Quick, Easy, and Healthy Homemade Mayonnaise with a Hand Blender {Finished Friday #54} come and link up your projects, too!

Link up your finished projects at the bottom of this post.

Mayonnaise is one of the items that has been difficult for me to buy for quite some time. Either I wasn't pleased with the ingredients or the price was way out of our budget. Thankfully, now I don't have to worry about whether I can afford mayo I feel good serving my family!

Several months ago I stumbled upon making mayo in the blender. While it tasted great, it was also a little time consuming. So I was very excited when I discovered that you can use a hand blender to make mayo quickly and easily.

It just so happens that my parents bought us an immersion hand blender for Christmas and we have been using it a lot. In fact, there haven't been many weeks when we haven't pulled it out for one reason or another.

One of my favorite uses for our hand blender is making healthy and extremely easy homemade mayo. Did you know that was even possibly?

Now I've been making fresh, healthy mayo every week, mostly to use in some of our favorite creamy salad dressing which we'll be sharing soon.

Quick, Easy, & Healthy Homemade Mayonnaise

1 whole egg, room temperature*
1 egg yolk, room temperature*
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons sugar (we use powdered sucanat)
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice (lime juice works as well)
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
2/3 cup olive oil** (light tasting olive oil makes a milder mayo, EVOO will make the may taste like olive oil)
1/3 cup coconut oil**, melted (extra virgin coconut oil adds a sweetness and coconut flavor, expeller pressed or refined coconut oil is flavorless)

*You can bring eggs to room temperature more quickly by submerging them (still in the shell) in warm water for 5-10 minutes until they no longer feel chilled to the touch. Room temperature eggs emulsify better than cold eggs. You can also use 2 egg yolks for a richer mayo.

**You can adjust the olive oil to coconut oil ratio, just remember that coconut oil solidifies at lower temperatures so your mayo might get hard in the fridge.

1. Place whole egg and egg yolk at the bottom of the container that came with the hand blender, or another container of similar size. We typically use a wide mouth canning jar.

2. Add the remaining ingredients except for the oils.

3. Place the immersion blender (still off) into the container and press it against the bottom so that it covers the egg yolks.

4. Pour the oils into the container.

5. Pulse the hand blender slowly until you see the mixture turn lighter. Then move the blender up and down (staying under the surface) a few times until you have a rich, creamy mayonnaise.

Check our video here. Sorry it's sideways :)

Yield: approximately 1 1/4 cups

If your mayonnaise is more like mayo soup, doesn't thicken, and begins to separate that means it did not emulsify. Never fear, you can still fix it! Pour your mayo soup into another container and place a room temperature egg yolk into the blending container. Now cover the egg yolk with the (still off) immersion blender and pour the "mayo soup" into the container. Pulse slowly until you see the mayo turn lighter, move the hand blender up slowly and you should feel the mayo getting thicker. Move the blender up and down until all of the ingredients have been incorporated.

This mayonnaise will keep in the fridge in an airtight container for about 2 weeks.

This recipe can also be used to make lacto-fermented mayo which is even more nutritious and will last at least twice as long in the fridge. Simply stir 1 Tbsp of whey into the finished mayo. Cover the container with a cloth and leave it on the counter for 6-7 hours. Then place it in an airtight container in the fridge.

Making homemade mayonnaise is a great recipe in which to involve your kids. All of our kids love adding ingredients to the jar and our five year old can even do a little of the blending herself. 

We'll be sharing some of our favorite homemade salad dressings made with this mayo soon. Subscribe to our free updates so you don't miss them.

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Homemade Pantry Staples for the Busy Modern Family

If you like knowing exactly what you're serving your family and
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Today's Question: How do you use mayonnaise in your home? What recipe would you like for us to try with this homemade mayo?

Okay, now on to the link-up...

I'm trying to hold myself accountable to finish some of the projects on my to do list by posting each Friday about a project I've completed.

Would you like to join in? Link up to your own projects below.

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Spaghetti Sauce for Canning {Finished Friday #51} Come and link up your projects, too!

Link up your finished projects at the bottom of this post.

I know you're probably getting tired of hearing about tomatoes, right?

But, then again, just think how I feel.

This week we finally got into canning tomato sauce. We've used this sauce recipe for a few years and we're very pleased with the simplicity and taste.

Spaghetti Sauce for Canning
adapted from this recipe at Cooks.com

yield: approximately 9 pints

1/4 bushel tomatoes, cored, blanched, & peeled, approximately 32 cups (we use a mixture of Roma and what ever other red tomatoes Tim decides to plant)
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup oil
2 Tbsp dried parsley
2 Tbsp dried oregano
2 Tbsp dried basil
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 Tbsp salt
6 Tbsp sugar
24 oz. tomato paste

In an 8-Quart or larger pot, cook the onion and pepper in the oil over medium heat until soft. Add tomatoes and cook until very soft. (As you can see this recipe just barely fits in an 8-Quart pot.)

Add the tomato paste and mash until desired consistency. We use our immersion hand blender to make this really quick and easy.

Add seasonings and cook down until thick. We usually cook at a simmer for 8-10 hours. Process in a hot water bath for 50 minutes or in a pressure canner for 20 minutes at 10 lbs.

By the way, these are some of my best friends right now. Seriously, how did I ever can without them?!?

Today's Questions: What projects did you finish this week?

Okay, now on to the link-up...

I'm trying to hold myself accountable to finish some of the projects on my to do list by posting each Friday about a project I've completed.

Would you like to join in? Link up to your own projects below.

1. Link to your project post, not your blog's home page, so we can find it easily.
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Easy Homemade: Homemade Pantry Staples for the Busy Modern Family eBook for only $0.99!

Today through August 21st you can get a copy of Easy. Homemade. for just $0.99! If you are interested in cooking from scratch then this eBook is for you. 

Easy Homemade features recipes for more than 60 homemade kitchen staples as well as kitchen tips, information about choosing various ingredients and more from Mandi, founder and editor of Life Your Way.

Check out Mandi's video introduction of Easy. Homemade. 

Our family was sent a copy of this eBook to review and I think it's a great collection of pantry staples for beginners, kitchen experts, and everyone in between.

View and download free sample pages.

In this eBook, Mandi shares quick and easy recipes you can make with basic ingredients. You'll find recipes for beverages, seasonings, condiments, pantry staples, dairy, snacks, and baking mixes. Mandi also includes several bonus pages with tips on the most useful kitchen tools, a helpful pantry list, and links to many free printables for recipes and menu planning.

This eBook also includes a set of printable recipe cards, the Nook & Kindle files to load to those devices and access to all of the recipes from the book on PlantoEat.com

Check out more about Easy. Homemade. or purchase your own copy for only $0.99! 

You can also purchase Easy. Homemade. on Amazon for only $0.99 through 8/21.

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Preserving Fresh Produce {Finished Friday #49} Come and link up your finished projects, too!

Link up your finished projects at the bottom of this post.
Also be sure to check out our Early Learning Prize Pack Giveaway ($60 Value).

This week we've been overwhelmed with fresh produce from our garden. This definitely isn't a bad thing, but we have so much that we've decided to freeze most of it until we can get around to canning.

There's been lots of yellow squash that is easily sliced and frozen for making Creamy Summer Squash Soup later. We have even more stored in our extra freezer at my parents' home.

We've also had lots and lots of tomatoes, which we've blanched, peeled and frozen for making tomato sauce later. I like to freeze the gallon bags on a flat surface and then stand them upright so they take up less room. (You can also see a glimpse of a bag of chopped banana peppers and our veggie scrap bin that we store extra bits in until we have enough for a big batch of vegetable broth.)

We also have these tomatoes that were blanched and cooled before we peeled, bagged, smushed (the kids' favorite part) and froze. This filled another 2 1/2 gallon bags. We combined the last half with the half filled bag you see in the freezer above.

And the tomatoes in this 5 gallon bucket filled another 4 bags for a total of 12 bags of tomatoes in our freezer alone. (We have a few more bags in our extra freezer.)

Oh, and these green and yellow tomatoes that we picked off of a couple plants that had to be pulled up because the bugs were getting crazy. (Plus the big batch of Salsa Verde that is already in the fridge ~ thanks, Tim.)

We also have a bag of unexpected potatoes that I don't know what to do with yet.

So while we might have a lot done we still have a long way to go. Wish us luck!

While we enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our labors, we are also still enjoying many, many garden books together. Check out some of our favorite garden and plant books for kids with pictures and reviews.

Today's Questions: Have you preserved any fresh produce so far this summer?

I'm trying to hold myself accountable to finish some of the projects on my to do list by posting each Friday about a project I've completed.

Would you like to join in? Link up to your own projects below.

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Summer Squash Soup for the Freezer {Finished Friday #46} come link up your projects, too!

link up your finished projects at the bottom of this post

During the past two weeks we've been harvesting some more produce from our garden. First there were lots and lots of carrots.

The carrots had to have the stems cut off, be scrubbed clean and placed in the fridge. We were able to fill over 10 gallon-sized bags!

Next there was a steady stream of yellow summer squash.

Most of the squash was washed, chopped, and placed into freezer bags for using in soup and pasta sauce later (since we'll be using the squash in the next couple of months we chose not to blanch the squash first.)

Yesterday, since we had gathered even more squash, we had a fresh batch of homemade vegetable broth, and Tim had a day off from work, it was time to make a double batch of one of our favorite soup recipes for the freezer.

First, Tim and the kids washed and chopped the squash. Then they washed, peeled, and chopped the potatoes and carrots. Next, I was called in to chop the onions since Tim's eyes water like crazy if he tries to chop onions.

Making a telescope out of the squash is completely optional :)

Once everything was chopped, most of the work for the soup was finished. (And we made sure to save all of those veggie scraps to make even more delicious homemade vegetable broth.)

We could barely fit all of the double batch of veggies into our 10 quart pot, but we piled it on and once everything cooked down a bit there was plenty of room to stir.
After it simmered and we blended it up with a handy immersion blender (we've blended in batches in a regular blender before, too) we ended up with 7 quarts of deliciously creamy soup.

Creamy Summer Squash Soup
adapted from Epicurious

3 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 pounds (about 8 small) yellow summer squash thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
1 yellow-fleshed potato (1/2 lb), peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth

Melt butter in a large, heavy pot over medium heat. 

Cook onion and garlic with salt, stirring, until softened, about 8 minutes. 

Add squash, carrots, potato, and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, then simmer, partially covered, until vegetables are very tender, about 20 minutes. 

Remove from heat and cool soup, uncovered, 10 minutes.

Working in batches, puree soup in a blender until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids) and transfer to a bowl. Return puree to cleaned pot and thin with water or more broth if desired. Or use an immersion blender to puree the soup. Simmer 3 minutes. Season with salt.

We also made a batch of Parsley Mint Pistou to freeze in an ice cube tray. This pistou is wonderful swirled into the hot soup.

I'm linking up to these parties.

Today's Questions: Did you plant a garden this year? Have you harvested anything yet? What produce would you love to be able to grow yourself? (The big thing I'm waiting for is our own land so we can plant some fruit trees.)

I'm trying to hold myself accountable to finish some of the projects on my to do list by posting each Friday about a project I've completed.

Would you like to join in? Link up to your own projects below.

1. Link to your project post, not your blog's home page, so we can find it easily.
2. Let us know what project you are sharing in your title, for example: Spring Wreath
3. We'd love it if your post links back here so that your readers can come join the fun. Feel free to copy & paste our Finished Friday Button into your post. (Just copy the text in the box below the button, click on the "Edit HTML" tab for your post and paste it there.)
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Quick & Easy Summer Meals {TIPsters}: Summer Salad Inspirations

Make sure you visit Kristin & Christy for their thoughts on today’s topic, as well as our guest TIPster Jillian from Hi! It's Jilly.

As I've mentioned before, our family eats very simply, so almost all of our meals would be considered quick and easy. I love how planning and preparing the same simple meals frees up some time for making more food from scratch. 

If I spent more time making dinner every night I'd probably be overwhelmed by the thought of cooking my own dried beans, preparing fresh milk kefir daily, picking a year's worth of blueberries to freeze, making vegetable broth, and baking soaked whole wheat sandwich bread. Most definitely, I'd be discouraged about trying to find time to tend to our own organic, pasture raised chickens. So for our family the trade off is very much worth it (and my husband agrees).

But, during the summer my dinner plan gets even easier. Most nights during the summer our family enjoys a delicious main dish salad. I try to add some type of protein, which for our family typically means cooked chicken or beans, although nuts and hard boiled eggs are sometimes scattered on top of our fresh veggies. 

While I love salads at restaurants, sometimes eating a salad at home can get a little boring. We've found that having lots of different veggies and a variety of toppings and dressings can help break up the boredom. I've been experimenting with homemade dressings and I'm dreaming of having several dressings mixed up in mason jars and stored in the fridge for salad duty rotations.

A few years ago we hosted a blog link up for salad recipes, but recently I've been turning to Pinterest for some ideas to freshen up our salads. So today, I'm sharing my top 10 Summer Salad inspirations.

Now, let's face it, some salads require a lot of chopping which cuts down on their quick and easy label, so I often pre-chop a large number of veggies at one time and store them in the fridge. At the very least I like to get everything chopped up during naptime so the before dinner scramble doesn't catch me by surprise.

And remember these are inspirations, salads aren't an exact science, so feel free to substitute what you have in the garden or already in your fridge to make these salads work for your family.

50+ Homemade Salad Dressings

Grilled Chicken Corn Salad

Pizza Chicken Salad

Cilantro Lime Chickpea Salad

Green Bean Summer Salad

Grilled Chicken & Fruit Salad (with homemade poppyseed dressing)

(Our kids love when we add fruit to our salads, in fact we add some apple slices to most salads. We cut the apple in quarters, cut out the core and slice the apple very thinly with a mandolin slicer. We use half of an apple divided among all of us.)

Rainbow Asian Slaw

Chicken, Avocado & Black Bean Salad

Cranberry Avocado Salad

and my personal all-time favorite Asian Noodle Salad

Check out the blog parties we like to join

Please visit my fellow TIPsters:

Kristin @ Bits & Pieces from my Life and 

Christy @ A Living Homeschool, and 
our guest TIPster, Jillian @ Hi! It's Jilly.

Coming Soon:

July 17: Taking Family Photos
August 7: Schooling Kids of Different Ages
August 21: Teaching Kids to Read

(Remember if you'd like to guest host an upcoming TIPster post, just let me know.)

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Blueberries Galore!

Right off the bat, I'll tell you that our family goes through a lot of blueberries. And when I say "a lot" I mean that we buy 3 pounds of blueberries every other week. (We add blueberries to our green smoothies every morning as part of our super simple meal plan.)

But after an enjoyable morning of picking blueberries (and supporting a local farmer who uses organic methods of growing) we'll definitely be able to cut down on our blueberries purchases for a few months.

In case you've ever wondered, this is what 26 pounds of blueberries looks like in our tiny kitchen.

We also saved quite a bit of money to boot. A 3 pound bag of regular (non-organic) blueberries costs $11.90 and the grocery store, but we were able to get the same amount (locally & organically grown) for only $5.37! This is about the same as buying 1 pound of organic blueberries at the grocery store.

If we're able to pick enough blueberries for the entire year (about 78 pounds) we'll be able to save about $150 even with a cushion of almost $20 extra to purchase freezer bags.

Now to bag up all the blueberries and fill our freezer.

Today's Question: Do you stock up on local fruits and vegetables by picking your own?

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Feeding Picky Eaters {TIPsters}

Make sure you visit Kristin & Christy for their thoughts on today’s topic, as well as our guest TIPster, Mindy @ Sweetness in the Small Stuff.



Let me just start with a disclaimer, okay?  Most people would not consider any of our kids picky eaters. However, we have experienced seasons when our kids displayed picky behaviors, so we do have a little experience. Here are our Top Ten suggestions for feeding picky eaters: 1. Try to build your meal plan around the healthy foods they will actually eat. Everyone likes to feel that their opinions matter, including your kids. Give them a say by having them list all of the foods they do like. Then try to incorporate tried and true favorites along with new foods. 2. Get your kids involved in preparing meals. Our kids all love to help in the kitchen! And taste testing is a great way to let your kids try new foods in a non-confrontational way. 3. Make mealtime fun. Sit down together and give your kids your attention. Talk about their day and enjoy your time together. (Young kids also love pretending they are animals as they gobble down their food; chew your carrot like a rabbit, eat your meat like a T-Rex, you get the point.)
4. Offer variety, but don’t fix separate foods for your child. You are not a short order cook, but kids will continue to do what works for them. If you’ve catered to their demands in the past it’ll take a while to convince them that you’ve changed your ways—wait them out. Eventually, they’ll eat (more of) what’s offered. 5. Have them eat the less desirable foods first. Our children will generally all eat a green salad, but I don’t know many children that would choose a salad over pasta. So, the whole family eats our salads first, before the pasta is even brought to the table. As a bonus it also feels like we’re having a fancy meal :) 6. Help them eat it. This rule only really applies to toddlers, but we’ve found that many times when our toddlers have refused to eat a certain food, a little extra attention and help from Mom or Dad was all it took to get the food in their mouth. 7. Realize that your child will eat when they are hungry. I think, for the most part, children are very aware of their own need for food and will eventually eat when they are hungry. On occasion we have sent children away from the table hungry, but it’s only happened a handful of times and our kids have always been ready to eat what was prepared at the next meal.  8. Don’t give snacks if they haven’t eaten what’s offered. This goes along with the last point, but really, if I knew I could skip the peas but still have cookies after dinner, I’d probably do it, too. This also goes for healthy snacks.  9. Set an expectation of what they will eat—and stick to it! Decide with your spouse or with your child what they will need to eat at each meal. This may be a certain number of bites, trying everything offered, or eating a serving of at least one vegetable, whatever it is, set up your expectations and then stick to them. This Dinner Adventure Sticker Chart might be a good place to start if you’re dealing with a really picky child. 10. Present new foods several times. Children will often “dislike” a food simply because it’s new. Keep offering it until you’re convinced they simply don’t like it. Then come back to it after a while to see if their tastes have changed. linking to Top Ten Tuesday...and check out all the other blog parties we like to join

Today's Questions: What tips do you have for feeding picky eaters?

(Any advice for kids with the opposite problem, who eat everything in site, even three-day old crumbs out of their little sister’s booster seat or peanut butter off of their sibling’s face?)

Please visit my fellow TIPsters:

Kristin @ Bits & Pieces from my Life and 

Christy @ A Living Homeschool, 

and our guest TIPster,  Mindy @ Sweetness in the Small Stuff 

for more tools, tips, and tricks of the trade.

Coming Soon:

June 19: Television Viewing (What & How Often)
July 3: Quick and Easy Summer Meals
July 17: Taking Family Photos

August 7: Schooling Kids of Different Ages

August 21: Teaching Kids to Read

(Remember if you'd like to guest host an upcoming TIPster post, just let me know.)

Be sure to click the link in the first email to activate your subscription.

Homemade Whole Wheat Cheese Crackers {Finished Friday} come link up your projects, too!

link up your finished projects at the bottom of this post

Whew! This week has flown by at an incredible pace. We've been busy little bees out in the garden getting our spring crops cleared out to make way for even more plants. I'm actually a little scared to see how much canning we'll have to do this year.

We've also been trying to prepare for baby chicks and chickens that are scheduled to be picked up today!

I also have been listening to a radio series on the importance of memorizing scripture and have felt very convicted to begin purposefully memorizing more scripture, both for myself and with the kiddos. I'm loving this idea I pinned from Simply Charlotte Mason.

On top of all that, we've been discussing homeschooling philosophies and goals for next year, which right now, seems completely overwhelming. We're leaning towards an eclectic mix of Charlotte Mason, unit studies and unschooling. To my former public school teacher mind seems really scary, any thoughts?

But, somehow, in the middle of all of the mental fatigue I was able to find a few minutes to bake some crackers with the kids. These are not just any crackers, but homemade cheese crackers. They were really yummy, or "nummy" as my two-year-old says.

We followed this recipe but substituted white whole wheat flour.

Next time I would definitely try to roll these out thinner, since our crackers more closely resembled little pillows. But, little, flaky, cheesy pillows really aren't that bad, trust me.

Today's Questions: What activities are you involved in right now? How are you able to make time to slow down and enjoy your family?

I'm trying to hold myself accountable to finish some of the projects on my to do list by posting each Friday about a project I've completed.

Would you like to join in? Link up to your own projects below.

1. Link to your project post, not your blog's home page, so we can find it easily.
2. Let us know what project you are sharing in your title, for example: Spring Wreath
3. We'd love it if your post links back here so that your readers can come join the fun. Feel free to copy & paste our Finished Friday Button into your post. (Just copy the text in the box below the button, click on the "Edit HTML" tab for your post and paste it there.)


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Homemade Vegetable Broth from Veggie Scraps {Finished Friday} come link up your projects, too!

Link up the projects you finished this week at the bottom of this post. 

Last summer when we reevaluated our grocery budget, we found that a sizable chunk of money was going towards all natural vegetable broth every month. We decided to start making our own broth and have been making it this way ever since.

This week I took some time to make another large batch of veggie broth to restock the freezer.

This is what my cutting board looks like after making our very simple lunches.

Instead of putting those scraps directly in the compost bin, I place them into a container in the freezer, adding to my scraps everyday until the container is full.

I typically collect carrot peels, celery leaves, apple and pear cores, onion ends and skins, and sweet potato peels.

Then I simply dump all of the veggie (and apple and pear) scraps into a large pot, cover with twice as much water, and add a little parsley.

Next I cover the pot and bring it to a boil. Once it reaches a boil I lower the heat and let it simmer away for 30 minutes or so. All of this happens with the cover on.

Then I simply turn off the burner and let the vegetable broth cool covered on the stove.

Once it cools, I strain out the veggie scraps and store the vegetable broth in jars. I usually place a few in the fridge to use within the week and put some (with at least an inch of head space between the liquid and the lid) into the freezer.

So instead of buying all natural vegetable broth at the grocery store I’m now making it out of scraps that would have been composted. And all those used veggie scraps can still be thrown into the compost pile after making our family delicious veggie broth.

*Since this veggie broth has no added salt, you may have to adjust recipes accordingly.

Today's Questions: In what ways are you able to feed your family healthy food for less?

Linking up to these parties.

I'm trying to hold myself accountable to finish some of the projects on my to do list by posting each Friday about a project I've completed.

Would you like to join in? Link up to your own projects below.

1. Link to your project post, not your blog's home page, so we can find it easily.
2. Let us know what project you are sharing in your title, for example: Spring Wreath
3. We'd love it if your post links back here so that your readers can come join the fun. Feel free to copy & paste our Finished Friday Button into your post. (Just copy the text in the box below the button, click on the "Edit HTML" tab for your post and paste it there.)

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