Greek Seasoning

Blend Spice Mix Recipe Can't find Greek seasoning at the grocery store? Watkins came up with their own rendition of the ethnic blend. Ingredients 2 tsp Coarse Sea Salt 2 tsp Oregano 1 1/2 tsp Onion Powder 1 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder 1 tsp cornstarch 1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg 1/2 tsp Purest Ground Cinnamon 1 tsp Beef Soup & Gravy 1 tsp Black Pepper 1 tsp Parsley    Directions: Combine all ingredients and store in an air tight container.

Pest Control > Mosquitoes

Making a Mosquito Trap

To keep mosquitoes from ruining a picnic or camping trip, it is nice to have an enticing trap to lure them away from you. This guide is about making a mosquito trap.

Making a Mosquito Trap

Because mosquitoes are attracted to the CO2 we breathe out, I started looking for ideas that used CO2 as the bait for the mosquito trap. I did think of dry ice but it does dissipate fairly quickly.

I found a cached link on Google here. It seems to be active again now. I've rewritten the instructions some and hopefully it will work as well.

Thanks to the students for their hard work on this project. I've used some of their photos for illustration.

Supplies:

• 1 2 liter soda bottle
• a sharp knife
• black paper
• tape
• candy thermometer

Take a 2 liter soda bottle. Cut off the top right below where it starts to narrow for the top.

Make a simple sugar syrup.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups cool water
• 1 tsp. active dry yeast

Directions:

Bring 1 cup of the water to a boil.

Dissolve the sugar into the boiling water.

Once the sugar is dissolved completely, remove the pan from the heat. Stir in 2 cups cool water, stir well.

Check the temperature of the syrup to make sure it is no hotter than 90 degrees F, if hotter, let cool to 90 degrees F, add 1 tsp. active dry yeast, no need to mix. Put syrup in the bottom part of the bottle, using the cut off neck piece, leave in place.

Be sure to seal the two parts of the bottle with the tape. The fermenting yeast will release carbon dioxide. Put black paper around the bottle since mosquitoes like dark places and carbon dioxide. This mosquito trap will then start working.
TIPS: Put the trap in a dark and humid place for 2 weeks, you'll see the effect. You'll have to replace the sugar water + yeast solution every 2 weeks.

By Susan Sanders-Kinzel

Incredible!!

Southern Living Hummingbird Bundt Cake

The Southern Living magazine always gets my attention when the latest issue arrives in the mailbox, especially the recipes inside. I try out desserts often and when I say this Hummingbird Cake, an updated version done in a Bundt pan, well…you can imagine how hard it would be to turn this down.
Needless to say, I didn’t.  It’s like banana bread with pineapple and cream cheese icing.
Not especially good for you, but boy, oh boy, was it good.

Do you see what I mean?  Could you turn this down?
I didn’t think so.

 

We ate the whole thing over the course of a few days.
Hummingbird Bundt Cake
Cake Batter:
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. watkins ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 3/4 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 4 large)
1 (8 oz.) can crushed pineapple (do not drain)
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 tsp. watkins vanilla extract
Glaze:
4 oz. cream cheese, cubed & softened
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 tsp. watkins vanilla extract
1 to 2 TBL. milk

1. Prepare Cake Batter:  Preheat oven to 350*.  Bake pecans in a single layer in a shallow pan 8 to 10 minutes or until toasted and fragrant, stirring halfway through.
2. Stir together flour and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl; stir in eggs and next 4 ingredients, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Sprinkle 1 cup toasted pecans into a greased and floured 14-cup Bundt pan.  Spoon batter over pecans.
3. Bake at 350* for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until a long wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool cake in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack, and cool completely (about 2 hours).
4. Prepare Glaze:  Process cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, and 1 TBL milk in a food processor until well blended.  Add remaining 1 TBL. milk, 1 tsp. at a time, processing until smooth.  Immediately pour glaze over cooled cake, and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup toasted pecans.

Shrimp Creole

Shrimp Creole over brown rice

Shrimp Creole

• 1 pound of medium (peeled and deveined) shrimp
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 ribs of  celery, diced
• 2 TB Watskins Parsley or chopped 1/2 cup parsley
• 1 sweet bell peppers, diced ( I prefer red bell pepper)
• 2 cups water
• 1 TB Watkins Garlic Powder or 2 small cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
• 2 cups of diced tomatoes
• 1 cup tomato juice
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp Habenero Hot Sauce (or your choice of any hot sauce)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp Watkins Black Pepper
• 3 cups cooked rice

1. In a large skillet, sauté onions, celery, parsley and bell peppers until tender, approximately 4 minutes.
2. Add water, garlic, tomatoes and tomato juice and simmer 5 minutes.
3. Season mixture with Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, and hot pepper flakes and cook for 20 minutes.
4. Add shrimp and cook an additional 20 minutes, or until shrimp are curled, pink and tender. Mixture should be of a thick consistency. Serve over steamed white or brown rice.

Yield: 4 Serving

Tips and Tricks!!

I've been working on this post for awhile now, as I find these neat tips and tricks I wanted to keep them all together and be able to share them with all of you!

  

1. To clean the grease off of the burners on the stove- put them in a zip lock baggie with about 1/4 cup of ammonia and seal the bag. Then let it sit overnight (outside is best, in case the bag breaks and you can avoid the stink!) and the fumes will take off the burned on grease and you can wipe it away with a sponge in the morning.

2. To get the built up residue off of your shower head, tie a baggy of vinegar around a shower head. Leave it there over night, and it will clean everything off with no work!

3. To keep spaghetti sauce from staining your plastic ware, spray the inside of the storage container with a little bit of non-stick cooking spray. It will prevent the red from soaking into the plastic. If they still smell like sauce after you've washed them, place a cut up lemon inside and zap it in the microwave for a minute. 

4. If you frost a cake and are going to store it in the fridge, wet a piece of newspaper and set it on a plate. All of the fridge odors will go into the newspaper and not the cake. A great hint for if you have a fridge full of food for a party.

5. The sun is a great bleaching agent. You can place wet fabrics or plastic ware into the sun and it will bleach the stains out for you.

6. Aspirin can not only prevent heart attacks but also remove sweat stains, take the green out of blonde hair in the summer, treat pimples and get rid of dandruff.  To remove sweat stains crush up enough pills to make a paste with water to cover the stain. Let set and then wash as usual. To remove the green from the pool from your hair, dissolve 6-8 tabs in water and let soak onto hair for 10 minutes. For problem acne, make a paste and apply directly to the pimple. For Dandruff- crush two aspirins and mix it into your normal amount of shampoo (regular shampoo, not the dandruff kind!) you use in the shower.  Let sit on hair for a few minutes and rinse away the flakes!

7. Tossing a few pennies in your garden to make your hydrangeas blue. (My grandma also swears it prevents slugs, but I dont have slugs in my garden so I dont know if this is true or not!)

8. Store your sheets in a pillowcase. Keeps everything together and it makes for easy, compact storage.

9. Once you open the brown sugar, toss a few marshmallows in to keep it soft.

10. To remove stains from nails after wearing a dark polish, scrub nails with a whitening toothpaste and a nail brush.

11. To make your own matte nail polish, make a little pile of eyeshadow (great idea for the broken shadows we all have lying around!) and mix in a little clear nail polish. No more paying $8 a bottle for the matte stuff!

12. When you cut up an apple keep it from turning brown by using a rubber band to hold it together in its original apple shape.

13. A bounce sheet in your back pocket will repel mosquitoes. Place them around your house to repel mice as well.

14. To get the water spots off of chrome faucets, after cleaning rub them with a piece of waxed paper- it will keep the water spots and fingerprints from sticking to the clean metal. You can also use a piece of waxed paper on your swifter sweeper. Just rip off a piece the size of the sweeper, attach, and wipe away. The dirt sticks to the paper- so much cheaper than buying the refill kits.

15. If you get a water mark on a wooden table, rub the stain with Petroleum Jelly and let sit for 24 hours. Then wipe off the excess and polish as usual.

16. Cornstarch will untangle all kinds of knots. Rub some into the knot in shoelaces, chains, string etc and watch as it comes apart.

17.  When painting, wrap a rubber band around the can over the opening. Then you can dip in the brush and wipe the excess paint off onto the rubber band, rather than the edge of the can.

18. You can make your own ice packs by filling a zip lock baggie with dish soap, then placing into a second baggie to seal in leaks. The soap wont freeze totally, allowing you to mold it to your body. Bonus, you can get a few packs out of a $1 bottle of soap from the dollar store.

19. To make perfectly shredded chicken, simply toss hot/warm cooked chicken into the mixer with the cookie paddle attachment. Turn it on speed 5 and in about 30 seconds it will have done all the work for you.

20. When you take down Christmas lights, wrap them around a square of cardboard for storage. A good use for all of the shirt boxes that get ripped open Christmas morning. Keeps them untangled and easy to put away.

21. When hammering in a nail, use a clothes pin to hold the nail in place. No more hammering your fingers!

22. You can make your own magic erasers for cleaning by simply buying some melamine foam. You can buy 30 of them on Amazon for $15. No more paying $4.69 for four!

23. Baby powder will remove sand from skin. Perfect for keeping feet clean!

24. Soak old paint brushes in HOT vinegar for 30 minutes and then wash. The old paint will come out and they will be as good as new.

25. Chalk will remove grease stains from clothes. Simply rub the stain with chalk, then toss in the wash as normal. I learned this when I was student teaching :)

26. Add some Velcro to a dish towel to keep it secure on the handle of the oven.

27. When a sweater gets pilly from being in the dryer, run a cheap disposable razor over the fabric to shave off the fuzz! They used to make little machines that were basically mens razors for this back in the 90's.

28. From Martha- save cabinet space in the kitchen, hang a tension rod and use S hooks to hang pots and pans. Then a magazine rack attached to the door will hold lids in place.  Also, tension rods turned vertical will sort cookie sheets and pans so you don't have to move a bunch of stuff to get the pan you want.

29. To clean a cast iron skillet, toss about 1/2 cup coarse salt into the pan and rub with a soft sponge. The salt removes excess oils and takes off the bits of food without messing with the seasoning of the pan.

30. Strawberries can be hulled using a regular drinking straw. Thank you Williams and Sonoma for charging me $8 for a strawberry huller for nothing...

31. Iron a little baby powder into the under arms of your white shirts. It will keep oil from seeping into the threads, thus keeping them white.

32. Bed Skirts can be really costly. Get an extra fitted sheet and cover the box spring. You can get the plain ones for around $7 from target.

33. When painting something, use a few push pins in the back of the object to lift it off of the table. No more sticking to whatever its painted on!

34.  Tired of having your shoes bang around in the dryer? Check this guy out.

35. Keep the stove top clean by applying a thin layer of car wax, then wipe it off. It keeps food from sticking. Anything that sticks easily wipes away with a magic eraser!

That's all for now, if you have any tips please feel free to pass them on!