Makin' Do Tuesday: Emergency Subsitutions

Welcome to Makin' Do Tuesday!

Needing to make an emergency substitution while cooking may be the epitome of making do. That is probably why most cookbooks have a list of them somewhere.

Buttermilk can be substituted by adding enough regular milk to a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to make a cup. Let it sit for about five minutes before you use it.

Yogurt and sour cream appear to be just about interchangeable. There are some consistency differences, so I would supposed it would depend on what you were cooking.

1/4 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp cream of tarter will substitute for a tsp of baking powder.

Adding 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt to a cup of regular flour will give you self-rising flour.

If you have self-rising and need regular, just omit the baking powder and salt from the recipe.

Make unsweetened chocolate by adding a tbs of oil to every three tbs of cocoa.

You can make whole wheat cake flour by taking two tbs of corn starch and adding enough whole wheat pastry flour to make a cup.

You can find a ton of other cooking substitutions here.

Sometimes though, you run out of other things beside cooking ingredients. What then?

Use paper towels or napkins as  make shift coffee filters.

Speaking of coffee filters, you can use them for tea bags. Just put your loose leaf tea in the center and tie it up with cooking twine or something similar.

Baking soda works great for both toothpaste and deoderant.

Olive oil and lemon juice make furniture polish.

Use vinegar for glass cleaner.

Don't have time to shampoo? Sprinkle baby powder or cornstarch on your head and brush out.

Women used to dab a little vanilla behind their ears in lieu of perfume.

This is just my opinion, but I think that once you understand how some things work, its easy to come up with substitutes for what you need. You may have to think outside the box, but that is what makin' do is all about.

See ya tomorrow!

Connie

Makin' Do Tuesday: Bottles, Salt, and Cookware

Hello! Welcome to Makin' Do Tuesday!

Still working on cleaning my bottles, using what I already have. For most of them, the salt treatment followed by a vinegar soak, did the trick. The vinegar may have worked on its own, but I won't know that until I have the occasion to try it.

My step-mom always cleaned all her glass with bleach water, but I just don't want to deal with the bleach fumes. She also used a lot of ammonia, but I don't like that either, for the same reason.

The Sloans' Liniment bottle needed more work, so decided to give it the volcano treatment. You know what I mean. Vinegar and baking soda! How many science project volcanos have been created that way? Anyway, it's also a great cleaner. Watching it bubble, I remembered that many articles I read suggested using denture cleaning tablets to clean bottles. Makes me wonder what those things are made of.

 It still didn't come completely clean, but it will do for now. I put it and two other bottles in the large shadow box. The small bottle has sprigs of dried lavender and yarrow from last year's garden.

Another use for salt, and a very good reason to keep it next to your stove, is as a grease fire extinguisher. Ed has worked as a professional fry cook/grill operator for years, and he told me to always use salt. I know that you can use baking soda too, but you have to use a lot. Flour might spread the fire and is actually combustible. Whatever you do, NEVER put water on a grease fire! Many online sources encourage simply smothering a pan fire with the lid, but if your cookware is like mine, most of the lids have disappeared over the years. Mine have...except for the little one-quart sauce pan lid. Those never go anywhere. Probably because they only get used once a year.

Most of my cookware is either hand me down or thrift store finds. Needless to say, those did not come with lids.  I have had two sets in the last twenty five years. The first set is long gone. It was a T-Fal non-stick set. I don't even know for sure where they went. Then I got a low-end stainless steel set. They had glass lids. Guess what happened to those? Yep. Broke.

When I got married the first time, over 30 years ago, my step mom gave me a cast iron skillet, as well as a cast iron griddle. I still have them, and I use them nearly every day. I really like cast iron. I have some other cast iron skillets of graduating sizes that I have picked up from thrift stores, and flea markets. I would love to have a full set, including a dutch over with lid, but that isn't in my budget (unless I can find a used one) so I use what I have and make do. Here are the lids I use most of the time. One is a pizza pan, and the other is a salad plate.

Concerning yesterday's post, Miss Betty is doing better today, but my friend who had the heart attack is not doing well. We. of course, continue to lift both to the Lord.

See ya tomorrow.

Connie