Keeping with the theme of Make Your Own, Béchamel, a basic white sauce is something every home cook should have in their culinary back pocket. I have been known to whip it out on unprepared nights when the family is staring at me asking, "What's for dinner?". Pasta, tuna, and veggies in a creamy white sauce - no problem. Homemade mac and cheese - coming right up. Fettuccine Alfredo - simple, set the table.

Serve as is with pasta, veggies or whatever you choose; or, use it as a base for other dishes. Add some paprika, cayenne pepper, and a few red pepper flakes to use it a a spicy sauce for sausage and gravy over biscuits.

ALFREDO SAUCE

Throw in 2 tablespoons cream cheese, 1 clove of minced garlic, 1 cup of grated Parmesan. Top with parsley flakes and you have a quick and easy Alfredo sauce. The Chitlins are Alfredo fiends! I have made several versions and I like this one the best because it does not separate when leftovers are stored in the refrigerator. We used to spend over $3.00 on a jar of processed Alfredo sauce. This is so easy to make and tastes waaay better.


CHEDDAR CHEESE SAUCE

After the basic white sauce has cooked and thickened, stir in 1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) shredded sharp or extra-sharp Cheddar cheese, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (optional), and 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper. Makes about 3 1/2 cups. Stir in cooked elbow noodles or shells for homemade mac and cheese. You can leave the mustard out, but it really does taste better with it. I do not even like mustard, but always include it. The Chitlins have never complained about it either. If you want a golden crust, top your mac and cheese with buttered bread crumbs and broil until desired color.


Once you get the basic recipe down, add ingredients to vary dishes to your heart's content. Use what you have on hand. The ingredients needed are almost always already in your kitchen. Save a trip to the grocery store and skip the extra packaging of over-priced processed "food". Béchamel is cheap and easy, the leftovers store well, and you will never have to panic again when someone utters the dreaded, "What's for dinner?".

With the economy in a slump and the future of the environment in question a lot more people are looking for ways to consume less and make do with what they already have. From learning to sew, make repairs, grow a garden, and cook from scratch there is a whole lot of DIY going on. Lately I have noticed a new buzz in the blogosphere - MYO. Make Your Own certainly is not a new concept; for generations before us it was a way of life, there just is a lot of talk about it as of late.

In the past week alone a slew of posts have popped up.

Santa did not bring me worms for Christmas like I had hoped, but he did bring me a gift that keeps on giving. Keeps on giving him bread. I got a shiny new bread machine.

I just started baking my own bread a few months ago with lackluster results. I had grand aspirations of eliminating plastic bread bags, saving money, and impressing my family with my domestic skill while making the house smell great. Instead I got oddly shaped-hard-dense loaves, entire days lost to "bread making", bread shortages, and emergency runs to the store to buy bread.


So when I unwrapped my new toy on Christmas day I thought my prayers had been answered. Yes! Now we can enjoy some real bread. I am still not sure if the gift was for me or hubby. Either way it does not vouch well for my bread baking artistry. I had such high hopes for this machine. You put the ingredients in and take the bread out. Perfect! Nothing for me to mess up.


Then explain this. Is it a chef's hat? A giant popover? What? It certainly cannot be a loaf of bread from my new magic machine. Can it? Damn. I have made three different loaves and none were good. I had better luck the old fashioned way. What am I doing wrong? Is there some secret bread baking society that I am banned from, a gluten gene I lack, or am I just doomed to forever eat mass produced bread out of a plastic bag? The only somewhat success that has come out of this is a batch of cinnamon rolls and butter.


Yes, butter. Since I was having no luck on the bread front I thought I would try to at least make its topping good. Homemade butter, which I never thought to be something I was capable of, is surprisingly easy to make. All you need is cream and a means to agitate it. A stand mixer works great.


Fifteen minutes later whipping at medium-high to high speed and it transforms from cream to butter.

With the seed catalogs rolling in, Melinda's new Growing Challenge could not have arrived at a better time. I missed the boat last year, but for those of you familiar with The Growing Challenge this year has a new twist: from Seed to Seed. All you have to do is plant at least one new crop from seed, grow it organically, and save the seed to plant next year.

I had every intention of doing this last year. I planted 24 plots of organic heirloom seeds, right under a line of Black Walnut trees. Yeah, it did not go well. Apparently, walnuts are toxic to plants. Shade + Toxins = Shopping at the Farmer's Market. This year I am armed with the All New Square Foot Gardening book from the library, a willingness to cooperate with Mother Nature, and a total disregard for the law*.

With all the effort I have been putting into reducing: reducing consumption, reducing packaging, reducing processed foods, reducing dependence; seed saving just makes sense. It accomplishes all of these in one fell swoop. I do not have to spend money every year to replenish my garden. I can reuse the seeds! No seeds to buy, no package for them to come in! I can replace trips to the processed food grocery store with a hop, skip and a jump to my whole foods garden. And, by preserving my bounty I am no longer at the mercy of escalating food prices or shortages in times of crisis.

I did manage to salvage some cucumber seed from my toxic wasteland of a garden. Assuming I do not spend my summer in perjury*, I will surely post on my misadventures in square foot/organic/heirloom/seed saving lackadaisical gardening.

*Don't ask, you could become an accomplice.

If you are interested in The Growing Challenge from Seed to Seed, head on over to One Green Generation and get yourself signed up!

3:00 in the afternoon and it is dark outside. Dark, cold, and VERY snowy. The picture above is of my garden. Well, the remains of my garden. Sadly, I never got a chance to clean it up before the snow came. Lifeless heirloom tomatoes clinging to their frozen cages. Peppers that were never meant to see snow. Frozen pumpkins still on their vine. Four more months of looking at this?


How depressing. But, just when I thought I was doomed to be a gloomy prisoner stuck inside this icy tomb, a miracle arrived in my mailbox.

Winter in Wisconsin is dry, dry, dry. Sure there is a lot of precipitation; in fact, this has been our snowiest December on record, but all that moisture is locked up inside each snowflake. A frozen desert, of sorts. My hair is a mess, my eyes are dry, my skin is scratchy, and I wake up parched. This is the time of year when you can walk across the carpet, touch some unsuspecting soul's ear and watch the sparks fly! We do not have any carpet, but the wood on our floor is contracting leaving cracks between the boards, much like the skin of my hands. Two days of cooking and constant hand washing for the holidays has turned the backs of my hands into sandpaper.

After swearing off synthetics, petroleum based, and plastic my medicine cabinet is a bit deserted as well. I had just finished off a big bottle of what I thought to be pure aloe vera gel from this summer (should have known it wasn't from the unnatural green color) and had yet to find a suitable alternative. Or had I? In my cabinet sits a lonely jar of coconut oil I had intended on using as hair conditioner after reading Crunchy's post about it. That was months ago and I still have yet to try it. Perhaps once my Aubrey conditioner runs out. Anyhoo... if it is good enough to eat and can soften hair, why not skin?


I have been using it daily for about a week now. My hands are healing, my legs are no longer a white, flaky, scaly mess, and I have stopped scratching myself raw. It comes in a glass jar - yea, no plastic! - you can buy at the grocery store. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature, but quickly turns to liquid from the warmth of your hand. You will need something to scoop/scrape it out with. Popsicle stick, tongue depressor, butter spreader, whatever you have on hand will be fine. Scoop some out and rub it on. I apply all over my body without any cravings for piña coladas. It really has no smell.


Coconut oil does not immediately absorb like a lotion. If that is what you are looking for you may be disappointed. I am okay with it for the winter. The bit left behind protects and provides moisture all day long. My skin is still silky soft when it is time to snuggle in for the night. Being fair skinned, I assume rubbing oil on my body in the summer would be a bad thing. Fried lobster anyone? Speaking of summer, I purchased my coconut oil back in July. It was hot upstairs and the oil liquefied. I recommend storing it someplace cool during warm temperatures. But for now I am digging it. It is all natural, plastic free, and it works!