Biscuits

I've been working on clearing out the freezer (or at least using up stuff that's been in there for eons) and the other night I found a bag with a few frozen biscuits left in it, so I threw them in the oven for supper. L fell in love (& they'd been in the freezer too long, they weren't awesome biscuits by any means). So, today for lunch I figured I'd whip up a batch of biscuits. I adapted a recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com

Quick Biscuits

2 c flour (I used half ww, will probably add a little more ww next time, since they weren't too "wheaty" at 50/50)
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 c oil
a generous 3/4 c milk (or buttermilk, or yogurt)

Mix everything together into a stick dough, drop by spoonfuls onto a baking stone (recipe says greased baking sheet for those who don't use baking stones) Bake 10-15 min at 425. If you want non-drop biscuits you can use the original recipe I chose the drop biscuits for a number of reasons. 1) I'm lazy & dropping is easier than rolling & cutting (though the kids would've enjoyed the rolling & cutting) 2) the original recipe calls for shortening instead of oil and I don't have any, nor do I like to use it. I've substituted coconut oil (solid @ room temp) for shortening in other recipes with good results but I'm running low on it at the moment and order it online so trying tomake it last till my next order. 3) the board game we were playing took longer than anticipated and I didn't want to push lunch back longer while we let the dough rise. I think L's eaten 4 or 5 of these and A's had at least 3 . . . so they're a hit! In fact, when L asked for "another one" for the umpteenth time, A's worry was "we need to save some for breakfast!" I assured her we can make more for breakfast LOL. I've been trying various muffin recipes for breakfast use, especially on Sabbath morning when a "grab & go" breakfast would be much easier, but haven't managed to make any that the girls like, so perhaps biscuits is what I need to be doing instead, dh will like that idea better anyway LOL.

Hot Chocolate Mix

Not especially note worthy, more for my own information . . . here's the hot chocolate mix that I made today (since we were out & the girls think we must have hot chocolate when we come in from playing in the snow, and we're essentially out of (real) milk since today was also the day I was going to go get milk, but didn't because of the snow). If I use this recipe again I will reduce the salt. . . It has the advantage of using all ingredients that I had on hand & the most "processed" thing in it is the powdered milk (or perhaps the powdered sugar, both are pretty far from their natural form, but still not as totally processed as the coffee creamer that was called for in most of the recipes I saw):

From food network:

Hot Cocoa - courtesy of Alton Brown
2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa (Dutch-process preferred)
2 1/2 cups powdered milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste
Hot water

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly. In a small pot, heat 4 to 6 cups of water.

Fill your mug half full with the mixture and pour in hot water. Stir to combine. Seal the rest in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry. This also works great with warm milk.

I made 1/4 a recipe & left out the cayenne pepper.

Laundry Soap - Powder

This is the recipe I use for making laundry soap:

Grate 1 bar of Dr. Bronners bar soap (I've also seen the recommendations to use Ivory soap or Fels Naptha soap, but I like Dr. Bronners, and as a bonus, it smells yummy when you use the peppermint LOL. Ivory would be the cheapest & easiest to find though). Now just mix equal parts of the grated soap, washing soda (this is not baking soda, but it's in a box that looks like a big baking soda box, the typical arm & hammer box, on the laundry aisle), and borax (also in the laundry aisle). Mix them all together, put them in a container w/ a lid, and use about 1/8 c per load of laundry.