English Muffins

As we prepare for our move down to Virginia next month, we've slowly started packing boxes. Besides finding great memories in scrapbooks and picture albums, I also took some time to look through the endless number of cookbooks I own. It actually reminded me of a challenge I gave myself a while back: cook as many recipes from my cookbooks as possible.

I was doing so well with this challenge at first, but to be quite honest Pinterest derailed me. Are you surprised? Pinterest has so many wonderful recipes, with such beautiful pictures, it's easy to forget about all those cookbooks! But I challenged myself and while I love trying Pinterest recipes, I also want to make good use of all those cookbooks.

This morning I found just the way to do that! I had just whipped up a homemade batch of peanut butter to discover we had absolutely no bread products at home. Luckily, I had just flipped through my Best of Food Network book last night and remembered spotting an English muffin recipe. English muffins for breakfast? Perfect!

The muffins didn't look like Thomas', but they were easy to make and very tasty. I will definitely be making them again! They also gave me a good excuse to use these metal rings I had purchased ages ago and never really used. You can probably make the muffins without them, but the rings help give them a nice round shape.


Ingredients:
1/2 cup powdered milk
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp + 1 tsp melted butter (The original recipe calls for 1 tbsp of shortening, which we didn't have at home)
1 cup hot water
1 envelope or 2 1/4 tsp dry active yeast
1/8 tsp sugar
1/3 cup warm water
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt

Supplies Needed:
electric griddle or griddle pan for on the stove
butter or cooking spray
metal rings (like the kind you use to make pancakes or eggs)

Directions:
Combine powdered milk, sugar, butter and hot water. Stir until dissolved, then let cool.
In a separate bowl combine sugar, warm water and yeast. Stir gently and let proof for 5-10 minutes. You'll know the yeast is active when it starts to foam.
Add this yeast mixture to the milk mixture and stir.
Slowly sift in the flour, stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon.
Beat thoroughly, then cover with a towel and let rise for 30 min.

Uncover your mix, beat in 1/2 tsp salt.
Lightly grease the griddle with butter or cooking spray. I used a griddle on the stove, but recommend an electric griddle where you can control the temperature, which should be 300 degrees.

Place metal rings on the griddle and fill with about 2 tablespoon of the mix. Spread it out as much as you can. The mixture will be very sticky and you'll be tempted to overfill the rings to cover every inch. Don't! The dough will rise and you'll get gigantic English muffins.

Cover the griddle with a big pot lid or a cookie sheet. Cook for about 5 min or until golden brown, then turn the muffins over and cook for another 5 min.

Since I only had 2 metal rings, I removed the muffins from the rings after flipping them over, so I could start the next batch. It's easiest to do this with a small knife.
If you're using a griddle on the stove, make sure to check your heat so you don't burn the bottoms.

Voila! You've got English muffins!

The recipe makes about 8-10 English muffins depending on how thick you make them.

They're best warm, fresh off the griddle and can be served with peanut butter, jelly, strawberry butter (recipe coming soon), eggs (think EggMcMuffin) and however you usually eat English muffins.

Homemade Cleaning Products

There are really only 3 ingredients you need to clean your entire house: white vinegar, castile soap and baking soda. Add to that list borax, citric acid and vegetable glycerin and you've got all the ingredients you need to make the 4 recipes below, and my homemade dishwasher detergent and dishwashing liquid.

Many of the recipes I found online use essential oils. These products are mostly added for their scent. If you're like me and you don't want to buy a lot of new products, you can use products you already have at home such as lemon juice, orange peels (and dried lavender).

Counter Cleaner:
Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
2 tsp citrus castile soap
3 tbsp lemon juice

To reduce the smell of vinegar, I actually ended up using a 1/2 cup vinegar and a 1/2 cup citrus infused vodka (Taken from Soap Making Essentials, although they just use plain vodka). The infused vodka is made by placing orange slices into vodka and letting it sit in a cool dark place for ~ 2 weeks (if you sterilize your container before using it, you can actually drink it -although I'm not sure how long you should let it stand, some places say 3 days, some say a few weeks- or you can make extracts).

Next time I make this, I'll probably just infuse the vinegar (and keep the vodka for drinking!) and I want to try to use thyme infused water next time as thyme is supposed to disinfect (see Tipnut and Livestrong).

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Floor Cleaner:
1/2 cup vinegar
2 cups lavender infused water

I used to clean with just vinegar and water, but since that has a really strong smell I've started adding lavender. You can use a few drop of lavender oil or just boil water and add fresh lavender to create lavender infused water.

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Bathroom Cleaner:
I used the same ingredients as the floor cleaner to wipe the counters (You can also use the Counter Cleaner, I just prefer citrus in the kitchen and lavender in the bathroom). Then when I clean the sink and bathtub, I just sprinkle some baking soda, then scrub with the vinegar/water/lavender.


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Toilet Bowl Cleaner:
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tbsp baking soda (or borax).

Make sure you mix the ingredients right before you pour them into the toilet and be aware that baking soda and vinegar foam when mixed. Clean with a toilet brush and flush. For hard stains, use more baking soda.

Homemade Dishwashing Liquid

There are a lot of recipes available for homemade dishwasher soap, but I also wanted to make homemade dishwashing liquid. After much searching, I finally found a recipe that works. We're on our second batch and have made a few modification, but it seems to be working well. We are still getting used to the fact that it doesn't foam. I actually added an extra tablespoon of castile soap to the recipe (the original recipe can be found at Towards Sustainability) to add some foam and give the dishwashing liquid some extra power.

 Ingredients:

2 cups warm water

4 tbsp citrus castile soap (Dr. Bronner's)

2 tsp vegetable glycerin

2 tbs vinegar

1 tbs lemon juice

Directions:

Mix the ingredients together (preferably in the order listed), so they dissolve into the water.

Castile soap is a great all-purpose cleaner, vinegar kills germs and bacteria, vegetable glycerin helps break down oils, lemon juice is also a grease cutter and a stain remover.