Rain Country Homestead

Have you ever read the ingredients in store bought skin creams? Truly atrocious! Here are two general rules when it comes to ingredients in beauty products: 1). If you do not recognize what it is, it is most likely toxic and should be avoided. 2).   If you should not eat it, you should not be putting it on your skin. Whatever you put on your skin gets absorbed into your blood stream so you might as well be ingesting it. Some the common toxic ingredients found in most store bought skin creams regardless of the price, from budget creams to the high button shoe variety, are:   Parabens, Propylene Glycol,   Sodium Laurel Sulfate, Synthetic Fragrances, Triethanolamine (TEA)/Diethanolamine (DEA), Behentrimonium Chloride, Aluminum. Those are just a few of the long list and these things can cause a plethora of health issues such as rashes, kidney and liver damage, urinary tract and bladder infections, and cancer.   That is just a sampling of th...

This was our second year to get a good harvest of grapes and this one much bigger than the last year.  Since our Niagra White grapes are not seedless, the best thing for us to do to preserve them is turn them into juice that will have many uses through the year.  I do not have any fancy juicing equipment, I just do it the somewhat "old fashioned" way - though I do not crush the grapes with my feet...yet...haha! I start by rinsing my grapes and picking out any bad ones and leaves.   I then put the grape clusters, stems and all, into a big pot and put a shallow layer of water at the bottom, this is mostly to keep the grapes from burning.  I place my big pot on the wood stove and mash for a bit with an old school potato masher.  I then cover with a lid and let simmer for a half hour or so, periodically lifting the lid and mashing more. If using a conventional stove, I would say set it to medium heat. Once the grapes have been mashed ...

I have been making my own seasoned salt for over 20 years. It all started when I got my hands on Amy Dacyczyn's Tightwad Gazette book collection.  At that time it was three separate books but now can be found consolidated into one Complete Tightwad Gazette . I think it was in book three I found a recipe for seasoned salt and since modified it a bit to suit our tastes more.  It also spurred me into making other blends like my Mexican popcorn seasoning blend, and I will share that recipe in another blog post in the future. When I first started making my own seasoned salt many years ago, it was for the purpose of being frugal.  Now it is much more than that.  Take a look at the ingredients of most store bought blends.  They will have at least one or more of any of these ingredients such as GMO corn, MSG, or silicon dioxide.  Good grief! By making your own, you can not only cut out all that nastiness and save money at the same time, you can also choo...

I have been experimenting for some time now using my own fruit based fermentation starters in replace of store bought yeast in my breads.  After making many small loaves and tweaking things a bit here and there, I believe I have finally perfected it though I plan to keep experimenting, especially for using with things like hamburger buns, cinnamon rolls, pizza crust, and more. There are some similarities between using this yeast and doing a sourdough, but the taste is different, more sweet than a sourdough is and I like the fact that I do not have to keep a sourdough starter alive at all times when I can just use my multi purpose fermentation starter. Since we do not eat bread on a daily basis as we are trying to limit our grain intake, using the fruit based starter works best for me. You can find the "how to" post on making your own starter in the hyperlinks above or you can click here.    Also be watching for more posts to come on the many different thi...

If you are vegan or simply cannot have dairy for any reason and have never made your own nutmilk, it is time to start! Making your own means YOU have control over what goes in it and it is far less expensive than store bought.   Have you every really read the labels closely on that over priced container in the store?  Even in many of the so-called organic brands, there is carrageenan and other unhealthy and unsavory ingredients. It really only takes a two ingredients: a healthy water (we use filtered rain water) and whatever your choice of nut or seed you prefer.  You can choose to add your favorite organic sweetener and vanilla extract if you choose. It is incredibly easy and you will be wishing you had started doing this sooner. This batch of nut milk I am making is almond from organic, raw almonds that have not been chemically treated. I have also made coconut, cashew, brazil nut, and hemp seed milks.   How To Make Nut ...

I have been making our own tooth powders and pastes for years and along the way have changed the recipe several times until I came up with this one.  It is my favorite of all the ones I have created. This recipe makes decent size batch so that it can be stored in a quart sized jar to use in refilling smaller jars we use for each person in the household as needed.  Doing it this way has really saved me a lot of time.  When one person's jar is emptied, it gets rinsed, dried, and refilled from the quart jar.  Easy and fast. Though one can use just plain baking soda,  it can often be too abrasive for using this way daily for a long period of time.  It has been said that it can actually cause minor scratches on the teeth that will likely lead to a greying or darkening of the teeth. This is why I like to blend the sodium bicarbonate with either organic Tapioca Starch or Arrow Root Powder. The addition of the magnesium and calcium citrates i...