Queen of Domesticity.... or how I spent a rainy day

It has been a gloomy rainy day on the east coast of Iowa. One of those days that you just want to stay at home under a blanket. But I had waaay too much energy today to stay under the blanket so I hit the kitchen ............... hard.

I started my morning by making laundry soap. What?? You make your own laundry soap?? Well -- sort of. Its kind of the cake mix of laundry soap. First of all -- you get your soap bars from one of my favorite soap makers ..............Maggie at Prairieland Herbs.

You grate it on a cheese grater .... mix it with 2 cups of Borax, 2 cups of washing soda and 1 cup of baking soda. I love this stuff!!!! If you need a stain stick -- just swipe an extra bar on the stain. It is wonderful stuff and I feel very accomplished. And look how pretty it looks in my jar!


The next project was cheese. Homemade mozzarella cheese for homemade pizza tonight. This was the best batch yet. OMG!! This is good. Ok -- its better than good. It was great!!! The tutorial I use is on this great blog.

This is while I was draining the whey. Most of my cats don't care for the whey ..... but my calico Mama cat loves it!
Isn't that just beautiful!! Shiny and smooth and delicious. I'm getting close to doing a class. Anyone interested out there?????

I made the cheese this morning because I thought the perfect Saturday night supper would be homemade pizza. Tonight's pizza featured a 7-grain and herb crust. Then I roasted onions, garlic, white mushrooms and the very last of my morel mushrooms for the topping. I used some turkey sausage for Honey. But my, it was good.
Not the prettiest pizza I have ever made .............. but it didn't live here long enough for any one to notice!!!! YUMM!

Then on to more cooking related activities. We eat a lot of yogurt here. And I have been pretty lazy about making yogurt ...... Yoplait is just too easy. But I can do so much more with my homemade yogurt. And seriously, how hard is yogurt when you have a yogurt maker?? There are days I could just shoot myself for being so lazy!!!!!And finally ........... bread. ABin5 seems to be my lifeline. Between ABin5 and Mark Bittman's no-knead bread, they have revolutionize bread baking in this household. Today -- I took the basic boule and used whole wheat flour in it. Did you know that you are suppose to let the bread cool before you cut it so the texture can develop completely???? Won't happen in this house!!

I'd say I have my bread baking done for the weekend and I will be set for the beginning of the week .................. but you haven't met Honey. Honey loves homemade bread..... maybe a little butter.... a little artisan cheese. Yea .......... I'll be baking again tomorrow night!!!

I squeezed in time for a little spinning, lots of laundry, a little painting and started working on a new apron project.

I think I have used up all that energy and I'm ready to hide under that blanket. If I could only find it..................hmmmm?