Make Your Own: Colored Craft Noodles

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Making colored noodles and rice for art projects is easy! 

For one pound of noodles in a single color, you need a gallon sized baggy, a 1 cup of Rubbing Alcohol and a about half a bottle of liquid (NOT JELL) food coloring. 

Hold baggy open, add alcohol, squirt in food coloring, shake baggy to mix it up, and then add your noodles. Fold baggy over before zipping (careful not to spill the liquid). Lay baggy flat on a surface that you will not mind getting colored if the baggy leaks. 

Flip baggy over every 10 minutes for an hour or until you are happy with the color. 

OVER A BOWL, clip the corner of the baggy and drain out liquid, (you can reuse liquid to color rice or more noodles). 

Pour wet, drained, colored noodles onto a plastic trash bag. I used a fan to help speed the drying process. Move the noodles around every 15 minutes to unsure the bottom noodles get enough air to dry. You will know they are done when they are dry to the touch and sound like dry noodles again. 

Mix up different types and shapes of noodles for fun art projects, or use tubed noodles to make colorful necklaces. 

Rice can be done in quart baggies, just use less liquid.

Ready for the crazy messy pics? 

(You might want to wear gloves if you don't want rainbow hands) 

WORD OF CAUTION! 

DO NOT EAT THESE NOODLES AND/OR RICE! 

They have been colored using Rubbing Alcohol and are NO LONGER EDIBLE! These are for craft purposes ONLY! 

Best noodles for necklaces are Penne Pasta and Rigatoni

Pastas great for craft projects are Farfalle, Rotini, Wagon Wheels, and even these cute little Alphabet pasta shapes. 

Colored Noodles and Rice can also be used for a variety of craft uses. How about an ISPY bottle using rainbow rice and Alphabet pasta! 

Children can also use them for sorting shapes and colors. 

Don't want the mess of making your own? I sell Rainbow Rice and Colored Pasta for only $5 a pound plus shipping. Email me at bykamay@yahoo.com

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates. I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online

Trying Potatoes.. AGAIN!

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     After killing almost every potato bucket we have ever tried growing and having last years ground potatoes washed out from under the ground from a flood, we have decided to try again. Yes, we may be a glutton for punishment, but we eat a lot of potatoes! 

     We went to a local feed store, bought Red Seed Potatoes, cut them so each piece had an eye, let them dry for a couple of days. We made deep trenches in the garden and laid the potatoes about 6 inches apart along the bottom of the trench row. We only covered them with a few inches of dirt. When they started to grow and leaves started to show, we would pull a few inches of dirt over them from the side of trench. In a couple of days, when the leaves would pop through the dirt again, we would cover them a little more. Finally, all the dirt from the trench side was mounded up on top of plants. I plan to do it one more time. That way it insures my plants run deep and we hopefully will get more tators this way! Hopefully.. 

     Sorry we didn't get any pictures of the process, I just didn't think to blog about this until I saw they were doing so well. We also have volunteer potato plants popping up all over the garden from the skins of potatoes we have eaten and put into the compost. The compost was tilled into the garden this year. Apparently, it was not all composted. Hubby surprised me for Valentine's Day with a freshly tilled garden! <3 Best present ever! I am going to let the volunteer plants stay where they are and grow through out the garden. Hopefully we will get some Russet Potatoes as well. 

Want to read about our other Tator Adventures?

Click the Pic! 

     Do you grow potatoes? In the ground? In a bucket? Hay bails? Let us know how it turned out for you, or perhaps how we can NOT manage to kill them again! ;) We love your comments! 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates. I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Meal In A Jar: Split Pea Soup

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     Recently, I had a Thrive Life Freeze Dried Food party. My friend and consultant, Deb, sent me some samples to pass out AND a Meal in a Jar! I've never done a meal in a jar and I had never tried Split Pea Soup either. EXCITING! Zoey could not wait to get started! 

  

Hearty Pea Soup

by Deb Hallman - Independent Thrive Life consultant

2 c Thrive split peas
2 Tbsp Thrive chopped onions
1 c Thrive potato chunks
1/2 c Thrive celery
1/4 c Thrive carrot dices
1 tsp Thrive parsley
6 tsp Thrive beef bouillon
1/4 tsp Thrive peppercorn
1 1/2 tsp Thrive oregano 1 1/2 tsp Thrive basil

Layer all ingredients (in any order) in a quart mason jar. Cover and add O2 absorber for long term storage.

To make soup, add 12 cups of water to a stock pot. Pour in the contents of the mason jar. Let soup mix sit in water for about 10 minutes. Then bring to a boil, and simmer for about 2 hours, stirring to keep the bottom from over cooking and sticking to the pot. The soup is done when the peas have melted away from their form and make a thick soup.
Serves 5

     Doesn't it look fantastic? Seems a shame to go ahead and use it! However, I am really curious as to how it tastes! It SMELLS amazing just in the jar! 

     

     Soooo.. We did not cook it long enough. It came out chunkier than regular Split Pea Soup. Deb told me I needed to let it cook longer because it is supposed to be thicker and creamier. Everything was soft and tender, smelled wonderful.. and we just couldn't wait! So, how was it? It tasted as good as it smelled! Zoey had two helpings! I am really glad Deb sent this to us. We might have a new favorite in our house! 

If you would like to make some meals in a jar, or find out more about Thrive Life, you can follow Deb over on Facebook, HERE, or email her HERE, or on her Thrive page HERE. 

Please excuse me while I go finish off some left overs! ;) 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates. I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.

  

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday #4

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     Out of 9 hens of laying age, we are getting about 4-6 eggs a day. Not so bad considering that is a couple of dozen a week. We eat a lot of eggs, but not that many! I was thinking about selling some to local friends to help off set the cost of feed and maybe make a little profit. 
     Today, Zoey and I are taking our old planting pots and emptying the dirt into one large bucket. Then, we are adding in some new dirt, fertilizer, sand and compost in to aerate it and freshen up the old dirt from last season. I decided we needed some more pots to plant in. Zoey and I walked out to the back garage to get the pots from out of the loft. As I am standing on top of the back of my husband's old Chevy Truck bed, looking around for what is easiest to grab, I see this.... 

Seriously Chickens? 

     
     Seriously? Guess how many there are? 22. Nearly two dozen eggs hiding in an old pet carrier. They all appear to be from the same chicken. 22 days worth of perfectly good eggs that now might be wasted. Time to do the float test. Please... 

Click the Pic to read how to test your eggs
and see how fresh they are! 

     Out of 22 eggs, only 10 were salvageable. None of them actually floated, but several where standing on end in the water. We have plenty of eggs in the fridge already, so I will feed the eggs we are not sure about to the new pig we have. We will still get use out of them so it is not too bad of a find. :) 
     We have set up the pet carrier where it will be a little bit easier to see into. If she lays there again.. we will find them! 

Do you raise chickens? 

What is the craziest place you have found eggs?

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online. 

Wild Foraging: Beauty Berry Jelly

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     For years, I told my son, "Don't eat the purple berries! They will kill you!" For years, I believed, "If you could eat it, it would be in the store." Right? 
     Fast foward a few years later, I was over on Foraging Texas when I stumbled upon his page American Beauty Berry. Well, as it turns out, you CAN eat the purple berries! We have several bushes on our property. However, by themselves, they are not so great and they really don't have very much nutritional value. Not poisonous, but not really a great find for foraging. Boo. Then I heard about Beauty Berry Jelly. Most that have tried it say it has an intriguing, yet delicious taste to it. Zoey and I decided we were going to make some. 
     

     
     Finding the brightly colored berries was easy. Picking them was pretty easy as well. You just slide your hand down a branch and pop them off right into your bowl. When they are on the branches, their looks like a whole lot of berries. However, even after we stripped nearly all of the bushes in our yard, we were not sure if there was going to be enough to make the jelly with. We were going to try anyways. 

"Hey Zoey, let me get a picture of you and the berries before we go inside."

      Yes, she looks like her daddy, but this kid is sooo me! :D 

     First the berries had to be picked through and washed thoroughly. We ended up getting leaves, twigs and bugs in with them. I did not get a picture, but I figure you don't want to really see all that anyways. Then we looked for recipes to make our jelly. The best one we found was at Hogtown Home Grown. I did not have Low Sugar Pectin or Raw Sugar so we followed the directions on the back of the package of Sure-Jell that we did have and used regular sugar.  We followed her instructions except for that. 

This is what the berries look like after being boiled. 

Zoey mashed them.

By this point we have boiled down the mixture, added the sugar, lemon, Sure-Jell and we are now ready to start loading our jars. 

      We filled 6 of the 8 oz. Jelly Jars and 3 of the little 4 oz. Jelly Jars. There was also a little left over that we nibbled on.  So how does it taste? It is really hard to describe. Definitely not your ordinary grape jelly! It has a more... sophisticated.. taste to it? AND IT IS AMAZING! It has replaced our favorite jellies on everything from PB&J to buttered biscuits. 

We can't wait to make it again this August!   

Get the recipe Here:

Learn More About American Beauty Berry Here:

Please use extreme caution when foraging for wild edibles. Do your own research. We are not responsible for any misidentifying of plants you make while on your own. Never eat anything you are not sure of.

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.