AIP-friendly Breakfast Hash

I just started myself of the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet, and will likely be sharing some recipes as I discover them.

This particular one-dish meal started as an attempt at a potato-free breakfast side dish, created by my friend Jenna. She threw together some bulk sausage, sliced parsnip, green onion, and parsley and served it up as an accompaniment to eggs. It was love at first bite.

At home, we would make it and serve it with eggs (yellow) and green veggies (green) to make a pretty, well balance plate. But after a while, we realized that we could get pretty and well-balanced just by varying the vegetables we throw into the pan.

So, without further ado, I present my Breakfast Hash Formula.

The Superawesome Jeans Rescue, or: Not Your Grandma's Pull-on Jeans

Oh. My. Gosh. I did it. I can't believe it worked. It worked!!
Ok, you know that pair of jeans that you have at the bottom of the pile? The ones that you have to constantly tug back up in back, that has the half rolled-over waistband in front because your mama flab keeps trying to escape because the rise is just a bit too low? The ones that fit ok 3 years ago, until something happened and your bulges inexplicably shifted? THOSE jeans.
Know what you can do with the dang things? You can, my dear reader, execute a Superawesome Jeans Rescue. Not only will you be able to wear them again, but you won't have to hitch them up EVER, there will be no muffin-top at all, and you can wear those form fitting tops that go down over your hips without the stupid waistband button making a big old lump in the middle. For serious.

Magic Mayonnaise

What's so magic about this mayonnaise? In a nutshell, it's so fast and easy, it practically makes itself. No joke. All you need is a pint mason jar and a stick blender, and you'll be able to astound yourself with how magically you can make mayonnaise with good oils, good eggs, and lacto-fermentation to naturally preserve it.

"Heavenly" Soaked Granola

"Mom! Did you make this yourself?! This is HEAVENLY!" - Bobby, age 8

First, the recipe.

Dolls Are Making Me Crabby

So I have these dolls. I've been making them for years, slowly perfecting my construction methods, making sure that they go together smoothly, look decently proportional, heads don't pop off, etc. I started with smaller ones, then worked my way up to larger, dollhouse-adult sizes, expanded their clothing pattern options. And if I do say so my self, I think they're pretty great.

So, my brilliant idea is to write a book on how to make these pretty great dollhouse dolls. I kept putting off working on it, by allowing myself to get distracted by food, or dagorhir projects, or errands, or Candy Crush, or, well, anything other than sitting down to get a book outline and master patterns hammered out.

Now I know why I'm avoiding it.

Making Butter

Butter-making was one of those things that I knew was supposed to be pretty easy, but I never bothered trying it, because, well....why should I?

But then I started getting raw milk and cream directly from the farm I bought herd-shares from. All of a sudden, I actually had a REASON to learn this supposedly simple process, because whatever I made was going to be better than whatever I could buy.

So, I learned. I looked stuff up online, got the general idea, then dove in. And by golly, it WAS simple. I'm not saying it's not work, because it is. And I'm not saying that I didn't have difficulties, because I did. But I figured it out, and I'll pass on what I learned to you.

Those Darned Socks!

I wear wool socks. That's pretty much all I have. If you have wool socks, you know as well as I do that they tend to wear out on the pressure points - the ball of the foot, and the back of the heel - pretty quickly.

With the price of good wool socks, though, it's not very cost-effective to just toss them once they get thin or get holes worn in them. That's why it's a good idea to learn the age-old practice of sock darning!

Fruit-on-the-Bottom Yogurt Cups

Making yogurt at home is easy. Most of us know this. However, getting your family (and sometimes even yourself!) to actually EAT your homemade yogurt can be a trick, because the flavor and consistency is rarely like what we're used to buying in the store.

This is how you make like-store-bought yogurt cups, with your own pastured milk, no GMOs, and no refined sugar.

Fun With Sourdough

I figured since I posted how to *use* sourdough starter to make bread, it might be handy to know how to make the starter in the first place.

Ok, first off, this is how I made a sourdough starter that worked for me. I'm pretty sure there are loads of people who can and will detail how I'm DOING IT WRONG, but this is how I did it.
Here's the super complicated process:
Put a half-cup of water and a half-cup of flour in a bowl.
Take a whisk and stir it up. Walk around your kitchen while you whisk. Visit the fruit bowl. Go hang out where you keep your bread. Stand by an open window. You're trying to capture some native yeast spores in your sticky flour paste.
Now cover it loosely and let it sit for 24 hours.

Super complicated, I know.

Baking Bread

"Mom, when I move out and have my own apartment, can I buy bread from you?" - Emily, age 14

This is how I make my sandwich bread, and it works for any proportion of whole wheat bread flour to white bread flour. I usually use 100% whole wheat. I make two loaves at a time.

Scrapbook Cookbooks

A few years ago, when my brother got married, my mom got together with all the women in our family and put together a cookbook for his wife. We put each recipe on its own page in a small scrapbook, and took some time on each one to make it interesting and pretty.

Well.....it turned out so well, we all got jealous. Fortunately, Mom had the foresight to scan each page into her computer before wrapping the book up, so that next Christmas, all us girls got identical cookbooks as gifts!

They see a lot of use. Each one of us has added to them, altered them, expanded them...and when a wedding approaches, we get out the scrapbooking supplies, buy a new scrapbook, and get busy!

This fall, I decided that, as a way to keep the recipes that my family REALLY likes all in one place, a new cookbook was in order. I'm not really a scrapbook-y kind of person....but I love the paper, and making a cookbook is an excellent way for me to get to use it in a practical way!




So, I gathered my supplies.