Category Archives: Cooking & Food Storage

As with all parenting tips, take this as it is presented – something I learned that I think is useful – that I am sharing.

I have a friend that is trained in toxicology, that is also an awesome home brewer and creator of all manner of Charcuterie.  I will freely admit, that if I got this idea from Joe Snuffie on some anonymous internet page I would probably not try it, however I trust my source and he does it with his own baby.

So my friend and I were talking about kids and the conversation turned to how his child had started “hiding” baby bottles around the house, and how nasty an old bottle of milk could get. I could just see the rising expense of baby bottles, as my wife would never let me reuse a bottle that once held moldy rotted milk.

My friend sympathized and shared a Clean Baby Bottles tip he uses, which is to put a small kefir grain in with the formula.

Basically all he is doing is inoculating the milk to control the bacteria in it.  The baby drinks all he wants before the milk turns to kefir (which takes 30 days or so), and if the half drunk bottle disappears behind the couch the good bacteria in the kefir overpowers the nasty bacteria that makes the milk turn black and nasty.

Kefir is a pro-biotic, which is something a baby needs anyway, so the small amount in the milk could be argued as beneficial to baby, even though I posit that the small amount is relatively neutral.

Now, as a disclaimer – this isn’t for infants – this is for toddlers who are old enough to tolerate honey because of a more established bacterial culture in their intestines.  Also before you trust your baby’s health to some crazy internet guy – run this past their pediatrician.  I am not a doctor, I just think this is a neat idea that I plan on trying when the boy gets a little older.

Brandied Fruit is a great way to preserve fresh fruit without having to deal with the heat of canning, which makes it perfect for the summer.

We have brandied several fruits, from strawberries to apples. Our experience with apples is that even after a year the apples are just as crispy as they were when we first brandied them. However, the apples have absorbed the alcohol and tastes just like the alcohol we used to preserve it. Depending on your tastes and uses this can be a good or a bad thing.

For the apples we just mixed everything together.

The Strawberries are more like a strawberry shortcake sauce (and it tastes great on shortcake), and did not pick up as much of the alcohol flavor. However, when we did the strawberries, we cooked them a little on the stove first.

Ingredients

• 1 c. brandy (we used white whiskey)
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 c. fruit (sliced)

Procedure

• Mix brandy sugar and fruit
• Place in airtight jar for at least 2 weeks

brandied fruit is an awesome gift, when I give some brandied strawberries to my friends, they all want more.  In the past this was to preserve food over the winter, but now it is a way to enjoy nature’s goodness.

Until you have had strawberry shortcake with a brandied strawberry topping, you have no idea what you are missing.

So simple, not many words are needed. As a matter of fact, when I first saw this Strawberry Coring tip I thought it was the most innovative thing I had seen in a long time, but I was disappointed when my normally uniformed wife, very matter of factly told me that “everyone knows this…” I didn’t know it, so I am sharing it…

Take a straw and a whole strawberry and push straw up through the bottom of the strawberry and the core pops right out.

If you wonder why I shared I a tip that “everyone already knew” its simple – while I hope that this website helps people learn how to become more self reliant as well as to be a place people can visit for answers to questions they have – it is more a documentary of my journey from a guy that read about things to become a guy that does things.  I did not know how to use a strawberry as a strawberry coring aid, so when I did learn I shared it.

This strawberry coring tip worked pretty good.  I use it whenever I have to make something with strawberries.  It worked perfect with my brandied strawberries.