Trials and tribulations on the home front

Welcome to my new follower Sandra.

I have now had two unsuccessful attempts at making Portugeuse corn bread. I hate throwing anything away so have given up and instead am going to keep adapting a normal bread mixture (substituting fine cornmeal for bread flour) until I get a loaf that is different to normal.

Yesterday was my first attempt. I normally use 1 lb 2 oz of bread flour but this time substituted 2 oz cornmeal. It handled well, rose well (the other two didn't move) and tasted good. So, next time, I will change 4 oz of flour and see how that goes. Anyway, here is a picture of my first loaf.

I had thawed 7 chicken wings to make into a soup but didn't get around to it so we had them for tea. I tossed them in some flour with paprika, black pepper and garlic salt – did the same with the potato wedges, dribbled with oil and baked at 200 celcius for 45 minutes. They were then served with home made coleslaw. These wings cost £1.15 so I reckon along with everything else, it was good value for money.

This 'going to be' lovely sunny Sunday morning, found me making up a 1/2 quantity of frugal laundry liquid. This time I used all the scraps of soap that had seen better days. I decided to sieve it after the soap melting stage as there were a few bits (garden rubbish?) floating in it. I now store it in milk containers. 

Sometimes it sets as a gel and sometimes it doesn't - works just as well either way. As I never know why or if this is going to happen, I leave 2" – 3" spare at the top so it can be shaken or poked with the handle of a wooden spoon to loosen it to pour. Then I add 200 ml or 1 cup of it to each wash, along with 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar for the conditioner. This works out at 1 1/2p per wash for those of you new to home made soap liquid. The recipe for this can be found under my cleaning label on the right.