Dried Pineapple Rings....and a bonus!

Hello friends!

This past weekend, I was looking for a healthy snack and remembered that I had 3 cans of pineapple rings (in 100% juice) sitting in my pantry. I bought them on sale for .97 cents each a while back with the intent of drying them. I went thru a big dried pineapple phase a few months ago, but cutting, peeling and chopping pineapple just to dehydrate became too much work for me and my busy schedule. So...when I saw the sale pineapple rings, I figured I'd hit the jackpot!

I thought I might have to cut the rings in half to make them thinner, but NOPE. They dry up to be the perfect size for snacking. This really doesn't get much easier, or cost effective.

Step 1: Drain the juice (and SAVE IT)

Step 2: Prepare a foil lined baking sheet with a cooling rack on top. 

Step 3: Put pineapple rings on top of cooling racks (to let the air circulate).

Step 4: Find something else to do while you dehydrate these gyus for 12 hours (or so, based on your oven settings) at 135 degrees. 

Step 5: EAT. Voila, dehydrated pineapple rings!

I'm going to make a ton of these and then vacuum seal them into mason jars for storage purposes. 

Now, let's talk about the juice. It's basically 100% no sugar added pineapple juice. That stuff is expensive when purchased by the bottle (Any Tone It Up sisters here!? You know what I'm talking about!). So of course, keeping it refrigerated in a mason jar strictly for drinking purposes was my first thought. But thanks to the YouTubes, I also discovered that with the juice of 6 cans of pineapple rings you can make 12 half pint jars of pineapple jam or pineapple syrup. 

Say what now?!?

Yea, Totes. Jam or syrup and a huge bag full of dried pineapple rings for just $6....I love this!

This is my first affiliate link, thank you for your support of my blog! Get Pineapple Rings here from Amazon!

Free Food from Schwan's

I love having food delivered to my house. Where I live, not many places will deliver...but the Schwan's Man will! Of course, I have to cook that food myself, but it's not all that bad. If you've never ordered from Schwan's, then you're like me. I didn't even really know what it was until we moved to Indiana. Basically, it's a quaint little service this frozen food vendor uses to get customers. Delivering food right to your door, every two weeks, just like the milk man of days gone by. (...and no, I'm not old enough to remember the milk man, thankyouverymuch)

So, here's how I was introduced to Bob, my Schwan's delivery guy...FREE FOOD. Yep. Free. $10 worth on your first order. He'll come back every 2 weeks to see if you want to place a real, paying order - but if you don't then just say so. And chances are you will, because some of their stuff is AWESOME.

This is a link to the $10 free deal - check it out soon, I have no idea how long this will last.
http://www.schwans.com/promos/freefood/freeFoodBegin.aspx

My favorites?

• Strawberry Daiquiri Sorbet (dairy free! and limited time only, do a search for it)
• Single Serve Fruit Packs - Island Blend (great for healthy smoothies, and it's tropical fruits which are harder to do on your own - but they do have a regular berry one too...I can get 2 smoothies from one fruit pack and you get 4 in each big bag)

I've heard their fish and seafood are both really good, and I'll be getting those next time. I'm on a diet, so a lot of the frozen stuff here isn't really in my "plan"...but for family or a splurge or a party, it all looks really yummy!

If you order, leave me a comment and let me know what you tried!

Amazon Grocery Deals!

I don't typically post about sales on my blog, but this is one I took advantage of yesterday and placed an order. I got some good stuff, and I think you can too...so I want to share the details.

Amazon is having a promotion on some grocery items, good for back to school. Stock up and save up to 40% on any combination of eligible products.

Here's how it works:
Buy any 2 eligible products and save 20%
Buy any 3 eligible products and save 30%
Buy any 5 eligible products and save 40% (this is obviously the best deal!)

Use the following promotional code when you check out: BCKSCLO9.

This offer applies only to products offered by Amazon.com and for purchases made between July 20 and September 6, 2009 (This offer cannot be combined with Subscribe & Save or other code-based offer).Stock up and save--all items are eligible for Amazon Prime and FREE Super Saver Shipping over $25.


Here's the link to the main page. Some items are super cheap to begin with, and adding free shipping with 40% off makes it SWEET (esp. if you like to buy in bulk and have things delivered right to your door!) http://www.amazon.com/Back-School-Grocery/b/ref=amb_link_84843791_1?ie=UTF8&node=235692011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=top-1&pf_rd_r=1ZR70JG2A6X0RVRJ18PG&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=484170531&pf_rd_i=235692011

Wanna know what I bought and paid? I was thinking about school lunches when I was filling my Amazon cart....unfortunately, many of the snacks have milk in them, so those were out. But, I managed to find some stuff! I bought:

36 mac n cheese cups (Audrey's new obsession, we don't use the cheese packet!)
8 chicken & stars Campbell's soup at hand cups
8 chicken & mini noodle Campbell's soup at hand cups
6 boxes (20 bags each) Tazo apricot vanilla white tea
20 no sugar added organic squeese applesauce things

So essentially, if you don't count the tea (since it's not for lunches) I paid $65 for 52 lunch items (mac n cheese and soups) plus 20 sides (applesauce). Not bad??

ps- we don't use the cheese sauce packet in the mac n cheese cups, in case anyone was wondering how my non-dairy child can eat mac n cheese!

Fun with Shaving Cream

While I'm sure some adults would enjoy this too, I'm specifically speaking of fun for kids with shaving cream.

Rainy day? Too hot to play outside? Just plain bored? Struggling for bathtime? Give the kid a can of shaving cream, strip 'em down and plunk them in the tub. Instant fun!

I gave my little one a $0.79 cent can of shaving cream and free reign to "play" in the tub. She covered herself and every surface she could find, including a cup, spoon and 3 barbies. About 45 minutes later, she was rinsed, clean and smellin' great. She later told me that this was "the best day of her life!". With feedback like that, you can't go wrong.

Shaving cream. They are already half way to a bath!
Trust me. Worth every penny....

Crock Pot Liners Saved My Life

Well, I'm exaggerating a little. They didn't really save my life exactly. But they sure made clean-up a lot easier...which makes my life easier. And who doesn't like easy?!?

I've been using Reynolds Slow Cooker liners for a while, they run about $4 for a box of 4...so $1 each. Expensive, yes. But totally worth it.

Then one day, I stumbled across a similar product that changed my life. Ok, exaggerating again, but seriously trust me on this one!

EZ Pans slow cooker/crock pot liners. THE BEST!

You've heard of crock pot liners, right? Basically, plastic-type "bags" you put into your slow cooker before you dump in the food. Then after cooking, you simply lift out the bag and toss it. Wipe down the inside of your crock pot with a damp towel (I use vinegar & water) and you're done. Simple, fast clean up. It makes me want to use the crock pot more and more, which is a huge time saver.

So here's another great thing about the EZ Pan liners. They cost about .30 cents each! I found a seller on Ebay who had them, but they are also available on Amazon.com....here's a link....free shipping too! You may not *need* 100 of them, but at this price you can either stock up for the year or share with friends.

Check them out and let me know what you think if you try them!
http://www.amazon.com/Special-Temp-Crockpot-Liners-Slowcooker/dp/B001GDFVZO

Let's do a contest, shall we? I'll choose a random number and the person with that number post in today's comments on this entry will WIN 5 of these crock pot liners. Yippee! My first contest. Post entries must be entered by midnight EST 6/15/09.

ps- please remember to either put your email in the comment or be a registered user so I can contact the winner! check back tomorrow for the winner's name. :)

Oatmeal Packets

It's summer. In an attempt to lure my 5 year old away from PBS, I needed a craft. And we needed breakfast. These Homemade Oatmeal Packets accomplished both!

It's really simple and delicious (and inexpensive!). What else would you expect from me?!?

CUSTOM MADE OATMEAL PACKETS

Ingredients:
3 cups oats
brown or white sugar
baggies or some container (you'll need about 8 per batch)
small blender/chopper/Magic Bullet
mix-ins for the oatmeal (dried fruit, powdered creamer, chocolate chips, etc)

Instructions:
Blend up 1 cup of oats and set aside in a bowl. Next, portion out 1/4 cup servings of the remaining whole oats (not the ones you just blended) into airtight containers like baggies or other small containers. To each packet, add 2 tablespoons of the powder oats (it's a thickening agent). Some recipes call for a dash of salt, but I didn't find it necessary. If you like, add a teaspoon or so of brown/white sugar or powder sweetener of choice. The final step is to add the mix-ins...

• dried fruit (raisin, blueberry, cranberry, cherry, apricot)



• spices (cinnamon, nutmeg)



• powdered creamer (for a fruit & cream variety)



• chocolate chips



• chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds)



• colored sprinkles

Close up the bag and your custom made, healthier-than-store-bought, instant oatmeal packets are complete! You can even take the craft aspect of this activity a step further by making fun labels for the packages. Or, set up a "topping bar" and have some friends over to make oatmeal packets and let them choose their own mix-ins. The possibilities are endless.

To serve, just add approximately 1/2 c. boiling water to a bowl with one packet of oatmeal. Mix well and let it sit to thicken. You can play around with the water amount if you like thicker or thinner oatmeal.

My daughter loved making these, and because we used a combo of red/green sprinkles (leftover mix from our Magic Reindeer Food from last Solstice) her oatmeal turned blue! Be cautious, with the mix-ins added, you may not even need sugar or sweetener. Our had sugar added, but next time I'll leave it out if we put in sprinkles because she said it was too sweet. Huh!??! It's true!

Homemade Bug Repellent - Deet Free!

Know what I don't love? Bugs. Namely mosquitoes. I have a bite on my ankle that is driving me crazy. Literally, crazy. So I needed a solution to prevent mosquito bites this summer, and I've found one that isn't going to harm me or my child with harsh chemicals. This bug repellent recipe is affordable and can easily be made in the kitchen without needing to buy a lot of crazy ingredients. And, of course, it's simple. I was given this recipe by a friend who found it in Family Circle. Thanks Brandi!

All you need are a few ingredients:

• equal parts of apple cider vinegar & witch hazel (I used 1 cup each)
  
• a few drops of citronella oil (for 1 cup and 1 cup, I used about 2 teaspoons of oil)
  
• spray bottle (walmart, $1.57)

Mix it all together and funnel into a spray bottle, or just funnel it all in and then give it a good shake. I can vouch that it does work. My daughter went to camp 2 days this week and hasn't had a single bite. One of her instructors, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, tried it out today on her legs only. She was bitten by mosquitoes on her arms, but not on her legs. Success!

If you don't have citronella oil, today is your lucky day because I have a website for you to order from AND a $5 coupon to pay for it!!

http://www.iherb.com/

use $5 off code KON547

I bought this citronella oil for $3.37.

http://www.iherb.com/Now-Foods-Citronella-Oil-1-fl-oz-30-ml/921?at=0

While you're there, you can also pick up some wonderful sweet almond oil to make sugar scrub!

Good Deal!

I love a good deal.
But, you know that about me already don't you. ;)

Here's one for those of us who hate to pay full price on clothing.

Chadwicks - 50% off any 1 item
Code: CH21595
Expires: 6/18/09

Guess what? I just bought a new dress!

Homemade Vanilla Extract

( UPDATE 2/17/12: I now sell fresh, raw vanilla beans on my Etsy shop SimplyClaudine! http://www.etsy.com/shop/SimplyClaudine )

Two years ago, I learned how to make vanilla extract. I love it! Homemade vanilla is so much better (and far less expensive) than store-bought extract. And it's very, very simple. Here's a basic recipe and a link to a reputable vanilla bean store online with a special offer! Free shipping if you enter the promo code "mayspecial"...so hurry! If you buy the Tahitian package, you should have enough beans for one batch, but I just ordered the combo pack. One of my water recipes calls for a vanilla bean, so make sure you order plenty!

How to make vanilla extract:
Take a bottle of cheap-o vodka and pour it from the plastic container into 2 large quart size mason jars. Rinse off your vanilla beans. Split them open down the middle, leaving them attached at the tip. Drop 4-6 beans into each mason jar. Cover tightly with a clean lid and ring. Place somewhere dark and cool. I keep mine in a kitchen cabinet. Give the vanilla a shake once a week. It will take at least 4 months for the vodka to turn into usable extract. So if you're hoping to give these as gifts for the holidays, plan accordingly...start now! The longer it sits, the better.

When you're ready to use it, strain out the vanilla bits and bottle the vanilla. For a unique presentation, add half (or whatever amount) of a fresh vanilla bean to the container. Lovely and useful!

I'll post pics later.

One million thanks to my friend Tracy for reminding me of my love for vanilla extract and my need to blog about it.

Silver Jewelry is Pretty

Do you ever find that you need a little gift for someone, say for Mother's Day or a birthday, and you can't spend a lot but still want it to be nice? I've got just the ticket!

Silver Jewelry Club. http://www.silverjewelryclub.com/

Only, it's not actually a club, so there's no joining or fee involved. And the best part is that the jewelry is FREE! Yep, free. You pay $6.99 for shipping...and if you buy a pendant and want to add a necklace chain, it's $4 more. Not too shabby!

I'll tell you honestly that some of the items are really nice, and others are not so much. But that may just be personal preference. And they look a lot bigger online than they do in real life, so keep that in mind. But I've bought a couple pendants and find them to be relatively heavy (which means they don't have that automatic cheap feel to them). The chain is nice too, for $4.

So for $7-11 each, you can buy a couple nice silver jewelry pieces to hide away for those times when you need a last minute gift...I'm thinking these would be great for birthday parties for the 8-15 year old set, friends, sisters, that hard-to-buy-for aunt...take a look at the website and see what you think.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that there are four items up at one time and they change every 15 minutes. So if you see something you like, buy it...don't wait....or it may be gone when you come back. :)

Goodwill....Great Deals!

I can smell a bargain a mile away. That's why I knew I had to stop in at the local Goodwill store after yoga class yesterday. See, I've been staking out 2 Coach bags for a while now...watching, waiting, hoping that they would soon go half price. Yesterday, I had the feeling! I went in, checked the color of the week and...YES! It was blue! So I headed to the locked case and asked to see "my" two purses. I bought them both, along with a blue tagged s'mores maker for $4. One purse was $10 and the other was $7.50....success!

What's that? You don't know what the color of the week means? (GASP!) Each item is marked with a price tag which includes a color code. Each Sunday, the sale code color changes, and that means it's HALF OFF. Such a great deal, especially if you can find things that are clearly worth more than the price tag states.

My favorite things to get at Goodwill are Coach bags, wood furniture, and kitchen gadgets like bread machines and juicers. When my daughter was smaller, I frequently would find barely used Hanna Andersson dresses for her as well. For the record, I draw the line at a few items. There are several things I will never buy from a Goodwill store, including shoes for myself, unders, bathing suits and food. That's just me though.

Did you know that Target uses Goodwill to dump all their unsold merchandise? I've seen loads of new-in-box Target furniture and toiletries (yesterday it was mostly hair dye and anti-gas meds).

Really, if you think about it, getting things on sale like this is actually like making money. Don't you agree? :)

Leave me a comment and share your best Goodwill find!

Homemade Laundry Soap

More homemade stuff today, this time it's laundry soap. Eventually I'll add pictures, but for now just imagine in your mind what these things look like. Thanks.

So, everyone uses laundry soap. And it's not cheap. Or if it is cheap, it doesn't clean very well in my experience. As an alternative, I decided to try a homemade "recipe" for laundry soap that a bunch of my friends are using...and it turns out that I really love it! It's easy to make, very economical and, since you only use one-two tablespoons per load, it saves me time in the long run because I don't have to continuously buy laundry soap.

Here's the basic recipe below with instructions. I keep mine in an old coffee can. It's plastic, so maybe it's more of a coffee tub. None-the-less, it's there, and it lasts a long time. You can use the aforementioned pure essential oils from your sugar scrub recipe too if you want to fragrance it up a bit. See, now that's thrifty! I don't, personally, because I like it just the way it is. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Oh, and one tip is that you'll need a grater. Specifically, I recommend a microplane. Trust. Without one, if you're anything like me, you'll cut your knuckles up during the assembly process. Microplane is the way to go, it gets a finer grate AND it's safer. :)

Basic Homemade Laundry Soap

Ingredients:
one bar Fels-Naptha (found in the laundry section, it's a bar of soap for laundry not bodies)
one box of Arm & Hammer washing soda (not baking soda, not laundry detergent, "washing soda" - it's a powder, also found in the laundry isle)
one box of Borax powder (guess where this is...yep, laundry isle)

Instructions:
Grate fels bar with a microplane. If you use a regular box grater, please be careful and use the smallest grate you can. Add one cup each of the Borax and the Arm & Hammer washing soda. If you have lots of stains, you can add an additional 1/2 cup of the Borax for added cleaning power. Mix and store in a container with a lid.

To use:
Add one to two tablespoons to each wash load. Add essential oil if you like.

Obviously, this recipe is for a powder soap. Historically, I never liked using powders, but this soap has changed my mind. I love it. You will too. Believe me. Have I ever steered you wrong?

Sugar Scrub

I like to make things from scratch. I think it's that feeling of accomplishment that gets me hooked. It could also be the fact that I'm cheap. Er...um...thrifty. Yea, thrifty is a better word. In any case, if I can make something homemade that equals or is better than store-bought, then I'm all over it.

So right now, my thing is sugar scrub. I adore a good sugar scrub. I also find them exceedingly necessary during dry skin weather. Before I shave my legs, I use my sugar scrub to exfoliate and then I don't get those itchy, red bumps all over the place. Plus, sugar scrubs smell so nice, they make me smile!

Recently I realized that I was paying way, way too much for a sugar scrub. Because really, how hard is it to make a sugar scrub?? Not hard at all! Here's my recipe below. You can get creative and adjust not only the ingredients (change up the oil or fragrance) but also the measurements. It's all up to you. Enjoy!

Basic Sugar Scrub

Ingredients:
oil -I use sweet almond oil with a touch of olive oil
sugar - I use white sugar, but sometimes do half white and half brown....divine!
fragrance - I believe 100% pure essential oils work best, make sure you use one that is meant for the body, not a room freshener. I really like Young Living brand oils, they are therapeutic grade.

Instructions:
Find a container to hold your sugar scrub. Tupperware is good, or a glass jar with a secure lid. Just realize that you'll be slippery and wet when you use it, so glass might not be the best choice if you're slightly clumsy. Add as much sugar as you want to the container (start with one cup), then pour in some oil (start with 1/4 cup) and mix until you have the consistency of wet sand. Next add a couple drops of essential oil fragrance. If you like it stronger, add more.

Voila, sugar scrub!

Pamper yourself with a daily or weekly sugar scrub. You, and your skin, deserve it.

(I've had a special request so tomorow, I'll share my homemade laundry soap recipe. It's easy and economical, plus it cleans big time.)

Namaste

In yoga, the word namaste is said to mean "The light within me honors the light within you.". As an aspiring yogi, I want to welcome you to my blog! Simply Claudine is my attempt at journaling things I find interesting or useful or just plain cool, from homemade laundry soap to delicious recipes to shopping bargains...and everything in between.

First things first, I want to acknowledge that yes, if all my friends were to jump off a bridge, it is quite possible that I too would jump off said bridge. Why? Because I love my friends. I trust my friends. And if they all jump, there must be a good reason. So it stands to reason that since practically everyone I know has a blog, I need one too. In my defense, I do have a dozen full journals in my closet from my high school and college days, so writing to myself and documenting my existence is not a completely new concept for me. Blogging just makes things a little more public.

So... read on my friends, the best is yet to come!