52 PINS IN 52 WEEKS -,July 2017

JULY 2017

Last year Katherine from I WISH I LIVED IN A LIBRARY decided to challenge herself to doing one pin a week from her ever growing PINTEREST boards and post about them on the last Saturday of each month. The posts were a big hit with me and I am elated that she has decided to host a LINK-UP feature this year!

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Well, it seems like everyone has been in a summer induced pin making slump because of hot weather and vacations, so I don't feel so bad about my measly three pins this month. I am now behind three pins because this month had five Saturdays, and I owed one from last month. Heh.

CLEANING TUB GROUT AND CALKING WITH A RAW POTATO

Yes, this is a real pin and I can't find it. I thought I pinned it to my 52 Pins board, but it is not there. Searching it brings up nothing, but I did find a recipe for Chunky Sweet Potato Applesauce while searching. Ha ha. I have a feeling it was in a multiple item natural cleaning pin. I do promise to find the pin link for next month, but right now I don't have time.

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Anyway, it didn't work. Not even a little bit. Of course you didn't expect a photo of my tub enclosure with the remaining soap scum did you?

Ha ha!

ADDING BAKING SODA TO ICED TEA TO REMOVE BITTERNESS

Many of the recipes for Southern SWEET TEA had a "secret ingredient"; a pinch of baking soda in the pitcher. I had never heard of this before. Some recipes said it was to take cloudiness away, but as you can see my original tea wasn't cloudy, even with fresh lemon juice in it, so I don't know how you achieve cloudy ice tea (notice no "d", that is what we call it in Upstate New York). Others said it takes away bitterness and/or gives it a smoother taste. I have been cold brewing my tea for the past three plus years, and I think that takes care of any bitterness inherent to hot steeping it, but hey, I will try anything to make food and drink taste even a smidge better.

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It actually made the tea taste strange. As you can see it turned the tea darker; which had to have been a reaction to the citric acid in the lemon juice. Maybe that is what caused the strange taste, too, because when I re-read the instructions to make sure I didn't forget anything, I saw that lemon juice was not an ingredient. I looked at a couple more of the baking soda trick recipes and they had no lemon added, either; which wouldn't go over in my house because fresh squeezed lemon juice in ice tea is a must. If anyone tries this trick with non lemon tea let me know how it turns out.

HOMEMADE FUDGESICLES

I have a professional size paleta (popsicle) maker. I usually freeze pureed fruit in it. There are also Mexican guava, mango, and peach juices I can buy at one local grocery store, that are on the thick side, and they make fabulous paletas, too. I was craving fudge pops the other day and I had all the ingedients in this PIN, so I decided to make them with the Munchkins (my new blog name for my two little charges). However, when I got the molds out, I discovered I had no popsicle sticks, so we froze it in a cakepan and ate it like ice cream.

The result was good, but it didn't taste much like the original Fudgesicle and it melted way too fast to be feasible for an ice pop. One of the Munchkin Moms told me she mixes whole milk with instant chocolate pudding mix and the pudding pops are pretty close to Fudgesicles. This is a plus because standing over the stove when it was hot out was no fun, and this way the kiddos can make them all by themselves. I am going to try her method and will include photos in my next 52 Pins post. There were not pictures for this pin because the end product melted too fast.

Do you have a special family ice tea recipe? Do you make any homemade frozen treats in the summer?