Here's some of what I harvested one day not too long ago:
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| The banana peppers made a delicious saute with some onion. They tasted like Bok Choy to me. Eaten raw, they taste like a traditional bell pepper. Our local store has the nerve to charge $4.99/lb for these. The plant cost me about $8 in start up costs and has produced oodles of peppers! |
My next project was to manufacture my own laundry soap. And it was amazingly easy. Just a few ingredients and you are in business. For pennies on the dollar of what it costs to purchase. I've done a couple of loads of wash with it and I'm happy. Given time, I'll learn what works best for us and adjust my recipe accordingly. But our laundry smells fabulous! And I didn't add the crystals that are optional in the recipe below even.
POWDER DETERGENT:
2 bars Fels Naptha or Zote soap prepared*
1 4 lb. box of Arm & Hammer baking soda
1 3lb 7oz box of Arm & Hammer washing soda
1 4 lb. 12 oz box of Borax
1 3lb container of OxiClean if so desired.
1 or 2 bottles of 55oz Purex crystals laundry enhancer if so desired.
Believe it or not, the majority of these ingredients were pretty much lined up all on the same shelf at our local Wally World. It was so easy to find them.
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| Completed Laundry Soap with the OxiClean scoop. The yellow flakes are the Fels Naptha soap. |
Directions: Mix well and store in containers with lids. Or I guess you could use a previous laundry soap bucket or a 3 or 5 gallon bucket from the store and mix it in that. For my storage purposes (that's a lot of weight to put in one container for sitting on a storage shelf), I chose to use some small plastic tubs that I bought in our paint department at Home Depot that are the size of larger butter tubs. This mixture filled up three without the extra crystals mixed in. I wanted to keep it as scent free as possible. No need to walk around smelling like the laundry aisle :)
I tossed around the idea of halving the recipe as it is super fast and easy to make when needed but in the end it was easier just to use the entire contents of each box and have done with it.
Use two tablespoons per load for heavy soiled and one for average laundry. Although I must confess that I will probably always use two. Here's a bonus for you: The OxiClean should come with a scoop for dispensing. This is exactly two tablespoons so just toss it in your bucket and use one scoop per load. Make sure you label the product with dispensing instructions in case someone else is helping with the laundry. (Hey, you can dream can't you?).
Well, that's my little foray into becoming more do-it-herself and less buy-it-done. Wonder what I'll get myself into next. Raising chickens for my own eggs? Hmm...One just does not know.
*To prepare the soap, grate it using the small size of a cheese grater. Not the super fine one - it's too small and just destroys the soap. Take the mixture and put in food processor to create small powdery pieces. If you don't use a food processor to get it to a finer consistency, then you just dissolve the mixture it in a pint of hot water before putting in washer. Of course, make sure you clean your grater and process super well. You don't want to be tasting soapy cheese on your tacos the following night. :)
