Does washing strawberries in a vinegar wash keep them fresh longer? 

Everyone has an opinion.  I think you should at least give it a try, then decide. I know the vinegar wash works for me, but then I think white vinegar is “gold.” We use it here at Big Mill B&B for an eco-friendly cleaning product. I also use it as a fabric softner.

So if you want to try the much-lauded and oft denied vinegar wash, here is the recipe:

Vinegar & Water Berry Wash Recipe:

•    10 parts water to 1 part white vinegar

In a large pan mix the water and vinegar. Gently add the berries and gently remove them to a colander to drain. Repeat this washing and draining.

After they have drained, remove the berries and place them on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels. I place this in front of a fan or under a ceiling fan until all the berries are very dry. Sometimes I have to replace the paper towels. Some folks use a salad spinner to remove the water. If you use the salad spinner, line it with paper towels. It certainly is faster than air drying on the cookie sheet.

To store: I use the plastic containers that the berries are in at the grocery stores. Wash these containers and dry them. Put a layer of berries, a small piece of the paper towel and then another layer of berries until the container is full.

Store berries in the refrigerator, not in the crisper. My berries will keep a week; they don’t keep a week if I just put them in the refrigerator without the vinegar wash.  

So why don’t you try it and see if it works for you. I also have found this does not affect the taste. You can, if you want, wash a third time with plain water. An added feature is that the vinegar kills any mold spores and bacteria. I wash all my vegetables in a vinegar wash, so all this is nothing new.

I’m curious to hear from those of you who try the vinegar wash, so let me know.

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Innkeeper’s Suet Recipe
Our special Earth Day gift to birds here at Big Mill Bird & Breakfast

Earth Day 2013 is just around the corner, so it seemed like a perfect time to celebrate the birds we love with a suet recipe they delight in eating.

When I am cooking for the bed and breakfast guests, I also make suet for our lovely feathered travelers. And this suet recipe is made from things that we all have in our larders, especially innkeepers.

Well, those of you who live north of Virginia might not have the lard, but you could render your own “Suet fat” out of bacon fat and other fats. Southerners know and understand lard and we have a deep respect for this delicacy.

Innkeeper’s Suet for the Birds

•    6 eggshells (about ¼ cup crushed) *
•    1 cup lard – no substitutions unless you use rendered fat. NO CRISCO
•    1 cup crunchy peanut butter
•    1 cup leftover granola
•    1 cup uncooked oats
•    ½ cup seeds like sunflower, pumpkin seeds or bird seed
•    ½ cup dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, blueberries, dates, etc.
•    ½ cup chopped nuts
•    1 cup corn meal
•    1 cup flour
•    Optional: ½ cup fresh, chopped fruit like pears, apple, orange, strawberries or blueberries if you are using Suet right away
•    large pine cone & about 6 feet of strong string

Wash eggshells and microwave wet shells for 4 minutes. Cool and crush.

Put lard and peanut butter into large cooking pan and heat on low heat till soft. Remove from heat and add eggshells, granola, oats, bird seed, dried fruit, nuts, corn meal and fresh fruit if you are using it.

Allow to cool until it is no longer “runny.”  You can refrigerate if you need it to cool quicker but it might get too stiff.

Stuff the suet into the pine cone. Tie a long string about 1/4 way down pine cone and leave about 4 feet tail on the string. Hang from a tree limb.

* (you can omit eggsshells)

Yield: 4 ½ cups

Remember that all the birds can’t eat from your suet feeder. Cardinals are ground feeders, so throw some out for them on the ground. This Innkeeper’s Suet Recipe is a great way to recycle too. We have other suet recipes here.

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It’s magic — those tiny lights that twinkle in the wine bottles in the rooms at our own North Carolina Bed and Breakfast, Big Mill Inn-the perfect romantic getaway.

The idea is really simple: just drill a hole in a glass bottle and push the lights in. Guests ask me all the time, "How do you do it?"  Now is the perfect time to learn and these glowing wine bottles make great gifts.

First you need an empty bottle; wine bottles are good because they are free. The best ones are light green, usually Chardonnay, or blue, usually Riesling, but not always. The dark green bottles used for red wines like Merlot just don’t illuminate well.

You can either drink the wine or beg your friends to give you their empties. I have been saving wine bottles for years and now I have quite a stash.

Supplies and Equipment you will need:

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What do we do? Those thin plastic bags, called white pollution, are killing sea creatures and cluttering our beaches. I remember walking the beach on the Pamlico River and seeing hundreds of plastic bags hanging from cypress trees; these were the bags that would end up in our rivers and eventually pose a threat to sea life.

How many bags are used per year?

The Wall Street Journal says 50 billion and they don’t biodegrade. So we still have all of them in some form.

As for paper sacks, making a paper bag generates more water and air pollution than a plastic bag. But we are more likely to recycle and reuse a paper bag. Neither breaks down very well in the landfill.  

Cities and countries around the globe are struggling with these issues. Los Angeles is the first U.S. City to ban free plastic bags. Their “No Disposable Bag Day” held in December, 2007 was a great success. Bangladesh has banned plastic bags. Ireland has imposed a bag tax and thereby reduced its plastic bag usage by 90%. Even China has banned free plastic bags, so if you are heading to the Olympics don’t forget your grocery totes.

Plastic bags will be gone from the check-out line at Whole Foods by Earth Day, April 22, 2008. The Manhattan Whole Foods Store sold reusable totes by the designer Anya Hindmarch that taut “I’m Not a Plastic Bag”. New Yorkers began queuing up at 2 a.m. to buy these bags that were quickly sold out.  A stampede of shoppers for these trendy bags in Taiwan injured thirty people.  

Target and Harris Teeter and many stores are selling the reusable bags at good prices, many under a dollar.  IKEA is charging a nickel for each plastic bag, hoping that folks will provide their own bags. Even Wal-Mart is introducing a reusable bag with “Paper or Plastic-Neither”  Wal-Mart,  forsooth? Guess it fits in with my quiet Green Revolution.  

What are we doing at Big Mill Bed and Breakfast?

Well, when I lived on a boat in the Caribbean, I always took my own bags to the store. When I lived in St. Barth’s we needed these strong, unbreakable canvas boat bags because we had to carry all our groceries on a small motorcycle. Thirty years later I still use these bags; you can buy them at places like West Marine , LL Bean and Bass Pro Shops and online at Green Home. They hold more than I can carry.  

Here in Williamston, North Carolina, I take my own bags to the store and the folks at the check-out counter peer at me as if I had sprouted horns. But I keep on with my, mostly tacit, vigil to help save the Earth, one aluminum can and one bag at a time. We might go through your trash if you don’t recycle at Big Mill.

And, along with the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Wan Arun Buddhist Temple in Bangkok, Thailand and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and others across the planet, Moses and I celebrated Earth Hour on March 29th. We really enjoyed the candlelight.

None of this is new for us on the farm here in coastal North Carolina; but we are glad to have the company. Someone must have noticed that we are seriously earth-friendly; we were just voted one of the Top Ten Eco-Friendly Inns by BedandBreakfast.com.  

For now, at Big Mill B&B, we are supporting those businesses that are making an effort to help fight global warming and pollution. We reuse any plastic or paper bags that sneak into the house.

We give them to the fellow who sells watermelons and collards out of his truck. And we carry those cute totes to the store. But just when I think I have figured it out, the bubble bursts; so please don’t tell me we destroyed a wetland to make them.

And shame on all of us in the U.S. if we have to trail behind Bangladesh.

           Chloe

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Not one to toot my own horn, I just have to share this good news.  Big Mill B&B has been singled out as one of the Top 10 earth-friendly inns by BedandBreakfast.com.  And we are the only North Carolina Bed and Breakfast to make the cut.  WOW! 

Of course, it was wonderful to be acknowledged last year when the Washington Post ran the article about our clothesline.  And now, to be in such good company with other environmentally-friendly bed and breakfast owners … I’m just tickled. 

That said, I realize that so many of the things we do here at Big Mill are second nature.  I’m always surprised when guests thank me for sharing a green-friendly tip or trick they didn’t realize.  I have a million of ‘em I learned from my mom  Hmmm, I should post some of these on my blog. 

In fact, I’m working on a new post called "Paper or Plastic."  It should have been finished by now, but I got so fascinated learning new things retailers are doing, it has taken me longer to wrap up the article.  But, I promise to have it ready for you in the next day or so.  It’s very interesting, if I do say so myself

We save the seeds every year from these stately sunflowers; some to feed the birds, some to grow new sunflowers.

Curious about the other inns who won the Top 10 Eco-Friendly Inns?  Click here to read the full press release. 

                 Chloe

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I saw my first Brown Bag Cookie Mold in the early eighties in a tiny shop in Virginia Highlands, a small Yuppie neighborhood in Atlanta, where I was living.

This love affair has never ended. I have St. Nicholas from the 1983 collection, which was the first year they were made. The Brown Bag name comes from the philosophy that small, ordinary things can be wonderful works of arts.

With these clay molds you can make gorgeous cookies, cast beeswax ornaments and hand cast paper. From what I have read it seems the originator of these clay molds now only creates one a year and she donates the proceeds of the sales to charity.  For 2007 the mold is a gingerbread house and any monies will go to Habitat for Humanity.

I have about 20 of these Brown Bag Cookie molds, some made by hand, and I cherish each one of them. Many of the molds are now collected and you can find them on EBay and other sites on the internet; they are no longer sold in stores.

If you buy beeswax directly from the beekeeper, it is cheaper, but it can be dirty, so you will have to clean it.  I used to keep bees; I even had bees in my early Innkeeping days here at Big Mill Bed and Breakfast. I had a great teacher, my cousin Bobby who was blind. I was his “eyes” when he checked the hives. I ordered my first colony of bees from Sears & Roebuck and they came by mail in a small screen box. My rural mail carrier was a wreck. En route wild errant bees had attached to the outside trying to join my bees.

Beekeeping is really a science, and without Bobby around, I couln’t protect my bees from all the dangers. But I still find them fascinating. Did you know that all the bees in a hive are women? There is even a book Beekeeping For Dummies. There are many good websites and books out there now, so if you want a fascinating hobby, you won’t be bored.

My bees knew me and could tell when I was upset or nervous; the pitch of the hum in the hive went up an octave. Bees have taken a bad rap. They are not naturally aggressive like wasps, hornets and yellow jackets. Please don’t kill them; we really need all the bees here on the farm at Big Mill. They are one of the reasons our blueberries are so prolific!

Recipe for Cast Beeswax Ornaments
(Download the Brown Bag Idea Book for more projects)

• Brown Bag Cookie Molds
• 1 pound beeswax (this will yield about 6-8 ornaments)
• Small amount of thin wire (like in a twist tie)
• 1 yard very thin ribbon
• A small amount of vegetable oil, 1 Tablespoon or thereabouts
• Small paint brush to apply the vegetable oil to the molds
• Old double boiler and ladle (or 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup if using microwave*)
• Wooden spoon or paint paddle for stirring

Chill the cookie molds at least 20 minutes in the refrigerator.

Melt the beeswax in a double boiler over medium to low heat, checking often to make sure the water does not boil out.  Remove the mold from the refrigerator and brush or rub a wee amount of vegetable oil onto the inside of the mold. Place the mold on a flat surface covered with some protective covering of waxed paper. This allows you to reuse any spilled wax. The mold MUST be flat and level.

Using a lipped ladle, gently pour beeswax into the mold. At this time you can tell if the mold is level. If not, correct this.  

The wax will immediately pull away from the mold and dry quickly. When it is cloudy, insert a twisted piece of very thin wire into the back of the mold at the top. This will be your hanger. If you forget you can heat the wire and do this later. Or you can use ribbon. You do not have to wash the molds between pourings; but you may have to add more oil.

To remove from the mold, turn it over and rap gently on a table. Do this before the ornament is completely cold. If you have any “over pour” you can trim off the edges using a heated knife blade. If you make a bad pour, don’t fret. Just put the wax back in the pot and reheat. This is true if you break an ornament…they are very fragile.

Now for the cleanup: Call the National Guard. But DON”T let any of this wax get into your drains…or you will rue the day. Actually, a hair dryer and paper towels work well.

The Rocking Horse design is from 1984, the second year of production for Hill Design’s Brown Bag Cookie Molds. Gingerbread Man and the Cherub are from 1992. These delicate ornaments are translucent and the tree lights glow through each one. The beeswax aroma lingers and is not lost through the years.

I store these treasures flat, with sheets of waxed paper between each one. They must be kept in a cool place.

I still have my hive, my bee suit and my pith helmet!   Chloë

*You can use the microwave to make these ornaments, but I prefer the stovetop because it allows me to keep the wax at a steady temperature.

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