Congratulations to…
Tammy Larsen!
Email the Damsel your choice of the sleeping bag or the rucksack, and we’ll get you hooked up. Hope you love it.
giveaway winner
May 7th, 2012 by damsel
New! Shiny!
May 6th, 2012 by damsel
The Damsel is SUPER EXCITED to announce that as part of the Old School birthday party, the schoolhouse has a fresh coat of paint, with a new header drawn by Sprog #2.
Thanks, honey! Momma loves it!
Stay tuned for the winner of the preparedness giveaway, which will be announced tomorrow.
The previous post contained a broken link. It’s fixed now, but here is a corrected version of the whole post, for the benefit of those on email subscriptions.
Hello dear students,
Old School is turning 3! As part of the Old School birthday celebration, the Damsel has a great giveaway to offer. Birthday for the Old School, presents for you.
The kind folks at Emergency and Disaster Prep have donated your choice of two items: an Extreme Cold US Military Sleeping Bag rated at -40 degrees or a Rucksack Pack. Woohoo!
Preparedness has always been a key part of the Old School’s curriculum, so the Damsel thinks this is perfect. Entering is simple.
1. Be a follower, either by email or through a blog reader, of the Old School. Subscription information can be found under the “subscribe” tab in the menu bar.
2. Click this link: Preparedness and follow the link to the page about their military surplus open house going on this weekend. Choose your favorite item from those listed, and post that in a comment. (This giveaway is limited to US residents.) Entries must be received by Sunday at the stroke of midnight.
That’s it! May the odds be ever in your favor. Good luck!
birthday present
May 2nd, 2012 by damsel
Hello dear students,
Old School is turning 3! As part of the Old School birthday celebration, the Damsel has a great giveaway to offer. Birthday for the Old School, presents for you.
The kind folks at Emergency and Disaster Prep have donated your choice of two items: an Extreme Cold US Military Sleeping Bag rated at -40 degrees or a Rucksack Pack. Woohoo!
Preparedness has always been a key part of the Old School’s curriculum, so the Damsel thinks this is perfect. Entering is simple.
1. Be a follower, either by email or through a blog reader, of the Old School. Subscription information can be found under the “subscribe” tab in the menu bar.
2. Click this link: Preparedness and follow the link to the page about their military surplus open house going on this weekend. Choose your favorite item from those listed, and post that in a comment. (This giveaway is limited to US residents.) Entries must be received by Sunday at the stroke of midnight.
That’s it! May the odds be ever in your favor. Good luck!
happy birthday, old school
Apr 23rd, 2012 by damsel
It’s hard to believe, but the Old School is turning three.
Dig in.
The Damsel would like to take a deep breath, pause, and thank you, dear students, for your faithful attendence. Students have been marked present about 350,000 times. She appreciates each and every one.
To celebrate, the Old School is going to get a fresh coat of paint. Stay tuned for a new look coming soon. And, it’s not a birthday without a presents, right? Next week, the Old School will host a giveaway where the students will be the ones getting the presents. Yay!
image by Renata Osinska from Fotolia.com
happy Earth Day :)
Apr 22nd, 2012 by damsel
In honor of Earth Day, here are a few review lessons from the Old School. It’s all about recycling, right? These ideas will help you live a greener life.
Reuse an old jar plus a salt container you’d throw away and get:
The weather’s getting warm, so reuse your winter denims for cut-offs:
Make your own cleaning products with natural ingredients. Nasty harsh chemicals be banished.
And, one of the most-hit posts in Old School history:
There are many more ideas found in the Old School archives. Take a trip through the “Categories” area on the sidebar under such headings as environment, gardening, handmade, and self-reliant.
Submit your best Earth Day idea by leaving a comment, thereby spreading the word and earning the Damsel’s deep gratitude in one fell swoop.
Have a great Earth Day!
regrow celery
Apr 19th, 2012 by damsel
The Damsel was so taken with the easiness of regrowing green onions that she reached out to the universe and found out there are other things you can do with produce trimmings besides compost them. (Click here for green onion instructions)
You can regrow celery. Amazing.
Imagine here a photo of the bottom of a bunch of celery, trimmed off as usual, maybe three inches or so from the root end. Imagine it sitting in a little dish of water. Now you have, in your mind’s eye, the photo the Damsel assumed she had for you but has utterly failed to produce.
The next time you buy celery, try this. Cut it off the root end, stick it in a dish of water, and in just a few days, you’ll see little celery leaves starting to grow. Keep adding water as needed, but don’t fuss.
After a week to ten days, you can plant it, either in a pot in your kitchen window or outside, if the weather’s nice. Just stick it in dirt.
The Damsel is waiting to find out whether stalks will grow, or just leaves. But she feels pretty happy about the whole situation, especially since she happens to like the leaves quite a lot for cooking. She’s always felt that in stalk form, celery’s main purpose on this planet is to carry dip to one’s mouth.
It’s nice to be useful.
DIY Whole Wheat Pancake Mix
Apr 12th, 2012 by damsel
Class: Please welcome substitute teacher Katheryn Rivas.
D.I.Y. Whole Wheat Pancake Mix: An Old-Fashioned Classic for Modern Times
One of the warmest memories from childhood is waking up to the smell of pancakes before a long day of school. But gone are the days when moms have the time to make pancakes from scratch on weekdays, let alone make pancakes at all. If we do want to surprise the kids with a special morning treat, the most we can do is reach for our boxed pancake mix and bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s and call it a day. Most moms would rather not, however, feed their kids a processed sugar-filled breakfast before sending them off to behave at school, so pancakes in the morning have, for most families, become a thing of the past. But why can’t we bring back the joy of a full-blown pancake breakfast that is both healthy and easy enough to actually fit in to your schedule? Take an extra 20 minutes some evening and make your own whole wheat pancake mix! You won’t have to deal with measuring cups or cleanup. Simply add your eggs, oil and milk to your mix and you’ll have perfect batter in a snap, anytime.
Here is what you will need to get started:
Supplies:
-Air-tight Mason jar or Tupperware
-Sifter
-Big bowl for mixing
-Measuring utensils
-Large mixing spoon
Ingredients:
2 c. whole wheat, or white whole wheat, flour
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsps. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon (or to taste)
Once you have everything in place, it’s time to get started. Holding your sifter over the large bowl, sift the dry ingredients through, one by one. Once everything is in the bowl, mix well, pour the entire mix into your jar or Tupperware, and you have just made your very own pancake mix!
Now, before you store your mix, take a sticky note and write down the measurements that you will need for the milk, eggs and oil when it comes time to use the mix. You will need 2 eggs, 1 ½ cups of milk, and 1/3 cup vegetable oil.
When you’re ready to make pancakes, dump out the entire mix in a large bowl. Add the milk, eggs and oil and stir until just mixed. Pour out and bake on a greased griddle or frying pan.
To make multiple batches of the mix, just double, triple or quadruple the dry ingredient recipe and pour into separate containers.
By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes on the topics of online universities advice. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: [email protected]
green onions–a continual, free supply
Mar 29th, 2012 by damsel
Green onions! Mmmm!
The Damsel loves them. They have that great onion flavor, but somehow fresher tasting, and usually not harsh or bitter. They cook fast. They’re cute.
What’s not to love?
Well, they don’t store as well as grown-up onions. But what if you could grow your own, easily, quickly, and–free?
The Damsel currently sees no downside.
Buy a bunch of green onions, feeling happy that this will be the last time for a very long time that you will need to do so. They don’t need to be this bulbous kind. They can be the more typical straight ones, and everything will be all right.
Cut the little root end off, as you normally do. (now use the green onion as you wish. The Damsel recommends a loaded baked potato. Worth every minute on the Stair-Master that it may cause.)
Put some potting soil in a flower pot or other container. Bonus if it looks nice on your kitchen windowsill, where you can keep an eye on it and then, later, other more wonderful things that have to do with kitchens and green onions. Poke a shallow hole with your finger and plant the little cut off piece, root side down, of course.
The Damsel was shocked how soon this was going on. Only a few days.
This was only a week or so later. Good grief.
Now, you can take your handy kitchen shears and trim off green onion at will, whenever the need arises or a baked potato occurs. And yes, they will GROW BACK. Over and over. And all you used was that little bit that you were going to throw away anyway.
Just to be clear, you are trimming the tops, not uprooting the onions.
WHY HAS NO ONE EVER TOLD THE DAMSEL ABOUT THIS BEFORE????
no-rub silver tarnish removal
Mar 15th, 2012 by damsel
Grandma taught the Damsel that saving the best china and silver for “special company” meant it would be rarely used, if ever. And who is more important than family, anyway? So every Sunday, out came the best china, the beautiful silver.
Over the years, a few precious pieces were broken by childish hands, yes. But the message was clear–she loved her family. And, if you wait for that perfect moment to use your nice things, that day may never come.
She also taught the Damsel the best way to keep your silver from tarnishing is to use it often. “Some people don’t want to do that, because a microscopic layer of silver is lost with each washing,” she said. “but is a gracefully thin silver spoon such a bad thing?”
Sometimes, though, getting tarnished silver to a state where you’d actually want to eat off it is a tedious task. In the great houses of the olden days (think “Downton Abbey”) the butler had this charge. But those of us butler-less folk have to struggle on alone, and sometimes there just isn’t time for such niceties.
Here’s the cheater way to detarnishify. The Damsel has heard you shouldn’t use this method for heirloom silver, although she isn’t sure why. Also, don’t use it for silver that has a dark background in its design, because that dark contrast will be removed by this method.
Go thou, and gather the tarnished items.
Line a container with aluminum foil. Could be a cake pan, could even be your sink. As you wish.
Pour in a cup of salt and a cup of baking soda, but don’t fuss about being exact. This ain’t souffle baking. Pour in enough water to submerge the silver items you’re planning to clean. Stir the mixture around a little–you can even just use your fingers. Try not to tear the foil, but it’s no big deal.
Drop the items in. Stand by for instant amazement. A chemical reaction is occurring, where the tarnish is pulled from the silver and deposited onto the aluminum foil. The Damsel has no idea why this works. Please recall she majored in music and hid from any and all chemistry-type thingies. This is as it should be.
Thank you, chemically-inclined people, for being there and taking care of these things for the rest of us. We couldn’t make it without you.
You can leave the silver in the solution for up to 30 minutes, but take it out when it looks “done.” Rinse and polish with a dry cloth. Or, rinse and put in a dish of ice cream for immediate sparkling satisfaction.
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