Homemade Deodorant

When I saw this post on Lifehacker it perked my interest! I'm always looking for a non aluminium deodorant and the ones available can be quite pricey and not particularly effective.

With the option of adding any kind of essential oil, the possible combinations could be endless!

To start you will need the following:

1/4 cup corn starch

1/4 cup baking soda

2 tbsp coconut oil

2-3 drops of essential oils (optional)

2-3 drops vitamin E (optional)

empty container for new deodorant

Start by mixing the cornstarch with the baking soda.

Then add your choice of essential oil - some good options are teatree, sandalwood, lemon, lavender & neem. Of course if I would add vanilla & chocolate flavours if they had them, i mean who wouldn't want chocovanili scented armpits?!

Now add 2 tbs of coconut oil and a few drops of vitamin E oil (for skin softening purposes). They mention on the website to buy coconut oil with the high melting point rather than the medium kind.

Mix up the ingredients until they start to form a lovely silky mass, sort of like melted white chocolate (most my analogies are to chocolate, fyi).

I felt my mixture was a little toooo silky so I added equal amounts of cornstarch & baking soda to thicken it up.

At this point I was ready to pack it into my container.

And you're done! How easy was that?! You can make personalized deodorant with the items in your pantry. Allow this to set for a couple of days before using.

Don't forget to add a label so your deodorant is easily recognizable!

'Help for Grace's Stinky Pits!
apply liberally...often!'

For the original article please follow this link.

Chai Tea Latte

So I really quite enjoy lattes.

Chocolate is divine, English penny sweets are delicious & salt n' vinegar crisps make my mouth water.

But, hot drinks are my weakness!

On the Samovar website they had a step by step on how to make homemade lattes.

Right up my street! Tea-street that is.

So today I'm going to make my own and try this out. It seems really quite easy as there are only a few simple steps.

First off, I chose my tea. You can use tea bags as I am, or loose tea. I went with tea bags so I didn't have the extra step of straining out the leaves.

Then I combined equal parts of water & milk. If you're going to make a 16 oz latte then you want half that to be liquid. When you blend ice with the mixture it will end up being 16 oz. Therefore, you'll need 4 oz water & 4 oz milk.

Also, feel free to use whatever kind of milk you like. I chose regular milk as these lattes will also be partaken by my husband who would instantly sniff out Almond Milk if I used it.
I mean the thought of using Almond Milk! How dare I.

I decided to make a big batch to last the weekend, so went all out with 16 oz of each. I know! Wild & crazy up in this here kitchen.

So next I combined the liquid and brought to a boil in a saucepan. Then I added the tea bags to stew for about 5 mins. Stewing times may vary depending on your personal preference of tea strength. (Did you know that some really strong teas offer bodyguard protection?)

Then I added the sweetener (which can also be done before you add the tea).

My personal sweetener of choice is Stevia.

Where's waldo!

When I felt happy about the strength of my tea, sweetness levels etc I whipped out my little frother and went to town!

So I stopped there as I fancied a hot latte. But at this point you could pour over ice or blend with ice to make a frap!

So go save yourself $4 and make some of this stuff right this second!

I demand it.

If you want to check out the original article please follow this link

Namaste

Sweet Potato Chips

So today in Grace's Cooking Class we are going to attempt to make homemade chips (or crisps if you're English. Chips are actually Fries to us, thus you understand why the clarification was needed).


To start you will need a beauty of a sweet potato, similar to this:



Then you'll need to choose your tools carefully. This was an experiment for me so I started out with a cheese grater, small knife and fruit/vegetable peeler.



**Broadcast Interruption** Here is a nice portion of portugese sausage for you to feast your eyes on and salivate a little.



Next you want to peel your potato. Now I chose a sweet potato because I had some on hand. You could also try a regular potato, turnip or squash. And if there are any other root vegetables out there I missed, you could use them too.



There was a lot of action peeling this sweet potato.

Whoosh. This is like an action movie.

Once peeled, you need to slice very thin pieces of the potato. I started using the small knife. Only thing was I yielded quite thick pieces/chunks of the potato.

Then I tried the cheese grater, which wasn't bad, but the pieces were quite thin and scraggly.

Then a genius moment happened (they don't happen often which is why it was so momentous). I cut the sweet potato in half and used my fruit/vegetable peeler to slice the pieces. As it was in half I was able to get a nice chip shape AND have better handling of the sweet potato as well. With the knife and cheese grater I was slightly concerned about chopping my thumb off. I defintely recommend using the peeler.

(Can you see all the scraggly pieces cut by the cheese grater?)

Then you want to give the 'chips' some flavour so I did a mix of salt, Pepperman and Carl's (a very southern all purpose seasoning given to us by our friends Brush & Reesey - thanks guys!)

(Just to clarify that is J-Man in the background not a cheeky monkey. It's an easy mistake to make)

So spread out your 'chips' so they have enough space between each other.

Another item to add is a sprinkling of oil. Either that, or a spray of PAM would work too.

Set your cooker to 200 or 250. You'll have them in there for about 30 mins, 45 mins or even an hour depending on how thick you cut your 'chips'. They cook slowly like this so they get thoroughly dried out and 'crispy'. (So that's the English connection. Crisps are called as such because they're CRISPY! Oh the revelation is too much).

Keep an eye on them just so they don't get burnt round the edges. It's also good to turn them over frequently.

Here is the final result! A nice collection of crispy, salty, homemade chips.

These chips are a lot healthier than those you find in the shop AND you can cater the flavour how ever you fancy. The time consuming part is slicing the vegetable, but other than that it is an easy option. A great way to con those kids ('kid' also encompasses fully grown hairy husbands).

Have fun experimenting!

Love Grace