Mango Salsa

Well, here in Texas it's starting to feel like summer.  We had a high of 91 yesterday!  With this summer heat comes my need for all things summer tasting which include my homemade blended strawberry lemon-aid (recipe coming soon on this one!) and of course my homemade mango salsa!  Mangos and I have  a sweet love affair all summer long and I simply can't get enough of them.

Here is my delicious Mango Salsa Recipe:

• 1 large mango (or 2 small mangos) skinned and diced small
• 1 can of black beans - washed and drained
• 1 cup of corn (can be canned or frozen, just drain the juice if it is canned)
• 1 red bell pepper - chopped small
• 1/2 purple onion - chopped small
• Bundle of Cilantro - chopped small
• 1 tsp. lime juice (or more to your liking!)
• 1 tsp. garlic salt (or more to your liking!)

Directions:

• Chop and prep everything then mix it all together!  
• Devour with tortilla chips or eat with tacos, it's great with mahi mahi fish too!

Homemade Dishwasher Soap

Homemade Dishwasher soap is another MUST in my house.  Keeping toxins at a minimum in my house is so important and unfortunately store bought dishwasher detergent is packed full of yucky cancer causing chemicals - no thank you!

I will say that dishwasher detergent has been one of the most tricky of all the homemade products to make.  Not that making it is hard, but being happy with the end result was the difficult part.  My water comes from a well and it is hard - I mean off the charts hard, so if this soap can keep my dishes clean - it can keep anyones dishes clean!

Another great bonus of my recipe is that it also serves as a great soft scrub for your sinks and shower!  I love it when one recipe can serve more than one purpose!

Here is the recipe:

• 1 Cup of Baking Soda
• 1 Cup of Borax
• 1/4 Cup of Citric Aci
• 20 Drops of Young Living Lemon Essential Oil
• 2 TBS Rice
• Fabric or small sachet

Directions:

• Mix everything except the rice together.  
• Put rice in a small sachet or make a small little bag out of fabric.  The rice keeps the moisture out of your soap and helps it not get hard!
• Put your rice sachet in the bottom of your container and fill your container with soap
• Use in your dishwasher just like you would use regular detergent!

Another super simple recipe that keeps toxins out of your home and your family healthy!

Questions?  Feel free to email me vintageburlapbarn@yahoo.com

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Cooked Kale Salad

It's a rainy and blustery day today and when the weather gets this way all I want to do is stay inside and bake, snuggle under a blanket with a good book, light a fire, and relax.  My husband and I eat a lot of salads (no shock I know what else do you eat when you don't eat meat or dairy lol!)  But when the weather turns cold soups tend to take the place of a lot of our salad consumption.  One recipe I created last winter still is a big hit for us, as it combines the best of salad and warmth together. It's a cooked Kale salad and it is so delicious.

Ingredients:

- 1 Bunch Kale chopped (you can use any Kale I've made this with them all)

- 3 Carrots chopped

- 1 Zucchini chopped

- 1/4 cup Pine Nuts

- 1/2 white onion chopped

- 2 garlic cloves minced

- 1 cup vegetable broth

-1 lemon

- Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

- Add onions carrots and garlic to pan with vegetable broth and cook on low till they are soft enough (I tend to like my veggies a little more crunchy so I don't cook a ton)

- Add in the pine nuts and zucchini and let them cook for a few minutes (again as soft or crunchy as you want)

- Add chopped Kale

- Juice lemon over the top of the Kale (if you don't like a lot of lemon flavor only add in a half a lemons worth of juice, but if you like the lemon flavor go for the entire lemon)

- Mix and take off the heat after just a couple minutes.  Your Kale will go mushy fast so watch this close.  

- Serve on a plate and add Salt and Pepper to taste, it usually doesn't need much if any!

The veggies within this salad can easily be exchanged for other veggies.  Some of my other favorites vegetables to add would be squash, eggplant, or green beans.   

Hope you love it, let me know what you think!

Micro Green Salad

I have been on a huge micro green kick lately.  My local farmer's market (which is amazing by the way you shop for everything online and then just pick it up in a box!  It's the perfect farmer's market for the soccer mom who doesn't have time to get to a farmer's market on a Saturday!  Seriously if you are in the Austin area check them out, they have several locations Bountiful Sprouts ) sells the most amazing delicious micro greens.

I had only been juicing them or cutting them up and throwing them in a salad.  But a couple days ago I decided to get creative with all my yummy micro greens and what was created in my kitchen was amazing deliciousness!  I just started throwing stuff together and before I knew it I had this salad:

In order to give you the recipe I actually had to remake the salad and measure everything out since I just started throwing stuff together like a mad scientist except Frankenstein didn't come out of my kitchen instead a very happy husband came out with several helpings of salad!  Here is the recipe hope you enjoy!

Ingredients for salad
- 2 smallish zucchini (grated)
- 10 oz of micro greens (I used several: sunflower, mung bean shoots and sweat pea shoots)
- 3 carrots (grated)
- 1/2 purple onion (diced)
- 1 red bell pepper (diced)
- 2 avocados (diced)

Ingredients for the Dressing
- 1/2 cup tahini
- 4 T coconut oil or olive oil
- 4 t Homemade Taco Seasoning
- 1 bundle of cilantro (chopped)
- 2 T Water (optional depending on thickness of dressing)

Directions:
- Chop and grate all the veggies for the salad and toss in a big bowl.
- Take all the ingredients for the dressing and put in a food processor or blender and mix till everything is nicely mixed.  The dressing should be pretty thick, this isn't a watery dressing (think of a thick ranch) However, if it seems way to thick (just depends on the tahini) add a couple T of water.
- Once it is all mixed in a little food processor or blender pour over the salad and toss till it spreads all over everything
- My favorite part of the directions EAT and enjoy!

Hope you all love this salad as much as I do!

Homemade Taco Seasoning

Today's recipe is a super simple taco seasoning recipe.  I love this mix and make it in big batches.  I also use the taco seasoning in a lot of my recipes like my Quinoa Taco Meat. I buy my spices in bulk from my local co-op so they are always organic and then my taco seasoning doesn't have any of the weird stuff in that a normal taco seasoning packet would have in it.  I would share all the scary details of what is in that taco seasoning packet you buy from the store, but I wouldn't want to scare you or guilt you into making your own.  I'll just leave it at this read your ingredients - if you don't recognize an ingredient it probably doesn't belong in your body - enough said - I'm off my soap box now!

Here is the recipe and this is my bulk recipe so cut it down if you don't want to make a mason jars worth of taco seasoning!

Ingredients:

-1 cup chili powder

-1/2 cup onion powder

- 1/4 cup cumin

- 1/4 cup garlic salt

-1/4 cup paprika

Directions:

Mix it all together and store in an air tight container.  Thats it!  Isn't that simple!

Another one of my favorite ways to use this Taco Seasonings is to make a salad dressing with it.  Mix 6 T of olive oil 4 T of balsamic vinegar and 2 T of the Taco Seasoning together.  I use this on my taco salad. I'll post a recipe for my taco salad soon!

Hope you enjoy the seasoning!  What yummy creative things do you do with your homemade taco seasonings?

Jet Dry in your dishwasher?!?

Jet Dry that little magic blue bottle you put in your dishwasher that somehow makes everything in your dishwasher better.  Well, I have discovered something new and my Jet Dry balloon has popped!

Can't remember where I read it (probably pinterest, isn't that where all great ideas come from!) the post talked all about how you can replace Jet Dry in your dishwasher with White Vinegar.  This makes sense since you can soak glasses in vinegar to get water spots off - it would naturally only makes sense to use vinegar in your Jet Dry spot.  And when I started digging into what Jet Dry was made of I was slightly disturbed it's acid and isn't good for you at all (no surprise there - all cleaning products are full of things that slowly make us sick!)

I was very excited by this discovery and so I not so patiently waited for my blue jet dry to run out in the dishwasher. . . and finally it did.

I've had vinegar in my jet dry spot for a couple of months now and guess what?!?  It works BETTER than jet dry!  No spots are ever found on my glasses and I'm not paying for Jet Dry, vinegar is way cheaper than that blue little bottle and I'm chemical free in my dishwasher now. (I'll post my dishwasher soap recipe soon!)  I also added 2 drops of Young Living Essential Oil to keep the smell of vinegar off my dishes.  It works great!

Vinegar I have loved you in my cleaning products for a long time - but this new Jet Dry discovery has made my heart swoon for you even more.

Fall in love with vinegar too!  Try it and let me know what you think!

Questions?  Feel free to email me at vintageburlapbarn@yahoo.com!

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Honey Poppyseed Salad Dressing

 This is with out a doubt my favorite salad dressing of the moment!  It is sweet and delicious on a summer spinach salad with strawberries, onions, and sunflower seeds - and it is packed full of things that are so good for your body like raw honey and coconut oil!

Here is the recipe:

• 3/4 cup raw honey (local and raw is always best!)
• 1/3 cup Braggs Apple Cidar Vinegar
• 4 T chopped onions
• 3 T Mustard (could be Dijon or just regular mustard)
• 1 t Poppy Seeds
• 1/2 t Sea Salt
• 1/2 cup Coconut Oil
• 1/2 cup Organic Olive Oil
• 1/4 cup water (if you like your salad dressings thicker don't add the water)

Directions:

• Blend all ingredients together in a vita-mix, blender, or food processor.  

We love this dressing on a spinach salad with fresh berries but it is also a great dressing to use in wraps especially if you leave it a little thicker!

Hope you enjoy!