Heather says Hi, it’s been a couple weeks, hasn’t it? Things started off with the best of intentions, but then my youngest decided to play Typhoid Mary (only she was sick, too) with a fun thing called Rotavirus. Parents of very young children probably know this term and are cringing. I took the kids to …
Dear Home Ec 101,How long will it take to clean my house?Signed,Curious in Corpus Christi Heather says: Well Curious, what is your favorite color? Blue? Ok. I’ve plugged that variable into the top-secret Home-Ec 101 House Cleaning Algorithm, and I’ve determined it will take you exactly 18.36 hours to clean your house thoroughly. Oh. Wait. That doesn’t make …
Since I have two young children, four teens, two dogs, and three parakeets, it’s just not the right season of life for me to buy brand new furniture. I buy secondhand and then try to take care of it – or cover it – until I get my money’s worth out of it. Here are …
Heather says Last week turned out to be a really good week overall. I used my stick blender to experiment with a sauce for fish tacos, it still needs some tweaking before I share it, but we’re on to something good. I didn’t make pho on Wednesday, instead I went with a Must Go style …
Dear Home-Ec 101, My husband was recently laid off -sound familiar?- and we really need to cut our food budget while he looks for a new job. In your opinion, what’s the most economical cut of meat or poultry I can get to feed our family? I pretty much stuck to boneless skinless chicken breasts …
If guests are coming over the bathroom is the first room I head to with cleaning supplies. It definitely helps to give it some attention weekly, and once I met a woman that wiped hers down daily so she never had heavy cleaning in the bathroom. Whatever your choice is – or if it’s a …
Heather says As I’ve mentioned before the menu plans I post are a frame work of what we’ll probably eat. Last week I experimented and instead of Thai coconut soup I decided to give Thai curry a try. Curry is something of a comfort food for me, I especially love it in the winter. Not …
The floor of a home is the canvas that family life gets lived on. Sometimes it is a fresh clean canvas and other times it is full of stains and spots. It often gets overlooked, but keeping it in good shape does improve the room. Here are some articles about taking care of flooring; there are …
Dear Home Ec 101, I have a fairly new (less than 1-year-old) cast iron Kohler sink, it is the shiny black one, the manual recommended using the Kohler cast iron sink cleaner and I have used it regularly and I have used a plastic mat on the bottom of the sink, to try to prevent …
Heather says Well, this is a safe space, right? I fell off the wagon last week. We not only ate out, we also had what the kids call a “floor picnic movie night”. The latter is how I make serving raw vegetables, cheese, and other usually lunch but not terribly exciting foods palatable. What’s my …