Purge Motivation ~ Camping Tip I Learned

 A few of you have mentioned that purging/organizing/tossing seems a bit overwhelming.  Well, this is how I do it.

I put the boxes of "stuff" in the smack dab middle of the living room.  It's in plain sight, and that will bother me, so it's tackled and taken care of and more out of the house faster.  More put in their new homes, or re-organized.  I am cleaning as if I was moving, so I handle each item asking myself, "would I take you to a new home," which helps make decisions on keeping or donating much easier.

I do have a ton of paperwork, that got taken out of a file cabinet 1 year ago (and 2 months to be precise).  The boxes were shoved into the office when the kitchen was boxed up to repair the flooring.

I found my hand crank coffee grinder, and my apple peeler/corer.  I honestly never had a chance to use the peeler.  How many of you have a peeler/corer combo and use it? 

Decisions are to be made here.  That fan was left upstairs by one of the kids, and it's on it's last leg, but I think we used it for one of the rooms we repaired and renovated.  It may be getting scrapped.

I hope that helps motivate you, if you need motivation.  We were just so overdue to purge/extreme clean/re-organize. 

Camping Tip (with a camper with water/grey water tank):  Wash your dishes with dawn powerwash (any environmentally safe dish soap) only, then over a dish tub run water over dishes to rinse, then dump the rinse water outside (or some campgrounds have a grey water dump near by).  This helps you keep your grey water tank from filling too fast while camping.  It is easier to get fresh water, than to dump your grey water tank.

When we had our pop up camper, it had a water tank, but for some reason we never used it.  We would heat water on the campfire, and fill two dish tubs to wash and rinse our dishes.

We are on day 21 of no rain, but that may change later today.  Crossing fingers, saying a prayer, and sending out that good mojo.

Buttermilk Biscuits ~ The Biscuit Experiment ~ Einkorn Flour Biscuits

 I apologize in advance.  I printed this recipe from a blog I follow, but failed to write down which blog.  It was a while ago too.   You know me, I'm a sucker to try a new recipe.

I gave the recipe a try, and here is how mine turned out. These baked pretty well, considering my baking powder was expired (gulp).  I haven't been doing much baking around here lately.

These were delicious freshly baked, but next day very dense.  Good, but the white flour is not good on our meal plan. 

So....

I played around with einkorn flour the other day.   Einkorn will not spike my husband's blood sugar levels. I see that Jovial has a drop biscuit recipe, but it calls for a full TBSP of baking powder (?) and maple syrup.

If you make einkorn biscuits without any sugar, please tell me how you make yours and if I need to change anything.

I prefer to use recipes directly from Jovial, but they only have two biscuit recipes on their site.

Here is what I did:

Einkorn Biscuit Trial #1

2 1/2 cups all-purpose einkorn flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

8 Tbsp butter (see note below), cold (organic)

3/4 cup milk, cold (I used organic whole milk)

I did my typically biscuit mixing, but with einkorn I like to sift it, so I sifted it with the baking powder and salt.  I cut in the butter with a pastry blender, then added the milk.  I only knead until it's all together, then I cut with a biscuit cutter.  I did these with a 2 inch.

Baked at 400°F for about 17-18 minutes.

They came out crispy on the bottom and a teensy crispy on the sides/top, but the center was soft.

Should I make any changes?  Add more milk, cut back on flour, change the baking powder amount?  The Jovial recipe for their drop biscuits calls  for 2 cups flour and 1 Tbsp baking powder and some cream of tartar.

Also, is there a way to still get a nice biscuit without baking powder?  Another healthier way to get that rise in the biscuit?

Baking soda and cream of tartar?

Buttermilk and baking soda?

Any ideas?

Note:  I either cube my butter and put in the fridge to keep cold, or put the butter in the freezer, then grate it for biscuits.  I have also grated it first (which does make a greasy mess on your hands, but works too), then froze the grated bits.

Results:  My husband said, "well, their biscuits" ha ha!  Not the best tasting, but a healthy alternative for when we have biscuits and sausage gravy (which is not very often).