See this?

The purple sweet potato is already putting out roots.  :)

My alternative to underarm deodorant....

The first memory I have of "deodorant" was in 1965 when I attended a youth camp.  Right Guard spray deodorant had recently burst upon the scene and I think probably every girl in my cabin was using it!  The cabin smelled like it all the time... but the stuff worked!

Through the years, a bewildering assortment of deodorants and anti-antiperspirants have come and gone on the market. At some point, a number of years ago, I started having trouble with them.  It seemed that if the product worked at keeping odor at bay, it gave me a rash.  If it didn't give me a rash, then it didn't work.  I think I must have become sensitive to some of the ingredients.

So, I gave up using commercial deodorants and tried to solve the problem on my own.  Of course, the first thing to do, always, is wash well with soap and water and rinse thoroughly and for some people, that's enough, but I am not that lucky.

For a while I tried using baking soda.  It helped, but wasn't enough on it's own.  I used rubbing alcohol for a while, also, and that worked, partially.

Then, our daughters got old enough to join the fray.  There are lots of "natural" deodorants that you can purchase, and all three of them would react badly to the baking soda in them, and for various reasons would quit using something they purchased....

THEN, our youngest daughter invented  the recipe for something she named "47 million times better deodorant."  For me, it has worked wonderfully and I have never had any trouble with it, but unfortunately, again, all three of them reacted badly to the baking soda ingredient after using it for a period of time.

Are you getting bored yet?

If you look over on the right side of this page, you'll see a long list of "chapters" about Kefir.  I have been brewing and drinking milk Kefir for 9 years.  I love it and believe it is very good for my health.  Our daughters and I have a Facebook page where we communicate with each other about remedies, beauty products and other related topics.  Lately, they've all been struggling to find a good deodorant.

I commented that maybe I should try Kefir.  They thought I was joking, but I wasn't.  Well, I am here to tell you that it works!  After my shower, I dip part of a cotton ball in a tiny amount of  milk Kefir and wipe it on my underarms.  I use the cotton to smooth it around and kind of dry it off.  One day, recently, I did that, then I went to the gym and worked out for an hour, and came home.  I decided to give it a really good try.  The following day, (and without showering) in the evening there was still no unpleasant odor.

I know that sounds impossible, but it's true.  I can only guess that since the yeast and bacteria in the milk Kefir are very robust and crowd everything else out, the odor producing bacteria simply cannot proliferate.

It's kind of personal and a little embarrassing to write about this, but I just have to share what I've discovered.

If you try it, please let me know what you think.  If you want to start brewing Kefir, read the "chapters" over there on the right and then you can order some Kefir grains off of eBay if you like.  That is where I got mine a long time ago.

It is time to start Sweet Potatoes!

I am hoping to grow all of my own sweet potato plants this year. In the picture above, you can see four glass jars, filled with water, each with a sweet potato in it. Over the next few weeks, sweet potato "slips" will grow and when they are big enough, I will pull them off and put them in a jar of water.  They will grow roots and then in May, I can plant them outside.

I chose one of the purple sweet potatoes and three of the regular ones that have little sprouts growing out of them already.  You can see, in the pictures, the sweet little slips growing out.  I put them in the water just last night and the leaves are already starting to open!

As they grow, and I pull them off, they will grow more. I am looking forward to getting into the garden this Spring. I still have the kale out there and there are bunching onions and garlic growing a little.  

Purple Sweet Potato Pie

This past summer, we grew some Purple Sweet Potatoes in our garden. Here is a link to where we got the original plants:

https://www.rareseeds.com/sweet-potato-molokai-purple-3-plants-ships-march-june-/

We bought the original plants 2 years ago and planted them, but then had a terrible, horrible, very bad gardening year and ended up with, literally, one little tuber about the size of a walnut.  One of my garden fairies (I have TWO now) told me to plant it in a pot to keep it alive.  I did, placing it on the windowsill in the kitchen.  It grew, at last and I started taking "slips" off of it and rooted them in a little jar of water.  I ended up planting just 3 of them in the sweet potato bed and they did very well!
Here is a photo from the website to show you what they look like:

I find them to be relatively dry, and not as sweet as the usual orange sweet potatoes, but they make up for that in their nutritional punch! That deep purple color tells you that they have LOTS more of the wonderful phytonutrients that are in blueberries.

Yesterday, I steamed some of them and then made a pie.  Here is my pie.  As it bakes it puffs up and that is what you see here, but after it begins to cool, it sinks back down.

Sweet Potato Pie 

(I used purple sweet potatoes.  You can use the orange ones, of course.)

1 pound steamed sweet potato (I put mine through a ricer, you don’t have to do that – mine was purple, but the orange kind would work just fine.

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup honey
½ cup milk
2 eggs
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust

Steam the sweet potatoes,cool a little, take off the skins and break them up into a bowl. Add the butter and mix well with mixer. Stir in honey, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat until nice and smooth. Pour into unbaked pie shell.

Bake at 350 F for 55 – 60 minutes until knife inserted in center comes out clean. It will puff up and then will sink down as it cools.

CRUST – use a pastry cutter to work in the lard.
About ¾ cup whole wheat flour and ½ cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup cold lard
½ teaspoon salt
Ice water

I did not give you the method for making the crust here, just the ingredients.  If you have a question about the method, please comment and ask!