Homemade Kim Chee

Over a year ago I experimented and made my very first batch of homemade kim chee. Kim chee is a traditional fermented Korean main dish made of vegetables with a variety of seasonings which can taste spicy and a little sour.  Several types of vegtables can be used for kim chee such as Won Bok (Chinese cabbage or Napa cabbage), cucumbers, or daikon (Japanese radish).

I decided to try my hand in making my own kim chee since it's pretty expensive for a small jar that can be eaten in one dinner sitting. I found two recipes online that seemed easy enough to follow and I ended up changing a few things through trial and error. I found two recipes online at umamitopia.com and culinonicles.blogspot.com that I used to reference, but I pretty much used the recipe off of umamitopia instead.

I followed the directions from umamitopia in the first step of brining the cabbage. They had a tsukemono maker to help wilt down the cabbage leaves which is something that I do not have. I have the option of purchasing one from my local Asian grocer but I wasn't about to spend $50+ for such a small item. So I improvised and used a heavy plate to cover the cabbage in a bowl and placed two-5 lbs exercise weights to help weigh it down.

My first batch of kim chee turned out good but I added too much chili powder and it was REALLY spicy for my taste, but overall it turned out pretty good. My second batch turned out even better and with just the right amount of heat. My brother (the chef) even compared it to the Kohala kim chee brand from back home in Hawaii. I've tweaked a few things here and there depending how large of a batch I'm making. The jars I use are ones with a flip open lid that I got from Ikea, but you most certainly can use those Kerr or Ball canning jars.

Here is the recipe with the tweaks that I made for myself.

HOMEMADE KIM CHEE:

Ingredients:
1 medium sized Napa cabbage
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. kosher salt (I just used regular salt)
2 tbsp. dried chili powder
3 tbsp. kim chee base
2 tbsp. fish sauce
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup shredded daikon
1 cup chopped green onions



Directions:

1. Cut the cabbage in half and cut out the core. Then cut each half in 4 equal sections. Wash the cabbage leave and spin out water in a salad spinner if you have one. If not, just shake out water using a colander.
2. Place cabbage leaves into the largest bowl that you have.  Add the sugar and salt, mix well without breaking cabbage leaves. Let sit for about 1 hours so the leaves can wilt a bit. 
3. After it has wilted a little place into large bowl, lay a large but small enough plate to completely cover the cabbage, then place a heavy object onto plate to help weigh it down. In my case they were the two-5 lb. weights. 
4. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight until you see the water covering the cabbage. When the cabbage is completely covered in water it is ready.
5. Squeeze out water form the cabbage and place into a bowl. Add the carrots, daikon, and green onion.
6. In a separate bowl add the chili powder, kim chee base, fish sauce, and garlic. Mix well.
7. Add the sauce to the vegetables. During this time I use food service gloves to mix all the ingredients by hand. Otherwise a wooden spoon will suffice. If your ingredients look a little dry, add more kim chee base by the tablespoon until they look wet enough.
8. Once thoroughly mixed place kim chee into glass jars or container. Let it sit at room temperature for 2-3 days. Then refrigerate.

ENJOY!

                      

                      

                                                                                                                                           

                       

                       

                       

                       

                       

                        

                                     

Crock Pot Laulau

One of my favorite things to eat from back home is laulau. It is pork wrapped in luau (taro) leaves and which is then traditionally wrapped in ti leaves and steamed till cooked. I could buy some frozen laulau at the Asian store here but it is expensive for such a small serving and the meat is so dry.

I've always wanted to attempt to make my own but I always worried about properly cleaning the fresh luau leaves correctly. If you don't clean the clean the leaves correctly by removing the stem and fibrous part of the leaves, you'll experience an itchy throat when eating the cooked leaves. 

Well I took the chance recently after much convincing from my hubby to just try it and watching a few YouTube videos   The one idea that seemed the easiest to do without me monitoring it while steaming to cook was the crock pot method. 

I pretty much followed this YouTube video with a few minor changes of my own. 

After this was done cooking with the wonderful smell permeating in the air, this came out a WINNAH!  It turned out a lot better than I thought.  Got the seal of approval from the hubby and my brother in law who was over for dinner too.  If only I had a bigger crock put to make more since I was only able to fit about 9 small ones in there.  So with that said here's what I did along with a few changes of my own but I pretty much followed the video.


CROCK POT LAULAU:

Ingredients:
2 lbs. Luau Leaves (Taro Leaves) with the fibrous parts taken out
2 lbs. Pork Butt or Shoulder cut into big chunks
1/2 lbs. Cod (Butterfish)
Hawaiian salt
Shoyu
1/4 c. water
Banana Leaves (Cleaned)

Directions:

1. Thoroughly clean the luau leaves and take out the fibrous parts.

2. Line your crock pot with the cleaned banana leaves with the shiny side facing up.

3. Cut up the pork into big chunks. Mix about a 1/2 tbsp. Hawaiian salt and 1/4 c. shoyu.

4. Grab two leaves into your palm and lay a few pieces of pork and butterfish. Wrap up meat with leaves (view video for better idea).  Repeat with ingredients to fit as much as your crock pot allows (I wasn't able to use all of the pork and fish, so I made a very small batch of kalua pig and just threw the extra fish into the crockpot). Add 1/4 c. water over the laulau

5. Line another layer of banana leaves over the laulau and cover with a sheet of aluminum foil. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.  The video says you could also cook it on HIGH for 4 hours but according to some of the reviews some people complained the leaves weren't cooked well and their throats itched a little.

6. All the deliciousness right here! My house smelled SO good and couldn't wait to eat this up.

ENJOY!!

Frugal Friday: Homemade Foaming Hand Soap

Who here loves Bath & Body Works Foaming Hand Soap in their yummy smelling scents?

*Ohh Ohh raises both hands here!!*

They get quite spendy even if you buy them on sale. I had no qualms before to snatch those babies up during a sale to stock up when I used to work and make my own money. Now that we've been a single income family for the past four years or so getting those BBW soaps were a once a great blue moon buy. Then I started to use generic Target foaming hand soap to refill the BBW bottles until I of course discovered Pinterest.

I stumbled upon several pins on how to make your own foaming hand soap. I honestly cannot tell you who I saw the pin from since it's been months since I first tried this out, but if you searched DIY foaming hand soap several pins will come up.

The one I found though simply just used an inch of baby washing soap and filled the rest of the bottle with water. You should actually leave about half an inch or so from the top of the bottle since when you put the pump back in it will overflow, then just tip side to side and up and down (DON'T SHAKE) to mix.

I had some baby washing soap from my baby shower that I ended not being able to use since the baby was "lucky" to have sensitive skin like me. So rather than waste those bottles of baby wash I put them to use and been using them for our hand soap.

It's been working great for us and in the end is a really cheap way to refill those foaming hand soap bottles. I think when I would buy the generic big bottle refills which ran about $4 and would only refill at the most four empty foaming dispensers. One 15 fluid ounce bottle of baby wash that cost about $4 as well has so far refilled my kitchen and downstairs bathroom dispensers at least a dozen plus times so far and there's still a little over 1/4 left in the baby wash bottle.

I'll be doing this for a long while now and you can even use the other scented baby washes. I had the lavender scented one as well and used that for the upstairs bathroom. My hands almost smells as good as a baby's freshly bathed bottom haha.

I hope that you try this out as well since I highly recommend it. So that's my frugal tip for Frugal Friday.

Everyone enjoy this Aloha Friday and long weekend!

Frugal Friday: Homemade Dryer Sheets Part 2

Last week I posted about making your own homemade dryer sheets using scrap material and spraying in diluted liquid fabric softener on them before tossing into the dryer. I had been using that method for over a year but now have found another method.

I found this similar option on Pinterest via One Good Thing By Jillee where she also made homemade dryer sheets. Instead of the scrap material I currently use, she used old dish rags. Now why didn't I think of that? Rags or even washcloths are more absorbent and would retain the liquid softener longer.

She too soaked the rags in softener, squeezed out the liquid, and let them completely dry then tossed into the dryer. According to her post one "sheet"is good for at least 12 loads of laundry before you need to re-soak them.

So I went out and got me a pack of cheap washcloths from Target. They were having their back to school sale and there was a section of home essentials. I got a pack of eight washcloths for about $3.00. Just to experiment with this new method I only used four washcloths just in case I didn't like the results and I didn't want to waste perfectly good washcloths either.

I took my spray bottle of equal parts of water and liquid fabric softener and sprayed the cloths outside and hung them over our patio chairs till they dried completely. Today I did a load of laundry and used one of the cloths to test them out and it worked AWESOMELY!! My laundry smelled fresh and no static cling either. Looks like I'll be doing this method from now on and I highly recommend it too.

That was my frugal tip for the week and hope you have a great Aloha Friday.

Frugal Friday: Homemade Dryer Sheets Part 1

This will be a two part post since i missed last week's Frugal Friday post. The first part will be about the current way I've been using homemade dryer sheets for over the past year.

I first learned about this technique after reading the book "Big Ass Book of Crafts" by Mark Montano. In the book it showed that all you needed was some scrap cotton material and a spray bottle of equal parts of liquid fabric softener and water. Then just spray your fabric scrap with the softener and toss into the dryer.

I had been doing that for several months but kept finding that my clothes would have "wet softener stains" and the blue Downy would bleed onto the whites laundry load. So rather than putting in a wet fabric scrap I would spray each scrap and let them dry completely before throwing them into the dryer.

This has working well for us and I haven't had to buy disposable dryer sheets for over a year. There is no static cling and our clothes still smell Downy fresh (I still put some for the laundry rinse cycle).

I did though find another similar way for homemade dryer sheets, but will save that for next week's Frugal Friday. Here's my current how to on the dryer sheets.

Until then Happy Aloha Friday!

HOMEMADE DRYER SHEETS

Supplies:
8x8 sized cotton fabric scrap
Sewing machine and thread
Spray bottle
Liquid fabric softener
Water

Directions:
Zig zag stitch or serge the edges of your scrap material to prevent fraying.

Put equal parts of liquid fabric softener and water into the spray bottle.

Spray mixture onto each side of fabric scrap and let dry completely.

Toss into dryer with your laundry load.

Frugal Friday: Homemade Laundry Soap

So I'm a HUGE Pinterest fanatic and I honestly online hoard a bunch of pins that catch my eye...well mostly with things I hope to try out. One of the most successful pins that I have made is making my own homemade laundry soap.  A friend of mine actually gave me the idea first a long while ago but I never got around to trying it out for myself until I stumbled upon it on Pinterest.

I have sensitive skin and have been an avid Tide laundry soap user for years and was leary on using the homemade recipe for fear of breaking out in eczema or making my skin condition worse.  However, my friend said her kids have sensitve skin too and they didn't break out in anything.  Also, she even used it on her baby's clothing instead of using Dreft baby laundry detergent which is stinking expensive.  The recipe my friend used is quite similar to one I found online via Pinterest at Being Creative to Keep My Sanity so I went with that.

So with the hubby's approval I went forth and got all the ingredients/supplies that I needed which I could find at my local Wal-Mart. 

Here's the list:

1 4 lb 12 oz box Borax (2.15 kg or 76 oz) found in the detergent isle

1 4 lb box Arm & Hammer Baking Soda (1.81 kg) found in the cooking isle

1 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda 55 oz (3 lb 7 oz) found in the detergent isle

3 bars of Fels-Naptha soap, found in the detergent isle (if you use Zote bars use 2 bars instead, Zote can be found at Home Depot)

2 small containers of Oxy Clean or store brand Oxy Clean (try to get about 3.5 lbs total (1.58 kg)) found in the detergent isle. (I already had a Costco sized box of the stuff so I just measured this out in my batch)

The instructions said to grate the Fels Naptha soap on a cheese grater or use a food processor.  I don't have a food processor so I went for the cheese grater option (I got a separate one just for this purpose).  That was a BIG mistake to do.  Not only did it take me forever to grate one bar of soap, the soap would get clogged in the holes of the grater.  I really didn't want to use any of my kitchen appliances and have them "tainted" with soap, but I gave in and first used my automatic shredder to grate the soap and then used my blender to ground up the "grated cheeselike soap".  After all of that I mixed everything into a big enough container. 

I made this batch of soap back in the beginning of December 2011 and it cost me roughly $12-$15.  The cool part of making your own homemade laundry soap is that all you need to use is just 1 tablespoon (I actually use 2 tablespoons), so this whole thing will stretch for a long while. Here are some pictures of my batch of soap and I apologize that they are not of good quality since I'm too LAZY to use my actual digital camera and just use my iPhone instead. The last pic is as of today and I still have lots left to use! I am guessing it'll last me probably a few more months and I'll be surprised if I'll get to stretch out till this December. If that happens then that means I would have only spent $12-$15 for laundry soap for the WHOLE year! WOW! Whereas before I would clip coupons for Tide soap and wait for a sale to come up, then in the end I would have spent over $100 in soap for an entire year. YIKES!

I highly recommend trying this out if you're trying to cut costs somewhere in your household budget. I use it for all of our laundry and even for our infant son's clothing too ever since he was born six months ago.  I got my sister in Hawaii on the bandwagon, she uses more than the 1-2 tablespoon it asks for so she's on making her second batch of soap, but she's still saving $$$.  Go to Being Creative to Keep My Sanity for more of the how to and go over the comments if you have any concerns.  Especially for those who have those fancy schmanchy HE washers ;p, I got an old school top loader and the soap works absolutely fine. 

So this is my first installment on hopefully a weekly Frugal Friday tid bit that I have tried on my own or maybe something one of you could benefit from. 

On that note HAPPY ALOHA FRIDAY!!