Archived Posts from diy

My dad and I were discussing how this little product is actually quite expensive. The vacuum itself isn’t really that expensive, I paid $7.00 for mine. They have been running $2.00 coupons in the paper and our local grocery store had the product on sale for $9.00. The problem isn’t the vacuum but the cost of the bags. I bought a box of gallon bags, 9 bags to be exact. This cost me an additional $3.29 or roughly $.37 per bag. Ouch! You better have some really great things to freeze.

I was attracted to the idea because I freeze a lot of the vegetables out of our garden. Unfortunately, I might as well just buy the vegetables from the grocery for that price. Well, I did have another idea. (Read the rest of this entry »)

Cooking, Family, Opinions, Tips

coconutOur family uses quite a bit of coconut milk for use in different recipes. Most commonly we use the coconut milk instead of other liquids when making rice. This makes a wonderful aromatic creamy rice. Unfortunately, coconut milk is fairly expensive. There is a solution.

You can make coconut milk at home quite easily. Just combine dry unsweetened coconut with hot water at a ratio of 1 to 2. For example, combine 1 cup of dry coconut to 2 cups hot water. I like to put the mixture in a blender and blend it for 30 seconds or so to make sure that it is thoroughly combined. Be careful when blending hot liquids as they tend to expand quite a bit. Pulsing the blender a couple of times helps to reduce the expansion. Let the mixture set for about 30 minutes and strain off the solids. The milk will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator.

Ingredients:
Dry unsweetened coconut - 1 part
Hot water - 2 parts

Directions:
Combine and let sit for 30 minutes.

Cooking, Tips

Baby GateAdjustable baby gates are wonderful in that they are both cheap and adjustable. Their weakness is that they are difficult to adjust. The little clip is always wanting to slip out of place and you often don’t know which notch works best for the door way. We found two solutions to this problem.

  1. Use a marker and mark the notch that works best. This works great if you are often moving the gate between different width doors.
  2. If the gate is being used primarily in one doorway or is used in doorways that are the same size you can fix the gate into one position. We used a wire staple to hold the clip in the notch that best fit our door and it still remains both collapsible and easily sets into place.
Family, Tips