Anybody else make their own?

[Duchess]

I can't wait for outdoor living weather! :B

[Cracker]

If you would move down here, you would get a lot more of it. And you could maybe get a slave or two.

[Duchess]

And you could maybe get a slave or two.

Yeah!

[Cracker]

Sodium percarbonate also kills mold spores. It would be perfect for cleaning the wood on barn floors to keep mold out of the feed in there.

[Duchess]

Floors are concrete, babe & the foyer in the barn is brick, walls are cinder block...my horse threw me into one once and I dropped like a rock all because he thought I was going to make him stay in the barn. Asshole.

[Cracker]

That sounds like a nice barn! I am barn soured, I would let you lock me in there. hahaha

[Cracker]

You just have to buy this:



The carafe on my coffee maker was getting crusted with stains (some asshole leaves it on half the time when she goes to work). I was going to buy a new one, but my inner buddha kicked in. I put a teaspoon of that stuff in, warm water, swished for 10 seconds, and it looks BRAND NEW! Loves that stuff! Breaks down to oxygen, water, and a little soda ash. Won't kill you and CHEAP. $5 for 6 lbs.

I'm going to mix it for my carpet cleaner next.

(Duchess, I will call it my Slave in a Bucket.)

[kfran]

I don't make my own detergent but when I had my first baby (almost 3 years ago- wowza!) I cloth diapered her & used detergents like Planet & Charlie's Soap. Also got into making my own cleaners then, a lot of vinegar, baking soda, etc. I mop my kitchen tile & damp mop our hardwoods w/vinegar & water as well. My spouse is in the Army & their uniforms cannot be washed w/detergent that has optical brighteners. That's a hard thing to find anymore.

[Gogo]

I 'made my own' by accident once and this will be long because it was a very involved process. Stupid is as stupid does goes the saying. And here's the proof.

I've always been different and it started early in my life. I like things other people don't like and have always been fascinated with being self sufficient (I watched too many reruns of Little House as a child). I bought my first house (dump) when I was 21. There was 2 acres of land with the house so I turned the extra acreage into a garden. I wanted to try my hand at 'canning'..preserving, putting up food or whatever you choose to call it, and I planted lots of different things and still had space left so I planted corn.

A friend's mom had a freezer full of vegetables she had grown and I was completely amazed by it so I bought an ancient freezer for $20. It wasn't one of the upright ones and was around 6 feet long. I happened across a 'Seal a Meal' thing at a yard sale for a dollar so I was basically all set. The Seal a Meal was one of the first ones out. I was planning on canning all of the vegetables excluding the corn, because I knew you could only can corn with tomatoes, although I didn't know why.

Harvest time came and I spent an inordinate amount of time gazing at the tassels on my corn. I asked some friends to help me shuck it. The pot smokers brought their pot and we spent half a day shucking corn, laughing our asses off and eating. I didn't have much money back then so I cooked up like 50 ears of corn and make a few dozen biscuits.

There was corn all over my kitchen and I stayed up all night scraping it off the cob. I mixed in a small amount of flour for thickening, and some butter and water and par boiled it. I was planning on freezing it as soon as it cooled. I had stacks of bags all over the place. The entire top of the freezer was covered and so was the big kitchen table and all the counters. I had spent a fortune on the bags and had worried about spending the money, but my reasoning was I would make my investment back.

A friend called from S.C. and invited me to come pick the leftovers from his garden. I couldn't resist the offer so off I went. I would put the corn in the freezer when I returned. I would only be gone maybe four hours and was sure the corn would be fine.

I got home nine hours later all excited about the corn. Stacking it in the freezer was what I had been waiting for. Little did I know the AC had croaked shortly after I left. Late August in the deep south can be hot. Especially in a closed up house with no shade. I opened the door and the first thing I noticed was the overwhelming heat. The second thing was the noise..wtf was that noise?
It scared me at first, even though it didn't sound like a human noise. It was more like a...shuffle..I stood still and listened. I walked slowly toward the kitchen, afraid to look in the door. Shuffle, shuffle...splat. What the hell? I finally got the nerve to peek around the corner. Just as I looked...a bag of corn fell off the side of the table. My eyes were huge and my mouth fell open. What the eff was wrong with this picture? There were all these...balloons..all over my kitchen! My mind couldn't process it. They looked like the balloon things they put teddy bears in and sell at florists. Except it wasn't teddy effin bears, it was my corn! But it was no longer flat like when I left. It was all swollen. As my mind was finally processing this info another bag fell off the freezer onto the floor (which had dozens of other bags on it). How was the corn moving? I moved closer and several more bags fell, then I noticed there were bubbles in the bags.

I still didn't know what the hell had happened, and why my corn was walking. I was now too busy to worry about anything but how I was going salvage it. I picked up a bag and stared at it. I knew then that I was screwed. It looked like it was about to explode and there was no way I could eat or feed that corn to anyone. The bag was tight and hard. So I did what any idiot would do..I started bawling. I gently filled clothes baskets with the corn balloons and took them to the trash.

At that time I lived out in the county, as the southerners call it. We had no garbage pick up and had to deal with it on our own. An old man ran a trash removal business and provided each of us with an old, rusted out oil drum. We had to burn the trash though, before he would remove it. So I make several dozen trips the the back of my yard and dumped the corn in the drum. Since it literally filled the drum I went ahead and tossed a match in it.

I don't know if the instinct to move away from the drum was primal or just that even idiots occasionally have an intelligent thought. Of course the shit exploded. The word exploded doesn't even do it justice. It blew the side out of the old oil drum and there was a small, mushroom cloud that lingered above for awhile.

And the air..the smell..wtf was that smell? I had smelled that once. An old mountain man had a jar..full..MOONSHINE. I had made corn liquor. Corn, water, something else = corn liquor. I guess you can even adjust moonshine recipes because I left out the something else and still made accidental moonshine.

I've had plenty of gardens since then but they are always (and forever) cornless.

well worth the read, funny story!