In honor of Mother’s Day, I asked my own mother to give me a recipe that she liked. She has fond memories of going to her grandmother’s house and eating her home-made noodles. While she regrets never getting my Great Grandmother’s actual recipe, she put together this one which is close.

Grandma’s Home Made Noodles

One of my most treasured memories of my dad’s mother was the homemade noodles she made. There is no store-bought comparison.

You’ll need:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs
½ teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp milk

Pour the flour onto a clean dry countertop – no bowl required. Make a small crater in the flour and break two eggs in the middle. Add salt and milk, and begin to mix with a fork. When the mixture starts to look like batter, add additional flour, a couple tablespoons at a time, until it sticks together as a dough. Knead the dough with floured hands for ten minutes.

Let the dough rest for ten minutes, then divide in half, covering one half with a damp towel (to keep it from drying out.) Dust your countertop and a rolling pin with flour and roll out the dough, one half at a time until it’s very thin. Use a pizza cutter or a sharp knife to cut the dough into long strips. You can make them any size you like. After the noodles are cut, it’s ok if they dry slightly before cooking.

To cook, bring water and salt to a boil and cook for eight to ten minutes.

For a complete meal: Place a whole chicken, cut into pieces, into a large stock pot. Add water until the chicken is just covered. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and let cool. Once cool to the touch, remove the meat from the bones and set aside.

In the same stock pot, with the water the chicken cooked in, add diced onion, celery, and carrots. If necessary, add more water, plus ¼ teaspoon each: white pepper, poultry seasoning, garlic powder, onion salt. Also add two chicken bouillon cubes and parsley.

Once the vegetables are tender, add your noodles. Meanwhile, mix together one cup of water and two tablespoons corn starch. Add the corn starch mixture to your pot, as well as the de-boned chicken. Stir until thick.

For my birthday last fall I got myself an awesome book called, “The Guerilla Art Kit” by artist Keri Smith. It’s packed with lots of cool projects all centered around the guerilla art movement, which encourages people to make temporary public art, often with a positive impact and free of political or religious ideology.

One of the projects featured in the book has been on my mind all winter, and with Earth Day this week, I figured now would be the perfect time to make some seed bombs.

Seed bombs are compact little balls of clay, fertilized soil and, you guessed it: seeds. They are dried in the sun so that they become hard little balls. These balls can be scattered around, thrown into areas you couldn’t otherwise reach or dropped at random as you walk, bike or otherwise travel around town.

Seed bombs do not need to be buried, or even watered. They can be tossed into empty lots, onto roof tops, landfills or on the side of the road. A little rain and the right conditions for growth, and Mother Nature will do the rest.

Ingredients:

Dried Clay. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the dried, powdered version of clay that the book called for around town. I went for an all-natural, air-drying clay at the craft store and will hope for the best. You can get dried clay at specialty gardening stores or stores that carry ceramics supplies. If you live near water, you may be able to dig up your own. You’ll only need a couple cups worth.

Worm Castings. Also called “vermicompost,” worm castings are the super fertilized soil that worms produce in a compost pile. I found a bag of it at Strange’s Garden Supply store, from an in town supplier.

Seeds. Stick to plants that would grow naturally in your area. Grasses and wildflowers are nice choices.

The Mixture:

According to The Guerrilla Art Kit, the correct ratio is two parts seeds + three parts compost + five parts clay.

Measure and mix your ingredients. You’ll have to add enough water to make it a workable mixture. Even though my clay wasn’t powdered, I still added a little water so I could mix it all together easily.

Once it’s mixed, pinch off small pieces and roll them into tight little balls, about one inch in diameter. The outside of the ball should be smooth. Finally, place them outside in the sun to dry for at least 24 hours. Store in a cool, dry place until you’re ready to send them out into the world.

Now What?

Now you go forth and scatter your seed bombs wherever you want, and grow spots of color in unexpected places. Think of it as positive graffiti – Johnny Appleseed meets Jackson Pollock.

I caught this video at random earlier this week and I kid you not, immediately marched over to my kitchen and made this flat bread. It takes about 45 minutes to cook. It was promptly eaten in all of about 10 minutes.

This is another one of those basic-basic recipes that imediately make you think, “what could I add to this!” but even as written, it’s a delicious snack, or as a base for a mini pizza.  It’d be great served with a salad, and I had mine with a little salsa.  Yum!

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil

Really!  That’s it!

You’ll need a pan that can work double duty — on your stove and in the oven.  Get the pan pretty hot and add one or two Tbsp olive oil to coat the pan.  Let it heat up pretty hot.

While that’s heating up, mix the whole wheat flour and salt, and add the water.  Bitten’s recipe called for 1 1/4 cups, but he noted that the amount of water will change every time you make this — it depends on the moisture in the air and in the flour itself.  I used just UNDER a cup, so add it slowly.  You’re looking for the consistency of a thick pancake batter.  Pourable, but just.

When your batter is mixed and your pan is nice and hot, pour the batter in and use a spatula to spread it out in the pan.  Place the whole thing into the oven for about 45 minutes.

Om Nom Nom Nom Nom.

A walk down the cleaning aisle at your local big box store is enough to send you home empty-handed, telling yourself, “Eh, I can live with some dirt.”  There are already a ton of choices – some specialized, some multitasking, and now that many companies are offering greener options as well, it’s harder than ever to make a decision.

It’s important from time to time to reflect on our grandparents, and remember that they, too, cleaned their houses.  Long before you could buy scrubbing bubbles and extra-whitening grout cleaner, houses still got clean.  That said, there are lots of technological advances since our grandparents’ day that make our day to day life much simpler.

So I set out, with a downright filthy kitchen, and a few questions in mind:  What did people use to clean their kitchen 30 years ago?  Do today’s products work better than they did?

A little research told me that Borax was a key ingredient to what our grandparents used.  Useful for cleaning items all over the house, it’s found in many of the store bought cleansers and detergents available today, as well as cosmetics.  A 72 oz (!) box, found in your grocery or big box store’s laundry aisle, will set you back about $4.
I found the following recipe for an all-purpose cleaner:

• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp borax
• ½ tsp liquid soap
• 2 cups hot water
• Several drops essential oil (optional)

While I was at the store picking up some Borax, I also decided to try one of the new “green” cleaners.  Biokleen All Purpose Cleaner is natural, non-toxic and biodegradable.  It contains no hazardous materials, and is manufactured in an eco-conscious way.  (For more about Biokleen, check out their website: http://biokleenhome.com/)

After mixing up my homemade solution, I wanted to test it out.  I stained my kitchen counter-top with coffee, red wine, dirt, chocolate syrup and red food coloring paste.  After letting it set for a while, I set up my experiment. I had four tests: plain water, Lysol all purpose cleaner, the Biokleen, and my homemade cleaner.

As long as I’m going all science fair on you, I’d better state my hypothesis:  I expected the homemade cleaner to work as well as the Lysol, but require a little more elbow grease.  I expected the store bought green cleaner to fall somewhere in between.

As I sprayed and tested away, I was quite surprised by the result.  The Lysol and Biokleen had similar results.  The homemade cleaner worked exceptionally well, and was named my winner!

Mix some up and try it out on your own.  Not only is it safer for the Earth, but you’ll save a ton of money, too.

Download the label!

We’re talking about green cleaning your kitchen this week, and that includes organizing, too.  While plastic containers are not particularly green, keeping your cupboards organized means that you are buying and wasting less.  Ever bought a brand new bag of flour just to find a half-full bag when you got home?  I’ve also noticed that by keeping my cupboards clean and organized, things aren’t as likely to go bad, since I can see everything clearly.  And airtight containers keep mice, ants and other pests out of my cupboards, which means less waste and less yuck.

These Snapware containers came from Target.  They come in a variety of sizes and are even available in a large box set.  I’ve been using this brand for several months, and I would definitely recommend them.  I also picked up some letter stickers in the scrapbooking section.

I placed a strip of masking tape along the top of the container to give myself a straight line to work with.  The containers have a natural seam down the center, and I used this to place the middle letter first.  Then, I used another strip of masking tape beneath it.

After placing the rest of the letters onto the canister, I removed the masking tape.  I sealed the letters with a piece of clear packing tape to protect them from getting wet or peeling off.

And now I have some great custom canisters which match my kitchen’s decor, have airtight storage and protection from pests, and I can easily tell what I have and what I need to buy.