Third Infinity

For those of you who don't know what washing soda is, it is the BEST stuff for cleaning sterling silver. Put a tablespoon in a bowl lined with aluminum foil then add hot water. Just drop in your sterling silver pieces and it starts to fizz away. Leave on for about 5-10 minutes then take out and rinse in cold water. Where to buy Washing Soda? Here: http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3549579&cagpspn=pla

Sugarplums Recipe courtesy Alton Brown, 2009 Prep Time: 45 min Inactive Prep Time: 13 hr 0 min Cook Time: -- Level: Easy Serves: approximately 80 (1/4 ounce) balls Ingredients 6 ounces slivered almonds, toasted 4 ounces dried plums 4 ounces dried apricots 4 ounces dried figs 1/4 cup powdered sugar 1/4 teaspoon anise seeds, toasted 1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds, toasted 1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom Pinch kosher salt 1/4 cup honey 1 cup coarse sugar Directions Put the almonds, plums, apricots, and figs into the bowl of a food processor and pulse 20 to 25 times or until the fruit and nuts are chopped into small pieces, but before the mixture becomes a ball. Combine the powdered sugar, anise seeds, fennel seeds, caraway seeds, cardamom, and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Add the nut and fruit mixture and the honey and mix using gloved hands until well combined. Scoop the mixture into 1/4-ounce por...

I think I'll treat them with some cheese biscuits to go with their Spicy Cheese Soup Spicy Cheese Soup 1 lb processed cheese, cubed (like Velveeta) 1 lb ground beef, cooked and drained 1 can (8-3/4 oz) whole kernel corn, undrained 1 can (4-oz) green chiles, chopped 1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes with green chiles 1 can (14 oz) stewed tomatoes 1 envelope taco seasoning Corn chips for garnish, optional Combine all ingredients in slow cooker, and cook on Low 4-5 hours. Serve with corn chips if desired. Original recipe in Rival Crock Pot 3-in-1 Cookbook. ISBN: 978-1-4127-2584-2 Coming Soon! A Haunted Halloween Blog Tour Lena Austin http://www.LenaAustin.com http://depravedduchess.blogspot.com

It's too hot to cook, not even for ice cream. Here's some treats that don't need it.

You can do this!!

This sauce is so perfect over ice cream, you just won't believe it. Rhubarb is the chameleon of the sauce world. Add it to frozen strawberries and it tastes like strawberries. Add it to a frozen berry mix and it tastes like the mix! Amazing stuff. Keep this on hand. Rhubarb is cheap because so many people don't know what to do with it. Best of all, you can grow your own. I grew it even in the dry, cold climate of Denver. Use an orange you buy at the same time as the rhubarb. Pull out the Y-shaped vegetable peeler and shave off the peel. You can dry the extra peel, or put it in a jar packed in plain old sugar. It stores well. Best of all, the peels flavor the sugar! I keep lemon peels packed in sugar and orange peels packed in sugar. They flavor plain old sugar cookies to sublime levels. Think how much money you just saved over buying the dried peels from the spice aisle!

Cut and pasted off Yahoo Green:  Most of us know that baking soda can be used for more than just making homemade cookies and other dough rise. It's not uncommon to see an open box of this leavening agent deodorizing refrigerators, for example. But did you know that there are at least 40 different ways to use baking soda? Baking soda makes a perfect stand-in for many personal care, cleaning, and deodorizing products. The list of benefits is long: It is inexpensive, free of toxic chemicals, versatile, and effective. Wondering how baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate, works its magic? It helps regulate pH — keeping a substance neither too acidic nor too alkaline. When baking soda comes in contact with either an acidic or an alkaline substance, its natural effect is to neutralize that pH. Beyond that, baking soda has the ability to retard further changes in the pH balance, known as buffering. This dual capability of neutralizing and buffering allows baking soda to do ...

Lammas is the holiday to love grain. Breads, rice, corn and I'll even throw in the legumes.For someone on a permanent low carb diet, it can be a little tricky. However, with good sense and some simple changes, even someone like me can celebrate the grain harvest, summer, and have fun. There are many options to suit any palate. I make baked brown rice, so the oven is already warm and ready when I mix up the casserole and I can shove it right back in. The rest of the rice I don't use in this recipe can be frozen in a zip-top bag for later use. You can even add meat to this casserole and save yourself a step. I keep cooked chicken in the freezer, all ready for recipes like this one.

Carving a pumpkin this fall? Don't throw any of it away! By Jeff Yeager Posted Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:44am PDT Related topics: Food and Drink , Holidays , Veggies More from The Green Cheapskate blog "Jeff, can't we at least celebrate the holiday before you eat the decorations?" I've heard that more than once from my long-suffering wife during our 26-year marriage. You see, cheapskates like to celebrate Halloween and other holidays just like everyone else. But we grimace at wasteful rituals like throwing away a perfectly good pumpkin after using it for only a few days as a decoration. Americans buy more than one billion pounds of pumpkins at Halloween, and the vast majority of those end up in the trash. But at the Green Cheapskate's house, we eat our jack-o-lantern, every last bit of it. While some particularly meaty varieties of pumpkins are specifically grown to be eaten (including Sweet Jack-be-Littles, Cheese Pumpkins, Sugar Pumpkins, and some delicious heirl...

Indian Pudding Recipe Print Options Print (no photos) Print (with photos) Ingredients 6 cups of milk 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal 1/4 cup flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup molasses 3 eggs, beaten 1/3 cup of granulated sugar 1 teaspoon of cinnamon 1 teaspoon of nutmeg 1 cup golden raisins (optional) Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream Method 1 Scald the milk and butter in a large double boiler. Or heat the milk and butter for 5 or 6 minutes on high heat in the microwave, until it is boiling, then transfer it to a pot on the stove. Keep hot on medium heat. 2 Preheat oven to 250°F. 3 In a separate bowl, mix cornmeal, flour, and salt; stir in molasses. Thin the mixture with about 1/2 cup of scalded milk, a few tablespoons at a time, then gradually add the mixture back to the large pot of scalded milk. Cook, stirring until thickened. 4 Temper the eggs by slowly adding a half cup of the hot milk cornmeal mixture to the beaten eggs, whisking constantly. Add the egg mixture back...

The Equinox Cleaning Is this like spring cleaning? Yes. Spring cleaning was a necessity in historical times when the house remained closed up all winter, gathering soot and smoke from the fireplace as well as the accumulated mess made when people are cooped up inside for long periods of time. That being said, we all need to do a thorough cleaning now and then. I recommend doing so at the equinoxes. In fall, we’re getting ready to shut our homes up for the winter and the holidays. Friends will visit, parties will be thrown, and of course we all want to show our homes off to the best advantage. In spring, we’re driven to open our homes to the warm spring breezes. However, let’s be honest. Very few of us have the time to strip our rooms completely one by one, washing anything that holds still for it. However, a few things can be done in a very short period of time. First things first! Take down the curtains, carpets, and throws. Dump them in the washer and/or load them in the car for a tr...

Flaking Jello is easy. Just make the Jello and let it firm up. Use a fork and run it up and down the Jello to create small flakes. Get out your aggressions. It's fun and easy. For me, I use fresh or frozen peaches to cut down on the carbs, and serve with Cool Whip Free. I can't resist ice cream, so we don't have it around here much. LOL! Any way you have it, this dish is a delight when Indian Summer Days strike.

While too "expensive" for me on a low carb diet, I try to be fair to those who don't have to watch every crumb they put in their mouth. Save this little treat for Sunday mornings or Sabbats. To me, this is a great "cake" for Cakes and Ale. Served with a hot mulled apple cider, it's perfect for a fall treat.

Ooops! This scan came out just a little off-kilter, but hopefully you can read it. This is a fall-flavored treat that isn't anymore "expensive" calorically than eating regular applesauce. Serve this as an after school snack, and you'll be the neighborhood home they all come to visit. The other parents will love you for serving a nutritious snack disguised as something tasty, too.

Now this takes applesauce to a whole new level of delicious, wouldn't you say? Applesauce itself (if homemade) is about 112 calories and 29 carbs for a 1/2 cup serving. You can reduce the carbs by using Splenda for 1/2 of the sugar. The recipe below will not add any real calories or carbs if you use sugar-free Jell-O.

I know, you can't read them like this. Click on them until they come up larger, then save them. Gotta save space. The big part you need to know is that you don't need an expensive machine to do this. Your oven is a fine fruit dryer. Set on low and following the instructions below, you can have dried fruit this winter without all those nasty preservatives. Pay attention to the parts I highlighted. I'll bet you didn't know all that sticky syrup that comes off the fruit during the process can be brushed back on the fruit for extra flavor. See what you learn hanging around with me? LOL!

Note with both of these that you do not *have* to use canning equipment. You may simply freeze your goodies. My batches rarely survive the ten months for apple butter, and eight for the applesauce. Heck, I'm lucky if the applesauce survives until Halloween. I've said it before, and I repeat: Share the costs of canning equipment with a friend or three. This is a wonderful opportunity to get Mom and/or Grandma in the kitchen to share her secrets for canning, and should not be missed. Dear friends sharing space and canning equipment means dividing the workload and the results of your work. If you're good with the applesauce and your best friend makes fantastic pickles, and another makes a salsa to die for, you all get the products of these talents by sharing equipment.

Make sure you take a peek at the variation at the bottom. Apple Raisin Bran Muffins! At 182 calories and 26 carbs, these are an indulgence for those on a low-carb diet.

We all don't have to like the same grains, but this is the grain harvest. Here's a recipe that lets you pick what works for your family and coven. If you're allergic to wheat, choose rice and so on. By technicalities, this is a vegetarian dish or side dish, but by adding cut up cooked chicken, this can become a meal. It's also a great way to use up leftovers. When we have rice (often) we may end up with half a cup or so of leftover rice. I pour it into a freezer bag and freeze it flat, adding more whenever the leftovers warrant. I can accumulate a lot of rice, but freezing it flat allows me to break off chunks when needed to thicken a soup or stew, add a bit of bulk to a stir fry, or a recipe like this. Same goes for chicken. There's *always* one last piece of chicken no one will eat. By scraping off the meat into a freezer bag, I can pretty much guarantee I've cut up cooked chicken for a fast stir fry, "impossible" quiche, or casserole. If you don...