After spending almost a decade in the event decorating industry I have repetatively heard "I can do that". Instead of being dismissed by creative minded people, I want to show you how I do "that" so you can be sucessful in recreating that inspiration image. I just might have a few tricks that you haven't seen yet!
It never fails that a moment in life comes when you forgot to get someone a gift or you received a last minute invitation. What do you do?
There’s a couple of things that I keep in my craft room all the time: fabric, ribbon, card stock, picture frames, paint, beads… You get the idea.
We had the privilege of meeting our neighbor’s parents, who came for a visit from halfway around the world. It’s amazing to see how much you can connect with people, especially when you don’t speak the same language. And even more amazing when you find out that you share some similar interests and find commonality.
It’s even more special when you receive an invitation to be a part of celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.
I’ve been married for over a decade. So much has changed in the world since that day. I tried to think of how much the world will change in another 50. It blows my mind.
What is it like to celebrate a 60th anniversary in another country–one you may or may not have thought you’d be in when you were younger?
Of course I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to celebrate and honor a long lasting relationship like this. And while thinking about how to give a meaningful gift, with little personal history, and something that’s not burdensome for when they return home, I chose to focus on the memories. Celebrating the last 60 years of their memories together and giving them a memento of this trip, this moment in time.
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My husband had taken a group picture at the end of a visit where we had them over and made for them their first American meal. I chose a picture because it travels well and is minimalistic for those who gravitate to that way of life. But I also couldn’t pass up giving some flowers because it’s something that brings happiness in the moment.
So for this quick to gather gift that’s pack full of memories and meaning, here’s an idea for you to consider the next time you need to find a gift in under two hours.
Pick a photo of you and the other person from your phone and send it to a local place that can print it out in an hour.
While that is processing you can stop by a shop, florist, road side stand, farmer’s market, or garden and gather some flowers that have meaning.
In this instance I chose sunflowers because with our guests, they saw the sunflower I had grown from seed and we talked about sunflowers and sunflower oil for quite some time. Sunflowers may not be their favorite flower, but in this gift, it’s a nod to something we connected with in the middle of a language barrier.
It just so happened that at home I had a vase on a shelf that I was saving for a time to reuse by gifting to someone, and I had some fabric with sunflower print on them.
As you notice here, sunflowers can be awkward if they’re not bundled. So I decided to bundle the flowers with a strip of cloth.
For a professional look of wrapping a bouquet, you want to first trim down the fabric you want to use into a strip. No matter how nicely you cut, the fabric will always fray. To give a clean edge, you want to press the strip of fabric. First, fold and press the raw edge. Then you’ll tri-fold and press the fabric into a wide ribbon. Now the edges won’t fray on you and you didn’t have to sew.
To make this wrap, you want to put one edge of the ribbon between the stems. Then you can wrap it tightly around the bouquet without the ribbon slipping on you.
When you get to the end of the ribbon, you want to fold the ribbon up at a 90° angle. The tuck this final edge down behind the wrap, between the stems. If the wrap is snug, it will hold the ribbon in place without using tape, pins, glue, or any other fastener.
The beauty of making a wrap like this is that the person you are gifting this to can use the fabric after the flowers are long gone. If this person is sentimental, they will no doubt find a way of repurposing and reusing this strip of fabric.
Don’t forget to use a small scrap of the fabric to make a card that matches.
Here, I took a piece of 8.5 x 11″ sheet of card stock and trimmed along the short edge a strip 4″ wide. This strip I folded in half to make a blank card that is 4 x 4.25″.
Using the left over sunflower fabric, I decided how wide of a ribbon I wanted to glue to the front of the card. You can be as precise as you want to be. I chose to wing it and just cut the fabric into a small strip.
This time I had to be careful about the edge because there’s no room for a folded seam. This fabric print looks good with a frayed edge, so I saved time by just removing the stray threads and embrace the fray. (As opposed to if I need to have a very clean edge and have to cut a straight edge.) Now the sides and bottom of the card need to have a straight edge, so I leave this ribbon large and will cut it down after I glue it to the cardstock.
For gluing the ribbon down, you want to decide where you want to place it and mark off the area. You will need to liberally apply glue to prevent fraying on the card, so drawing a glue line is very important. Make sure that where you draw the line will be hidden behind the ribbon, so make sure the line is lower than where you want it. Apply the glue and spread it evenly across the whole section, even over the edges. If you don’t put glue on the edges, the fabric will lift from the cardstock.
Gently lay the ribbon on top of the glue and make any adjustments that you need. When you are satisfied, take a scraper or plastic card, place it in the middle of the ribbon and press it to the edge of the card. Then place the scraper/card in the middle and press down in the opposite direction. This will secure your fabric to the card and remove any air pockets that may have been present.
Now that your ribbon is secure, you can flip the card over. With a pair of scissors, trim off the excess fabric.
I trim from the back because I can see exactly where the edge of the cardstock is.
The blank card is now ready for you to write you message on.
By now, your pictures should be ready to pick up. Once you have them, you can place them in a picture frame and you’re ready to bag or wrap your present.
From this gift given, the part of the gift that meant the most was the blessing that I wrote inside the card.
In today’s world, a blessing spoken over another person is something that’s not talked about. But it’s the most powerful gift that we can give another person. And to have those words writing for the person you’re gifting to read over and over again is life changing.
If you are unfamiliar with a blessing, it’s what you tell someone that you see in them now, but you also what you desire for their future. Instead of “I hope you have a happy birthday” or anniversary, I tell the person what I want to see in their lives for this coming year or the years moving forward.
In a time where people are struggling to see their purpose in life, why they matter, the most important thing you can give a person is a vision of something to look forward to. And the best part about a blessing that you speak over a person is that it’s not something that can be bought. It shows the person that you see them, you value them, and that they have a purpose to live for.
Whether you’re looking for making a meaningful gift on a tight budget, don’t know what to give a person, need an impactful last minute gift, or any other reason, know that you can speak into a person’s life and it means more to them than anything else you give them. So no matter what your gift giving situation is, know that a blessing from you can be the most impactful thing that you can give another person.
Never underestimate the power of your words.
And don’t hesitate to gift a blessing!
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A few years ago, my oldest came home from school saying that he and one of his friends were BFFs. I asked him if he knew what that meant. He said, “Yes, mom, Bacon Friends Forever!”
I tried so hard not to laugh. He was serious. And it got me thinking about how no matter the culture people have always bonded together over food.
Today I want to talk about curing meat. If you are a non-pork eater (whether for religious or personal reasons) please stay with me here, because the curing of bacon is the same process as curing other meats. For example, Pastrami is made with beef using the same method (even with a different seasoning recipe). And you can even make Bacon using Beef as a substitute (there’s a recipe for this at the very end of the post).
The process of curing meat use to be common knowledge for all families before refrigerators were invented. In fact there are still many cultures around the world that still cure meat in their traditional ways. If you are interested in learning other methods 2 Guys & A Cooler is one channel that I follow. And what surprises me is just how similar all these other meat preserving methods are to making bacon.
Curing meats, in short, is the process of removing water from meat to make it shelf stable without refrigeration. This is done by using high amounts of salt.
The reason why salt works in preserving meat is because salt draws water out of the meat and creates a saline environment that makes the meat inhospitable to the growth of colonies of bacteria and mold.
Specific salamis are cured for a specific flavor brought from the controlled growth of certain mold. So, in this instance salt is the controlling agent to that mold growth.
I mention this before starting to show you how easy it is to cure meat because there are certain diets where it can be tempting to alter meat curing recipes. You need to keep the high salt content on order to not grow bacteria or mold on your meat, and making it dangerous to eat. There are methods to alter the saltiness of the meat later on in the curing process. So give me a moment, and I will come full circle back to salt levels.
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Let’s Make Bacon!
There’s many bacon recipes found all over the internet. My husband and I have tried at least half a dozen. And that doesn’t include the experiments we made in trying to make our own. None of them compare to the recipe made by Jess Pryles, which is our go to recipe. The easiest way of describing it is to think of your favorite grocery store brand and multiplying your love for it a hundred times. Or think of the best bacon you had in a restaurant, and this bacon turns out better than even the finest restaurant. That’s how much we love this recipe. So this is the one I’m going to share with you because it’s not too sweet, not too spicy, smokes without burning or sticking to your smoker/grill, and the level of saltiness is easy to manage for your preference–both at the beginning of the curing process and at the end.
This recipe can be multiplied in direct relation to the weight of the pork belly you are working with. See “Managing Saltiness” to see how you want to treat this ingredient as well as the pink curing salt.
Managing Saltiness
Before I move on to the process I want to briefly walk you through your first option of managing the saltiness of your bacon–or any cured meat for that matter. You have two options of salt to use: fine grain salt or rock salt.
Fine grain salt is your table salt, kosher salt, or any other salt that has been milled down to a fine powder. Because of how small the salt has been broken down into, the salt easily penetrates deep into the muscle tissue of the meat. This will give you a punch in the face saltiness level that you can further modify at the end of the curing process.
Rock salt is the crystal salt that you usually see in the store for sea salt or Himalayan salt. There’s a couple of other salt options out there that uses the crystals or rocks to put in your own spice grinder or mill. Because the rocks are obviously larger than the salt grains, it takes it longer for the saltiness to enter into the meat tissue. This process speeds up as the water is extracted from the meat and “melts” the salt crystal/rock. If you prefer cooking on the less salt is more spectrum if cooking, this is the salt you want to use. (I’m in this spectrum, so I always use this salt for curing meat.)
One more thing I want to address, before moving on to the process, is the pink salt ingredient. If you are nitrite or nitrate sensitive, you definitely want to leave out this ingredient. Pink curing salt is included in many recipes because it is preserving agent. Depending on how quickly you move (or don’t move) through a pork belly depends on if this is a necessary ingredient for you.
Without the pink curing salt, your bacon can be kept in your fridge for a couple weeks before spoiling. So if you go through a lot of bacon, that the pink curing salt really isn’t necessary. But if it will take you months to eat through pounds (however big your pork belly is) you will need to think of an alternative long term storage option, such as bagging up the bacon in your family’s serving sizes and storing in the freezer.
As a comparison note, we cured whole bellies with the pink curing salt, and life happened. We were unable to cook with the bacon like we thought we would and it took us almost three months to finish that batch. It’s instances like this where families might choose to use a pink curing salt. But making bacon has happened long before the manufacture and sales of pink curing salt.
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Curing Container
There are a couple of different options you can go with when it comes to what you will contain your bacon in while curing. You can choose to use zip lock bags, closed container, or open container.
The open container is easy because everyone has one. There are a handful of drawbacks though. First, you keep the curing bacon in your fridge, so an open container leaves your meat vulnerable to flavor exchange with other foods. The bacon is also vulnerable to other contaminates, such as someone sneezing while looking in the fridge. And the water extracted from the meat gums up in the bottom of the container through the curing process.
A closed container is by far better in regards that it prevents all the draw backs of the open container. Plus, if you are a family that eliminates or minimizes the amounts of plastics in your house, this fits in your lifestyle. But the drawback for the average home kitchen, is that you might not have a large enough reusable container for your meat to lie flat. I do have a Pyrex casserole dish (which has a lid) that’s the perfect size for a 5lb pork belly. However it comes out of meal cooking circulation for a week.
Both of these options are great for their own reasons. However it’s important to note that these two containing methods will require that you handle the curing meat by hand or other kitchen utensil such as thongs. So if you have any food handling aversions, this might be your determining factor.
The other option is using plastic zip lock bags. You will have to cut the meat down to fit in a one gallon size bag. Or you can leave it whole if you have 2.5 gallon bags. This option gives you an automatic barrier for when it’s time to flip the meat and contain all the extracted water. It is also the most space saving method in the fridge, if space is the limiting factor. The drawback to this option is the dreaded bag failure. If the seal is not secure, you will have the extracted water leaking in your fridge.
If you are using a 3 lb pork belly, the 1 Gallon Zip Lock Bag will be large enough. We generally use a 6-9lb belly and need the 2.5 Gallon Bag.
This bag method has been my method of choice with littles in the house. It just minimizes the other potential could-go-wrongs that happen in a very active house where the kids love to help and be part of the cooking process.
The pictures you see throughout this post are from the bag method and closed container, but we have done all three. They all work. But the open container method also dries out the meat, so it definitely does not come out as tender as the other two methods.
The Process
Measure out your seasoning ingredients (in direct relation to the weight of your pork) and set aside.
Remove your Pork Belly from it’s wrappings (whether direct from a butcher or from a wholesale meat provider) and rinse it off to remove any juices that it may have had in its packaging.
Season your meat with the seasoning ingredients, making sure that you have equal amounts on front and back, and all the ends. Be aware of all the creases in the meat and get the seasoning in there–the salt needs to be in here to make sure that all surface areas are covered in adequate salt. (If you are using the bag method, it’s easiest and cleanest to put the pork belly in the bag and season it in the bag. Seal up the bag once you’re finished.)
Close your bag/container and place the pork belly in the fridge.
For 7 whole days, flip the bacon over once in the morning and once in the evening.
Once the 7 days are up, can remove the cured bacon from the fridge or let it continue curing for a few additional days.
Remove the bacon from the bag/container and rinse off your pork belly. (See below for “Rinsing Advice”.)
Now you will low and slow cook or smoke the pork belly, depending on what equipment you have available at your home. If all you have is your oven, set your oven on the lowest possible setting and cook the pork belly until you reach the internal temperature of 165°F. (See Below for “Cooking Options” to hear about the other ways you can cook/smoke the bacon.)
Once you’ve reached the correct internal temperature, you will remove it from the heat source and put it on a plate/tray and cover it with foil and let the pork belly come to room temperature. (See “Tenting Options” below.)
The room temperature pork belly can now be put in the fridge overnight. (See “Cutting Options” below)
Slice the pork belly into the thickness of bacon you prefer, whether thick or thin.
You now have bacon!!!
Use this bacon just as you would with the bacon you’ve previously purchased from the butcher or local grocery store. If you are anything like my family, you will turn into a bacon snob and prefer the slices that you made over the store bought ones.
Rinsing Advice
This rinsing stage is going to look a little different for you depending on what type of salt that you chose to use.
As I mentioned above, my family likes the rock salt because we lean to the savory side of the food world, instead of the salty side. A generous rinsing off of the curing seasoning will leave a mild saltiness to it. A quicker rinse off is the maximum limit of our salt preference, but the starting off point for some of our family members.
If you choose to use a fine salt, a quick rinse is going to leave you with a salt bomb. (I did this once and that bacon was quickly reserved for soups and stews, and I don’t add any of the recipe’s called for salt. This bacon took care of the salt seasoning for the entire dish.) A generous rinse is what I consider a salt lover would prefer. But if you’re like our family of salt-less-is-more camp, but only have fine salt, I recommend filling a large bowl with clean water and letting the pork belly sit it for about a half hour or so. This is not going to undo the curing at all, but it will keep you from puckering from too-salty.
This is one ingredient that no one can tell you how to handle it, because everyone’s preferences are going to be all over the spectrum. So hopefully this section helps assists you in making salt choices that reflect your personal seasoning preference.
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Cooking Options
We have cooked our pork bellies on our Traeger Grill and in a proper smoker. Both of these other cooking sources are great options, but our personal favorite is the smoker.
When it comes to grills, whether charcoal or propane, you want to use indirect heat. Even on the lowest setting/heat, it’s going to cook your bacon. This step should take no less than 3 hours. We are talking low and slow. And if you want to add that element of smoke flavor to your bacon, you can use a smoking chamber on your grill, like the one I have a link to below.
If you have a Traeger, or other grill that is a combo smoker, you want to keep your grill on the smoke setting and let the smoke cook your pork belly. It’s been a while since my husband smoked bacon on our Traeger, but he remembers it taking about 3-4 hours. Remember, this isn’t about time as much as it is about reaching that temperature of 165°F using just the heat from the smoke.
My husband loves the smoker that he found on a community “Free” page. This one allows you to customize your meat smoking experience better than a smoker/grill combo unit. His advice for using this cooking option is to soak your wood chips. At a bare minimum you soak them for 30 minutes, but 30-60 minutes is good. And in my ear, my husband is saying, “Do not soak grill pellets!” You definitely want the wood chips. And even with soaked chips, you still want to keep a tray of water in your smoker with your chips and meat. It keeps the humidity just right to keep the juices in your bacon.
The other advice that my husband popped in to give, is that if for whatever reason your pork belly just won’t come to temperature don’t worry. All you have to do is put it in your oven (lowest setting) and finish cooking it to 165°F.
Tenting Options
While this step can be omitted, you might consider to keeping it in your procedure. The tenting helps keep the steam in, instead of evaporating away while it cools down. My husband advocates that this is the secret that keeps his bacon from drying out.
If you want to tent your bacon but don’t want to use foil, you can use your lidded container (just don’t seal it).
Cutting Options
Here is where my husband and I have a slight difference of opinion. I have absolutely no problem slicing my bacon by hand. I’ve been slicing sandwich bread for over 3 years now, so I have a steady hand for this sort of thing. My husband prefers a meat slicer. Knife or machine, I’m an advocate for using what you have on hand.
We both do agree that letting the pork belly rest over night in the fridge is a huge step in your favor. If you slice your bacon at room temperature, you will more than likely find that it shifts on you and your blade slides out of place. By cooling the pork belly over night in the refrigerator, it firms the meat up and makes the slicing that much easier.
Why is it important to cure the pork belly for 7 days?
Depending on who you talk to, or where you look up information, you’re going to find a wide spectrum of curing time as an answer. But before I answer this question I want to make sure we’re on the same page about why we cure meat, in this case bacon.
All throughout history meat has been cured to preserve meat in a time before refrigeration was invented. In fact, many countries today still depend on curing to preserve meat. The enemy of meat (and food in general) is exposure to water, light, and heat. These three things degrade food, promote bacterial growth, and increase the chances of food borne illnesses. Salt is an amazing ingredient, because it changes (in this case) meat in such a way that water is removed and it creates an environment that bacteria does not like or live in.
In fact, in another scenario, I have the perfect example. The yeast that I use to make my bread, when I neglect it, starts to grow bacteria. The whole yeast culture is thrown off and smells horrible. However, this is the culture of wild yeast starter. You have a community here. When the community gets out of balance you have to make changes to bring it back into balance and make the community happy again. Salt does this. I toss in 2 tsp of salt into my out of balance starter, give it a good stir, and by the next day all is right in the world of my wild yeast starter. What happened? The salt changed the environment of the starter. The bacteria became unhappy and quit reproducing. Mean while, the yeast became happy and began to populate again or recovered from its illness (or however you want to look at it.)
Now a pork belly is so much larger than my quart size mason jar of yeast starter. It’s a thriving metropolis in comparison. It takes much longer for salt to infiltrate that pork belly and withdraw the water content of the belly. It takes time for the meat to cure and stabilize itself to withstand the threats to food preservation.
I saw one site say that it takes up to 24 hours to cure bacon using their method. The difference is that they have to inject the salt in deep throughout the pork belly. This method is not using an injection method. It is the meat bringing in the salt, and the salt working its way into the center of the belly. This takes time.
any2ndnow.com
There was another site that I saw claim that it only took 3 days to reach a “mild” cure. Food science being science, either it’s cured or it’s not cured. Cured meat is a process. It is a method. And the proof is behind the results on how the meat holds up over time. There’s nothing wrong with making salted pork. It doesn’t make it cured. It just means that it has a higher salt content that the meat that you pull out of your fridge or freezer. Please, let’s just call salted pork by its rightful name.
Can bacon be cured longer than 7 days? Absolutely! It’s not going to dry your pork belly out unless you’re using an open container. But that only happens because your fridge naturally evaporates water out of food that is left in there without being covered.
And let’s just be clear that evaporation or dehydration is not curing. Dehydration/evaporation is one method of preserving that is purely unique. Curing is an entirely different method of preservation, unique to itself. Every method has its own rules. Anything that doesn’t follow the rules is a different method for a different purpose.
I wanted to mention all of this because there were some friends of ours that we walked through the steps of how we cure our bacon. They stopped the curing step at three days and didn’t find the results that we said they should expect. There’s a couple of reasons why their first attempt of curing bacon didn’t turn out, so I can’t write definitively here what went wrong. I do know that we had shared from the same pork belly and the bacon had turned out with the above method. The two biggest suspicions I have is that not all the cuts and groves in the pork belly so the majority of the belly was working on becoming cured, but there were spots where bacteria had the opportunity to grow because the salt wasn’t there to make the meat an uninhabitable environment.
The other big potential of what went wrong is that the salt did not make it into the center of the meat. This is an important issue because remember, we are cooking low and slow. And since the center of meat is the last place to “cook”, this becomes a prime breeding ground for all sorts of potential food problems because salt wasn’t there to keep in check bad cultures. This then comes into realm of poor food handling.
I know that it’s tempting to take short cuts or speed things along quicker than described. We’ve all been there, especially when we’re excited to try a new skill and have great expectations. Please know that no matter how tempting it is, curing meats does take time. It can’t be rushed. And if you don’t believe me, you have to check out the link I have below for 2 Guys & A Cooler. They have amazing methods for making so many different cured meats that I can’t wait to get cracking to try. And what you see there just confirms what I’m saying that great meats take time.
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Here are other recipes you may be interested in.
If you’re looking for a Beef Bacon (bypassing the pork all together), this is the recipe that I recommend. Disclosure, I have not tried this recipe yet. But this is the one that I have on hold for when I make that plunge.
If you’re interested in a Pastrami Recipe, this is the one that I have bookmarked.
2 Guys & A Cooler is definitely worth subscribing to if you’re looking at many other ways of curing meat. This link takes you to their video on making Biltong. I like their presentation because it all makes sense after making our own bacon for several years now.
This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commissions on products purchased through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets.
If a smoker is not in your budget, this might be the tool to meet your needs.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms who are celebrating today with their children, the moms who are missing their children, the moms who have lost their babies far too early, those who shared an all too brief moment with their babies, the mothers who are in the middle of a season of making the dream of motherhood a reality, and those who love on the children from other mothers who lean on you to be the loving assurance in this season of their life. No matter what motherhood looks like to you, Happy Mother’s Day!
Depending on who you talk to, some people feel that holidays are too commercialized. Others find it difficult to find the perfect gift. And others find it difficult to gift a loved one while feeling the financial pressures of this season of world history. No matter where you personally find yourself on this spectrum, I want to help you find inspiration on how you can find a meaningful gift for someone. Whether it’s a belated mother’s day present, a birthday, anniversary, father’s day, grandparents’ day, teacher appreciation, graduation, or any other occasion, know that you can gift in a meaningful way.
I’m going to use the example of the mother’s day gift that I gave one of the mothers in my life. While this may not apply to the person in your life, the same principle can be applied in finding what you can gift that special person in your life.
This mom loves talking about her memories. For many years she’s shared her precious memories of when she operated a daycare. And one of those fond memories is when she grew gardens with the children under her care.
Growing salads in a container box.
One thing about moms, it seems pretty universal that sharing memories usually isn’t about the memory. It’s about reliving a moment in life that brought pleasure to them.
From this understanding, I knew that building a garden for this mom was a gift that would fill her love tank. Not only is it an opportunity for her to relive precious memories in the here and now, it also opened the opportunity to add more memories in association with these older memories. By building a garden and scheduling time to upkeep and tend to the garden, it was also guaranteeing visits and making time for her to spend time together.
Container growing for small spaces.
For this mom, she has two love languages. Her primary love language is gift giving. Her receiving love language is quality time.
Making a deposit of part of this season’s garden was not just a simple arrive, dig holes, put in start, say good bye, and move on with the day.
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For this Mother’s Day gift, it took in the appearance of leaving all the gardening supplies in the car and starting off with a sit down chat and getting caught up with all the news, even if it was only a day since we last saw each other. Then, I was able to go prepare the garden beds for this first plant installment.
Even before I could bring out the plants, this mom was already so filled with love that she wanted to spend some more talking. As much as I wanted to stay task driven (my personality is to knuckle down and get a project done quickly so I can move on to the next task), this day was all about showing love to this mom.
Pallet boxes for narrow spaces and hanging baskets on cyclone fence
So we had another chat session.
When I could find a polite moment to get back to the task of putting the starts back into the ground, I made that move. And with the final post plant watering, I went back and gave this mom one last extension to the gift I was giving her.
Remember, I said that this mom shows love to others by giving to them. So while I was building this garden for this mom, I know that the one thing that would bring her even more pleasure is by telling her upfront that the goal of this garden is primarily to meet her primary produce needs, I’m planting more than she will personally need so that she can give from the garden to others.
I wish I could share with you the look on her face, because she was bursting with love. Knowing that she was having a garden this year was more than enough to help her feel love, she felt seen and more loved because the gift was enabling her to show love to others without need to be reserved or anything else. It was a gift that was freely given so that she could freely give to others.
Growing herbs in repurposed gutters hung on a cyclone fence.
I know that this story may or may not show you specifically what you can give the hard to shop for person, but there is a valuable lesson here.
A good gift is designed to make a person feel loved because it speaks to how they most readily feel loved.
If you don’t know this love language, ask your person how they most feel loved. They will gladly tell you. It could be a tangible object or food that makes them feel loved. Or it can be a non-tangible activity, expression, or display.
A great gift is one that fills their love tank, but also doubles as a tool to enable them to share their love with others.
Container growing garden with DIY budget friendly or recycled components. Chicken wire trellis threaded through upright supports.
Maybe your loved one is not like this mother. Maybe they don’t show love to others by giving them things. Maybe they show love through acts of service. However their schedule is busy. By gifting them your time to do tasks for them or help them create time, this can free up time where they can show love to others by spending time with another person.
My encouragement to you today is to be inspired with a gift idea that doesn’t come from the shelf of a store. Yes, there are many store bought items that are amazing and meaningful. I want to strike the inspirational fire to give a gift out of love and seeing the other person at a core level. And also enable them to pass on love to others.
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Right now we live in an interesting moment in history. It is an uncertain time for many families. But it is also a prime moment to celebrate others by giving to them in a way that shows them that you remember past conversations. Where you have heard and remembered things that could have easily been passed off as trivial information in the moment.
Let’s show our loved ones that we see them. And we celebrate them for who they are.
Again, Happy Mother’s Day!
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This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commissions on products purchased through these links, but at no extra cost to you. This item link is to Amazon but may be purchased at local markets, and found at your local library.
If you are unfamiliar with Love languages, here is the book that started it all.
Originally this was written for understanding your mate. There are several other editions available to meet other relationship needs such as children, being single, and in relationship of a military service member.
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One of the memories that we are so quick to build are children’s birthday parties. So how do we make memories that last?
Make a cake!
I can’t begin to tell you all the cakes that I remember through the years. There’s the Holly Hobby cake my mom made from me (a popular baby doll from the 70’s). There was the cake that got locked in the trunk on my sister’s birthday. The cakes my sister’s and I made for our parents because finances were tight but the box cake was a big way we could show they mattered. The cake my husband made for me with marshmallow frosting. The cakes I made for my kids.
The list goes on and on….
I could tell a life story just off of the cakes I’ve made through the years.
And I want you to know that you can make cakes that make memories without going to culinary school and gaining the education of a baker!
Even though I have cake recipe books which put a world of recipes from scratch, I’m going to show you how you can make a memorable cake using a box cake–which is in everyone’s price range. And in this age of inflation, when you can still find boxes of cake mix for a dollar, I want that to be available to you.
Box cake mixes are great. The directions are easy enough for my kids to follow and make on their own. (In fact I just made a cake for a local mom and my boys wanted to help because they love baking cakes with me. They had to skip out on this one, but I had to promise that they could make their dad’s cake all on their own without me!)
TIP: you can test the doneness of you cake sponge by poking the cake with a toothpick in the center. When you pull the tooth pick out, and it’s dry, your cake is done. You want no moisture or batter on the tooth pick. Although you might see cooked crumb–that is still done.
Or….
TIP 2: When your timer goes off take a temperature reading in the center of your cake. When you reach an internal temperature of 200°F, your cake is done.
This particular tip is invaluable. If you’ve watched baking competitions you see people testing cakes by poking it like a chef pokes a steak. The amount of resistance tells you the internal state of being done.
The average person doesn’t know what a done cake feels like. We can easily learn the feel of an under done cake and an overly done (and dry) cake. I’m going to save you the head ache and just tell you that you only need to reach 200°F and your cake will be perfectly done no matter what. This works for all elevations. AND it gives you a more accurate unit of measurement to direct you in how much longer to cook your cake when it’s under 200°F.
Now that you know you do not have an undercooked cake, you’re halfway done.
Some people find the cake (or sponge) cooking the most intimidating. Others find the frosting to be intimidating. But frosting a cake doesn’t have to be intimidating either, because I’m going to show you a trick that I used with the Pinterest inspiration picture that was given to me for the cake I made the other day.
My go to frosting is formulated by Wilton. I’ve successfully modified this recipe to make it flavored. But this recipe gives you three different consistencies. I used two of these for the following Unicorn Cake that I recreated, stiff and medium. I used the medium for the filling between two layers and doe the exterior frosting. The stiff consistency I used for the decorative elements.
When it comes to coloring your frosting, the stores give you the choice of the liquid food dye or gel. The gel will give you vibrant colors for less.
TIP: If you’re a family that is conscientious about food dyes, you can still color your frosting. What you’re going to do is plan in advance and dehydrate the fruit, vegetable, or edible flower for the colors you want. Don’t worry about the vegetables. The Wilton frosting is sweet and can overpower the vegetable flavor, if that is a concern for you.
As a point of reference, it took me about half a pound of strawberries (sliced, dehydrated, than powdered) to turn a single batch of Wilton frosting pink and mild strawberry flavor. I had the pink color to the frosting long before the strawberry flavoring that was requested by the birthday girl.
TIP: When you use a fruit with high water content, you definitely want to turn it into a powder in order to prevent your frosting from becoming watered down.
Frosting the cake is going to look a little differently depending on what kitchen tools you have available. If you can pipe the frosting onto the cake before you spread the frosting, you will be able to do a thin layer of frosting without getting crumbs of cake into your frosting.
Don’t have piping tools (pastry bag, coupler, and decorative tips), that’s okay. The trick is to take your butter knife (if that’s all you have), put dollops of frosting onto your cake, and then spread the frosting around using the flat of your knife.
The number one cause of crumbs in your frosting is your knife hitting the cake’s sponge. If you just move the frosting around, with your knife only touching your frosting, you should eliminate all crumbs.
If you still find you have crumbs, the other reason is that your frosting is too thick. This is particularly a problem with cakes that are light and fluffy. Not a problem!
If your frosting doesn’t spread easily, stop. Remove the frosting and put it back in the bowl. Add a teaspoon of water (or less) and mix it into your frosting to loosen it up. Test the consistency by trying to spread your frosting on your cake. It shouldn’t grip your cake like Velcro, but smoothly spread like mashed potatoes. Once you can easily spread your frosting, make that cake beautiful!
Want to make decorative elements, like an inspiration picture, but don’t feel confident in your piping skills? You will want this trick.
Don’t worry. You can use this trick even if you’re only comfortable using the tubes of colored frosting!
Print out your inspiration picture (with the elements blown up to the size you want them on the cake). If you have face details you want to recreate, make a copy for the body, and a second copy for the face. (The same is true for detailed that are stacked but not faces.)
For example, here’s the inspiration that I was working with.
The original creator had freehanded the design of this cake. I’m fortunate if I can draw a horse head on paper with a pencil, so I needed this trick.
I do have skills in Inkscape where I took the picture and traced the elements and made my own stencils. After I printed out the stencils I put them on top of a metal cooking sheet. To keep them in place, I used a loop of tape. Then on top of the stencils I taped down a sheet of waxed paper.
Once my different colors of frosting were put in piping bags, I started tracing the stencil lines with the planned out colors.
In the instance with the unicorn head, I made the outline, then filled (flooded) the inside with frosting, smoothing everything out with a knife to make it look like a solid piece.
When all my decorative elements were piped out, I put the cooking sheet in the freezer.
You’ll want to plan this one ahead of time. The frosting will take time to freeze. Even with the stiff frosting, you will want this to be in the freezer for at least over night.
When the frosting is frozen, you can transfer the elements from the waxed paper to the cake.
A memorable cake doesn’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, making a cake shows the person that you love them. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.
My favorite cake my husband made was the marshmallow frosting cake. And I guarantee that none of us will make that frosting again. It was not user friendly because it was a pouring frosting instead of a classic spreadable one.
This isn’t the marshmallow frosting cake. But it is the one my boys made on their own, for me.
The most memorable cake I made was my son’s bubble cake. He wanted a bubble cake so I made a tall multi layer cake in the shape of a bottle of bubbles. That sponge would not keep shape. It wanted to disintegrate on me and there was not enough support I could put in to make it stay. Let’s just say I’m glad I made it a fondant cake, because that fondant was the only thing keeping it together. I was in tears. But my son was dancing with happiness over having a bubble cake.
I tell you these stories so that you know that sometimes the best memories come from the imperfections in our cakes. After all, my favorite childhood cake, the Holly Hobby one I mentioned at the beginning, wasn’t all perfection. I look at the pictures from that birthday and only see love. My mom looks at those pictures and sees the cramping in her hands because of all the piping that cake took. She finished that cake with tears of pain. But it meant the world to me.
So don’t be afraid to make that cake for your loved one!
It may turn out to be an imperfect but testament of love that lasts through the ages. Or it may be the cake that blows your mind because you never thought you could do it, but you did! No matter the outcome, it is always worth it to make that cake!
Super hero birthday
Navy Retirement Cake. Inspiration cake and my cake with the medalion that was placed against the center wave in the flag.
There’s just something about having real vanilla extract in your pantry. It’s so tempting to reach for that imitation vanilla extract on the grocery shelf when you see that price tag on the real extract. But there is such a huge difference in flavor when you use the real stuff.
I’m not going to go into the problems and scary information that will want you stay away from the imitation extract. There’s not need to create fear or disgust. So I’m just going to focus on the good and benefits of the real vanilla and add value to making the purchase of the real vanilla beans to make your own extract and other products.
How to make a Vanilla Extract
All you need to make your own extract is vanilla beans, 70-proof alcohol (or higher), and a glass jar (with a sealing lid) to extract. The three most common alcohols used are bourbon, rum, and vodka. (My preference is vodka because it has the least amount of alcohol flavor.) A general rule of thumb is to use 4-6 vanilla beans for each 8 oz of alcohol.
Slice the vanilla beans down the length of the bean. This opens the bean up to create the most surface area for extraction. It also releases the bean, which heightens the flavor of the extraction.
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Put the cut beans into your jar and fill the jar up to the brim with your alcohol of choice. Tighten the lid and give the ingredients a good shake. Place in a cool dark place for a minimum of two months. (For a rich potent extract, let it sit for 6-12 months.) Shake the jar daily for the first two weeks.
The draw backs of making your own extract
What everyone tells you is that as you use your extract, you need to keep topping off your jar.
My big problem is that I use vanilla extract a lot and I quickly found that my extract quickly became diluted! I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that the non-vanilla alcohol quickly overtook the extract. And so my vodka quit tasting like a vanilla extract and began tasting more like vanilla infused vodka. That’s not so much of a problem if you’re after flavored liquor. But it’s a huge problem if you’re using the extract for baking.
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My solution is making a few jars of vanilla extract at the same time. Yes it is a little overkill at first glance, but bear with me. Once your jar starts giving you a less potent extract, it’s time to shelve it and let the vanilla beans go to work and extract more. By giving this first jar a little vacation, and grabbing a second jar, you get the benefit of having vanilla potency as well as keeping the extract cycle going.
Some people say that your beans will last for 5 years. My mom had gifted me a bean from Hawaii where it was marketed to last up to 25 years. I’m not going to put an expiration date on your beans. My Hawaiian bean and the second one that I added to it, are still in their jar maybe 18 years after I first received it. I just recently fished this jar back out from the back of my cupboard because I finally had beans and alcohol to start back up on my real extract. The older beans are only giving off a diluted vanilla extract now. So I added 2 new beans in to jump start my extraction and get real vanilla back in my life. And I have a larger bottle started, which I should get to the longer extracted window before I need to use it and give my smaller bottle a break and refortify itself.
Benefits of Vanilla
If you grew up like I did, the only thing you were exposed to was imitation vanilla extract. If you were fortunate enough to have a family member go to Mexico, they might have brought back a real vanilla extract. But all you knew was that it was a luxury and yes it tastes amazing.
What you May not know
Vanilla beans contain B Vitamins (niacin, thiamin, B6, Pantothenic acid), potassium, riboflavin, copper, magnesium, and iron. They also have these properties; antioxidant, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and are neuroprotective.
Depending on if you want to just make your own real vanilla extract, or would like to use vanilla to help meet your other health needs, the above information is a great starting point to talking with a naturopath or herbalist to see how vanilla can find a new course for healing your body.
I started looking a little deeper into what other benefits I could gain from vanilla (aside from incomparable baking goodness) when I got into soap and lotion making. It’s probably well thought about how vanilla is great as a comforting aroma therapy to soothe anxiety and calming the stomach. After all vanilla bean ice cream is pretty much a comfort food.
What was new information to me is that there have been studies that show there is the potential of vanilla having the benefits of increasing hearth health by helping to reduce LDL cholesterol, it’s antibacterial properties help treat acne, the antioxidants have healing properties to boost your immune system, help heal split ends and strengthen hair, and slow down the aging process (age spots and wrinkles).
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All of these benefits were what has been found in the studies that have researched the compound Vanillin. These studies have done work in vanilla extracts and the seeds. And if this interests you, these studies are well worth reading up on.
Even if you don’t want to pursue vanilla for health reasons, it is worth knowing that vanilla beans contain over 200 compounds. And their concentrations are dependent on the region from where the beans are harvested. Again, this is another area of diving into that is well worth the look. I wanted to mention this (as well as point you back up to the vitamins and minerals mentioned in the beginning) to point you toward the benefit of using real vanilla extract over imitation vanilla extract (which has absolutely none of these components).
Extract is not the only thing you can make from Vanilla
Vanilla beans can also infuse oil.
In the infusion that I made, I used 4 vanilla beans, a quart sized mason jar, and olive oil. (You can choose your own carrier oil, like jojoba oil, or any other that is better absorbed into your skin. Each oil has its own benefits that it offers the infusion.)
Follow the same steps as above, with the vanilla extract. The only difference in the method is that the vanilla beans are scraped from the bean pod. The pods are what I put into the oil. (The beans I put into a lotion–this will be its own post in the future.)
Instead of keeping my oil in a cool dark place, I left mine in a westward facing window and used solar heat to help the infusion for 2 months. Even using winter sun, the finished oil has a warm vanilla scent.
This oil can be used for so many different needs.
Use the oil on your skin for massage or relieve dry skin
Use to improve sleep whether you put a drops of oil in a warm bath or smell the oil before going to bed
Improve your skin health by adding a couple drops into your face wash or lotion
It is reported to soothe minor burns when you add 2-3 drops to effected area
Use in desserts (for whatever recipe calls for oil and you chose a cooking oil like avocado or olive)
I also use infused oil in products I made for sale.
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If you are interested in using vanilla beans for cooking only, you can put a bean in with some sugar in your food processor and blend together. This will give you a fancy sugar that you can dust on top of desserts or use as a sugar rim on a drink of choice. The same can be done with salt (even though savory herbs are usually matched with salt).
The most important thing to keep in mind when using vanilla beans, whether in extract or infusions, make sure that your beans have an oily sheen to them. Many compounds are found in the oil of the bean and speak to the overall health and quality of the bean.
There is so much goodness found in vanilla beans. Hopefully, you have learned something new about vanilla. That it has so much more to offer than just being the flavor of a beloved ice cream or just a simple ingredient that you add to your cakes and cookies.
What have you used Vanilla for?
This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commissions on products purchased through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets.
Are you looking for a new place to buy vanilla beans? I am very pleased with this vendor.
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I really like what you have acquired here, certainly like what you’re stating and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still take care of to keep it wise. I can not wait to read far more from this site.
Thank you for commenting! I appreciate what you’ve shared. My goal is to take a new skill and make it approachable for someone who might question if they can do it. Being entertaining is an amazing bonus. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy future posts.
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