Spoon Care

 Hey everyone what's been going on?!  We had snow for the first time yesterday!  The kids thought it was FABULOUS!!  Mommy did not think so since it was freezing cold out.

 So last winter I saw this post on Food In Jars (one of my favorite blogs).  I've been meaning to make it for ages and finally got a round to doing it.

 The wax I used is from the same bee keeper that I get our raw honey from.  I paid about $2 for the quarter pound of wax.  Chopping it up really helped it fit into the jar and melt quicker.

 The mineral oil came from the pharmacy section of the grocery store. I will say that I wish I had reused a tin can like Frugally Sustainable did here instead of using the mason jar.  If the spoon butter was not going to be moved into smaller containers this probably would have been great but it is kind of a pain in the butt to clean up from the glass (and I'm lazy don't forget that).

 The mixture looks a bit like chicken fat or something doesn't it?

 

I got several of these cute small jars out of just one batch!  They are going to be great holiday gifts along with a set of spoons for some of my cooking friends.  I love the way they made my bamboo spoons look too!  

Mama's New Toy

Many moons ago Photo Dude and I had a 900 square foot apartment with a 4X6 foot linoleum kitchen floor to clean and a 5X10 foot ceramic tiled bathroom floor to clean.  Yes we had more floor space in the bathroom than the kitchen and yes our landlord was a guy.  One day out of the blue Photo Dude brought me home a Swiffer Wet Jet, I was ecstatic about it!  With two small areas that needed to be washed down it was perfect.  Fast forward a bit and we are living in a 890 square foot house with a little more linoleum in the kitchen and laundry room and the bathroom that needed to be scrubbed.  The Swiffer was still perfect I thought.  Next we move to our fabulous new house with A LOT more hard flooring that needs to be scrubbed.  When we moved Photo Dude and I knew that we were tired of all the disposable things in our lives so we got the sponge mop.  I hated it immediately for all the reasons that are on the TV commercial.  I continued to use the Swiffer until we ran out of juice and batteries.  Then we got this!  It is the Rubbermaid Revel, you get to add in any cleaning agent that you want to and the scrubbing pad is washable.   I would say that the Revel works pretty much the same as the Swiffer but it does spray a bit higher so watch your lower cabinets.  I just loved that I wasn't using commercial cleaners or something disposable so I thought I would share my new toy :)

Easy floor cleaning solution
      1/2 C. white vinegar
      2 C. water

the vinegar smell goes away once it dries.

Cleaning Cast Iron

I love Photo Dude super awesome lots do I love that man but when he leaves me a mess like this it makes me wonder about him.  He was sweet enough to cook up the bacon for dinner the other night (BLTs yummy!) and then I had this pan to clean, my brand new cast iron skillet.  If you are like me and looking at it going "Oh crap now what do I do!" here's whatcha' do.

Scrape all the crud out of it, next time I'll do it when it's still hot instead of waiting..... ummm a while before doing it.

Sprinkle some salt over the whole pan, just regular out of the cheap cylinder salt.

Now start scrubbing the yuck out.  We started with paper towels then got ourselves an old dish cloth that will now only be used for this skillet.  My super sweet awesome step-dad helped with this project and provided much elbow grease.  If you are scrubbing your pan and the salt isn't soaking up the grease any more, dump out the salt and add more in.  We had to change our salt out once.

This is what it looked like when we were all done scrubbing.  Then we washed it out with soap and water (please don't stone me for this).  Just a quick wash around the inside to get all the left over salt and whatnot out okay?

Next put that sucker in your oven.  Our oven was hot from baking so we didn't actually turn it on we just let the heat dry it out for about a half hour or so.

This is what it looked like out of the hot oven.

Last take a lightly oiled cloth and swipe it around in the pan to keep it from rusting.  We used probably less than a teaspoon of vegetable oil.  If you use too much oil it can get rancid in your pans and that would just be nasty.
If you keep your cast iron in good condition they will last you forever and the more you use it the better they get.  Happy scrubbing!