Dutch Oven

A few years ago we got a cast iron dutch oven from my parents.  It mostly has sat in our garage, but it comes in handy when when the scouts go camping.  They are going winter camping next week and will be taking it.  In preparation, a couple of weeks ago they used it to practice their dutch oven cooking.  It came home looking like this.

It obviously has seen better days.  It is getting rusty on the outside and inside, the black around the edges in the bottom of the pan is some unknown charred on food, that will not come off.  It is about 1/2 inch thick.  And they are supposed to cook their meals in this.  It needs some love.

I started looking online for how to re-season cast iron and came across Sheryl Canter's blog.  She appears to be a little obsessed with cast iron cookware, which is a good thing for me.  She did all the research and figured out the best oil to use to season cast iron and could explain why.  She also had great steps to follow.  For her it has been a journey, so I had to read a couple of different posts and the comments to get all the information.

Here is how I did it.

First I cleaned the dutch oven with Easy Off oven cleaner.  Heating it first then spraying it and enclosing it in a big garbage bag to set for several hours and one time over Sunday. 

 It took several applications as well as Trip scrubbing it and chipping away at that charred on gunk.  We still had a few spots that wouldn't come completely off, but I thought it was good enough.   

Next we rinsed really well and towel dried it.  

In trying to get some "black rust" we baked it in a 450* oven for 1 hour.  It still just looked like red rust on it. So then I tried to boil it in water to get the "black rust", but my canner wasn't big enough to submerge the whole thing and it didn't work out.

Instead, I tried a tip that I found in the comment section and rubbed the whole thing with a cut onion.  That worked the best of all to give it some blackness.

Then I baked it again at 450* for an hour.

I let it cool and rubbed it with organic, unfiltered flax seed oil (it was cheapest at Amazon.com) then wiped it all off with a clean rag.  You might be tempted to leave a thin layer of oil on the pan, but that will cause it to be sticky when it comes out of the oven.  Wipe it all off (there really is the right amount left on the pan).  It works!

I put the dutch oven and lid in the cold oven, upside down, brought the temp up to 500*.  

After 1 hour at 500*, I  turned the oven off and it let cool for 2 hours.  Don't open the oven.

Then I repeated the oil steps 5 more times over the next 2 days.

We did 2 coats a day.  When the oil heats up, it made all of our eyes hurt, so I would time it to bake it, then leave the house or go to bed for the cool down period.  That is why it took so long.

It was totally worth it though.  

It looks beautiful!  

I keep thinking I want other cast iron pieces to make look so nice.

Here are the before and after pictures.

If you need some flax oil to do your own, I have some and it will expire before I use it again.

(I know I could eat the flax oil myself, in fact I used to take a table spoon a day, but then I got pregnant with Ocean and I couldn't stomach it anymore and I still can't.  Yuck!)

Sorry!

I have a little boy that loves to play games.  It is this one.

Julius

In the morning after his brothers and sister go to school, he sets up a game.  As soon at that one is done,  he gets out another.  One of his favorites is 

Sorry!

He has become quite the good counter as he moves our pieces around the board.  The other day I had some work to do, so he set up the game in the kitchen and moved all the pieces and flipped the cards while I made the appropriate comments.  "Oh no",  "Sorry!", "Hey", etc.  Some times Zelda plays with us, but she usually looses interest and so we take over for her.

The other day, my visiting teacher came over.  She got to play with us, too.

He also likes to play Uno, which is great for learning to match colors and numbers. 

And Candy Land

Mouse Trap

A B Seas

 and Squarlles

He also likes 

Tic Tic to Ride (Ticket to Ride)

But that one is not so fun with just the 2 of us. 

I think I might have to teach him one of my favorites,

Yhatzee!

I will get him writing and doing addition!

You should stop by sometime and we will play a game. 

Harvey's Horrible Hives

A while ago Harvey got an ear ache.  He went to the doctor and got a prescription for Amoxicillin.

He took it for about a week and started getting spots.  We didn't know what it was.  Then the spots got bigger and some of them looked like hives.  He had no other symptoms.  Just the spots.  Spots everywhere!

We took him back to the doctor.

It turns out that he is allergic to Amoxicillin.

This was a few days before he started kindergarten.  

We took him to school with a note that he was not contagious, 

but he sure looked bad. 

They lasted a long time, several days, and slowly faded away.

The Tooth

Ocean has had a loose tooth for a while now.  It has really been bothering him.  The new tooth is poking out through the gums, but that old tooth was just hanging on.  Tonight he took care of that.

Amazingly enough, it actually worked!

Nursing is Great!

I don't think that I have fully appreciated nursing before.  But I am much more knowledgeable about calories and weight gain and loss now after my weight loss journey a year ago that got interrupted with becoming pregnant.  But I have gained that appreciation now.

I did not gain any weight over that holidays and I ate A LOT.  I didn't really loose any either, but I didn't gain and I think I should have gained at least 10 pounds.  I am thinking of this because Travis and I are tracking our food now.  We started on January 2nd.

With my other kids, when I was nursing, I was a bottomless pit.  But this time I don't feel so hungry.  I think it is a blessing from God.  I don't have a scale, but I do know that I have lost 3/4 of an inch off my waist and 1" off my hips in the first week.  And I am enjoying my food.  I am limiting what I eat, but I don't feel deprived.  Some days I just want to eat all day, but other days (most days) I can just eat my food and be completely content.

But I have a day about once a week that I disregard my calorie limit.  Today is one of those days.  I am typing this as I eat some of a Marie Callender's Chocolate Satin pie, that I unfortunately looked at the ingredients of it, but I have dismissed that bad news from my head to enjoy the chocolately deliciousness of it.  As I do, I am thinking of all the calories that my cute little baby sucks from me and not feeling guilty at all.  Tomorrow I will be back to a strict calorie intake, but tonight I will enjoy.

**Morning note.  Eating junk does not actually make you feel good.  Especially when you are used to eating healthy.  I feel full of junk!

Where have you been?

That is what people should be asking me.  No posts for almost 3 months, and when I had been doing so well too.  Ok I hadn't been doing well for several months, but at least there were some posts.

This cute little guy is the reason.  

Indie keeping me busy, and up late at night, which should mean that I could write posts, but I discovered Amazon Prime Instant Videos and so I watch "Poirot" episodes instead.  

Here are some updates...

Rez became a Star Scout and finally finished his Law merit badge.  He has awesome hair at the moment and can do 15 pull ups in a row.  He is almost as tall as me.

Ocean decided to go back to blond.  I had to bleach all the red out and then tone it to the right color.  (Every time I look at his hair I think what a great hairdresser I am and then I remember that I don't do it alone.  Then, I think how grateful I am to God for his help in getting the right colors and having it all turn out good.  I wouldn't be as great of a hairdresser without him.  He is my secret weapon in all that I do.) 

He will be getting his braces off soon.  He is excited to be able to whistle again.

Daphne is growing up and getting more gorgeous.  She is sick at the moment with a fever, headache and sore throat.  She is learning to play the trumpet and the piano.  

Zelda, where do we start with her.  Her hair is much curlier than this, I had straightened the front this day.  It normally is in cute ringlets with frizz in the back.  She has decided that she doesn't like to be in a wet or dirty diaper and takes it off as soon as she does anything in it.  She got training pants for Christmas and wore them for the first time today.  We had several times of sitting on the potty with nothing happening followed by little puddles on the floor.  She is learning though.  She loves Indie and can often be seen leaning over him making him smile and occasionally  cry.

Mo, how can you not love that face?  There are some things I learned about him a long time ago.  He thinks of something and does it.  He cannot not talk.  He speaks really fast, and it is hard to understand him.  He doesn't sit still for very long.  He plays really well with younger kids.  But recently I have learned that those things add up to ADHD.  And that helped us learn some other things about him.  Like, he is paying attention when he is moving.  And his mind is moving so fast it can't be bothered with little details like how to spell correctly or write all of his numbers the right direction.

I have been trying to get our life back in some semblance of order after having a baby and Thanksgiving, Christmas, new year and having everyone out of school and Trip home for the holidays. I am still trying to get the Christmas tree down, find homes for new things and recently we had dining room benches delivered that I have to find time to finish.

Harvey is loving school.  It turns out that he is thriving with the structure and schedule of school life, not to mention he is very smart.

Julius.  He is my little buddy at home every day.  He and I play Uno together.  He will do yoga with me and loves to play computer games when I have a client.   And in the afternoons, he will watch a "move-move" and take a nap on the couch.

Trip is busy at work, home and church.  He switched to the research department last year and loves it.  Work is much less stressful when you can't accidentally loose millions of dollars.  He is working with the young men at church, which is great since we have 2 of them.  And he is the #1 kid putter to bedder.  While I am sitting nursing the baby in the evenings, he is reading stories and singing songs and leading by example:)

Help! Bleach on Scout Pants!

This is the post that I wanted to find a few months ago when I discovered bleach had gotten onto Rez's $40 scout uniform pants.  I didn't want to buy another pair, they were not that old and in really good shape otherwise.  The bleach turns the green a lovely lavender color.  

They are made of some microfiber fabric, really nice but not easily dyeable.  I looked up how to dye polyester, not an easy proposition and that is assuming you can find the right color of dye.  

So, I came up with my own solution, fabric paint.

I mixed these 4 colors to get a color that was close, then dapped it on to the bleach spots, rubbed it in and let it dry.  

After a day or so, I washed them.

It turned out pretty good, not perfect, but when you look at them you think more of camouflage than, "my what a lovely lavender that is."

I ended up buying another pair of pants for "dress", but these work great for when he is on hikes, etc.