October Quickies—Pearl Tea and Oven Cleaner

Among the hundreds of blog ideas I’ve saved are several topics that I can’t fathom turning into standalone posts.  There’s just not that much to them.  You’d die of boredom reading them if I didn’t pass away first from the boredom of writing them.  But if written about as a quick tip, maybe once a month, that might be ok.  Even interesting.  We shall see.

FOOD

I read somewhere of someone’s aunt making what she termed Pearl Tea during the Depression.  Her recipe of “hot water, a little milk, and a smidge of sugar” didn’t cut it for me. It didn’t sound very appetizing, either, but taste-testing it wouldn’t kill me.  I translated that recipe into a cup of water, a tablespoon of milk, and ½ teaspoon of sugar.  That was too blah.  So I increased the milk and sugar.  Here’s how it ended up:

Pearl Tea

1 cup hot water

2 tablespoons milk

1 ½ teaspoons sugar

 

Stir the milk and sugar into the hot water.

 

Family reviews:  OK, I didn’t test the whole family on this.  It’s a “Quickie” in more ways than one.  With more milk and sugar, it’s not too blah.  It warms a body up and provides a tiny bit of sweetness.  It’s easy to understand why it’s a Depression recipe.  And it’s another way to use powdered milk.  Were I to begin with instant powdered milk, I’d stir in 1 ½ teaspoons.

 

CLEANING

I always—always—want a more natural cleaner that I can make at home.  It saves money and doesn’t level unwanted chemicals in my air or near my food.  Unfortunately, I was raised with all those magical industrial potions that do the hard work so that all I had to do was wipe things up.  Sometimes the DIY solutions aren’t all they claim to be.  Or perhaps I am expecting too much.  Here’s a recipe I found for oven cleaner.

Oven Cleaner

1 ½ cups distilled white vinegar

1 ½ cups hot tap water

½ cup lemon juice

¼ cup Dawn

 

Mix well in a spray bottle.  Spray the oven walls.  Close door and wait 15 minutes.  Wipe up.

 

Review:  This works just fine for messes that haven’t been baked on for months.  Only for recent splatters.  The more time stuff has baked on, the more help you need.  I enlisted a Magic Eraser for scrubbing the glass, and steel wool for getting the industrially baked on grime off.  I will admit that perhaps I should try cleaning the oven more often.  Maybe I will. 

 

And maybe I won’t.  In that off chance (Ok, don’t laugh.  It’s not nice.) I’d rather not have a whole bottle of cleaner cluttering up the cabinet.  I’d rather make just enough for a single cleaning session.  The batch I came up with today is enough to clean my large double ovens twice.  So I scaled that down to half.

 

Single-Use Oven Cleaner

2 ½ tablespoons hot tap water

2 ½ tablespoons distilled white vinegar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 ½ teaspoons Dawn dishwashing liquid

 

Mix well in a spray bottle.  Spray the oven walls.  Close door and wait 15 minutes.  Wipe up.