Homemade Tea Blend

My partner recently gave me the best tea ball (tea infuser) ever.

Yes, that is in fact the Death Star with TIE-fighter chain weight. This is such an awesome ball for so many reasons. Not only is the shape great, but it holds enough loose tea for a whole pot. It's just great.

For obvious reasons, I've become obsessed with the loose-leaf tea section of my local co-op. I recently bought a local tea called Moscow Mint that I'm excited to try (though I haven't as of writing this post). It has two mints, lavender, and lemon balm.

We spent some time in the bulk herb section of the co-op picking ingredients for my first ever homemade tea blend. Here's an image of all the beautiful ingredients.

Peppermint, spearmint, red raspberry leaf, orange peel, lavender, hibiscus flower, and lemon balm leaf.

I only blended a tiny bit up so far.

I used a regular small spoon to measure, so these are really not specific measurements, but here's the general idea of it. The number indicates roughly how much of the spoon I used in my first attempt (enough for two cups of tea).

1 1/2 peppermint
1 spearmint
1 lemon balm
1/2 lavender
1/3 orange peel
1/8 hibiscus
1/8 raspberry leaf

Why did I select some of these? Mostly based on smell and known-to-me benefits. It's a half and half of which were smells and which were known medicinal benefits.

I am prone to stress. No, I don't really have many reasons to be stressed, but I'm prone to feeling it more than I know I should. I'm trying to find ways to reduce stress. I've meditated before and really want to remember to do it again. Meanwhile, I try to keep myself calm in other ways. Like tea.

Peppermint, spearmint, lemon balm, and lavender are all known for helping manage stress. Chamomile is too, you probably know, but my partner is allergic to chamomile. Since I didn't want him to end up with a scratchy, slightly swollen throat, I opted to leave it out of this blend.

I knew these were flavors I wanted to include. I let my partner pick out most of the others.

 The raspberry leaf he picked because it was an interesting name and because it smelled "better than marshmallow root". My only tip is that if you think about using raspberry leaf is that it can specifically affect pregnancies and pregnant women. I can't remember exactly what the affects are, but I remember you have to be careful about when you drink it. If considering adding raspberry leaf to tea and you're anywhere in the pregnancy stages, please consult your doctor (or midwife, probably) first.

The hibiscus flower smelled really good. It smelled way better than rose hips for this particular tea. I don't know what kind of health benefits or concerns it has. I used a very small amount.

The orange peel just smelled like it would help round out the tea. I smelled the lemon peel but thought the orange would be better. Again, I'm not sure what the health impacts are.

Anyway, this is really good. I'm pleased with the blend. I don't know if it's fluke or actually something in my tea, but shortly after drinking it, I developed a bit of a headache. Since I'd had coffee earlier in the day, I'm guessing it was fluke.

I look forward to blending ingredients in the very near future to see what happens. 

Quick Shot: Recent Dinners

I know it's not always great to brag about having success with making food. And I know that a lot of times I'm not specific enough in my instructions to allow perfect imitation. And, quite frankly, half the time my dinners aren't exciting enough for an entire post. So here are two (sort of three) recent dinner I wanted to talk about without getting too in depth.

The first dinner was steak with twice-baked potatoes, green salad, and garlic bread.
We used our George Foreman grill for the steaks (seasoned with garlic pepper and dried minced onion).
It was my first time making twice-baked potatoes, but they turned out so well! (Bake potato at 400° for 50 minutes, cut in half, scoop out inside, mash, add sour cream, butter, garlic powder, salt, pepper, freeze-dried chives, stick back in skins, cover with cheese, bake at 400° for 15 minutes.)
The garlic bread was the pre-made stuff from the store.
The salad is only notable because we didn't actually have many ingredients for it. We ended up doing green leaf lettuce, fresh spinach (my partner uses it on the sandwich he eats every work day), baby carrots, an almond-dried cranberry topping thing from a bag, Mrs. Dash table blend, tomato-basil feta (recently bought for gyros) and Vidalia onion dressing. The almond-dried cranberry thing was hidden in the cupboard but it and the feta helped us feel like we were eating something really fancy. Also, never underestimate the power of a bit of Mrs. Dash.

The second dinner was a truly amazingly delicious pizza.
The crust was a pre-made thing.
We used jarred pizza sauce first. Then we mixed together a jar of pesto with some of the frozen fresh pesto I try to have on hand and swirled that on to mix the two sauces up. (I use this recipe for spinach-basil pesto usually, but this last time I left out the spinach)
Next we added fresh tomato, fresh spinach, and fancy-ish fresh mozzarella.
We threw it all in the oven for a bit, then pulled it out, sliced it, and ate the delicious flavor.


I don't have a picture for the third dinner. Sorry. So this is super short.
I wanted to make stuffed shells, but trying to undercook the shells lead to them falling all apart. So I laid them in the casserole dish kinda like lasagna noodles.
I mixed together ricotta cheese and the remaining pesto mixture from the above mentioned pizza. That's it. I put that in on top of the pasta. Put a bit more destroyed shells on top of the cheese, cover in jarred sauce, top with mozzarella cheese, bake, enjoy.

I'm going to make my shell stuffing with just ricotta and pesto (maybe some spinach too) from now on. It didn't fall apart and was delicious.

Tip: How to Cut Onions (When You're Super Sensitive)

I have a tip for today!

I can't hardly cut raw onions. I tear up so fast it's almost like a magic trick. We only buy sweet onions because the fumes aren't as bad. Even when I make my partner cut them across the apartment with the oven hood on to sweep up the fumes, there are times I'm still wiping tears away for several minutes.

This is a problem since I really love cooking with onion. I'm not a huge fan of raw onion flavor, but if it gets cooked even halfway to soft, I'm a fan. 

I very recently discovered two things that help me cut onions with ease now. I've been an onion cutting fool since I figured it out, so I have to share.

Yes, I now cut onions with swim goggles on! These are fairly old goggles -- probably 6 or 7 years old now. I took a couple swimming classes in college, and my best friend (who was on the high school swim team) helped me get my goggles and hair cap. I remember being really surprised how snug the goggles were supposed to be. It's that snugness now that makes these the perfect tool in the kitchen. After all, science explains that it's the "fumes" from the onion that hits your eyeballs and creates watering (check this video if you want more info or other tips about cutting onions).

Since they're old-ish, not being used under water, and I have to wear glasses, they're actually kind of foggy when I use them in the kitchen. It's totally worth it, though.

I use those gloves just so I don't smell like onion for the next three days. Nothing is weirder than realizing in your Wednesday shower that your hands still smell like Sunday's onions.

If you have swim goggles and are super sensitive to cutting onions, try this! It may not work for you, but I think it has a really good chance. 

Chicken Soup Success

When we were trying to recover from our colds last month, I decided to make chicken noodle soup. I've had fairly average success making it before, but I like the idea of making it more than buying a can of it.

Here are my ingredients:

It's nothing at all unexpected. Frozen chicken breasts, a box of chicken broth (cut with a bit of water), frozen onion (I am super sensitive to cutting raw onion), frozen peas and carrots (because it's a nice shortcut on cutting carrots), thin spaghetti (I meant to use thicker stuff but accidentally bought the thin), fresh parsley (not often found in my house, but it was there for a different recipe), green onion, celery, garlic, and assorted spices in the jar on the left.

Years ago my mom went through all her spices and typed up this reference chart of spices down the side, types of protein and ingredients along the top, and a notes field on the far right side. Basically the chart just tells you exactly which spices go best with which ingredients based on what the spice can says. I forget I have it, but when it's time to experiment with things like soup, I pull out the chart and look for ideas. I don't remember what was in it, but I'd guess some salt, pepper, possibly garlic powder, maybe some cumin, and thyme. Maybe sage? I don't really remember. 

I ended up taking that peeled clove of garlic, the parsley, and bay leaves and wrapped them in cheesecloth tied with kitchen twine. 

My theory was that I definitely wanted the flavors but no one wants to get the whole clove of garlic in their soup or a whole bay leaf or sprig of parsley. Plus, I recently bought the twine and really wanted to see how it worked out. I'm very pleased with the results.

I used both frozen chopped white onion and fresh green onion. Since the flavors are pretty different (as far as onion goes), I didn't think it would really overwhelm the soup. There also wasn't more than maybe a 1/2 cup of chopped frozen onion, so it wasn't as much as it sounds like.

My partner doesn't like celery very much, but I love using it. Also, I'm aware enough of what cooking does to the vegetables he doesn't like to know how to incorporate them without overwhelming the dish. Mushroom, while delicious, wouldn't have been easy to mask in this soup, so I left it out. Anyway, this is what it looked like after I threw everything together. You can see the cheesecloth package of flavorings in there too.

I put two chicken breasts in frozen because I knew they'd thoroughly cook. I also like making soup with real meat flavor (in addition to broth) when I can.  After they cooked down a bunch, I pulled the chicken out and cubes it before I returned it to the soup. Everything ended up fairly similar sized in the end.

 I broke the noodles in half before I added them. I wanted to get them in thirds, but it was going to take far too much effort.

I honestly don't know how long I cooked it for. I think I probably cooked it without noodles for a half hour, then stuck the noodles in and cooked it another 15 minutes. I like doing soup that's really low maintenance like this. As you probably guessed, the starch in the noodles thickened up my broth.

That's pretty much what it looked like. I tried to make a small batch, but I still haven't perfected the cooking-for-two thing. We ate it off and on for about two weeks. It held up super well. The only issue was the noodles sucked up so much broth that it was almost not soup by the end. It was startlingly good, though. I think the thyme really helped. I wish I'd actually kept track of what I ended up putting in at the end.

I think it's the victories like this that really help me feel confident experimenting more.

Berry Smoothie with Kale

We're still on a quest for good smoothies. My partner still wants to use kale. While he was out of town in January, I tried a new smoothie that has kale but is primarily fruit.

We tried the second smoothie (kale and banana) on this page a while ago. It was good, but the cinnamon was too strong. This time I made the third smoothie. The instructions (such as they are) read:

If green drinks creep you out, give this recipe a whirl. Fresh raspberries and strawberries help disguise the kale and produce a pretty pink smoothie. Add pineapple, banana, a splash of milk, Greek yogurt, and protein powder to try it.

I had almost all the ingredients, but I made a few changes.

Firstly, everything was frozen except the milk, yogurt, and banana.
Secondly, I didn't use protein powder.
Thirdly, I used regular vanilla yogurt. I had vanilla Greek yogurt, but I'm actually not a huge fan of Greek yogurt. Sometimes I feel like it, but usually I just don't like it much.

My smoothie turned out so pretty!

I was pretty surprised it wasn't green at all, but that was the point of this smoothie, right? I don't know if the kale being frozen had anything to do with it staying so amazingly not-green, but it definitely made the process easier. With everything being frozen, though, it was crazy thick.

Without a doubt, this is the tastiest smoothie (read: no ice cream) I've made yet.
It made probably 24 oz of smoothie. I put most of it in my 20 oz insulated Klean Kanteen and took it to work with me. It was hard to drink because it was insulated so well the smoothie couldn't really melt.

I'm really excited to make this one again and have my partner try it. We have some frozen spinach, so I may throw a bit of that in there too. Or maybe that will be for the third attempt.

Shower Decongestant Tablets

As I've previously mentioned, we were sick in January. It was just a cold, but those things are fairly unpleasant. I saw a recipe for little tablets you make and put in the shower with you and as they dissolve, they release what smells like Vicks Vaporub into the air to help decongest you.
I thought I'd make them and see if they worked. I edited the original recipe a bit to suit us.

Ingredients:
3 parts baking soda
1 part water
12 drops each of essential oils: rosemary,lavender, eucalyptus, and peppermint

I believe I used a cup of baking soda because I really hate figuring out 1/3 of other measurements.

Directions

Mix ingredients together.
Transfer mixture to molds.
Let dry completely.
Remove tablets, store in airtight container.

I didn't have silicon molds to use, but I had a spare plastic ice cube tray that I stuck them all in.

They're a really strong scent as they dry, so we kept having to move them around. We left them in the bathroom with the light and fan on while we were awake, but we moved them to the kitchen counter for the night. I didn't want the cat to eat or lick any of them.

The original directions predicted they'd be ready by the next morning, but they definitely weren't. I wager it has something to do with me making them in the middle of winter. I ended up turning on a space heater and setting the tray fairly close to the heater to help the moisture evaporate. By the end of that second day, they were dry-ish. I popped them out and stuck them in a jar to store.

Because I didn't have a silicon mold, they actually came out fairly poorly. Only about half of them kept their shape. The rest crumbled. They also were not as dry as I thought they might be.

When I tried one, I wasn't that impressed. It smelled like something was happening for about three minutes, but then it had all dissolved and gone down the drain.


I've actually left them in the kitchen uncovered for a day or two and they finished drying out the way they needed to. I still don't know what to do about them not working super long. I'm thinking that putting one or two in a bath might do what they're supposed to do.

Overall, they're kind of disappointing.

Kitten-proofing a Box Spring (We Hope)

Back in mid-August, my partner and I moved in together. Part of us moving in included the promise that we'd get a cat (probably a week or two after we were settled in).

We officially took over the place on August 12 (a Tuesday). We planned to spend the first few days making sure the place was clean and ready for us, then we'd take Friday off to move stuff in our cars and Saturday we'd get the moving truck for the furniture.

Things worked out so that we moved in and 20 minutes after we were in, our new kitten arrived. He'd been a stray found on the side of the road in a tiny little town about 20 minutes north of us. He was fostered for two and a half days between his being found and his moving in with us. When we adopted him, he was about 4 months old.

It's an adventure living with a kitten. He gets into all kinds of trouble. The trouble I'm talking about is when he decided to tear up the felt lining the underside of our box spring. He was sleeping in and among the springs. I'm not a fan of that for safety's sake, but there was recently a story about a cat who accidentally got sold with a box spring. We're not going to be selling our bed any time soon, but I still didn't like the thought of this happening to my cat.

I won't bore you with too many details, but here's the summary:

We locked the kitten out of the bedroom and pulled the bed apart.
We took off the torn felt.
We stapled on one big piece of muslin, using a bunch of staples to make sure there's not a space for him to climb in.
We put the bed back together.

The kitten walking on the old felt. 97% of the damage was kitten-caused. The last 3% was from when we pulled it off the box spring.

The piece of muslin we now have on the bottom of our box spring. It was a 72 x 90 inch piece.

My best friend said her three cats just tore up muslin when they did this same technique under their bed.

So far, he hasn't torn a hole in the muslin. I'm really hoping he doesn't ever get around to tearing a hole. We've been scolding him (and squirting him with a water bottle) every time we hear him under the bed messing with the muslin.


And here's a close up of our little troublemaker. He tries to pull off the innocent look, but we know better.

Fawkes MaxNaughty McBitey, age 9 months

Deviled Egg Failure

Since I've shared some successes in the cooking world, I thought I'd share a recent failure.

I tried to make deviled eggs. I really enjoy them, but my partner doesn't. Since he was out of town, I thought I'd try making some. Since it was new, I only did 6 eggs. Here's what they looked like:

The many reasons they failed:

I didn't cook them long enough, which means when I cut them apart the yolk wasn't good for this. To try to fix it, I scooped out the yolks and carefully microwaved them in 15 second intervals to try to get them done. When they got out of the microwave, the yolk was crumbly and no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to be that smooth consistency I wanted.

I used a recipe I wasn't sure of. The recipe, from my Better Home and Garden cookbook, called for mayo, prepared mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper, and paprika. A couple weeks ago, my friend, S, kind of talked me through making them, but she said she only used mayo and mustard. There was no discussion of vinegar. And, as I've stated in the past, I dislike vinegar a lot.

I substituted an ingredient in that unknown recipe. S recently told me that she used dijon mustard when she made her eggs, and she recommended dijon instead of yellow. The recipe actually didn't specify which kind of mustard to use (other than prepared), but I'm inclined to think maybe they meant yellow.


I ate one or two of these little things, but I ended up throwing most of them out. I had hoped the next day I'd feel adventurous and try eating a few more, but the next day I just couldn't bring myself to eat another one. Since the ingredients may have equaled $2.00, I didn't feel bad getting rid of them.

I don't know how to make them better for next time other than make sure the yolk is cooked fully first. My family doesn't make deviled eggs, really. I'm also fairly reluctant to try making more any time soon. My pride and tastebuds have to heal first.

Homemade Headache Salve

I get headaches on a fairly regular basis. Most of the time it's just a small headache. This is a huge contrast to my partner whose headaches have an 85% chance of turning into a debilitating migraine if not treated quickly enough.

I don't really know what causes my headaches. Sometimes it's a lack of food. Sometimes it's a lack of water (which I hate most since I'm usually good about drinking enough water). Sometimes it's stress. Sometimes it's nothing identifiable.

Since I get them more often than I'd like, I'm disinclined to head straight for medicine. I try eating or drinking water. I try to wait them out. When I'm busy at work or I can tell it's not going away anytime soon or I just feel too tired to fight it, I'll take medicine. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I'll take it faster than my partner will.

I found a recipe for a homemade headache salve. It uses coconut oil and essential oils. Since I actually had everything the recipe called for, I decided to make some. When I was talking to my best friend about it, she said if I added beeswax, it could help keep the salve solid at higher temperatures. I actually had to go buy some beeswax, but it wasn't too expensive, I'd been thinking about getting some for a while, and now I have more than I can use this year.

I'd like to state that I didn't in fact measure anything. I'd guess I only made about 2 or 3 oz of the stuff total. My ratios are probably wrong, though.

The first thing I had to do was melt the coconut oil and beeswax. I stuck them in a glass ramekin and put that in a bowl with boiling water. As I suspected, though, the coconut oil melted and the beeswax didn't.

I ended up having to microwave it all when I determined the beeswax wasn't going to melt without more direct heat. By the time I pulled it out of the microwave after 30 seconds to a minute, it was practically spitting.

The original recipe called for using different kinds of oils depending on which type of headache I get most. Sadly, I can't identify which type is most common for me. I ended up using peppermint, eucalyptus, and lavender oils so I didn't have to worry. I didn't really count how many drops of each oil I used, but I think it was something like 6 or 8. I don't know that I was supposed to use that much, but the beeswax smell was a bit hard to cover plus the hot oil seemed to absorb the scent more than expected.

Here's a picture of it after it cooled a bit and was transferred into its permanent jar.

I used it a bit at this stage, but it was still so warm that I ended up rubbing liquid oil on my temples and the back of my neck. It wasn't horrible, but I wager a solid salve would be less messy.

This is a picture of the salve after it's had almost 24 hours to cool. I put it in the fridge for a bit to start the cooling, but I left it on the counter for at least 12 hours because I didn't want to shock it too much.

Since I don't work with beeswax ever, I don't actually know if I put enough in to stabilize the salve. I guess I'll find out this summer.

My favorite thing about this is that it's in a tiny 4 oz jar, which means I can take it with me to work fairly easily.

The headache I had when I made the salve didn't really go away until the next morning after I ate breakfast and had some coffee. I'm hoping it came about because I was sick, I hadn't eaten fantastically the previous few days, and my partner had been away for a few days on a trip.

I don't know how much I believe this stuff will work, but I'm willing to try it since almost all the ingredients were already at my home and this couldn't hurt to try. I'll let you know how it goes.

Triple Threat Fruit Smoothie

We're still working through recipes for smoothies to try to find something that we enjoy. We found a recipe for a smoothie that included only ingredients we had at home.

The recipe is:

1 kiwi, sliced

1 banana, peeled and chopped

1⁄2 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberry

1 cup ice cubes

1⁄2 cup orange juice

8 oz container peach yogurt

This one was very good. The orange juice and kiwi made it ever so slightly tart. I really enjoyed how many fruits we got into the smoothie.