Making Ketchup at home

It’s been on my “make it” list for awhile now. But, I was waiting to use up my stock of store bought organic ketchup before I started making my own.

My store bought ketchup was the Private Selection brand from my local Fred Meyer store. Well, the last bottle was about to be gone, last week. So, the hunt began for a recipe to try for the first batch. I didn’t want to make a lot until we found a recipe we both really liked.

I asked on my Facebook wall if anyone had a recipe. My friend from a coupon group I belong to, shared hers with me.

Rani’s Ketchup

6 oz can of tomato paste

2 tablespoons brown Sugar Twin (organic brown sugar, 3 Tbsp total)

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (didn’t have, left out)

1 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (organic acv, 3 Tbsp total)

1/2 can of water, divided (used a whole can, full 6oz, could use more)

1/2 tablespoon oil  (left out)

1/8 teaspoon salt (optional) (used, sea salt, just a dash)

Combine all ingredients and quarter a can of water.

Cook over low-medium heat in a sturdy pan, until it cooks down a bit and begins to darken slightly.

Add more water as necessary and continue cooking down.

Adjust the allspice and Brown Sugar Twin to taste.

Continue adding water and cooking down to desired consistency.

Okay, so I had a starting point. I made a few alterations, which gave us a nice flavor & consistency, for a first try. My changes are in the ( ) above. The taste will change slightly as it sits in the fridge it seems. So, next time, we’ll use just a tad less ACV if we make this recipe again.Or, we'll try it with just white vinegar.

There are a ton of recipes out there for homemade tomato paste ketchup. Depending on what you like, you’ll be sure to find one that suits your taste to a tee … and the best part is you can use whatever you want! All the recipes are just a starting point!

The photo above got taken after we'd already used up some ... there was enough to almost fill that second jar. And, it was thick. Thinner ketchup will obviously get you a bit more.

Comparing milk

The other day I saw that Organic coconut milk was on sale at my local favorite grocer. Now, I already use organic rice milk in place of creamer in my coffee. I like it pretty well, even tho half & half is richer. But, this is much more cost effective. Anyway, I have always wanted to try coconut milk. I know its supposed to be good for you & a great alternative to cow milk. I bought one carton of regular & one unsweetened. Set them in the fridge to chill.

Once nice & cold, I poured a little of each for me & the man to try. Huh. Not bad. Not what we know as milk, but not bad. Maybe I could get used to this in my cereal, I thought. The man said it was okay. Not really sure what that meant, since he didn’t divulge more info.

This morning, I poured the regular version in my bowl of Kashi cereal. Umm. I don’t think I’ll do that again. Drinking it from a glass, in just a small quantity, was one thing. But it just was not the same & actually tasted kinda funny in my cereal.

I also tried the unsweetened version in my coffee. Now this was kinda nice. It’s thicker than the rice milk so it made the coffee seem a little richer. The flavor was the same. Not bad. I could see me using this in coffee on a regular basis. Well, maybe after I use up all the rice milk I’ve stockpiled! LOL After all, I can get the organic rice milk from my Costco for a decent price, by the case.

So I just thought I’d put this out there for others to compare. My new experience with Organic Coconut milk.

GMO's

I was really at a loss as to what to write about today. I had several ideas, but just didn’t feel like going into any of them! My funk has spread beyond just my creativity.

So I got to looking at this …

apparently the pic is gone & I dont recall what it was.

Learning more about GMO’s is on my list all the time. I don’t like what I read. It scares me. I really don’t want people messing with my food just to make it more resistant to pests or something. Leave it alone. I grew my garden this year without any help from pesticides or un-natural things. I used natural things to fertilize. I used organic seeds or plant starts. Everything grew fine when it was given the right growing conditions. Now, I understand in some areas there are more bugs, or whatever… but everything has built up a resistance… because we keep using all this poisonous crap.

When I shop, I try to buy organic as much as I can. The GMO issue is among the reasons for this. Knowing what is likely to be GMO & what isn’t, helps me to see what I need to buy organic & what I can get conventional if need be.

One of the things mentioned is soy. I don’t like it to begin with because of things I’ve read in the past, but if I buy it or see it as an ingredient in something, it will be organic.

There is a list out there that tells you what ingredients & companies you can trust to use non GMO stuff. I’ll have to find it. For today, take a look at this picture, & give some thought to what you eat ….

Making growing containers

So anyways, I mentioned recently I would share how we made the cool container for gardening. I first saw this on the wonderful Instructableswebsite a couple years ago. Showed it to my hubby & we agreed it would be a fun idea to try. It was fairly simple, & up here in Washington, it worked great. I mention that because the first try was when we were in Florida for a summer. It didn’t work out so well down there. Didn’t really explore the reasons why very much since we knew we’d be back here.

this is how it will all fit together

Obviously, to make this easy, I’m sharing a lot of pictures. You can see that we built a matching set. We got 2 deep totes (w/lids, needed, but I left em outa the pictures), 2 shallow totes, 2 pond plant baskets, 4 small metal rods (not pictured, oops) & a length of PVC pipe to be cut to size. Then all you need is something to cut holes in the lids & bottoms. It’s pretty easy to see how it goes together looking at the pictures.

The small hole about half way down on the one end is the drain hole. It should be located just as where the bottom of the shallow tote sits when nestled together. This is located on the same end as the PVC fill pipe. The fill pipe has a slanted bottom so it fills without backing up. The height is up to you really, as long as it comes thru the lid. We opted for 5 holes in each lid. You can do less if you like depending on what you plan to plant.

PVC pipe hole & basket cutout

To write out all the directions would make this so long. If the pictures don’t explain enough, feel free to email me (HerbsnChocolate@Gmail.com) & I’ll happily explain any part!

drain/overflow hole

Once you have all the cuts made & everything assembled, you want to fill the basket with dirt. Then keep filling until you are just below the top. Be sure you have the fill pipe in place!!! Now the website I got this from had several people saying to use only a specific blend of soil. I kinda followed that the first time, in FL. We did not have wonderful results. Up here in WA I used just good store bought soil along with some soil amendment mix stuff. It worked great. I think the key is keeping it watered, and sunlight!

So if you try this, I’d love to know what your results are like … Ours were great this year & we plan to use both containers next year along with maybe one or two more! 

 Basket in place, PVC fill pipe in place.

Rods get pushed thru the basket holes so the baskets stay in place better. Lip of the basket is on the inside, rest of basket & rods, underneath. Only cut the square big enough for the basket to fit thru, not the lip of the basket.

Hole drilled in lid for PVC pipe. Holes drilled for plants to grow thru. I dont suggest more than 5 unless you are growing something that is really small/compact, or trails off onto the ground.

with the lid on, we made indents to match the holes. take lid off, plant plants. carefully put lid back on, pulling plants thru holes as needed.

this was the FL planting. a varied crop.

The planted version, in Florida 2010. You can see the WA 2011 version  in the last post.

Talking about gardening ...

Today I want to talk about our garden. Well, what there was of it anyway. We began with the best of intentions, with the limited knowledge & money that we had. We figured planting in the ground, along our fence would be a great start & easy to keep up with since everything would be easily accessible. We waited until frost had passed & began to put organic & heirloom plants in the ground. Before the plants came lots of tilling by hand & a few added bags of help.Thru the whole season, we used only natural & organic things to help our efforts. No chemicals!<!-- more -->

We were excited. Took pictures of everything all newly planted & waited. And waited. Even with proper watering & fertilizing, things were beyond slow to grow. Come to find out later on, we were not the only ones having a lack of growth. The cooler spring weather made the Earth warm much slower. And even tho air temps were fine, ground temps were less than ideal for growth. Eventually, we did get growth for at least the tomato plants. All the peppers, carrots, radishes, lettuce & chives died. Go figure. 

So we learned that growing in either raised beds or containers would be the way to go. Not only could we ensure more sun for the plants in containers, but their root systems would get more warmth for sure! Along the edge of our patio area, we placed a couple of containers. In one we put 4 rescued, clearance priced tomato plants. In the other we put 5 clearance priced pepper plants. What’s the worst that could happen? We get green but no fruit? Well, far from it! Both containers have shown awesome growth & lots of fruit!

Our ground tomatoes did provide a decent harvest as well, just not nearly what could have been. We’re already so excited about next season, when we’ll have multiple containers along the patio edge.

The one thing that seemed to do fin in the ground was all the herbs we planted. And since they are all perennial, they will stay & hopefully come back next year even bigger. I’m looking at snipping a bunch here shortly to dry.

I think I’ll share how we made the Rubbermaid container for the peppers. All the images today are of the awesome progress of the container plants. Look for that one the 8^th!

And so it begins again in a new year

So the hum-drum of daily life is back. Hubby went back to work. Daughter spent most of the day sleeping since she works nights now. I spent most of my day … in front of this thing. I wrote out the final checks for everyone from the mall. I also wrote out nice little thank you notes to go with them. They’ll all get mailed Tuesday. Exciting huh?

We got dumped on big time with snow last night. Probably the biggest one time snowfall so far. No idea how much we technically got. It was about as deep as my hand if not a bit more. With all the snow, I figured the roads & people would be a mess. So, I stayed home. I should have gone to the store & post office. Guess they’ll both wait till morning.

I began going thru some of my digital picture files today too. I know there are tons I can just delete because they are almost identical. So I started. Felt good to clean out more of my life. Really good. Clearing out the various areas of my life of clutter & unneeded things is going slow, but well. I love the feeling of being able to let go of more & more material things. It’s one small step in the bigger quest to simplify my life.

One of my things has been to remove chemicals from my life. Chemicals are bad. Yet we put them into & onto our body’s everyday in so many forms. My big step? I went thru most of my toiletries. Lotions. Makeup. Facial cleansers. They are full of stuff that seeps into our pores, into our skin & blood stream. Well, not so much into mine anymore. I gathered up quite the pile of stuff & posted it on Freecycle last week. Even tho it was money, it felt so good to know I was taking a step towards something that means a lot to me. I didn’t let go of everything, but about 80% or more. I’ll have to find suitable replacements for things like body wash/shower gel. And shampoo. I kept the pencil eyeliners, but let go of the lipsticks. I let go of all the lotions except for 2. I want to make changes in my feminine stuff, but that’s expensive so it’ll have to be in baby steps as things get used.

Can you tell I’m trying to go more natural? Not just in food, but all areas of my life. And as long as you read, you’ll be along for the journey.

For the first time in months I popped back into the natural living community on LJ. Found a post about facial cleansing & using oil to clean your face. Sounds odd, but I’ll be looking into it. I will be enjoying getting into all the fun stuff of going organic & natural. Besides, it’ll give me something to blog about besides boring everyday life.