Two Recipes

I spilled the last of my Aldi soap powder over the floor so had to go with the home made stuff earlier than expected.  I had copied the recipe carefully from the magazine - twice the weight of the grated bar of soap in both borax and washing soda.  I had some incredibly inexpensive soap from Approved Food that turned out to be pure vegetable soap, really nice looking stuff.  I decided to double up the recipe as the jar I keep my soap in is quite big.

 However, approximately 250g of grated soap, 500g of washing soda and 500g of Wizzo Oxi Clean look a bit bigger than I thought.

I thought I would try it on my table cloth that after a packed weekend looked like this.

I put the cloth into a 60 degree wash, pre-wash setting, no extra cleaning agents, vinegar as a laundry condition, home made washing powder into the drum and not the drawer.  Actually it came out okay.  There was a faint mark, but nothing that another rinse wouldn't deal with.  The downside is that there was a lot of undissolved grated soap still hanging around in the drum.  I did not expect this after a stern wash at 60 degrees.  It is fine in a table cloth bought second hand from an Indian restaurant for very little money and that is is designed for a boil wash.  It would be no good on our clothes.  I'm currently on steroid cream again for my skin, and soap left in clothes would not do me any good.  I suspect that if I sort of sifted out the grated soap the result would be fine, but I am unsure that I want to risk it.

I have now tried substituting my preferred Ariel with Tesco Everyday Value, Aldi and home made.  I am going to include a pack of Ariel in tomorrow's delivery.  I would consider Aldi if it was slightly easier to get to, and Tesco Everyday Value isn't too bad.  I just think I get a better result from Ariel.  Bear likes playing out in the summer, so I expect I shall have to use something fairly heavy duty.

The second recipe is the 'two ingredient pizza' that I saw on Mumsnet.  There are lots of variations on the web, but I mixed 200g of fat free Greek yogurt with 200g of gluten free self raising flour and stirred, then kneaded, then instead of rolling out thinly I squidged it down in a tin, spread with a gluten free pizza sauce and sprinkled with chopped bell pepper and torn up sandwich ham.  I cooked it at 180 degrees C, Gas 4, moderate oven for fifteen minutes and it was lovely.  Bear loved everything but the sauce.  To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with the sauce, which I had got when on offer during a 'gluten free' sale.  Next time I shall gently fry peppers and onions, stir in tomato puree and herbs and sprinkled over with ham (or whatever meat was left from the joint).  The pizza sauce is actually quite nice used as a pasta sauce, but I shall be sticking to the tomato puree in future with that as well.

I shall also be using the 'greek yogurt and flour' combination to make flat bread type stuff, especially if I want to make fattoush.  Fattoush is a sort of bread salad and there is a recipe here.

So there are two recipes.  It is really important that you do not get them confused.  One of them works and one of them doesn't.  Heaven knows what I am going to do with the rest of the homemade soap powder!

Mountain Ash thank you so much for your kind words.  I took down the White Hart as I wasn't getting anywhere with it.  I had a blast writing it, and I had some great ideas but at the time father was actively stopping me writing.  At the moment I visit him in the early part of the day, look after bear and then DH needs a lot of support at the moment so I am spending lots of time with him in the evening.  Writing is being squeezed in as and when.