If you want to cook with your homemade tomatoes or store bought ones you will need to know how to blanch your tomatoes. The reason you need to blanch your tomatoes before you can cook with them is that the process works to take care of the removal of any chemicals applied during their growing. Blanching your tomatoes also allow just the good juicy flavor of the inside to get into whatever your preparing instead of the surface which adds little value.

To get started you will need your tomatoes, a paring knife and a knife you can use for cutting as well as a cutting board. First step is to put water in a large pot on the stove and let it start boiling. While the water is heating take your knife and begin to cut out the stems of the tomatoes. Lightly cut an X into the bottom of each tomato and place them into a blanching basket which is basically a big bowl which looks like a metal strainer. Once all of your tomatoes are in the blanching bowl, place the bowl inside the boiling water. Once your tomatoes are in the hot water, fill your sink with cold water.

Keep your eyes on the tomatoes and you should see after about sixty seconds that the skins will begin to lift off of the tomatoes. Using tongs, remove the blanching basket from the hot water. Remove the fruit from the blanching basket into the sink and leave them there to cool. Once they are all cooled down you should be able to pull at the skin of the fruit around where you made the X mark and remove the skin from all of your tomatoes.

This is all it takes to blanch your tomatoes! Now that you know how to blanch your tomatoes, you have no excuses to go get cooking!

Pasta and sauce is one of the most popular dinners thanks to its quick and simple preparation time. What makes or break the meal is the quality and flavor of the sauce as everyone can make it a little different depending on personal preferences. Here is how you can make your own homemade tomato sauce and overtime start making it your own by changing the recipe and playing with the flavors you like the most.

The first thing you need to do is blanch ten tomatoes. Once they are ready, chop eight of them using your processor. Take the other two and dice them up and save off separately from the other eight. With your tomatoes ready it is time to make up your own homemade tomato sauce!

Take a large pot and heat at medium heat the following: one onion chopped, one green bell pepper chopped, four cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter. After about five minutes add in your eight blended tomatoes and stir in your other two diced tomatoes, a pinch of basil and a pinch of Italian seasonings.

Bring the pot to a boil. Once boiling lower the stove to low and cover the pot. Allow your tomato sauce to simmer for about two hours to allow everything to breakdown and work out the flavors. Once your two hours are up, add in two tablespoons of tomato paste and allow your sauce to simmer two more hours and then you are done!

Making your own homemade tomato sauce allows you to create a variety of flavors that meets your specific preferences. You can store your sauce in cans making the process more reasonable as you only need to do it now and again. Congrats, you now know how to make your own homemade tomato sauce!

When I say bread I don’t mean money, I literally mean bread. Have you ever made your own home made bread? If you have made your own bread you would know that after two days maybe three, it goes stale. Have you ever bought bread from the store? Do you know how long store bought bread is good for? It can last for two weeks or longer. Isn’t that just a little disconcerting?

Same basic ingredients are used to make bread be it at home or by a large company accept when made for mass production and sold at your grocery store, it last two weeks thanks to the addition of preservatives and chemicals. These preservatives introduced to the bread do nothing good for you as far as nutrition or health but are applied help the bottom line of the company. Bread that lasts longer on the shelf of the store make more money for bakers as less waste and products going pass their must sell date.

This is why you should do it yourself, especially if you have a family who will go through a loaf of bread in a few days anyways. You won’t have to worry about the short time to go stale and in the end you will save money and be healthier for it. If you think it is a long time consuming process and do not want to get involved buy a bread machine. Bread machines will take you little time, just set it in motion and come back when it is done. Still better then the store bought bread.

A hole can appear in your interior walls any number of ways and leave you with annoying problem you need to resolve. Hiring a contractor to come fix a hole in your drywall walls is not needed. This is a very simple problem and something anyone should be able to do no matter how handy they consider themselves. When you are done repairing the hole in your wall it will look like new and no need to hide it with the painting you hung in front of it last week.

To get started take down the following items, run over to your local hardware store and pick them up. These are common items so if you don’t know where to find them show someone this list. Drywall, drywall screws, spackle, putty knife, drywall tape, and sandpaper. That is all you need to do the patchwork, you might also want to pick up a little touch up paint if you need it.

Once you have the items, time to get started. Use a knife and turn your hole in the wall into a square hole in the wall. The closer to a perfect square the easier it is for you. You will need a stud exposed in order to install the drywall. If the hole is so small that no stud was exposed, they make small hole patch kits which might be better the solution for you. Be sure to install the screw within an inch of the wall itself as it will be later covered by the tape.

With the hole a square, use a knife to cut your drywall so that the piece you cut out matches the size of the opening in the wall. Place your new drywall into the hole and secure it using the drywall screws by screwing them into the studs behind your patch piece. Once you have the patch in place the hole should be covered.

Now it is time to make it look pretty again. Take the sandpaper and sand down the edges where the drywall patch and original wall meet. Take your putty knife and apply the putty around the edges you just sanded to fill in any cracks that may exist between the two. Cut your drywall tape to the right length to be applied to the area you just filled in and soak it in water for a few seconds. Remove it from the water and lay it along the four lines of the square hole where a little of the tape sits on the wall, a little sits on patch. You should also cover the screws used to install the patch. Be sure the tape is applied and flush so that it does not bubble up later on.

Apply more spackle on top of the drywall tape and leave it to dry overnight. In the morning use the sandpaper to blend and smooth out the edges and just like that, no more hole in the wall you have patched it!

Laundry detergent is one of those things everyone needs and those with kids use more then the rest of us. By making your own laundry determent you can save yourself money per load without losing any value. Here is how you can make your own laundry detergent which will last almost 50 loads worth of laundry.

To get started you will need a bar of soap (doesn’t matter what kind), one box of washing soda (not baking), a 5 gallon container that has a lid, 3 gallons of water, a large spoon which will be used to mix the ingredients, a measurement cup and a knife. Most of this stuff you will already have around the house anyways (except for the washing soda) so just a matter of collecting them before you can get started on making your own laundry detergent.

Once everything is collected the first thing you need to do is boil four cups of water on your stove. Get the water started and while it is heating up use your knife and shave the bar of soap where you want to slice off thin slices until you have broken the entire bar down to nothing. Once your water is at a boil, empty your soap shavings into the water and use your spoon to stir it in until it dissolves. You will know it is dissolved when you have soapy looking water and not slices of soap. Set the soapy water to the side and continue to the next part.

Empty the 3 gallons of water into the 4 gallon container. Pour the hot soapy water you just created into the mix and stir for one minute. Add in your washing soda and stir for two more minutes. Let this sit overnight to cool and then you’re done. While it may not look like what your use to, it will work the same as the store bought stuff. Keep the lid on the container for storage and when you want to do laundry simply use one cup full each time and treat it like the normal laundry detergent you were buying from the store. Congrats! You now know how to make your own laundry detergent!

When it comes to buying groceries there are two tests you should apply before going to the store and purchasing it. If you can follow these two simple but effective rules you will save yourself a lot of money in the long run.

First rule: Do you need it. Simple but most people get in the habit of just buying something because they usually buy it… even if they already have it at home and do not really use it that often. Even if you do not have any, is it something you need? Can you do without it?

Second rule: Can you do it yourself. Are you going to buy a cake? Why not buy the ingredients and make it yourself? (Most common answer is laziness but no one admits it). Most things people actually NEED (see rule 1) they can do themselves. Most things people WANT they need to buy from the store. Why? Because everything you need you can provide for yourself.

Always apply these two basics rules and you will have more money in your wallet and live a healthier life in the long run.

The reasons to create your own compost are various. From reducing landfills, saving money and providing nutrients to your garden are just a few reasons why you should start your own compost this year and help the environment and your wallet out. There are really no reasons why you shouldn’t do it actually. You need to throw this stuff out or do something with it, so why not put it to work in a positive way?

To create your own open air compost outside you will need the following materials. Wood, hammer, nails and of course, a shovel. The exact measurements of the wood depend on how much room you want to take up with it. If you have a large garden, create a large compost, etc.

Build your compost early in the spring and select a location that is level, well drained and is somewhat private. It also should be a location that is not in direct sun (you don’t want it too hot) but not cool areas either (you don’t want it not warm). To build, create your box with wood and nails being sure to leave room for the compost to breath at the various heights that you build it. That is all it takes. It is a simple box to keep your compost in one location and allowing it to break down in a secluded location.

Once built, start throwing in your food scraps, paper materials and yard trimmings. A good rule of thumb is for every 2 brown items you put in (carbon) be sure to put in one green item (nitrogen) to ensure your compost has a healthy mixture of nutrients.

As you add items to your compost something’s to keep in mind is that you want to moisten any dry material you add to the pile. Also use your shovel to occasionally turn over the compost; you should also use your shovel to bury fruit, vegetables and other food a few inches below the surface. You want to keep the compost wet, if it gets too dry it will slow the process.

After a few weeks to a month you can begin to use your compost pile (take from the bottom first) as a soil add in, mulch, or a potting mixture.

One of the largest food crops harvested each year, potatoes are an easy to grow option for your garden that provides a great side item for every barbeque or home cooked meal. When deciding to grow your own potatoes something you should keep in mind is that they require full sun to grow so be sure to pick the right spot. They have aggressive roots so be sure to break up the soil and that it is well drained. While these are preferences, potatoes are hardy and are very growable in less then perfect soil.

Once the spring arrives and the ground is no longer frozen, you can get to work on growing your own potatoes. Potatoes are normally grown in rows and planted roughly fifteen inches apart where the rows are spaced two to three feet apart. If you are working with limited space, you can grow them in mounds. Dig roughly four inches wide and about six inches deep along your rows or mound. Place the seeds into your trenches and cover over with three inches of soil. After a few weeks you will note some growth on your potatoes, add a little more soil to the trench at this time. As the plant grows you will continue to add a little soil so that the base of the plant has a mound of soil near the bottom. This is done over a period of time to ensure the potatoes are receiving the right amount of sunlight as it grows. The potatoes require the hill effect around the base in order for the plant to grow properly and the seed to expand with its root systems.

Once planted and soil is occasionally added to help grow the mounding effect around the base of your potato plant, it should be watered often throughout the summer. You should try to water early in the morning to allow for proper drying of the foliage before evening. Watering in the early stages and while flowering are the most critical times, later on, watering becomes less critical and the plant can even survive a short drought.

After your own home grown potatoes have finished flowers, give it about two to three weeks and you can begin to harvest your potatoes. These potatoes would be smaller, baby potatoes, the longer you wait to harvest your crop the larger they will be. To harvest gently loosen the soil, reach below the plant and begin to remove the tubers. Take the largest ones first allowing your smaller ones more time to grow. Keep repeating all summer long and you will have more potatoes all season.