another job, too. Then I take another Kitchen job and put it with the outside jobs to balance out the load a bit. One of our "Outside" jobs is laundry. How would you like to be stuck doing laundry for 8 people all day, every day, all week, every week, forever and ever...? "Not I!" said the mom! So we recently created the "Laundry Floater", and it moves from person to person every day. Laundry is a pain here, anyway, because we have such water issues and electricity issues. If you have a washer that works and a dryer, too, then having one person to do laundry for the week isn't such a big deal. Remember that everyone should be able to fold and put away their own clothes, right???
  
• I originally had one chore for each child in each room so that we could work together and help each other (read that: so the little boys would work instead of play). I put each chore on a small circle of colored paper with velcro on the back and it velcroed underneath their names. Once the kids learned what to do and how to do it -- and were old enough to follow through without constant supervision (OK, I still have to supervise, but not moment-by-moment!) -- I could turn them loose on an area and then check it over when they were done.

You could imagine that if you've never done anything like this before, you'll still spend the better part of the day on housework...and you will have some pretty stressful times. There have been days when I've had to call the same child back to the same chore 3 or 4 times because it wasn't done to my satisfaction. Wouldn't it be easier to just do it myself??? Oh, yeah...for the short-term. But the long-term rewards are worth the perserverance.

Here I am, 10 years down the road, and I can now leave in the morning to go to a women's prayer time and come home at 9 a.m. to a house that's spiffy, breakfast finished and kids working on lessons (usually -- sometimes the house is a disaster, half the kids are still in bed and the other half are at each other's throats. Life is still life.).

Now, don't think that we have it all together! My house is not a showcase!!! Martha Stewart not only doesn't live here, she would probably run screaming if she came to visit! My goal is not a "Better Homes and Gardens" interview...I want peace in my house, time to work on projects and do fun things with my husband, my kids and other people, and (maybe most importantly) I want my kids to achieve the same in their homes when they are adults.

My verses for the week:

Psalm 128:1-2 Blessed is every one that fears the Lord, that walks in his ways. For you shall eat the labor of your hands; happy shall you be, and it will be well with you.

**This passage is sweet to me for this reason: the years we spent laboring to teach the kids discipline, perserverance and responsibility in daily chores are now beginning to bear fruit. The fruit is sweet indeed!!!**

My Work Crew

Oh, BTW, this is my Tackle it Tuesday post, too, since it's housework-related, it's a project I've been working on and it just so happens to be Tuesday!

Tackle it Tuesday -- Mosquito Barricade

The Enemy:

The problem: Our window screens don't seal properly. Most of the time it's no big deal, but during this season a 3/8 inch gap between the screen and the window frame means lots of pesky mini-vampires sucking at your ankles. No fun.

The solution: Evie and I cut some felt strips, doubled them over and stitched them to make a weatherstripping-sort-of-thing. Then we hot-glued them to the existing weatherstripping (which is worthless). Viola! Screens that seal! No more mosquito entrance!

Now, if I can just get the boys to keep the front screen door latched!!!

Tackle it Tuesday -- Sewing Project

This week I tackled the boys' baseball pants. One challenge about sewing in Mexico is that no one sells patterns. I didn't know that when we were packing to move here, so I gave away most of my patterns and all of my pattern construction books. I honestly haven't built my own patterns for a decade. So lazy!!!


Well, here we go...back to making patterns out of newspaper! My 14 years in the 4H sewing project pay off!!!


Thanks, Mom, for insisting that I learn to make my own patterns instead of always relying on Butterick!

Success!!! All the boys like their pants, and eveyone else on the team wants a pair!!!

Tackle it Tuesday -- Tuh-maters

This tackle was actually a couple of weeks ago, but I actually have time to post today, so...here ya go!

I've found yet another reason to love living in Mexico: canning tomatoes in April. I've been a "canner" for ages. Growing up in the midwest, I used to watch my mom preserving jams and jellies and tomatoes and pickles. I just naturally inherited the desire to preserve foods for my family. Honestly, I love to process fruits, veggies and even fish, because at the end of the day, I can look at what I've done and see PROGRESS! So much of a mom's life is dishes and laundry and other jobs which have no end. Canning, on the other hand, has a beginning and an end and best of all -- a reward!

So, we come back to why I enjoy canning tomatoes in April. Well, tomatoes are a hot weather crop. In Oregon, they really start to ripen in the warm summer months of July and August. Tomatoes are at their best and cheapest for the hottest weeks of the year. Water-bath canning requires holding gallons and gallons of water at boiling for hours (since I usually put up over 100 quarts of tomatoes) plus the tomato sauce has to boil for hours before it's ready to process. I've done it for years, but MAN is it hot in the house during canning season! In Oregon, I actually had an old, ugly stove on the front porch specifically for canning. It helped, but it was still hot.

Now we're in Sinaloa, Mexico. Tomatoes are in season all year long! In the morning, it's still cool enough to want a sweatshirt and long pants. Running the stove and boiling water for hours actually felt good! Ah, no more processing gallon after gallon of sauce in 100 degree heat! I can stock up in the spring and beat the heat!

Just one more benefit of missionary life! Thanks, God!

At my feet you can see two of the wooden crates of 'maters I was processing. Each crate is about 50 pounds.

I really love my stove. I've never had one large enough to have a canner, stew pot AND small saucepan boiling all at the same time.

Can we say "oxidation"? Love that humidity!

NOT an extremely flattering photo. Anyway, we ended up with about 50 quarts of sauce. It was great to be able to share with our pastor and the school of ministry, too...and we had to have a pizza party since we had all that pizza sauce ready!!!

Tackle it Tuesday -- Summer's Starting

This weeks tackle was a pretty hefty one -- which I had VERY little to do with, but I did take the time to capture it on film, so that counts, right???

It's beginning to warm up...time to take the cover off the pool!

Yuck.

There was plenty of work for everyone and everybody pitched in to make the pool...

beautiful again!!!

Tackle it Tuesday -- Nature abhors a vacuum!

Ever notice that when you have a nice, clean surface people begin to put things on it? Well, maybe it's not that way in your house, but around here an empty space attracts clutter. First I put some packages that I received from some visiting missionaries in a neat stack to go through "later". Then I noticed that a couple of other boxes had mysteriously crept over to sit next to these boxes. A few days later, there were stacks of mending projects on top of the boxes next to the packages. A few days after that, "used" schoolwork and toys without a home began to appear on top of the already cluttered and growing mountain.

Alright! Enough already!!!

It didn't really take that long to put things "in their place". Caleb was my slave helper to run things up and down the stairs. In return for his help, I let him keep his djembay in the empty space!
I'm winning the war on clutter! Hooray!!!

Tackle it Tuesday

I've gotta hand it to Janice over at "5 minutes for mom";
She's absolutely right about this being "raw vulnerability"!

To be totally honest, I was in denial about how bad I had let my youngest daughter's room become. My oldest daughter, who shares aforementioned room, has been gently urging me to do something about it. Actually, she's been becoming increasingly insistent to the point of nagging. Finally, I acted. Evie and I took before and after pics. What I didn't take pictures of was the huge mountain of junk we threw out. Suffice to say that what you saw in photo number one, but no longer see in photo four, no longer is in our house. Yeah!!!

Big sister is very happy, and little sister found all her baby-doll equipment and Polly Pocket paraphernalia. She knew it was there...somewhere!!!