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Thursday, October 4, 2012

Chicken Casserole-30 Minute Meal




Easy-Peasy Casserole

Seriously.


It's so good and takes so little time! I made this for a savory thing at a cold time. You can, of course, substitute frozen broccoli for fresh (just kissed with steam) if you still have it available to you. And chicken/mushroom soup could be replaced with any thick broth. If you can't get wild rice-don't worry about it, it just adds to the texture and appearance. Should take about 30 minutes, unless you're not used to the kitchen so much, then, about 45.




Ingredients:



Water

2 Cups wild rice with 4 cups quick rice

1 Stick of butter-or a bit less...

1 clove of garlic

1 Can cream of chicken soup


1 Can cream of mushroom soup

2 10oz packages of frozen broccoli, warmed with 1 cup water in a small pot and drained


1 Small can of mushrooms

1 Small can of water chestnuts

3 Cups of shredded mixed cheese



Directions:





1)Cook rice with butter and chopped garlic clove and a cup, then add in 5-5.5 cups water in a a medium pot on medium-high heat


2)After cooked add slowly soups, turn down heat a bit to medium


3)In separate bowl mix broccoli, mushrooms, chestnuts and 1/2 of the cheese


4)Mix it all together and get it in a dish-then top it with cheese


5)Bake at 350 deg F for about 20 minutes


6)Let cool and chop ya some chives on that baby (or, those who like those onion crisp things

can add that)!


Serves 12 (maybe...)



Done!

Simple joys.

Laundry Day

What Will it Wash?
An Informal Experiment

So I have been excited to use my new laundry detergent that I made, and I had already discovered the wonders of hydro-suds, but I wanted to test it to see which was better. So, I took a towel that had been soiled with one of the harshest substances-hair dye. I produced my own simple experiment, judging the time it seemed  to take it to do it's job, amount of washes, and if it really met the standards of the regular detergent.

So without further do, I will give an informal and not-professional lab report. We're all friends, right?


The towel sections are best shown here
First, I split up the towel to where there were three smaller towels that were soiled evenly as possible.
I then assigned each cleaner to each towelette and got to washing. I got a bowl of water and scrubbed for 2 minutes and rinsed and repeated until it didn't feel like more was coming out. I recorded time and number of washes. Since they all used about the same amount of substance, I wont account it (two tablespoons) into the equation. I repeated this for the other two then took a picture.

The only problem I had was the stain remover didn't lather and spread around, so it was more of pouring two tablespoons along it than working around with the cloth. Which makes sense-it's a fine spot remover. And the detergent in the big bottle gave me a bit of a headache and was hard to rinse out. This is probably why washing machines use so much water..




As you can see, the other stain removers did a great job, and all did their best and about the same quality in washing abilities. I noticed that the detergent was good for large areas, the hydro-suds were good for really bad stains, and the commercially produced-chemical laced-detergent or whatever you decide to call it was good for nothing. My skin not only broke out from it, but I felt like I couldn't wash anything. The homemade ones didn't irritate my skin at all so I would see that as a plus.

The red bumps on my hand-forgot to wear gloves with abrasive soaps
In the end, I believe that all did their job and did well as a cleaning agent-just for different things. Price, space, and quality should be accounted for when you decide what to use.

Happy washing!