Kombucha Tea = Vinegar! July 23, 2009

Click the picture to go directly to an article by Arwen O’Reilly about Kombucha (picture is her’s as well! isn’t it awesome!!)

This article/recipe is for those of you who already own a kombucha SCOBY, or have access to getting one, and are semi-familiar with the premise of Kombucha Tea. I’m not going to make any health claims or any boasts about how awesome it is.

I will however say I’m a busy woman. And I take time, several hours a month, and put it into making kombucha, so you can draw your conclusions for that LOL

Making Kombucha Tea into Vinegar for home use

Step 1. Make tea – 4 tea bags for vinegar, 6 for drinking kombucha
Step 2. When tea is done, but still hot – add in 3/4 cup of sugar for each gallon of water
Step 3. You let the water cool to room temp.
Step 4. Add the tea to your kombucha tea starter, and the kombucha mushroom that you’ve put in a big container (5 gallon bucket, 5 gallon water jug, etc)
Step 5. Let it sit about a week and a half in a cool dark place.
Step 6. Using a pressure cooker or large 4/5 gallon pot, place a filter where you can dump the kombucha tea through it. I use a large cloth one over the top of my pot.  Run all the kombucha tea through a filter. When the cloth starts getting clogged with debris. I take it off and rinse it, then put it back on. I keep dumping the kombucha in the pot until I’ve got about 3 inches left in the bottom of my container (the starter tea) and the mushroom of course.
Step 7. Put the pot on simmer for about 2 hours if it’s a large pot. If it’s a pressure cooker, 20 min on 10lbs. The idea is to kill all the bacteria in the kombucha tea that make up the SCOBY or the ‘mother’ so no new one can grow.
Step 8. It’s now vinegar, run it through another filter, to catch all of the dead ‘mother’ particles.
Step 9. Place your vinegar in it’s storage containers.

I use vinegar all over the house. I use it as a hair rinse in the bathroom. It’s in several small spray bottles all over the house with some basil tea as a homemade ‘febreeze’. It’s in a gallon container in the laundry room to put in a downy ball for each load of laundry (it makes hung laundry less crunchy, helps eliminate problems with hard water, which is important to me as we use cloth diapers and cloth pads) We use it in cleaning counters, sinks, and most especially in cleaning hard water off of the shower walls, shower fixtures and toilet insides. I also give vinegar to my neighbors, who love it LOL.

Darn near Helpless January 22, 2009

Between the near constant glutening this past week (the cross contamination issues have gotten out of hand as I’ve gotten sicker) and somehow spraining my wrist so badly it hurts just to lift my arm up I’m darn near helpless.

Did you know how hard it is to hunt and peck for someone who types 98 wpm? Or get dressed one armed? Change a wiggly babies diaper? Cut a mushroom? Dishes? Laundry? Clean house?

Luckily it is very easy to read to children or have children read to you, and we are learning a lot about fish. But my arm is aching just sitting here, so it’s back to supervising the boys and their muffin math.

Oh my New Sewing Machine December 7, 2008

So, I DID IT!!

I cut out most of what I needed to cut out yesterday.

that would be.

• Morgan’s pj pants
• Ian’s pj shorts (they changed their mind)
• Owyn’s pj shorts
• Danyca’s pj shorts
• Danyca’s pj tank top
• Freya’s pj shorts
• Freya’s pj tank top
• 3 Kaia reversible pants (need to cut out 3 matching pieces now)
• 1 Kaia tank top dress
• 1 Kaia reversible skirt (need to cut out other side and matching trim now)
• 1 curtain for Brianna

I honestly went on to sew. I was going to mess around on my new machine a bit (an early 70’s Kenmore with it’s own table) that was given to me by a friend. I sat down at it, fiddled with learning to thread it, etc. And discovered that I just CANNOT figure out how to get it to sew a straight line. I can’t believe it, it’s so dorky I just laughed at myself. So I hunted online to find a manual for it (158.14101) found it, paid for it with paypal, then discovered I’d clicked the wrong darn link. Paid for the wrong darn manual. And now I need to wait for Monday to contact customer support (though I AM going to try today) to ask if they would switch me with the manual that I can acutally use LOL.

rolls eyes

So I guess I’m going to cut out some more stuff today. I need to cut out

• Morgan’s flannel pj pants
• Ian’s flannel pj pants
• Owyn’s flannel pj pants
• Freya’s flannel pj dress
• Danyca’s flannel pj dress
• figure out what to use the left over material on for Kaia
• 6 Stockings (green plaid with green strips for the top + Hobbes)

Soooo, I’m off to fiddle with the darn sewing machine again. Maybe see if I can figure out that bottom serger needle that is causing my other serger needles to bust (or find the book to help me fix it alternately) If I can’t sew. I guess I’ll have to clean *sigh* I’ll work on my room! Organization! yeah, that’s the ticket!

Heh.

Homemade Cleaning Supplies May 23, 2008

~All-Purpose~

1 TB of washing soda (not baking soda)

2 cups of vinegar,

Afew drops of whatever essential oil I like (right now it’s bergamot and lavender with a couple of drops of tea tree oil) Put them all in a squirty container. I use this to wash pretty much anything that needs it, from counters to doors and walls.

~Copper cleaner~

1 tsp salt

1 tsp lemon juice

Mix together and scrub copper, then rinse

~Silver Cleaner~

baking soda

Add enough water to make it a paste.

Scrub with an old toothbrush, rinse clean

~Mouth wash~

50/50 mix peroxide and water

You can add a couple of drops of peppermint or cinnamon essential oil to the water if you’d like some flavor. I’d recommend rinsing BEFORE you brush instead of after like with the alcohol based products.

~Laundry Soap~

1 bar laundry soap (this is a specific bar, you can buy ready made like fels naptha, or find someone who makes them, like my friend Holly http://homesteadsoap.com/ when they are handmade your laundry smells SO good)

1/2 cup washing soda

1 cup borax

5 gallon bucket

In a gallon pot, put in one gallon of water and shredded laundry bar. Heat until bar is completely melted. Place melted soap in 5 gallon bucket, mix in washing soda and borax, add in 4 more gallons of warm water. Let sit overnight. With some homemade bars the soap mix will be like regular liquid laundry soap, just white instead of see through. With fels naptha and other kinds of laundry bars (including homemade) the soap will be a gel-like mixture. 1/2 cup of this mixture cleans my sons laundry (and they are filthy savages most days). I also use this on my cloth diapers.

~Soap Scum and Hard Water~

Vinegar

Old cloths or a plastic bag

Vinegar removes soap scum and hard water stains like you would not believe. For stains and scum, place old clothes or paper towels (I try not to use paper towels since it’s just money in the garbage) on the spot you need cleaned, soak the cloth, then let sit for about 5 min.

Come back and wipe it up. Say you have a shower door. Soak the cloths in vinegar, place them all over the shower doors, walk away, then come back and wipe up.

For Shower heads, faucets etc. Place vinegar in a bag, tie the bag around the nozzle with the nozzle directly sitting in the vinegar. Soak for an hour or so. Then remove, wipe off if you need too, and run the water for a minute. Hard water gone!

~Window Cleaner~

Squirt bottle

vinegar

essential oil (if wanted)

Vinegar will leave spotless, streakless shine on windows not directly in the sun. (I wonder if this would work in place of JetDry or similiar product? Anyone?)