Healthy ravioli's for my toddler!

Lately I've been thinking more about how I can be healthier and although I can't convince my husband to join me, I can try to feed my 18 mo old healthier options.  We like to rely on easy quick things to feed our son because I am not home for dinner 5 nights a week and my husband is not home during the day 4 days a week so it's hard to watch my son and take the time to cook a big meal.  In the past we've bought Gerber brand ravioli's that are precooked and all you do is heat them up for 25 seconds in the microwave, drain the liquid and they are ready!  They are great to have on hand but they are around $1.30 each and that starts to add up!  So I decided to try to make my own.  I used a basic pasta recipe and put my kitchen aid mixer and food processor to work.

Pasta recipe:

3 Cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/4 Cup olive oil
1/2 Cup water

Start out mixing the eggs, olive oil, and water together.  I used my kitchen aid with the whisk attachment for this part.  Then I switched to the dough hook.  Add salt and slowly start adding flour.  I kept the mixer on a lower speed and let it mix and knead the dough for me.  I didn't pay attention to the time but it probably took around 5-7 minutes.

In the meantime I decided I was going to fill them with ground turkey, carrots and baby kale leaves.  I browned the turkey and only added a little salt and pepper, but a very little amount.  Then I put the carrots in the food processor for a few seconds, until it was evenly chopped.  Then I added the kale to the carrots and chopped that up.  I scooped that mixture into a bowl and then added the turkey to the processor and ground it up into a fine consistency.  I then mixed the turkey in with the carrots and kale until it was well blended.  I didn't measure how much carrot, kale and turkey I used but you can make yours to your liking.

I then rolled my dough out on a floured counter and cut it in half.  I rolled it to about 1/8in thickness and started adding my filling.  I used a teaspoon of filling to make each ravioli.  I thought that would be a small enough size.  It ended up being bigger than I'd had hoped, but I'll get to that later.

I then took the other half of the dough I had set aside and laid it over the top of the first.  I ended up using a shot glass to cut out each ravioli.  The glass sealed the edges together for most of the raviolis but I had to pinch a few of them shut so make sure to do a quick inspection.  :)  You can reuse the excess dough, even though there will most likely be some of the filling mixed in it.  That didn't really affect the next batch of ravioli's.

 I then threw them into a pot of boiling water for around 10 minutes a batch.  This is what they looked like cooked.  After they cooled I divided them into portions in ziplock bags.  

 

They were not very appealing to look at, but I tried one and it was good.  I prefer sauce but my son has been eating them up!  Again, they were a little big so I cut them into 4's and they are perfect.  I think next time I will make them smaller so that I don't have to cut them and loose half the nutritious filling!  

    These were a little work, I think I spent about an hour or so making them, but I will be making them again if it means saving money and knowing exactly what my son is eating!!  You could also substitute the all purpose flour for whole wheat flour for an even healthier ravioli!  I might be trying that next time... :)

DIY Liquid Hand Soap

Today I decided to try out yet another DIY project from One Good Thing by Jillee, making my own liquid hand soap and a mason jar soap dispenser!  It was something I had never done before, but it ended up being a lot of fun!  So this is the basic recipe:

1 Gallon of purified water

2 Tablespoons of glycerine

8 Ounces of your choice bar soap

I wasn't sure what Ivory soap smelled like (I don't use bar soap ever)  but it was on clearance at Target so I thought I'd give it a try.  Unfortunately I bought 32oz of this stuff and I'm not a huge fan of the smell.  Fortunately my husband doesn't mind it too much.  I think next time I will go with an unscented soap and add some Tangerine or Grapefruit essential oil to it.  I had this little bottle of glycerine sitting in my cupboard from my first attempt at making fondant (before I discovered marshmallow fondant!) and had no use for it, until now!!  Finally, I just got water out of my refrigerator dispenser.  It took FOREVER, but according to Jill the soap will be more affective if the water is purified, and this is all I had.

First, grate your soap.  I've heard of people blending it or using a food processor, but I was nervous about using my precious expensive equipment on soap making.  Now that I know how soft the soap is, I might consider blending it next time, but really grating it took no time at all.

It looked like a plate of mozzarella cheese!  Fortunately it didn't smell like it or maybe I would have taken a bite.. ;)  Kidding.  So next you add the grated soap to the water and heat it up to melt the soap.

Stir it up to get all the little pieces of soap melted.  It takes a little while, I think it took me around 10 minutes before I stopped seeing soap pieces.  I kept it on the heat for a few extra minutes just to make sure.

 It will foam up a little from the stirring.  Remove from the heat and add the glycerine.  Then I poured it into a container and let it sit, about 24 hours or until cooled completely because that's what I saw Jill do on her blog.  I think next time I will just let it sit in the pot it's in because I really don't see the need to move it to another container.  Plus the container I used was too small and even after I poured some into a cup, I still had too much and I dumped a little.

Once it is completely cooled, it becomes this gelatinous substance that will need mixed up before put into its final storage containers.  To be honest, the soap looks kind of gross after it's mixed up.  It looks like snot.  Maybe I should have whisked it better, I don't know.  My husband has asked me to add a little food dye to it because it looks, umm, gross is all I'm going to say.  So our soap is purple and pink and blue and all sorts of colors because the dye was added after I portioned it out.  Anyway, I loved the idea of mason jar soap pumps so I decided to make 3, one for each sink in the house!!  I followed Jillee's tutorial about it and it was pretty easy!  I'm not going to go step by step through that, but you can follow her blog for instruction how to make them.  The only problem I had was that she starts the hole where the dispenser goes through with an exacto knife, which I did, but the very first one I tried, the tip of the knife snapped off!  So I just ended up using the sharp pliers, wire cutters maybe?  But they turned out pretty good, I think!

I loved the idea of simply unscrewing the top of an empty jar and just sticking a pump lid onto another full jar!  I love it and I hope you will too!

Stain Fighting Magic!

I've never really been any good at doing laundry.  I have been trying to get myself back into the habit of separating my whites, colors and towels because for years I was only doing my laundry and I never had enough of each to make full loads so I just threw everything together.  Now that I am doing laundry for my husband and son, I've been trying to separate things again.  I'd noticed my whites were turning gray from throwing everything together.

Lately I have been spending HOURS looking around this website, reading about all sorts of DIY projects and tips for cleaning, laundry, and beauty.  I have found many things I would like to try such as making my own hand soap and mason jar dispensers, making my own laundry detergent, etc.  I like the idea of making my own products, especially if it means saving a little money and keeping unwanted chemicals out of the house.  I love her blog and I especially love the additional ideas I find in the comments section.  Well, on her blog I found a page talking about whitening your clothes.  She tried it out on her mattress pad and wow!  What a difference.  I decided that I was going to try it out but with color safe bleach so I could try it on some of my sons terribly stained shirts.

 This shirt was stained while in the washing machine!  Even after washing several times, the stain wouldn't go away.

 My son's very stained shirt.

  Another of my son's but not too bad.

So I grabbed a few of our shirts, grabbed all the materials and was ready to (hopefully) see some magic!

 After soaking all night and most of the day, I finally threw everything in the washing machine and this is how they turned out.

Since all three shirts had been washed and dried many times with the stains in them, I didn't really expect much but it did help, especially on my husbands shirt!  I think that I may have put too many things into my little bucket and that the solution wasn't able to get to everything evenly because some things looked the same as before, but other things looked not perfect, but a lot better.  I will definitely be trying this again!  And I know, I'm on my journey to become a chemically free house and the first thing I go out and buy is chemicals!  So I'm not as committed to the idea as I thought, but if it means cleaner laundry, I'm all about breaking my new rule. I'll make up for it when I start making other products.  :)

Thai Green Chicken Curry Awesomness!!

Big News!!! About 6 weeks....

So the past month has been a very up and down month.  About a week and a half ago I started getting a lot of reallllly bad cramps.  I don't normally get cramps that often and never like this before.  I started taking Advil and Pampren just so I could get through the day.  At the same time I also started feeling hungry more often.  I would eat a meal and then 30 minutes later I would start to feel like I wanted to eat again!  After 3 days of this I decided to look around webmd.com to see what I could find.  I started in pregnancy to see what the early symptoms were and sure enough, both of those were a sign to pregnancy!!  I happened to have a pregnancy test so I ran to the bathroom to check.  Rob was busy sitting on the couch playing Modern Warfare so I didn't tell him of my suspicions.  When the test showed a very faint sign of a plus and minus sign I was shocked!  Could I really be pregnant??  When I came out of the bathroom Rob asked me what took so long so I told him.  He remained calm but I could tell he was excited too.  We decided that the next day we would go to the store and get a couple more tests to be sure.

The next day we bought a couple of the digital tests that actually said "pregnant" or "not pregnant" so there wouldn't be any guessing.  Sure enough it said "pregnant"!!!  We are having a baby!!! 

Yesterday morning was finally the day of our appointment.  I had scheduled it a week ago and that was the longest week ever!  The doctor confirmed that we were having a baby and then went over all my do's and don'ts.  She asked me what my symptoms were and said that everything sounded normal.  We go back in a few weeks for our next appointment!

I was so excited to tell my family that I couldn't wait!  I asked everyone to meet at Godfather's pizza for dinner that night.  I told them that I might be out of town for my birthday in a couple weeks and I wanted to do it early.  I assumed that they would be suspicious since it was a last minute thing and it was a Tuesday... They just thought I was crazy.  :)  I had seen on another blog where the girl baked a cake and made one layer pink and the other layer blue.  I loved the idea so I copied her.  After dinner I finally told everyone it was time for cake!  I started cutting the slices and no one got it.  They thought it looked pretty and that I was on drugs or something...  Finally I had to help them and my dad was the first one to understand!  My mom went speechless and Becca and Audrey(sisters) were excited and hugged me.  My mom has been quitting smoking and hasn't smoked in about a month.  I really hope I don't set her back with this.

Well now the cat is out of the bag and I can start telling everyone else.  Becca posted it on Facebook so there is a possibility that my friends will see it and find out there before I have the chance to tell them in person.  That is the stinky thing about technology... nothing stays a secret for long.  I just hope that people that do see it on Facebook don't get upset that I didn't tell them first!!

Just Keep Swimming

I've been feeling a little stressed lately because the house I grew up in is going to be forclosed soon.  Everyone except my dad moved out of the house a few years ago and he decided that the best solution to getting out of the house payment was to just quit paying it.  Now the bank has told him that he has maybe a week left.  I've been going over to the house to try to clean it out but it's a never ending battle!  There is just so much crap there that I alone have no idea what to do with.  My dad has the most stuff there now but since he moved in with his girlfriend maybe a month ago, he's just not really working on getting it out.  He keeps telling my mom that she needs to do it.  I am trying to help but I really don't have anything left there so I've been filling up trash bags and hauling them out.  Part of me wishes that I would have bought the house off my dad because it's my house, the house I grew up in but there is no way I was going to pay the price he was asking.  There is way too much work that needs to be done since it was not maintained really at all in the last 20 years plus it is just so small.  Now that it is going to be forclosed I just have to watch it go and it bothers me a little.  Everything works out the way it should though.

            Today Rob went out and bought a Dori fish from Finding Nemo!  He is so small and cute.  We already had a Nemo so now we are set.  :)  Salt water fish are a lot of fun (as much fun as a fish can be..)  They actually follow you around and come up to the glass when you are there like other pets would.  Right now we have a 40 gallon tank and a 20 gallon tank set up which is a lot but when we get a house it won't be so bad.  The fish are pretty cool.

Let's Begin

I'm not really sure what I will blog about, or who (if anyone) will read it, but it's something I've wanted to start doing for a while.  I suppose that I will start this blog with telling you a little about myself.  Well, my name is Stephanie.  I'm a newly wed!  I just got married in August and my wedding was amazing in my opinion.  I put a lot of work and effort into it with the help of other bloggers and I was so excited that everything turned out alright.  I am a socially awkward person which sucks sometimes but in the end it really doesn't matter.  I have some friends and I married my best friend so I always have at least him to talk to.  Rob loves to drive me nuts and say or do things he knows I will get worked up about, but for the most-part we get along just fine.  Together we have an apartment and somehow we ended up with 4 cats.  4 cats!!  I'm a sucker for baby animals and Rob likes fish so he always wants to go to Petsmart or other animal stores.  He looks at the fish while I go pet the cats.  I never asked for a cat but he would see me with them and would ask me if I wanted them and of course I would say yes!  Well now we have 4 cats and I don't want any more!!!  :)  I think that when we move into a house it won't be so bad.. hopefully.  It just means that we won't be getting a dog anytime soon or maybe ever.  But if we do then we could invite people over to see our zoo and at least make a little profit off of them. 
            I love to cook.  I used to watch the cooking channel all the time when I had cable.  More than cooking though, I love to bake.  With baking you can be really creative if you want.  I watch Cake Boss and it is just so amazing what those people can do with a cake!  I would love to have a little bakery or coffee shop or something of that sort but I don't have the experience or the money to start something like that.  I have been going to Metro for the past 5 or so years to study Culinary Arts.  I have maybe 4 classes left at this point but I've been putting off going back.  I took a year off and I used my wedding as the excuse but now it's really hard to go back.  I think I'm just scared because my last classes will be with a bunch of people who have experience and know what they are doing  and I don't.  After new years I will talk to an advisor so that they can help me get back on track, but once I finish I probably won't do anything with my knowledge.  I don't even work in the industry now so it's really pointless to even study culinary, but I want to finish anyway.  Who knows, maybe something will come up and I'll change careers.  Hopefully but I think I have to make it happen instead of waiting for someone to do it for me and I don't know how.