health – Page 13 – Home's Cool!

Recipes and Tips Week, as Promised – Here are some of my favorite secrets. Enjoy!

Posted on November 8, 2010April 21, 2015 by Katharine

Homemade Self-rising Whole Wheat Flour
10 cups whole wheat flour
5 teaspoons salt
5 Tablespoons double-acting baking powder

Sift together three times. Store very tightly covered. Substitute for self-rising flour.

This really works and adds fiber to your diet. Great for pancakes, biscuits, anything you usually make with self-rising flour. So handy!

Sometimes, you may notice a slight difference in consistency. This comes from the fiber in the whole wheat. You may use a bit more if you feel your batter or dough is too soft or runny. Or add regular whole wheat flour to make consistency you expected. You can do this. It’s how new recipes come about.

Emergency Homemade “Cake Flour”
Place 2 tablespoons cornstarch into one-cup measure. Lightly add enough flour to fill cup. Sift together, well. Substitute for 1 cup cake flour. To make in advance for general use:

1 cup cornstarch
7 cups flour

Sift together three times. Store tightly covered. Makes eight cups “cake flour”.

Emergency Frosting without Powdered Sugar
5 Tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 cup (2 sticks) soft butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Whisk together flour and milk. Slowly cook, stirring constantly, until it boils and is very thick. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

Whip rest of ingredients in large mixer bowl until fluffy. Gradually add flour mixture and beat until fluffy, the longer, the better. May add 2 T. cocoa with 1 t. milk to first flour mixture, if desired. Enough for two-layer cake. Store refrigerated.

Tomorrow will be savings tips. See ya!

Husbands, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Wives, Womanhood

Tired. Dog Tired.

Posted on October 11, 2010June 8, 2011 by Katharine

This week’s posts answer several questions from a dear woman in a wrenching situation. I answered her immediately and privately, awhile back. Recently postpartum with her first child, she wonders about the effects of her wounded and out-lashing husband. She wonders if it would be better for the baby to live without a dad. Here is the greater part of my answers:

Yes! That “row-to-hoe” can stretch on forever, trying to outlive children, can’t it? I know because I had six of them and they sometimes seemed to have a head start on me.

Just when we imagine all’s well, something surfaces, and usually at the worst time, right? Accustoming myself to motherhood and all its foibles and failures cost me several years of my life. By the time the third child arrived, I thought I’d mastered some techniques of child raising. Boy, was I wrong!

I finally got it, though. Now I know the only, only, only way to give a child a happy life is to have parents who seek God daily, even hourly. I can do my half of that.

Difficult childbirth has knocked at my door, too, leaving me weak and weary. Oh, I know the long days and short nights. I know the constant care-giving while needing care, yourself. I know the disorientation, forgetfulness, depression, and touchiness that come with the elation and wonder at experiencing this tiny new being. How could I have sunk into such sadness when life had dealt such joy as a miracle baby?

Easy.

My health deteriorated when I gave birth. I was not in tip-top shape, in fact, I remembered only vaguely what tip-top felt like. What a zombie I was! Hormones jumped up and down a scale from below zero to over the moon. I battled for sanity, once nearly broke down. I lacked iron. A gaping wound in my internals healed slowly. I slept only occasionally, fitfully.

And they asked me to make decisions. I would have laughed, except my laugh was broken. Laughter would have required action, and I mostly operated on reaction. I was so tired, every decision culminated in taking a nap, which never materialized because hormones would not let me sleep.

The better course would have been to have waited until I was the real me. The difficulty of waiting disappears when you lose track of time, though. We need waiting. For nine months, we wait for the most important event in ages, and never, ever do we think more waiting would greatly help. But we need waiting.

If we cannot find a good rhythm, some rest, and sanity, if our smile turns upside-down more often than not, is it the time to make a life-long decision? No. If I cannot decide if I want to eat or not, is it time to decide if I want to keep my husband or not? No. Wait.

Homemaking, Husbands, Inspiring, Wisdom, Wives

Gramma’s Wisdom – Go Faster!

Posted on October 8, 2010March 19, 2015 by Katharine

Life can fill so quickly with predicaments that weaken our intentions. A simple variation can derail me.

One day last spring was all about laundry until I woke up. Really late. The recent time change had messed up my life. I aimed at sleep, but missed the mark. When I asked a pharmacist about melatonin, he told me the brain already makes that. When I said, “I know it, but my brain is confused,” he nearly fell down laughing.

The melatonin hurt my stomach. The gift of sleep presented itself to me, those days, in three-hour shifts, with three hours between each shift.

Eventually everything catches up with everyone. The impossibility of waking at 7:30 to do all the laundry and arrive in town before 10:00 ruled my every action. Some of the laundry washed while some dried, when I left without my usual shower. Half-way to town, I remembered what I forgot: breakfast. Lunching, finally, at 2:00, left me weak.

Anyway, during that day, I experienced a refreshing visit with an old friend. She showed me her reproduction quilt. Some of the pieces are about a half-inch square. Of course, she hand-pieced it, over 2000 pieces. She lives alone in what she calls “this broken down house” and delights, as I do, in fabrics. She showed me how she quilts and how she locks her stitches. We discussed my curtains. I save this visit with her as a treat for when I need a return to reality.

Then it was on to the printer, on to the bank, on to the library, zooming as best I could without breaking any laws. Zooming to grab a short lunch, zooming to transfer laundry loads, zooming to fold and hang clothing, zooming to check chickens, zooming to make the bed (anytime before 4:30 p.m. counts), zooming to answer the phone, zooming to—does it matter?

Does it matter as much as a friend and her quilt?

My husband was out of white socks and hoped to play racquetball the next day. I paid close attention to folding his socks, stayed up late to get it done. I believe in making laundry happen for my people. It is my profession: I am an expert, and I believe a person can teach himself to enjoy any activity. I enjoy doing laundry. It calms me. I derive satisfaction from gazing at a long row of expertly-ironed, long-sleeved shirts and watching my husband leave in the morning, wearing a crisp, good-smelling shirt. It is a competition, although most women do not realize it, and secretly, I win.

Next morning, when I again awoke late, I remembered what I had forgotten: to place the folded socks where my husband could find them. They were still atop the file cabinet, where I had sleepily left them, and he was gone.

Okay, so you win, after all.

Blessings of Habit, Homemaking, Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom, Wives

Gramma’s Wisdom – Spring Cleaning

Posted on October 7, 2010November 29, 2016 by Katharine

They tell me old timers used to practice Spring-cleaning every year. My mother did. For a long while, I felt guilty when I failed even to nod in that direction. Now I realize why they did it and why they had the energy.

And what a blessing it was, in disguise.

They had to. Winter warmth cost them more than just the husband’s fuel bill. The fuel deposits carried an extra annual cost for the wife: Spring-cleaning. Smoke from wood or coal settled ash onto every surface, even walls, curtains, and ceiling. Humid breezes from spring’s open windows melded with this deposit, forming mold. It was clean or die, and they knew it. Hence the motivation to have some energy.

I recently heard from some beautiful elderly women who remember their grandmothers’ Spring-cleaning. Drafting every member of the family and any neighbors who wanted to trade services, they ordered every piece of furniture outdoors. I know why. Every piece needed cleaning, fore and aft, inside and out, yes.

However, the carpet, itself, also had to make that trip outdoors for a good scrubbing and sunning, and to grant that sub-floor its own turn with the soap and scrub brush.

Everything, everything, in the house was clean as new, only one week later.

Usually they worked together, neighbors helping each other by turns, just as the men often did the harvest. Spring-cleaning and the harvest were equally essential to life, and they knew it. God had told them in Leviticus 14, and, of course, lately we’ve learned He was right, that a moldy house is bad, but back then they didn’t have any better sense than to believe God.

Well, of course, that was the right thing to do, but to believe Him so much that they would act on it by actually removing mold or even the potential for mold, was their only recourse, lacking today’s science.

Well, of course, today’s science isn’t so advanced if they actually already knew these things back in our great-great-great-grandmothers’ days, but it just proves that those verses actually were right.

I mean, to invest an entire week of hard work into believing that a few Bible verses might be right, was the best they could do. They had no way of knowing the dangers of mold or the importance of washing things

Oh.

I think I’ll go dust for a while. ‘Bye, now.

_________________

Katharine is a retired home educating mom who writes about all things “woman”, from a Godly viewpoint, here on this site, and at The Conquering Mom. Her writing appeared in several magazines for 15 years, and she is currently working on several books. She loves to write, speak, teach, cook, garden, spoil her hennies, and watch old movies with popcorn.