Important: While this facial scrub is made with largely natural ingredients, allergic reactions are always possible. Facial skin, especially around the eyes, is sensitive.

• Test a small area of skin in a less sensitive area, such as your arm, before applying it to your face.
• Avoid direct contact with the eyes or the mouth
• Those with nut allergies should use extra caution, as coconut oil is a primary ingredient

We originally used this scrub occasionally to treat irritated, very dry skin, serving as both an exfoliant and a moisturizer. Over time, one of us began using it daily with great results. Because coconut oil is the base, it can help or worsen acne depending on skin type and use. We do include castor oil and honey to help balance it. As with most skincare, results depend on context, since skin is highly personal. Let your skin’s response guide how often you use this scrub.

Let’s get to the ingredients

Here is what you will need:

• Dark Brown Sugar – 1 cup
• Coconut Oil – ½ cup
• Sea Salt – 1 tbsp
• Castor Oil -1 tbsp
• Vitamin E oil -1 tsp
• Arrowroot Powder – ½ tsp
• Dried Comfrey – ½ cup
• Honey – 1 tbsp
• Essential Oils – 30 drops +/-

The Why Breakdown

Each ingredient in this scrub serves a specific purpose. Some benefits are supported by research, others by long-standing traditional use. For us, the deciding factor is simple: it works.

Dark brown sugar provides gentle exfoliation, helping remove dead skin without being overly abrasive.

Sea salt adds exfoliating grit and helps reduce spoilage due to its natural preservative properties.

Coconut oil moisturizes and helps restore the skin barrier, making it especially useful for dry, irritated skin.

Castor oil balances coconut oil, offering anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.

Vitamin E oil helps prevent moisture loss, softens skin, and supports skin repair.

Honey helps draw moisture into the skin and offers anti-inflammatory and antibacterial benefits.

Comfrey helps soothe and soften skin and supports hydration.

Arrowroot powder reduces the greasy feel of the scrub and helps improve overall texture.

Essential oils add scent and provide aromatherapy benefits, depending on the oils selected.

We recommend using organic and all-natural sources to ensure they maintain their full strength. The reality is, though, that it can get cost-prohibitive for some. We have written a couple of articles about what organic means and what it doesn’t. If you need to cut costs, do so; we have at times as well and haven’t noticed a significant difference.

Essential Oils

Essential oils let you customize this scrub for your intended use. For a morning scrub, brighter scents like eucalyptus, lemongrass, and tea tree work well. For evening use, softer options such as chamomile, rose, and lavender are more calming.

Use caution when selecting oils. Some essential oils, including cinnamon, clove, and peppermint, can irritate sensitive skin and are unsafe if they come into contact with the eyes. If you are unsure about an oil, check a reliable reference before adding it to the mix.

The how

So, how do you make this? It is easy

1. Gather up all ingredients, including the essential oils
2. Place in a food processor
3. Pulse for 30 seconds
4. Scrape down sides
5. Pulse again for 30 seconds.

At this point, check it. It is very easy to overblend. To ensure this works correctly, keep blending to a minimum to preserve the grit of the sugar and salt. It should feel gritty like coarse sand. You may need to repeat steps 4 and 5 a couple more times.

Place this in a jar or other sealable container. Since brown sugar, honey, and salt are hygroscopic, they degrade by absorbing moisture from the air. You know what air in a bathroom has in it? Water! Keep it sealed to extend its shelf life.

Using it

When you want to use it, open the container, take out a teaspoonful, and use it as you would any other facial scrub. It is that simple.

A Side Note

If you are concerned about coconut oil, you could substitute an alternative oil, such as olive oil. In that case, we would recommend adding more arrowroot to the mix. Why is this needed? Coconut oil is firm enough at room temperature to retain its shape, whereas olive oil does not. Additional arrowroot or other thickener would be needed to solidify the mixture and prevent separation. We have not tried this ourselves but it would be a good experiment to try.

Wrapping Up

You know how to create your own facial scrub and tune it to your needs. While the ‘green goo’ isn’t the prettiest, it is highly effective and made with ingredients that are generally low-cost and have known health benefits. In addition, it is easy to make, smells good, and can make a decent homemade gift.

The post How To Make A Great Facial Scrub first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Why Make It?

People post recipes that usually lead with claims like lower cost, more natural ingredients, fewer preservatives, or other health perks. We’re skipping that because our focus lies elsewhere. What we wanted was to be able to create things from scratch and tailor them to what we liked. As a result, like our bread recipe, we wanted a place to put the instructions so we could find them. That is what this blog post is. 

Our Peanut Butter Can Be Any Nut Butter

We may be talking about peanut butter, but technically, you can make your version with different nuts. It is the same process. We don’t only use peanuts in ours because we want a different depth of flavor. As an aside, the US does have standards for when to call something a spread or a butter. The tl;dr is here, and the more extended version is here. After making and eating a lot of nut butters, I am not a fan of these categorizations. 

Why aren’t we fans? Because we break nut butters into three types that don’t come from factories.

• First, you’ll find the basic grind at many local supermarkets. It’s usually just nuts, coarse, and in our experience, nearly impossible to spread.
• Then there’s the ultra-smooth kind—more like a sauce or jelly—that comes from high-oil nuts (or added oil) and long processing times.
• We want something in between: butter that spreads easily but still holds some firmness and texture—not as firm or creamy as Jif or Skippy. We appreciate those for what they are, but they lack the depth of flavor and homemade texture we’re after.

 It’s About the Oil Content

The final texture of nut butters comes down to how long you process them and how much oil the nuts contain. Raw ingredients aren’t always consistent—peanuts, for example, vary greatly. There are several types of peanuts and different methods for roasting them. Since peanuts are a crop, their characteristics depend on where and how they grow. That means oil content and texture can differ from batch to batch.

Our recipe uses a standard roasted, non-salted supermarket bulk peanut. We also add a bit of pecans to add depth of flavor. Want less oil? Use a dry-roasted peanut with no salt added for your peanut butter. Want to roast your own? Maybe try Alton Brown’s idea in his recipe.  

The important thing is that familiarity creates success. Once you have tried something and found something you like, realize that changing the nuts can impact how oily the peanut butter is, impacting the final consistency. 

Texture is About Time

This will sound like a Captain Obvious comment, but the longer you process the peanuts, the smoother the result. What is not so obvious is that you raise the heat level as you process. If you want silky, you can process the peanuts until they release their oil and become liquified. 

When you process under 10 minutes, you will not usually see the separation. Processing means pulsing your food processor for 1 minute, then letting it rest for 1 minute. Why do this? It’s about heat. You are slowly raising the temperature of the peanuts through friction. Based on our empirical evidence, once you hit 12-14 minutes of processing, your mix will liquify. For us, that isn’t simply about time; it happens at around 120℉-130℉.  

Here is the progression over time of the peanut butter as it goes from thick to a creamy sauce.

Chunky as it first comes together.

Blended similar to buying fresh ground in a store.

Creamy as the nuts release their fat.

Why is that important? If you want thick peanut butter at room temperature, you may not want to process it as long. If you want it to be thin and spreadable, you may need to keep it in the fridge to firm up. In the latter case, you don’t want to add more than a teaspoon of oil until you have completed processing to dial in the right consistency for your needs.

Hedging Your Bets

In terms of having it get too thin once it separates, you can hedge your bets and take out some insurance using a stabilizer like guar gum. Many people have issues with an additive that stabilizes or alters food chemically. Hear us out on this one first before saying ‘t’ain’t natural to be using that’

Guar gum, made from guar beans, is a natural thickener like corn starch or arrowroot powder. The key difference is that it thickens without heat, which makes it ideal for recipes that don’t involve cooking, like peanut butter or fermented hot sauces. You can read more about it here.

Some individuals are sensitive to guar gum just like those sensitive to soy, nuts, milk, whey, or other food intolerances. However, guar gum is also a common ingredient in the food world, so you are probably already consuming it if you have had something as familiar as a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (or others) Ice Cream. We aren’t picking on them, but we use them to show how common the usage is.

Storage

Our recipe creates an easily spreadable peanut butter. The oil (fat) is drawn out of the nuts into a suspension to make it spreadable, which makes it a bit unstable. Depending on your kitchen, at room temperature, it may be too thin for you, and due to the instability, it may allow the oil to separate. We recommend storing it in the fridge after making it to allow it to thicken and solidify. This may take up to 12 hours. We would rather keep it in the refrigerator than add any shelf stabilizer to it.

Print

Smooth Peanut Butter

A recipe for a smooth Peanut or an 'Any' nut butter.

Keyword Bread, Condiment, Sandwich, Sauce, Side

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Processing Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Equipment

• 1 Food Processor
• 1 Spatula

Ingredients

• 12 oz Roasted Peanuts
• 2 oz Roasted Pecans You can use all peanuts but this will create a different depth of flavor.
• 2 tsp Kosher Salt Use more or less to your liking.
• 1 tsp Peanut Oil You may need more based on the oil content of your nuts.
• 3 tbsp Honey Use more or less to your liking.
• 1/2 tsp Guar Gum Optional

Instructions

• Gather all ingredients before you start.
• Place all dry ingredients in a Food Processor
• Process for 1 minute, let rest for 1 minute. We are using this to process / rest interval to control how we raise the temperature.
• Process for 1 minute as you drizzle in the oil and honey mix, then rest for 1 minute.
• Sample flavor and adjust salt and honey to taste.
• Continue to process for 1 minute / rest 1 minute 8-10 more times.
• The temperature should slowly come up to 120-130 Fahrenheit.
• At this point, you should have a major consistency change as the fats liquify. If not, continue to pulse/rest a few more times until you see it seperate.
• Add oil to adjust the consistency to liking.
• Place in jar and set in fridge to firm up. It may take up to 12 hours to fully solidify.

Wrapping Up

This post provides the basics for making a simple homemade creamy peanut or nut recipe. You can experiment with nuts, sweeteners, and consistency to tailor the recipe to your liking. For example, walnuts and maple syrup create a great nut butter with a different flavor profile to spread on apple slices in the fall.

The post How To Make Peanut Butter first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Flashback to Where We Started

We started to cook for ourselves over eating out to help us handle our calorie budget through portions over serving size. It was also a way to lower costs as we started to break out of the economies of convenience. As we made our bread, yogurt, and crackers, we found things didn’t taste the same. Over time, we found our food more to our liking than what we purchased or ate when out.

Was it better? Is homemade better? That is subjective because it is a judgment based on personal taste. We noticed most food we bought or ate out was significantly more salty and/or sweet. We eventually had to limit our eating or purchase of pre-packaged food because we started not to like them. 

Nope, We’re Not Haters

We are not here to discuss whether homemade food is better than factory food. There are so many different ways to compare the two that it is hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison. This is not a post about ultra-processed food vs. farm-to-table organics. We won’t examine how food is wasted through the supply chain. 

The reality is, I still love myself some Taco Bell once in a while. Big Macs are a great treat once every six months. You can’t tell me Taco Bell tastes like genuine Mexican or Tex-Mex cuisine. I don’t consider a Big Mac to taste like any real hamburger, homemade or not. They are both delightful nonetheless. We will treat fast food or large restaurant chains as factory food, even when they produce it fresh in-store or in restaurants. We will get to why in a bit.

Factory vs Home

The fundamental difference between factory food and homemade food lies in their goals and production methods.

Factory food aims to maximize sales by appealing to the broadest audience. Producers must ensure the food stays as consistent as possible. That means every frozen pizza, box of crackers, and block of cheddar must meet specific standards. Even fast-food restaurants must maintain these standards. For example, a Whopper in California should taste the same as one in Kentucky.

Factory food producers must use consistent ingredients in their production lines. When you buy frozen fries, the producers have selected potatoes of a specific variety, size, and water content to ensure a uniform product. Additionally, many factories use machines and processes that home cooks lack. These machines enable instant freezing and more consistent deep frying. It doesn’t stop there. They also have tools and packaging for less spoilage by using, for example, things such as nitrogen gas in a bag of chips.

Home cooking is about tailoring food to your specifications. That means creating something for you, by you. For example, you may prefer spicier or sweeter food than the general public likes, so you tailor your cooking to your palate. You often need to work with inconsistent seasonal ingredients as a home cook. You generally prepare food without highly specialized equipment designed for one specific dish. For example, you may have an ice cream machine; however, it can’t create the same overrun as a commercial machine. 

By definition, home cooking can’t taste 100% the same as factory food because of these reasons.

How We All Got Here

Over time, we have shifted from an agrarian to an industrialized society. If you were an early pioneer or homesteader, you often cooked simple meals based on what you produced. As we moved into larger populations living in cities, this changed. People in cities didn’t have room for a garden and chickens, so they had to seek out local vendors. This was part of the tradeoff of working long hours in a factory versus homesteading. 

As we progressed post-WWII into a level of affluence combined with leisure, we entered a time where convenience and consistency became key. We had abundance, were traveling more, and let’s face it, cooking three hot meals a day plus goodies isn’t easy. In a family at that time, that job was usually the work of one person: the woman. Convenience, or factory food, was part of her emancipation. This was where things like TV dinners and pre-packaged meals gained ground over home cooking. 

Fast food, another form of factory food, was born then. It came from travelers’ need for consistency. The age of the motor car and family road trips began with the construction of the interstate highway system. People wanted to trust what they ate and stayed, so many companies like McDonald’s, White Castle, and Howard Johnson catered to that need. 

Changing Over

Because home-cooked foods aren’t the same as factory foods, they will taste different. Learning to store and reheat foods becomes essential to make the best use of them and reduce the time we spend cooking. There is also a period of adjustment to the change of taste. Here’s the strange part: once you become used to what you make, factory foods taste very strange. Why?

By cooking at home, you tailor your food to your tastes, not the larger populations. Remember that factory foods are created through a rigorous series of consumer testing. That testing decides what foods have the broadest appeal to sell. Making anything for a large population or least common denominator can’t be polarizing in any one direction. It can’t be excessively sweet, spicy, salty, etc. It also has to be a certain level of these to be liked by many. 

For example, we cut out a lot of salt from our diet. We didn’t go to zero; we just dialed it back. As we changed, we found that eating out or purchasing something was much more salty than we had remembered. Our tastes had adapted to what we produced rather than what others liked. We realized that the more we made at home, the less we liked out. Your tastes adapt. That wasn’t an overnight thing; it took time. 

But Why?

Food isn’t just about consuming nutrients. When we eat things that taste good, our brain releases dopamine. Factory food companies design their products to trigger this response, and they prove it through consumer testing. We promised not to preach, but the reality is that ultra-high-processed food deliberately aims to do this. People often see home cooking as made with love, but love doesn’t always win—at least not at first.

We Didn’t Go Cold Turkey

For us, breaking with factory food meant rewiring our brains in how we thought about food and the rewards our brains got from eating it. To switch, we found ways of approximating factory foods but with our twist and customized to our liking. We had fried fish and fried chicken, made our egg rolls, and even katsu chicken. They were experiments. Even our bread recipe tries to approximate a local loaf we used to buy in the store. 

As we tailored our food to our needs, we found when we had to purchase something or eat out, we were less satisfied. The food was more expensive, saltier, or too sweet, or something that was becoming less familiar. We had essentially rewired our brains to enjoy what we produced over what was created for mass consumption. 

However, we will never produce a Big Mac or a crunchy Taco Bell taco. Those are still basic treats for once every few months. But now, those tastes and the rewards from them are different. They have become substitutes for times when we travel and need something consistent if we can’t bring our food. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we discussed why homemade and factory foods taste different. It is tough to produce that ‘factory taste’ at home. Instead of trying to imitate, you can create for yourself what rewards you and helps you meet your dietary goals. Factory foods have a purpose, as do homemade foods. We don’t believe that making everything from scratch scales in the modern world. Still, by investing a little time in learning, you can create food tailored to your needs over the general population.  

The post Why Homemade Makes Food So Unique? first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

A Tale of Two Leavenings

What makes bread rise is pretty simple. It is a mix of expanding gases and how much structure, traditionally gluten, has been developed in the bread. Not enough gases or gluten, and bread doesn’t rise. Oddly enough, too much gas may allow the bread to rise, but more like a balloon than having a great crumb. This is how Choux pastry works, which is a terrible dough for bread. On the other hand, too much gluten and the air can’t create enough pressure to lift the dough.

 Leavened bread is any bread that rises via a leavening agent. In an over-simplification, we will say there are two types of leavening that produce the proper gases to help the dough rise; chemical and yeast. We use the term gases to cover everything from steam to carbon dioxide. Let’s take this one definition further. Chemically leavened breads are generally classified as quick breads. Examples of quick breads are pancakes, muffins, and banana bread. 

Yeast breads are those that are leavened by way of critters and a byproduct of their binge eating. Yeast consumes sugar and turns starch into sugar to consume it next. The byproduct of their consumption is alcohol, carbon dioxide, and organic acids. That yeast may come in several forms, but it is all basically critters having a big ol’ party that makes your bread rise. 

But Chemicals Are Bad!

Ok, yes, we know, the word chemical scares people. The word chemical, in our context here, is not some crazy concoction made by some multinational conglomerate bent on world destruction by way of your GI tract. Chemical leavening is the natural reaction of things like acids and bases that create expanding gases in the same way a school science project volcano does. If you use baking soda and baking powder, you are making a chemical leavened bread. 

When Chemical Leavening Goes Wrong

Quick breads and other chemically leavened items generally are a bit more foolproof than getting yeast breads to rise. If you are following a known good recipe, and things don’t work out, it is probably something simple that went wrong. Since this is not a post on how to create a recipe using these two, for brevity, we will focus on what usually goes wrong.

• Old ingredients that have degraded. Baking powder and baking soda have a shelf life and can break down over time. To test them:
  • Place a small amount of baking soda in a bowl and add vinegar. If it fizzes, it is good, otherwise replace it.
  • Put hot water in a small bowl and add baking powder to it. If it fizzes, it is good, otherwise replace it. 
• Improper mixing, especially over mixing of can cause quick breads to not rise. When mixed too much, gluten forms and keeps the gases from creating lift. Pancakes are notorious for having this problem so leave some small lumps please. 
• You added or substituted something that threw off the chemical balance. Remember chemical leavening has to be a balance of acid and base to work right. If you use buttermilk over whole milk, you have changed the chemical composition of the recipe.

Yeast, The Beast

You can write a lot about yeast. Many of our most loved foods come from their digestive antics. Yeast are what create leavened bread and alcohol. This is a post about fixing things, not the yeast themselves. To do that, we need to understand a little but not a lot about them. 

Ask someone how many types of yeast there are and you will get mixed answers because they are used in so many different ways and some have brand-specific names.  To keep it simple, we will try and limit it to those used in making dough. Each type of yeast has specific qualities, which you can read about from people who know more than us. Starters such as sourdough or Bittman, are also created by yeast. They are a living, breathing, set of active critters that can be called up to help bread rise. 

Unless they are dead, or asleep, or…, or…, and yes, that is the challenge with yeast. They are somewhat temperamental and need to be alive and active or they are of no use. They also need to be treated right, or they won’t produce well like any other people who work for you. Most of the time bread doesn’t rise, it is because our little bubble makers have been done wrong. We will get to why that can happen without you knowing you did anything wrong.

The Primary Reasons Breads Fall Flat

We won’t try and give every reason bread can fail to rise, but we can cover the major reasons for it. We will explain why, and how to avoid it the next time. Here are some likely culprits.

• The yeast you used is not active or dead.
• There isn’t enough or there is too much gluten or structure in the dough.
• You didn’t let it rise long enough.
• As with yeast problems, the starter isn’t ready even though it bubbles.

These are all the core issues for bread not rising. Let’s examine each one.

In Active or Dead Yeast

This is probably the number one reason bread doesn’t rise. Yeast are a bit finicky. They may need to be woken up to work, which is known as proofing the yeast. You need to know which type of yeast you are using to know if they must be woken up first before use. Once you know that, you can look at the type and application and do a quick Google search. 

Regardless, we always proof our yeast or at least check some of it if it has been sitting, no matter which type we use. It is easy to check it is alive by putting a ¼ of a teaspoon of it in warm water to make sure it creates bubbles after a 2-3 minutes or so. Warm water brings us to the other finicky side of yeast, temperatures, and chemicals. 

What is warm water? Warm is a subjective term. Warm water means any range from 95℉ to 115℉ depending on yeast type. At 120F yeast starts dying. Think about that for a minute. Our bodies are roughly 98.6F. The difference between what is ‘warm’ to us and dead yeast is not very big. This is why we use a thermometer to check our water temps. 

Also remember that in certain areas of the world, the water supply has chemicals such as chlorine specifically designed to kill all bugs, not just bad ones. If you are having continuing problems, it may be time to look at that as a possibility. This can be fixed, usually, by using distilled or filtered water. We make bread with tap water all the time, but others aren’t always so lucky. 

Gluten and Dough Structure

Bread requires structure, which is generally formed by gluten, to trap air bubbles to allow it to rise. If not enough gluten is present, the dough won’t have enough structure to rise. If too much gluten is present, the dough also can’t rise since the air and gas pressure can’t push or pull the structure around. 

Let’s face it, most recipes also use all sorts of strange things for a definition of how bread dough should feel. It makes it hard for people new to bread making to understand when enough is enough when kneading bread. To fix this, for many breads, you can use what is known as a window pane test to get an idea of where you’re at. While this doesn’t work for all bread types, it is a good gauge to use as you teach yourself how much is enough. 

 It Didn’t Rise Enough

Yes, yeast is fickle. We have established that. It turns out they have their own schedule. Many bread recipes will tell you to allow it to rise for some stated time or until it doubles in size, or a combination of both. Time, in recipes, is a guideline not a reality. Even the idea of the bread doubling in size is technically a suggestion. 

 How much rise you can have and how fast it can happen are directly related to how active your yeast is and how much gas they can produce. That is directly related to how much food is available to them, and the temperature they are at. Simply put, yeast work faster the warmer they are up until a point. That doesn’t mean you want them going all out either. The best range for a dough rise is generally 75℉-78℉.

To improve your odds of success, it is best to do a poke test on the dough rather than simply wait and hope. When you do a poke test, you get a realistic idea of just how much rise has happened and how much the yeast has inflated the dough. This is the same way we may test a bike tire or beach ball for how inflated it is. 

Starter Didn’t Start It

A challenge that arises when using a starter is that you also have to know when that starter is ready. Just because a starter is producing bubbles doesn’t mean it is a gung ho colony of yeast ready for a mission. We realized this as we started doing sourdough. Our first loaf was dense enough to be hardtack. 

When you are just starting with some of these new items, you may not understand how bubbly that bubbly should be. Of course, again, most recipes will tell you ‘doubled in size’ for both starter and bread. That is a hard lesson to learn in both the amount of time and the ingredients wasted. 

A helpful solution for this is what is called a float test. A float test is placing a small bit of a starter into water to see if it floats. This test gives you some assurance that the starter is not only mature enough, but is at peak production before it falls back onto itself. 

Wrapping Up

Many things can go wrong in creating bread. In this post we have addressed many of the big ones. Even if these are not 100% full proof for every situation, they give you some tools to start digging into the problem. If you use them, they can help you methodically eliminate much of the noise from “What did I do wrong?”. For each item you know works with certainty, you can feel more secure in your abilities. All of this can also help reduce the wasted time and ingredients you have spent precious time and money on. 

The post It’s Easy To Fix Problems With Bread first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Background

Many of us have heard the story of the Earl of Sandwich and his gambling that spawned the sandwich. It was bread and beef, but that is what it is today? What about the submarine, grinder, hot dog, or burrito? It turns out both the FDA and USDA  govern the definition of sandwich. Not only do they govern it, some states have their take on it. Stranger still, or maybe not, it varies from country to country with groups like the British Sandwich Association or BSA. 

All of this seems more of something to keep lawyers busy than anything to do with food. That makes it an interesting sidebar but not something that helps us. Let’s use this information to set context that we will be considering only a case of a closed sandwich rather than anything else.  What is a closed sandwich? We will call it two or more pieces of bread that contain filling between them.

Callout, You do You

We are looking to learn how we can create a perfect sandwich, and what it means to us. We are not telling people to not go out and make the sloppiest sandwich known to humanity. The same goes for restaurants that serve sandwiches or burgers the size of someone’s head. It’s not our jam but we dig others may like it. You do you. This is also why we will leave the recipes for sandwiches to someone like Alton Brown and other chefs. It was his show that spawned the idea behind the post. We wanted to dig a bit further than he did. 

Why? Who Cares?

As usual, we are doing this as much as a thought experiment for us as much as we are for others to ponder. When I order a sandwich, I don’t want to receive something that I can’t eat without a bib or knife and fork. Worse still, when I bite into a sandwich I don’t want the fillings to be shot out of the other side. In both cases, if I have to use a fork and knife to eat it, it is not a sandwich. It just feels like bad craftsmanship and a waste of food. Ok, I will step down from my soapbox now.

Still, why does that matter to others? It is very simple to us. The entire point of a sandwich was to be able to carry on something while using a single hand to eat with. Whether you fish, play cards, read during lunch, or any of a myriad of other activities, the purpose of a sandwich was to only occupy a single clean hand to consume nutrition without utensils.   

Combine that thought with the want of good food and there is the reason for why. We’re good with a baloney and cheese sandwich sometimes. Other times, not so much. A grilled cheese sandwich can be sublime in the same way a tuna sandwich can be. Where things get more complicated is, say a chicken salad on wheat. 

What makes or breaks most meals is water content. A good cook knows how to manipulate the water content of food to create something more than just palatable but enjoyable. Here is why water, and manipulating it, is so important. 

Water boils at sea level at 212℉. If you want moisture in your food, you can’t raise the temperature over that number or the food will start to dry. When water is present in food, cooking it initially produces steam, which prevents creating a crust as you would for, say, toast.  As heat penetrates the food, the outer layers’ temperatures go up and caramelization or browning via the Maillard reaction starts. The real trick is to make everything from moist fried chicken to toast to a seared yet juicy burger is about balancing water evaporation as the food cooks.

This balance of wet and dry, soft and hard drives the mouthfeel of what we are eating. In fried chicken, you get the crunchy crust around the juicy meat. In a seared burger, you taste a bit of the char with the still moist meat. With toast, we end up with a crisp caramelized surface with, depending on slice thickness, a soft center. It is in that balance where basic nutrition becomes great food.

The Balance of Structure with Wet and Dry 

Sandwiches need the same manipulation of wet and dry as any other type of food. Additionally, sandwiches must provide a structure which makes them a little more complicated. It’s this relationship that can make or break a good sandwich. Let’s put down some axioms to help us form a sandwich construction rubric.

First Axiom: The harder the bread, the more pressure exerted on the contents when bitten, but the less moisture will impact it.

Second Axiom: The softer the bread, the easier it is to bite, but it’s much more susceptible to falling apart by getting soggy with wet ingredients. 

Third Axiom: For a sandwich to stay together, the layers must provide enough friction against each other to keep the sandwich from sliding apart.

Fourth Axiom: A sandwich is not a bread bowl or bowl of any type so it should not hold ingredients that need that level of containment.

Let’s dig in a bit more on all of these.

The Big 3 

Our first axiom is about dealing with hard bread and/or toasted bread. The harder the crust of a sandwich is, the more bite pressure it takes to get through it. That pressure is then transferred to the filling of the sandwich. That is great if we have a deli-meat and cheese sandwich, which creates a flat structure.

If we add avocado on that sandwich or use that bread to make a toasted tuna fish, the results won’t be great. In sandwiches, softer ingredients don’t always play well with harder ingredients and are usually ejected from the sandwich, onto you. We need to balance how much give is left in the bread to allow it to contain the ingredients when bitten.

In the second axiom, we know that when we add wet ingredients to soft bread, it can become, well, soup, not bread. By using a firmer crust or a light toasting, we create a barrier to that moisture destroying our bread. When we toast it too much, we may, however, run into our first axiom. This can be counteracted by a thicker slice of bread, which creates a cushion for the bite pressure. 

The third axiom is no different than building a house or a high rise. When we consider a building, each level higher we go, we must make sure it is structurally sound. That means hard and soft textures need to work together to create a cohesive structure, or things will eject from the sandwich. You have probably witnessed this in action if you have ever eaten a burger with lots of sauce and leaf lettuce. If the lettuce was shredded, it would hold in place rather than make a slip and slide.

The Big Bowl

At another time in our history, people used trenchers instead of more refined service items. Yes, your bread was your utensils, bowl, etc. That is great. In the modern world, we see that a deep dish pizza is not a sandwich. Sandwiches are a form of service ware to hold your fillings. Up to a point that is fine. Where it becomes problematic is in trying to make a sandwich with items that don’t belong. Thick salsas, cherry tomatoes, olives, etc. can destroy the structure of a sandwich quickly. 

Let’s talk about types of chicken sandwiches to make the point. If you are preparing a chicken salad sandwich with lovely big chunks of chicken in slippery mayo, it will be better in a bowl than between bread. Why? Unless the bread slice is thick enough and soft enough to deform into a bowl, the ingredients will fall out.  Let’s change that to pulled chicken in BBQ sauce. If it is piled high and heavily sauced, nothing will hold it. Fry that chicken breast and you will have no problem.

Cheese as Binding Container

When it comes to hot sandwiches, cheese can do you a structural favor. By placing the cheese over all the other ingredients and melting it, you in essence, create a shell around those ingredients. This results in a sandwich that will hold tougher despite some of the axioms we have discussed. 

Wrapping Up

We discussed aspects of sandwich making to set up a rubric for more success than failures. This thought experiment hopefully helps others think through how to make tweaks to how they look at sandwiches. We also discussed why they aren’t as simple as two slices of bread and some meat or vegetables. With a bit of thinking, a simple sandwich can be elevated to a one-hand buffet over just a midnight snack. 

The post A Guide To Better Sandwiches first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

Note: Products, services, and suppliers shown or linked to in this post are for example purposes only. They are not a direct endorsement of them, their brand, or the seller.

Everything Old is New Again

This type of vacuum sealing is not new. We owned a FoodSaver years ago similar to this one that had an attachment to vacuum seal mason jars. We never used it. It wasn’t convenient due to the amount of counter space it took up and having to connect 3 things to use it. Then we found this style and our world changed.

This Started With Canning

Earlier on we learned how to freeze and store food by usage types and times. Our next experiments were in shelf-stable methods. The immediate thing we thought of when thinking about creating food that could be shelf-stable for storage was canning. We knew we could store food by using water-bath canning because we grew up with it. As we looked at canning equipment, we ran across this type of vacuum sealer.

Let’s be crystal clear, as I have read on the interwebs many times about this miracle electric canner. This is not an automatic canner. It is a vacuum-sealing device. If you use it to preserve food in the same way as canning, you may just end up with some weird science experiments with food spoilage.

Canning vs Vacuum Sealing

Canning and Vacuum Sealing are not the same thing. We would say they aren’t even used for the same outcomes. Here is how they differ:

• Canning uses heat, vacuum, and sometimes acidity to preserve food.
• Vacuum sealing uses a vacuum to preserve quality.

In canning, you are removing pathogens and creating an environment in which they can not grow. Vacuum sealing does not destroy pathogens. What vacuum sealing does is remove air from around the food. Some pathogens can still exist and grow as some can live in an anaerobic environment. In general, we don’t vacuum seal those types of foods that are problematic. This is why we make the distinction between quality preserver and food preservation.

But Dry Canning….

We won’t discuss that as it is a heated topic, no pun intended. Each of these methods has pro’s and con’s but our blog is about making it easy. Dry canning is a food preservation method, not a quality preservation method. It also doesn’t work for many items we will want to store at lower temperatures. For example, you aren’t going to put cheese in a mason jar in a 200℉ oven and expect it to be ok.

It’s the Water Too

What is rarely discussed in vacuum sealing is how it helps preserve the quality of hygroscopic foods. What are those? Hygroscopic foods attract moisture from the surrounding environment. These foods draw in moisture from the air. Limit the air getting to food, and limit the humidity’s impact on the food.

This is obvious in some cases such as brown sugar. If you have ever accidentally left brown sugar out in humidity for any period, it will usually clump to the point of being unusable. That same process is at work on your cereal, chips, crackers, and candy. This process will turn a nice crisp peanut brittle into a chewy candy or deflate your divinity pretty quickly.

What and What Can’t You Use This Method On:

Mason jar vacuum sealing is great for items you want to open, reseal, and reopen again and again. It is also great for irregular or soft items that won’t vacuum seal in bags well. Here are a few things we have learned:

Works:

• Any dry goods such as dehydrated fruits and vegetables.
• Baked or fried snack items such as chips, crackers, etc.
• Breads such as biscuits or items with crusts like mini-quiches.
• Candies and cookies.
• Baking and cooking staples like sugar and sea salts.
• Non-food items such as bath bombs, soaps, or other things that contain volatile compounds like essential oils.

Doesn’t work:

• High moisture items such as young cheeses.
• Items destined for the freezer as they will still freezer burn.
• Items that produce gasses such as roasted coffee beans.

The last item above is one of the gotchas with this quality preservation method. As food breaks down, it can create gases. Eventually, this process can break the vacuum seal of the container. While not always obvious at first, you should monitor what foods you store by checking on them every so often. If one is consistently losing a vacuum, it may create gas and ultimately be past its time.

How To Tips

These sealers are almost bulletproof however a couple of tricks help.

• When sealing, press the tool down fully onto the jar, then pull up a quarter to half an inch. By doing this we can get a better pull of vacuum.
• Check the vacuum the same way you would in canning by making sure the lid doesn’t pop back when pushed on.
• After vacuuming, finger-tighten the ring onto the sealed jar. The ring provides extra protection and helps preserve the seal even if gasses develop.

Wrapping Up

In this post, we discussed mason jar vacuum sealing in depth. We offered some ideas on what works and doesn’t work and a couple of tips to make things easier. Also, remember this method is great for non-food items. Once you make friends with the mason jar sealer, you will find you can make more at home. This is due to the fact you will be able to use what you make longer.

The post How To Get Air Out Of Mason Jars first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

A Little History:

As with all things food, the flour tortilla’s origin is somewhat contested. While corn tortillas aren’t as disputed as corn originated in Mexico, flour and its uses are a little harder to trace. Some believe these came from Mexico, and some think of them as Tex-Mex. There is even some idea that they are by-products of Catholic, Jewish, and Moorish immigration in the Northern Mexico / SW US area. 

Do we care where it came from? Probably not but it’s fun to ruminate on its origin stories.  Even more interesting is that all of the above cultures and religions have some form of unleavened bread or flatbread. The tortilla is one of those breads that can be either or. What does that make it? That makes it a great stand-in for other breads!

The Calorie Budget Conscience And Consistent

We won’t argue that mass-produced tortillas are great. That said, we also won’t make the argument that mass-produced bread is great. Mass-produced tortillas are simply practical and predictable. There are times when that wins out over homemade especially when considering pantry staples.

For most of our items, we use Mission flour Fajita Tortillas because they are the best! Not exactly. We use them because they are ubiquitous, inexpensive, consistent, and have a decent shelf life. No matter the grocery store, we can generally find them.  They are 110 calories a piece. This is perfect for our calorie budget. By the time we get done adding toppings and or other ingredients, their meal comes in at around 200-250 calories per tortilla-based item. 

But What Can You Do With Them?

You could write an entire book on using tortillas other than in Tex-Mex and Mexican dishes. They can be substituted for just about any flat or unleavened bread. We use them for everything from our Doritos to pizzas. We don’t have time for a book so instead we will focus on cooking styles and examples. 

The Out Of Package

• Wraps of meats, cheese, and veggies.
• Folded sandwiches.
• A side for soups and chilis. 

The Baked Flat

• In impromptu personal pizza using pizza sauce, cheese, and other toppings.
• The above folded for a calzone.
• Covered with olive oil,  garlic, rosemary, and sea salt like Focaccia. 
• Covered with buttered, garlic and zaatar similar to Naan.
• Spiced with seasonings, cut into wedges, and baked like Dorritos.
• Spiced with sugar and cinnamon and butter like cinnamon toast. 

The Baked Or Microwaved Rolled

• Meat and cheese wraps to create melts.  
• Mini-calzones and pizza rolls. 
• Breakfast roll-ups with eggs, meat, and veggies.

A note on cooking methods. Baking and frying them will create a crispy tortilla. The higher the heat, the more likely it is to brown or burn. Microwaves will cook them but will create a chewier result. This is also why they are so versatile to have around. You can be creative with textures by simply changing the heating method.

And yes you can deep fry them, pan fry them, and even fill them with seafood. They are a blank slate. That is the point. If we keep frozen chicken, ham, cheddar, mozzarella, salami, pizza sauce, and some basic spices, we can easily make multiple combinations of food. They also give us more flexibility so we can easily use up leftovers creatively. And one more point, they freeze well if you put wax paper between them before freezing.

Here are the wins

• Save money by using one basic staple that is cheap in multiple ways.
• Always have a starch on hand for when you need something impromptu.
• Give them a purpose past Taco Tuesday where there are usually some left over. 
• Save time as many of the above take no time to make. 

What? No Recipes? 

No, we aren’t providing them because in many ways they already exist. Ok, maybe one for the Doritos. The goal of this post is really to call attention to how a single staple can create so many different meals. There are very talented people out there who I use the recipes of all the time. When it comes to the ingredient list, we may substitute a tortilla on hand for one of the recipe’s ingredients. That is why we focused on getting information on how to simplify things like meal planning and cooking. 

In this specific case, we also feel like each of the items discussed is a formula. The actual ingredients you use are based on your taste. If you like cheesy pesto pizzas tortillas instead of pepperoni and red sauce, you do you. And let’s face it, this is not a meal item that is going to be on the next Iron Chef America. This is a meal item to simplify making food within a calorie and time budget.

Wrapping Up

In this post, we discussed how useful the tortilla can be as a staple in the kitchen. By keeping these types of basic, blank canvas staples around, you give yourself meal flexibility. With that flexibility also comes calorie consistency and time savings. This simple example is how we started to recognize what we need to keep on hand and really, what we didn’t to avoid eating out more often.

The post Get More Out Of A Simple Tortilla first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

We are constantly bombarded with pseudo-facts and misinformation. As consumers, we care about product tradeoffs so we can make informed decisions. The domain of food is challenging as we can’t compare two items, even with the same name, in terms of calories. In this post, we will give you some ideas on how to compare disparate but similar items. 

First, Were Sticking to Calories

This post does not pick on any company or food choice. Our purpose is to raise awareness of the disparity of claims and perceptions of serving sizes versus what is actually on nutritional data or labels. As a result, we leave debating the nutritional value of any type of food to others. Whether you choose fast or organic vegan or anything in between is up to you.

Incongruencies of Agency Goals

First, let’s note a difference. Nutrition labels use the FDA 2,000 calories a day which was the old standard of measuring the amount of calories the average adult needs. That is the overall generalization for how much the average person needs to consume a day. The USDA is now using MyPlate. You may recognize it to be similar to the BMR work we discussed. The plan also moves away from the food pyramid to what is considered a visualization of what should be on our plates. The issue is the calories don’t match.

Because this is not a post on nutrition, it doesn’t help or hurt what we are going to discuss. We bring it up as another point of how people are set up to fail through packaging. When you read a label and it says serving size containing x, y, and z you expect it to be accurate. If there is 30% of your daily protein in the serving, it should be 30%. If your calorie intake needs to be 2,400 calories, not 2,000, then it is only 24% of your needed protein.

The more we learned, the less trust we had in labels and experts. There were simply too many incongruencies across all of them. All the incongruencies pointed to the same problem. It is about you as a person and your goals and you have to be an informed consumer.

A Serving May Only be Part of a Package

Serving size is where many hidden calories lie. You will see a package advertising that says only 100 or 150 calories per serving. But what is the serving size? Bags of chips, crackers, and individually packed items are usually the foods you see this on. In one package of Milton crackers we like, the serving size was only 2 crackers for 70 calories.  Comparing this with Gardetos we also like, it was 150 calories for a 1/2 cup.

You may ask why does that matter and what point are we making? By logging our calories we quickly learned our expectations of portion sizes were way off. When we buy a small bag of chips, rarely do we eat half and leave the rest for another day. I don’t think I have ever eaten just 2 crackers. As the Lay’s potatoes chip commercial used to claim ‘I bet you can’t eat just one’. We found truth in that statement.

What you Drink Impacts your Calories

Similarly, let’s talk about alcohol. We like to drink beer so we budget it into our calories. Calories from beer are based on the alcohol content of that beer. When we choose a can of Coors Light or Bud Light, that is roughly 100-120 calories per can. If we go out to a pub or restaurant and have a pint of something like an IPA that may jump to 300 or more.  If I enjoy 3 IPAs by the fire some Saturday night that could be 900 calories. Realizing that you can choose which is best for your calorie budget. 

Reading the Tea Leaves of Menus

You may ask, why a meal at a restaurant may range from 600-1200 calories. The reason is that it includes all the possible combinations of sizes, sides, sauces, or drink choices. Let’s look at two well-known chains. Both of them do a great job of having nutrition labels available but they also both can be confusing. Understanding the total calories of what you have eaten is challenging.

Breaking it Down

By Ingredients

  A Subway Chicken Bacon Ranch 6” on multi-grain bread in 530 calories. Let’s add Pepper Jack cheese and some Creamy Sriracha dressing to it. That bumps the 6” to  620 calories. Bread is all within 10-20 calories of each other so we can have it on anything we like with it. Eat the whole thing like I used to? That would be roughly 1240 calories excluding drinks, chips, cookies, or anything else. Great if you have the budget for it, bad if you don’t.

By Meal Choices

 In contrast, a McDonald’s Big Mac, Medium Fries, and Medium Coke weigh in at roughly 1130 calories when you include ketchup. Switch that to small fries and Diet Coke and we are at 830 calories. That is 210 more than the Subway 6” but less than the 410 less than the 12”. What this starts to show is how important portion size is in setting a calorie budget. We will touch on that in a later post as well.

But They are Consistent

 While fast food has been villainized by many, the reality is, their whole goal is consistency. What you order at one restaurant will be the same as another calorie-wise. Consistency is an advantage of eating these places which we will discuss in another post. In terms of nutrition and taste, well, those are not the subject of this blog. Our goal is strictly around weight management for now. 

But We Only Eat ‘Healthy’ Food

Of course, we are all health conscious so many turn away from processed foods. We want fruit juice and a healthy snack like pistachios instead of all this booze and fast food. Maybe we can add in half a cup of  2% cottage cheese. Based on calories sourced through Google, a cup of OJ is roughly 140 calories. We also found a cup of pistachios is roughly 690 and the cottage cheese is 100 calories. At 930 calories that is about on par with our Big Mac Meal. Whether it is healthier or a better choice is up to others.

Learning this made me grumpy because I love nuts. Pistachios, walnuts, almonds, peanuts (yes, not a true nut, but close enough). I could go eat them all day. To meet my personal goals I had to change how many I ate. I didn’t stop eating them, just the amount and frequency. An aside to think about. Candy bars were marketed as a meal replacement during the Depression. Nutritionally maybe not but you can see it from a pure calorie point of view. Mr. Goodbar, which contained peanuts was marketed as a cheap ‘protein-rich’ meal.

One more for you salad enthusiasts.  A Caesar salad with 4 oz of grilled chicken and a roll can come in at a hefty 760 calories. The salad can be as high as 470 calories, the chicken 170, and a roll of roughly 120. Add butter to that roll and we are in the range of a Big Mac Meal.

Don’t Take Anything at Face Value

The takeaway here is to trust nothing. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Managing your weight is more about understanding what calories come from what. You are the person empowered to make changes in your eating habits. Just because someone says it’s only 100 calories per serving or is ‘healthy’ doesn’t mean it is what you think it is. 

 The realization of where these hidden calories were was ultimately life-changing for us. It was frustrating to learn we had been wrong in our approach to our calorie budget. It is this type of information that allows us to stay on track through informed decisions. That is why we feel it is so important to share these types of things with others.

The post The Surprise Ways Calories Can Hide first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.