Free Homeschool Stuff: Online Courses and Education

A nice listing of free online courses and education as well as an informational video on how to use these resources.

Includes: Business OpenCourseWare, Technology OpenCoursWare, Science OpenCourseWare, and Liberal Arts OpenCourseWare.

Homemade Ketchup

Tonight I decided to make my own ketchup. We are almost out, so after we finished a bottle Kurtz Ketchup, I thought I'd just make a copy-cat recipe from the ingredients on the back of the bottles minus the corn syrup. I also checked around the web for other recipes to see how people were making their ketchup. Most recipes were pretty much the same. The main ingredients are tomato paste, sugar(sweetener), vinegar, onion powder, salt, and spices. Instead of using a recipe, I just experimented with these ingredients by keeping an eye on the texture and adding spices to taste.

You certainly can make ketchup with diced tomatoes, but next time I'll wait to get some tomato paste! It's taking a long time to thicken up; I've got it cooking on low, and added some corn starch. The taste is really good, just too thin.

Here's what I can remember using for a large batch:

- Two cans of tomato sauce, one can of diced tomatoes, and one can of seasoned diced tomatoes
- 1/2 cup sugar, and a big pour of dark molasses
- 3/4 - 1 cup vinegar
- A little water(a mistake, needs less liquids!)
- Various shakes and pours to taste of onion powder, Italian seasoning, cardamon, celery salt, tarragon, salt, coriander, and garlic.
- A few sprays of canola oil
- A little corn starch to thicken which got blobby on me.

I used the blender to liquefy the tomatoes and combine everything, now I'm waiting for it to thicken up on the stove. I think I may need to get some tomato paste tomorrow to fix it.

Here's a formal recipe: Hillbilly Housewife Homemade Ketchup recipe

Is it worth it? Maybe, if you use the paste, or you have a lot of tomatoes to use up. I think it takes a lot of them to make a good thick paste. The benefits are a product free of artificial ingredients and high fructose corn syrup, made to taste, adjustable for sugars and salts.

You can also just purchase organic or Kosher ketchup which is free of artificial ingredients and high fructose corn syrup. Not all organic ketchups are free from high fructose corn syrup. Ketchups like Muir Glen, Trader Joe's(spicey), Annie's, and all Kosher are sugar based.These ketchups are about $3.50 a bottle and up.

See more entries at this week's Make It From Scratch Carnival.

Make Your Own Mulch and Compost from Leaves

"Every spring we make new leaf mold. This is part of this year’s huge pile of ground-up leaves… by next spring it will have become a pile of rich black “soil” that will do wonderful things to our gardens." Read the rest here.

We do a version of this as well, more out of laziness than anything else! ;) Seriously, this is an efficient and cost effective way to recycle, and take advance of nature's cycle of decomposition. We use a mulching mower to shred the leaves, tiny sticks, and grass into tiny pieces so that they decompose more quickly. Instead of piling them, we just mow right over the stuff and leave them. Everything returns to the earth as free fertilizer. Anything extra or unsightly gets raked up around the trees in a neat circle, or wisked into the beds as mulch.

In addition to the using a mulching mower, we get free wood chips from local tree cutting companies. I dress the beds with these, right over the leaves and weeds. It all breaks down into lovely rich soil with the help of lots of worms who find the mix lovely.

Less work and cost for us, and better for the environment.

Our local government is encouraging this natural method of landscaping in order to minimize fertilizer and other chemical run off(storm drains) into the Chesapeake Bay, which is suffering a slow death from algae bloom and pollution. In addition to loss of wildlife, waterman jobs have been lost due to poor catches. Crab and fish are no longer as plentiful.