The Dish Fairy Does Some Plumbing

I believe confession is good for the soul...but confessing on your blog is some pretty heavy confession.  Here goes...

I clogged my kitchen sink and I did it really well and completely.  Here's the story....

Homemade Countertop Cleaner (for Granite too!)

My friend Amy got new granite countertops and my friend Martha got a new travertine stone shower and so, I got to thinking...how do your clean these without damaging the stone.

Here is what I learned.  Granite is very hard and very hard to damage, but the seal isn't.  Granite also is prone to stain.  It is a natural porous material.  So, you DO need to protect it.  Here's what I have determined that I will do to take care of my granite.  (Remember, I am NOT an expert.  I just am reporting things I found on the internet.  My information is only as good as the information I found.)

One Dish Dinner - Pad Thai

I had seen a post floating around facebook for a "One Pot Wonder" made with pasta, tomatoes and basil and thought "Oh my!  If that works, someone is brilliant."  Then, I found this recipe at www.apronstringsblog.com for a Thai One Pot Wonder and had to try it.

BUT, I am gluten-free (not by choice) and gf pasta does not act the same as wheat pasta, so this was truly going to be an experiment.  In the true experimental mode, I made two pots.  One regular pasta and one Thai rice noodles.  Here's what I found...

How to make your own Pool Table

Warning:  today's post has nothing to do with the Dish Fairy or the deficit of a Dish Fairy...

I have a pool.  I love my pool.  I spend a lot of time in my pool and I've always wanted a floating table.  So, I made one...my own pool table.

Friday's Fab Five - Tacos

On Friday's, I post a recipe to make five meals at one time - all in one pan!  That way we all have  fewer dishes to wash!!

Today's is SUPER easy!  Tacos....you can take this method and use it for all kinds of meals, but this is the easiest.

Dish Fairy Approved Dishwasher Tabs

Well, I've been experimenting with dishwasher soap for about a month now and here is what I have learned.  When you are making soap, any kind, your type of water makes a HUGE difference.  What works for one person will not necessarily work for others because you have different water.

I started with One Good Thing by Jillee's post about dishwasher tabs and made it just like she said.  My dishes looked horrible.  Now, I LOVE Jillee, so I'm sure it works for her or she wouldn't have posted it.  But, she lives in a small Utah town and I live in the 4th largest city in the States - Houston.  So, obviously we have different water and I had to tweak her recipe.  (Actually, it was more than a tweak - more of a rework.)

So, lesson learned....play until you get it right.

Corn on the cob with no mess?!? Get out!

My friend, Amy, is having her kitchen remodeled and so I went to help her pack up everything.  Because I'm super sweet, I took dinner...and then said, "we can cook this, but we have to do it my way and we have to stop and take pictures."  I'm very bossy that way.

After we finished she said, "Wow!  We might have corn on the cob more if I can do the shuck and silk thing that way!"  So, now her family is probably thanking me.  I will say "You're welcome."

Homemade Laundry Soap

Now, you may be asking how does a blog about the lack of a Dish Fairy have anything to do with laundry?  Well, let me tell you.

See here is how the equation works. 

If I save money, that leaves extra money in the "Eating Out" category of the budget. 

If I eat out, there are no dishes to wash.

If there are no dishes to wash, I am happy, happy, happy.

Isn't that brilliant????  Such simple math

So, last week I had posted about a laundry soap that I had made and had been using about a month and loved everything about it, especially the PRICE!

One Dish Dinner: Succotash

One Dish Dinners are my absolute favorite!  Any meal that I can cook and only wash one dish is a winner dinner!

Now, this isn't really Succotash because it doesn't actually have lima beans and lima beans are a requisite in succotash.  The original recipe did include lima beans, but we don't really do limas well, so I changed the recipe, but not the name.  It's one of those One Dish dinners that really can be made with whatever you have in the fridge and pantry.  But, here's how I make it....most of the time.  But, if you don't have zucchini, don't worry.  It'll still be good.

Amazing Coconut Oil

On Saturdays, I have decided to give the Dish Fairy a break and stop complaining about how she doesn't help me out. 

On Saturdays, I'm just going to post about things I like or things that I want to tell you about.

Today:  Coconut Oil

Friday's Fab Five - Spaghetti

On Friday's I post a recipe to make five meals at one time - all in one pan!  That way we all have  fewer dishes to wash!!

I only buy hamburger in family packs.  It is not worth my time to cook one pound at a time.  I don't enjoy washing dishes and that would mean that I have to clean 5 skillets.  That is not for me.  So, when family packs are on sale, I stock up!

I used to buy 5 pounds and make 5 different recipes to freeze.  But, now I buy 5 pounds and make the same recipe in bulk.  We eat one that day and then I freeze the others for the future.

LemonAid

Some really easy lemon tricks in the kitchen....(like my play on words, lemon AID, not lemonade???)

I had some citrus in the fridge that was starting to look a little yucky and I didn't want to just throw it away, so I decided to see what interesting things I could do with the little buggers.  I was AMAZED at what I found!!!

Home Made Hand Soap

A few weeks ago, my friend Alli posted a question on facebook wondering if anyone had ever made their own hand soap.  So, today when I was adding hand soap to the grocery list, I got to wondering the same thing.

So after a little research...

How to Clean your Dishwasher

When I first heard about cleaning the dishwasher, I thought, "Why?  After all, the soap cleaning my dishes is cleaning my dishwasher too."  Well, after inspecting my dishwasher...I was wrong. 

Never fear!  This is easy, peasy, lemon squeasy.

One Dish Dinner: Italian Chicken

21 years ago while I was pregnant, I ended up on bed rest for 16 weeks.  Lots of very sweet people brought me meals.  This was one of our favorites and has remained one that my kiddos beg me to fix.

Tines up or Tines Down?

Some people have rules about their dishwashers.  This really blows me away I guess because my only dishwasher rule is "put it in."  But it has come to my attention that the following topic is VERY debatable  So...how do you load your dishwasher tines up or tines down?

The debate:
Do forks get cleaner if the tines are up or down? 
Should knives be sharp up or sharp down?
What about little fingers or doggie tongues that might get poked or cut?
 

Saving money = less dishes to wash

See here is how the equation works. 

If I save money, that leaves extra money in the "Eating Out" category of the budget. 

If I eat out, there are no dishes to wash.

If there are no dishes to wash, I am happy, happy, happy.

Isn't that brilliant????  Such simple math. 

Free meal tommorow!

Tomorrow is Chick-fil-A Cow Appreciation Day.  That means if you dress up like a cow, you get free food.  If you get free food, you don't need the dish fairy.

Avoidance Tactics

Well, in the never ending quest to avoid dish duty, going to a restaurant ranks pretty high up there in avoidance tactics.  The problem is....we have two kids in college this year.  That means that all my extra money (and some not so extra) will be going straight to the university.  So, in order to eat out, I will need to get super creative.

Anything to avoid doing dishes

Ok, a little dark, deep secret about me...I hate doing dishes.  I will do just about anything to avoid doing dishes.  If Rumpelstiltskin had come to me while I was pregnant and offered to trade me doing the dishes for my first born child, I would've considered the trade.  Not for long and I wouldn't have done it, but I would've BRIEFLY considered it.

I've even gone so far as to start a blog to avoid doing dishes.  In fact, as I type, there is a  dishwasher full of dishes that need to be unloaded.  UGH. 

She needs a straw.

So, yesterday I had to make a short road trip.  This was a good thing and a bad thing.  Bad because my FIL is having surgery.  Good because it was my first road trip in my NEW car.  I love my new car.  It's little and red and gets great gas mileage, but the best thing is the smell.  New car smell.  I LOVE new car smell.  A lot.

Because I like new car smell so much, I have eaten much in my new car.  I don't want to distort the smell, but yesterday I needed to eat on the road.  (I bet you can already see where this is going.)

So, I'm tooling along at 70 mph and I pick up my drink to take a sip of my cold, sweet tea.  Somehow, my fry container punches a hole in my Chick-fil-a cup.  It's Styrofoam which should be indestructible, but evidently the new car smell has rendered it molecularly weak.  One tiny hole in the cup and guess what?  I now have a sweet tea waterfall...in my new car...while I am driving 70 mph.  Panic.  Absolute panic.  I swerve to the shoulder only to find that there is no place to stop because I've swerved into an on-ramp.  Double panic.  Now at this point, I am trying to drive at high speeds, swerve, AND hold my hands (yes, both) over the hole in the cup to prevent the waterfall of sweet tea from soiling my new car.  Then, I get brilliant.  I just put it back into my cup holder which luckily is the type that is entirely enclosed.  That way I can find a GOOD place to pull over and clean up my mess.

So, I concentrate on driving and find a good stopping point and look down.  Good news.  I no longer have a waterfall.  Now it is a lake.  A lake of sweet tea...in my cup holders...in my NEW car.  I wish I had thought to take a picture because no joke - there were 3 inches of sweet tea in my cup holders.

What was my first thought?  The dish fairy, if she loved me, would magically appear and use her magic straw and suck the sweet tea lake up and out of my little red car.  I waited.  No dish fairy.  I thought briefly about calling my husband, "quick, bring me the wet vac"!  Then, I decided this might be one of those moments in a marriage when you elect NOT to call your spouse.  (My husband is kinda a car guy and a clean guy.  I can guarantee you that he has NEVER had a sweet tea lake in his vehicle.)

So, I HAD TO CLEAN IT UP!!!!  Now, in my old car, I would have had all kinds of things lying around to help my cleanup effort, but this is a new car.  Therefore, it has not accumulated junk.  So, I did the only thing I knew to do.  After all, I did have a straw and one napkin.  I drank the lake.

Is new car smell toxic?  If I die, it is TOTALLY the dish fairy's fault.  My tombstone will say.  "Death by lack of Dish Fairy" and that will be true in many different ways.

Who is the Dish Fairy?

The Dish Fairy is like the reverse of the Easter Bunny...you leave your basket out and the big guy fills it.  You leave your kitchen sink full and the Dish Fairy EMPTIES it!

I have never seen her and I am absolutely positive that she does not visit my house.  I've heard of her existence.  I've even set traps for her.  I've left VERY dirty dishes in the sink and then prayed and did the dish dance (very similar to a rain dance) in my kitchen, but sadly, NO DISH FAIRY!

We are a believing house.  Santa Claus graces us with his presence each year.  Even my kiddos still believe because "if you don't believe, you don't receive."  We still hang our stockings with care.  Shoot, my kids even have Easter stockings.  I bet your kids don't have Easter stockings (probably because you don't have a super creative MIL like me).  The Easter Bunny hops on in every year.  My daughter lost her last tooth at age 16.  The Tooth Fairy still came.

You have to admit that the concept is BRILLANT!  There is just one problem.  She doesn't exist.  I'm convinced.  I've tried and tried and tried to lure her to my humble abode, sadly the dishes are still waiting.

BUT, here is the problem - my family.  They still believe and that what this blog is about.  Finding ways to overcome the dish fairy deficit.  Stay tuned....