Heldin im Chaos

Cooking with nitrite-free bacon: learn from my lesson

A few weeks ago, some girlfriends were discussing the woes of nitrites in bacon.  I tend to avoid buying bacon full stop, because once I get started, I can't seem to lay off it and I do so enjoy the flavor.  Knowing it is naughty (for the fats, I thought), I just stopped buying it.  It turns out the fats aren't the worst part; rather, it's the nitrite/nitrate preservatives.  The girlfriends were discussing this quandry, and someone mentioned one butcher in town (coincidentally, my part of town) that sells nitrite-free bacon.  "Has anyone tried it?  Major bucks!" she said.  I was intrigued.  Indeed, it was for sale at AU$49.99 per kilo, but I bought a pack of maybe 10 slices and it cost $6.75 (pretty average for quality bacon, actually).  I wanted to make corn chowder, which is best (in my opinion) on a base of bacon fat.  Yum.  

My lesson to you is: nitrite-free bacon is preserved not with the very nasty nitrites but by smoking the sh*t out of the bacon.  After cooking four slices, my house smells like a smokehouse and I didn't make "corn chowder";  I made lumpy "smoke soup."  Nitrite-free bacon tastes quite good, but it does not taste like bacon as we know it.  Serve it up on the side, but you might want to reconsider it as a built-in ingredient.

Tuesday tips: Clove oil = mold-be-gone!

Raise your hand if you like the smell of cloves!  (ME!)  Let me introduce you to a little bottle of clove oil, something that will make cleaning your bathroom a far more lovely experience than you achieve with commercial stuff.

 

Clove oil inhibits mold.

Just add a few drops to tap water (maybe 3-4 drops oil for every 8 ounces water).  Pour the mixture into an empty spray bottle, and you have a handy, beautifully-scented mold inhibitor!  I find this especially nice in the bathroom as a final touch after a clean.  Just mist the clove oil-water solution on non-porous surfaces (tile, shower curtain, even your wall and grout are fine) and walk away.  Your bathroom will smell great, and no new mold will start sneaking in behind your back.  Other very effective, natural mold and mildew inhibitors are white vinegar and apple cider vinegar.  Just don't expect any of these to remove the black mold stain, if it had gotten that bad; you will need bleach for that.

A word to parents:  Don't be tempted to go crazy with clove oil and plastic bath toys. I recommend a white vinegar solution for those (LMNOP must have read my mind, and their latest blog post is on this very topic). You can, however, rejoice in clove oil's analgesic properties.  It is apparently excellent for toothaches (though not for sore gums or children under 2).

By the way, many commercial mold removers actually only remove the stain of mold (something clove oil does not do).  They can bleach the surface white, but the spores are still active.  I learned that nasty tidbit from the insurance guy who came to look at the house after we had mushrooms grow out of the carpet.  That whole room was a potential mold zone, and he scoffed at the bottle of Exit Mould our estate agent had provided.  The fumes would have been horrific, and what we needed was a preventative rather than a cover-up.  His suggestion was to wipe down the walls with apple cider vinegar diluted in water.  Much more pleasant, non-toxic and quite effective (also a good kitchen floor cleaner).  Thank you for that!

 

Unrelated, I noticed last week that Small Notebook posted a great cleaning tip I already use (hooray!) on Tuesday!  It's the alliteration: "Tuesday tips" are good!  Do you have any to share?

Tuesday tips: The Big Tomato

I'm going to put this out there from the start:  I am not the world's best housekeeper.  I'm pretty crap at it, actually.  My house will pass a sanitary test, but tidy?  Not so much.  My brain just seems wired to accept clutter in the form of "organized piles."  As long as no one else touches it, I know what's there (most of the time).  I'm a very visual person, so I tend to leave things out until I am completely done with them.  It's just that the "completely done" phase rarely seems to be achieved.  Ahem.  Honestly, when I look around and see lots of clutter, I see all the little tiny built-in jobs that are required to do a truly thorough and correct clean and tidy...and I get overwhelmed at the thought.  Instead of making a dent, I go eat a cookie or enjoy a cuppa or surf the net (big time-suck!) or knit or hide under the bed...just about anything else can take priority.  I love the idea of a totally clean and tidy house, but the input required to get it there stops me nearly every time.  Enter the Big Tomato.

It's called the Pomodoro Technique (Italian for "tomato", thus my translation to The Big Tomato).  You can follow the link to the home site, where the book is available as a free download.  The basic idea is that closely monitoring your time and allocating specific tasks to a set time slot vastly improves productivity.  How does it work?  Set a timer for 25 minutes (one "pomodoro") and work uninterrupted at that task until the timer is done.  Then, take a five minute break.  For every four pomodoros, you get a longer break.  

This plan is genius!  Do I want to clean the house?  No.  Can I spend 25 very focused, intentional minutes cleaning (select just one room to start) and then take a 5 minute break after?  YES!  Do I have time to totally clean the kitchen top to bottom?  No.  Can I sweep, mop, etc in 25 minutes?  Actually, yes!  

This works so well for me!  The timer seems to be the key.  I haven't been doing this for long, but I'm going to stick with it.  So far, I've only applied it sporadically (during my daughter's naptimes this week) to see how much I can accomplish in those 25 minute segments.  It's a LOT, I can tell you!  Wow.  And do I enjoy those 5 minute breaks?  You bet!  They feel like little rewards rather than guilty side-tracking.  Obviously, this has applications far beyond my lazy housekeeping, but that's where I decided to start.  I have a massive to-do list of projects and planning that would benefit from applying this technique.  I think my next step is to start planning out my task list and monitoring my progress.  Join me in giving it a real go?

Tuesday tips: Grated lemon zest

Have you ever found yourself flour-coated and knee-deep in a recipe only to realize it calls for lemon zest and you don't have any lemons?  Or you do have lemons, but it seems a darned shame to waste them for the sake of the zest?  Maybe you have lemons and need lemon juice, but don't want to waste that good zest?  Perhaps I'm the only person with these problems (oh, the travails of us foodies!), but no longer!  The next time you do have fresh lemons on hand, you can make the most of them for future recipes.

Freeze freshly-squeezed lemons.  Zest them, still frozen, as needed.

Voila!  I only learned this trick recently, and I used it tonight for a small but critical ingredient in pinenut-crusted snapper.  Woo, baby!  That was some yummy dinner, and I know it has something to do with that little bit of lemon zest.

Tuesday* tips: Castor Oil and the OCM

I've written about the Oil Cleansing Method (OCM) before, because I am a fan.  I started using castor oil and extra virgin olive oil to wash my face at night almost a year ago, and I am very happy with the results!  It removes dirt, oil (yes, oil!), makeup...and leaves my skin feeling soft and refreshed.  I may sound like a commercial, but this method won't get its time on TV.  Seriously, why would expensive cosmetics companies give away the secret that you could wash your face perfectly well for less than $5 a month?

 

This is my little bottle of castor oil and a travel-sized squeeze bottle I filled with olive oil to leave in the bathroom.  The only other needs are a clean washcloth and hot water.

Even if you are on the fence about the OCM, I still recommend you keep some castor oil in your medicine cabinet.  It is widely used as a laxative, and many overdue and heavily pregnant women credit its use for helping get labor started (though this is not particularly recommended or reliable).  Castor oil is good for your skin.  The OCM maximizes this with the olive oil for hydration, but on its own, castor oil is very effective at drying up acne (a bit too effective, actually, so still add a bit of olive oil for your skin's sake).  Grandmary tipped me off to old country wisdom about castor oil: over time, repeated application of castor oil is effective at eliminating warts!  Do you hate that awful acid stuff available over the counter to paint onto a wart and leave to burn (again and again for days!)?  Use castor oil instead.  This is a particularly good alternative if you have a wart on your hand and you are constantly in contact with babies who like to suck or gnaw on your fingers (ask me how I know this).

So there you have it: a totally useful substance in a little bottle at a cost of $10 or less.  Yippee!

*Sorry I'm a day late with my Tuesday tips this week.  We enjoyed a long weekend, courtesy of the Queen's birthday, so Tuesday felt very much like a Monday.  I'm a day off entirely.

Tuesday tip: Dodging the nude bra

Over the years, I've collected lots of little random tips and tricks.  Each one is so little but greatly useful, so I thought I'd try to get into the habit of passing them along.  My attempt at this will be weekly "Tuesday tips" (for the simple reason that I like the alliteration).  It would be fantastic if you would drop a little useful tip in the comment section, along with a link to your blog if you've got one!  My first and most fun tip is this week's "Dodging the nude bra."

For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, white shirt season is passing you by as autumn makes its presence felt.  For those of us Down Under and in all other regions south of the equator, spring is upon us and white shirts are reasserting themselves in our wardrobes.  This brings out the useful-but-boring nude bra.  Years ago, I was trained by the Bra-wearing Powers That Be that the only way to avoid showing the world your bra (or undies, for that matter) while wearing white was the nude color option.  A very practical tip, but yawn.  It just doesn't make this woman feel particularly sexy.  Then, a couple of years ago while living in The Hague, a fantastic lingerie shop opened around the corner from our home, and the lady who owned the shop taught me this surprising trick:

Red does not show under white.  

I didn't believe her until (being Dutch and therefore very frank) she unbuttoned her tight white jeans right there and showed me her red thong.  Hello!  She had always found that nude did show to some degree, but red (or at least certain shades of red) didn't at all.  She sold me a beautiful, sexy, red lace bra and matching undies* on the spot, and I've been one happy chica in white ever since.  

Look!  Even with the light shining through the shirt, you can't see the red!

There is something very fun about the red beneath the white, a very sexy secret just for you and the lucky person you might choose to share it with...and of course, there's that obvious benefit of not showing the outline of the undergarments to everyone else.  Useful, really.

*The lingerie line carried in her shop (P'tite Sophie on the Denneweg) is Belabumbum, so I can tell you from experience that their red is the "right" shade.  You yummy mummies out there should know that Belabumbum also makes gorgeous maternity and nursing lingerie, which is such a lovely alternative to sports-bra-style breast-feeding bras carried by just about everyone else.