Single serving, oatmeal-free apple crisp

We are foster parents.  The house can go from 2 adults to 2 adults & 2 kids before you can say "boo", and with new children in the house, you don't know if they go bananas when they eat sweets or not, so this fruit-based dessert is perfect, and the recipe can be altered to suit how many people are coming to dinner.  The kids can help make it and they love that... plus they love how easy it is to make a fancy dessert.  And every ingredient is a staple in our house.   We've ALWAYS got apples in the fruit bowl, butter in the freezer, brown sugar & flour in the pantry, and cinnamon in the spice cabinet.  It's a no-brainer... a modification of my Grandma Lindquist's recipe. 


About one apple for 2 people (Granny Smith apples are GREAT for this).  For one apple, get 2 ramekins... About 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter.  About 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of flour.  Cinnamon.  A pinch of salt.

Your choice, pecans, Walnuts, raisins, craisins. 

Peel, core & slice the apple.  Put the apples in individual ramekins.  sprinkle cinnamon on them & toss.  If you're using raising, walnuts, craisins or pecans, put about a tablespoonful in each ramekin.  Mash the rest of the ingredients together with a fork, add more cinnamon (we LOVE spice in this household), divide & crumble over each of the two ramekins.

Cook at 350 degrees for a half hour. 

 

Notice that the one on the right looks different from the one on the left.  I just made these for Wayne & myself.  This recipe allows you to personalize each one.  He likes more pecans and less topping, I like more topping.  YUM!

lip gloss

A few months ago I saw a Pinterest on lip gloss.  I looked it up and saw that several people have used the same recipe.  Problem is, the recipe as written, results in gritty lip gloss.  More appropriate for a lip scrub.  And while lip scrub of that sort is wonderful to help reduce dry flakes, it is not the type of gloss that you'd love to wear and would feel... well... KISS-able. 

The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline).  One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work. 

One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested.  I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested.  The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process.  For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it.  And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture.  Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example. 

Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work. 

Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline.  I decided to try it out.  I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals.  But it was clearly not going to mix up properly.  It didn't work.  So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish.  I was thinking on it.

Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish.  A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink.  BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery.  Maybe...

I tried mixing in a little Vaseline.  Wow.  Magic.  LIP GLOSS.  No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...

So, here's the formula.  Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.)  Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait.  Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline.  Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy.  The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day. 

My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline.  The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better.  It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick.  IF this works. 

Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it.  But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss! 

Oh, and P.S.  This is a great project to do with your teen girls.  It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!

homemade lip gloss and lip scrub

In an effort to cut costs, going with cheap make-up is one option.  But sometimes the cheap stuff has odd ingredients, changes color, aggravates allergies, etc.  And of course, for a girly girl who likes to play with make-up, it's not as much FUN.  Flavored lipsticks are less intense if they're the cheap variety, and then there's the whole feeling of "I'm cheapening up on myself", which never feels good.

But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option. 

In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers.  Those, I will offer later.  Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub.  All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss.  The result was ALWAYS gritty.  Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty.  One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer".  I tried.  That does not work.

You see, the recipe generally goes like this.  You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss. 

When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that.  It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do.   I had to take it a step further. 

Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss:  The night before, put your powder in a small dish.  Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit.  The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline.  So let it sit overnight.  The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy.  PERFECT.  NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up.  You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly. 

The taste is yummy.  The tint is very faint.  Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet.  And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color.  Less is a fainter color.  AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules. 

Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well.  There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.

My next experiment will be to use coconut oil.  At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used?  Or less?  I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try.  I'll write another post when I do that.  Stay tuned. 

PIZZA

OK, so if you find things to cook at home that are easier than going out, and taste at least as good (if not better), then you'll cook at home more often.  A few years ago, we found how to cook pizza so that it's better than what we can get from a restaurant, takeout-or home delivery.  I'm not kidding, we've had foster kids who declared it to be the best they'd ever had.

Of course, for the foster kids, helping make their own meal added to the flavor.  It's always so much more satisfying when you do something on your own that turns out to be GREAT, right?

So we start with pizza stones.  We went to Home Depot and got a couple of stone tiles to use.  You don't want a glazed stone for this, the glazing will ruin this.  If you can get an unglazed clay tile, like saltillo, then great, but any unglazed stone will do.  Get it BIG, you want your whole pizza to fit on it.  We got two 12 inch tiles, and they aren't exactly large enough for one 12 inch pizza.  We cut the second tile to fit across our oven. 

The trick with pizza stones, which I forgot last night, is to get them VERY hot before you put the pizza in to cook.  If they are hot, the bottom of your pizza will cook fast, making it crispier.  Not having a hot stone in the oven means the bottom of your pizza cooks last.  Your toppings may be great, but your crust will be limp or soggy, cooked last (if at all).  Having the stone hot is the most important trick to a tasty, firm crust at the center bottom of the pizza! 

We use Mamma Mary's thin & crispy 12 inch pizza crusts.  One is about the right size for a pizza for 2 adults.  Teens, you probably need more than half a thin crust pizza... children, there will be leftovers (cooking leftover pizza in a minute).  You start by putting a very thin layer of oil on top of the cold crust, seal it JUST a little from sauce soaking in and making it soggy.  And now I'll put in a tiny word for  Mamma Mary's crusts.  We discovered them a few years ago.  This company makes crusts that are reasonably priced, comes with the thin & crispy style we like, do not have excess dough or stray flavors cooked in, so that we can make it what we want.  AND they keep on the pantry shelf for MONTHS, till we're ready to use them.  They come two (or more) to a package and the package contains a separate baggie to put your leftover into so you can keep it in the fridge for the next time you use it.   

We made tomato sauce from our garden last summer, but sometimes it's not as thick as we want.  I mix some of the homemade tomato sauce with tomato paste to thicken it up.  The alternative is to use canned tomato sauce (keep a tupperware container available for leftovers).  Add some basil or oregano, and little bits of garlic or garlic powder, to give it a little oomph, if you've used canned tomatoes.  If you make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, whatever you choose to put in your basic sauce is fine for pizzas.  The only problem seems to be the texture.  Thin is fine for pasta, but for pizza, you want a tomato sauce with a little body to it! 

Slices of tomato are fun, too... and can be really cool if you're doing a specialty pizza like one that has feta or ricotta, apples or pears, walnuts... all those cute toppings that you find at a chic and adult pizza place... but today we're looking for reasons not to get take-out, so we're going to work with the usual take-out toppings... not the pears & ricotta...

Cheese is always an issue.  We put the tomato sauce on first, then any veggies... we saute the veggies a little to soften them up and pull out any sweetness we can get from them, and put them on the 'za before we put on the cheese.  We use part skim cheese or full fat.  Anything less fat than "part skim", and it does not melt or bubble up properly. 

The biggest mistake people make with cheese on pizza is that they put on too much.  It really does not require a lot of cheese to make a pizza great.  Too much and the pizza will not crisp up right, it will melt but not get those wonderful little brown bubbles, the toppings will be smothered.  EVERY time I think I've not got enough cheese left to make a pizza, and I put one together anyways and hope for the best, it turns out to have been the PERFECT amount of cheese, creating a bubbly, thin layer that browns up nicely. 

And with meat... if you're using sausage or burger, please, PLEASE brown it first in a pan, sweating out as much of the fat as you can, before you put it on top of all that cheese.  If you're using pepperoni, it seems to not leave as many little puddles of fat on a pizza cooked the way we do (with the stones, and not too much cheese), but sausage can REALLY produce too many puddles of boiling oil on your pizza if you don't take off some of the fat first by giving it a little swirl in the browning pan.  Interestingly, people make a mistake of putting on too much cheese, they make a mistake of putting on too LITTLE toppings.  Remember that if you have a slice of pepperoni that's about an inch & a half around when you put it on, it will shrink during cooking.  If you put the pepperonis on so they look like you want the pizza to look when you're finished, it'll be clearly too few pieces.  Generally, it works best if you put the pepperonis in an overlapping pattern... start from the center and just overlap as they go out.  Same goes for thin slices of ham or any other type of meat that will shrink up as it cooks. 

Let the meat be on top, so it cooks fully and crisps up nicely.  Assuming you've not overloaded the pizza with toppings, and pre-heated the stones till they're super-hot, the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes... depending upon how crisp you want it.  Around here, we like it a little crunchy at the edges. 

For the thin crust pizza, take the toppings ALL the way out to the edge.  For a chewier crust, choose the thicker crust, which has a slightly larger edge.  EVEN if you're used to ordering the chewier crust from your take-out place, TRY the thin crust for the DIY pizza.  I suspect you'll like it better than anything you can buy in a restaurant or take-out.  When you're making a pizza for home, and do it right, and the toppings are on properly and the taste is good, suddenly you're less interested in wasting perfectly good crust by not putting toppings on it!  If you want something to dip, make a bread stick, you know? 

And most importantly, this one is great for the kiddos to get involved.  They love getting their hands oily by putting a tablespoon worth of oil on the crust and spreading it around... they like stealing random pieces of pepperoni.  They learn to appreciate veggies like Onions and bell peppers if they help in sauteing and putting them on the tomato sauce.  And maybe more importantly, they learn that too much cheese is not only high fat and unhealthy, but messes up the pizza by making it harder to get that good, crispy crunch that everyone seems to like so well...

In our house, except during Lent, Friday night is Pizza night... and it's a dinner that EVERYONE looks forward to... a great punctuation for a good workweek, and a great start to the weekend! 

Our Daily salad

I didn't get to Costco last Friday as planned.  But we went over the weekend.  It's a whole lot easier shopping during the Christmas season if you go during the workweek, preferably on a morning when the kids are in school.  The stores are SOOOO much easier!  And the traffic. 

Oh well, we did it the hard way.

But I was desperate.  In my quest to get healthier, we are eating salads every day if we can, and we were running out of our favorite lettuce.  Getting lettuce from Costco is a commitment.  It means you have to EAT that lettuce before it starts to go bad.  We will get a package of 6 romaine hearts and spend the week eating them, one a day, before dinner.  It's good to have some extra refrigerator space downstairs in the rec room! 

To make the salad something to look forward to, we also use mandarin orange sections... a product that would be unreasonably expensive if we weren't ALSO buying these at Costco.  And we add a sprinkle of slivered almonds.  Unfortunately, not available at Costco, but I can get them in bulk at Wegman's (we also put them on yogurt, so we keep lots of them around).  And a dollop of honey-mustard dressing.  I've not yet looked to see if we could get the dressing at Costco.  I fear that the bottle of dressing I'd get from there might be bigger than would fit the fridge, and to make a green, leafy salad a daily habit, it's got to be EASY.  Running up & down stairs for the salad dressing might be a step further than I'd be willing to do. 

There's a principle of management... these days it's called "process management", and they have various ways of enforcing it... you may have heard of "Lean Six Sigma"... which is the process of taking a manufacturing process that is working well, and slowly identifying issues that are causing variation (variation is considered inappropriate in a manufacturing situation, if they are creating widgets, they want every widget to match)... you spent your time nibbling away at the pieces of the process that cause the widgets to fall outside of the standard deviation (a statistics term, the standard deviation is considered "sigma"... and in any grouping of objects, nearly all of the objects fall within six "sigmas"...).  To reduce the size of the six sigmas that the grouping of objects falls within, to make that variation smaller, is the goal.

When I am trying to organize my life, I use the same principles.  I find something that works, and reduce the work needed to make it happen.  If I can cut down the number of times I have to go to the store to get the ingredients... if I can cut down the number of trips to the refrigerator in the rec room... if I can cut down the amount of product wasted because we don't eat it in time... then I am more likely to do the thing.  Cleaning the bathroom is easier if the products used to clean it are stored in the bathroom.  Sweeping the floor is easier (and more likely to get done), if the broom and dustpan are nearby.  My sewing project is more likely to get done if the sewing machine and equipment are someplace where I can use them easily and not stored away in a closet so that every time I use them is a project in cleaning my closet, just to get access to the equipment.  And I am more likely to eat my healthy salad if the ingredients are close at hand and easy to put together.

Wayne likes a variation in the salad.  He prefers Craisins or tomato chunks over mandarin orange slices.  And he prefers a spicy pepper vinaigrette over my honey mustard flavor... I make sure to keep lots of his favorite ingredients close at hand also.  Because if his favorite ingredients are nearby, I can often rely upon him to do the salad-making. 

With all the ingredients close at hand, inexpensive, and easy to manage, as well as flavorful... we eat a bowlful of salad every day. 

Someday, when we retire, we hope to be able to afford to travel, and we hope to have good enough health that we will not be forced into being one of those little old couples who hobbles on & off of a bus tour through Europe... no, we want to be healthy enough to go off the beaten path, to climb pyramids in Egypt, ride elephants through the jungles of Thailand, and hike up & down the hills & stairways of Assisi.

Our daily salad is one step in the right direction.