She once hired a teenage neighbor to scrub the grout with a toothbrush and Ajax. This was effective but made both the teenager and the Damsel feel sad inside, and also a bit chlorinated. Let’s just say the Damsel has a lot of grout.

The Damsel spent lots of money on a fancy steam cleaner, and although she likes having it and uses it frequently, it didn’t solve the grout problem like she hoped.

She tried sealing the grout during one of its moments of cleanliness. While this has worked well for others, the tile nirvana didn’t occur at the Cottage. She could hardly tell a difference.

Once she had some pros in, who cleaned it with an oxygen process. This was lovely. And expensive.

Several times, the Damsel has considered staining the grout black and just get it over with.

Then, she heard about using toilet bowl cleaner on it. What a curious idea! She noticed that one of the main ingredients of her toilet bowl cleaner is muriatic acid, which has long been used as a stone and brick cleaner. Her grout is sort of like stone, in a way, since it is basically cement. So she decided to try it in a spot behind a door, just in case something exploded or dissolved the tile or some such.

She poured a little onto the line of grout and spread it with an old toothbrush. Yes! The toothbrush returns! But instead of scrubbing, she only spread it. Something chemical seemed to happen immediately–the grout looked lighter right away.

Ever hopeful, she let it sit a few minutes and then sponged it off. While the grout was wet, it still had the dark, dirty look. But once the grout dried, et voila:

(sad, dark grout below. happy, clean grout above. The grout is supposed to be a very light gray color)

After a couple of weeks, the grout still looks good. The Damsel is pleased. It took time, but NOTHING like the other knee-bruising methods she’s tried. She feels a little weird about using a strong chemical like this, but she made sure to have good ventilation and to thoroughly clean the chemical from the floor afterward. In the mopping-off process, some toilet bowl cleaner got on the tile itself, not just the grout, which cleaned it nicely as well.

A person could probably do this even faster by just mopping toilet bowl cleaner all over the whole floor and letting it sit, then thoroughly mopping off, but it would take a lot more chemical–costing more, obviously. Then there’s the thing about dumping a whole lot of strong chemical out on your floors.

The Damsel leaves the choice up to you.

Back in the olden days (and by that the Damsel means WAY long ago), people used to weigh gems to determine their value, just like we do nowadays. But of course there was no such thing as a digital scale…

So, it just so happens that the carob seed grows remarkably consistent in size and weight. So this humble little seed was used for centuries as a standard for weighing precious stones.

Then perhaps a gemsmith came along who was rudely trying to speak with his mouth full of peanut butter, and when he said “carob” it sounded like “carat” or “karat.”

From then on, the weights of gems have been measured in karats. One karat has been standardized worldwide to equal 0.2 grams.

Measuring the pureness of gold in karats is different. It’s not a weight, but a percentage of purity. 24 karat gold is 100% pure gold, while 18k is 75% pure and 12k gold is 50% pure.

It’s sort of confusing to use “karat” in these two ways, and people who deal with gold are gradually shifting to a decimal based system. For example, 22k gold is marked as “916″ under this system, or 91.6% gold.

The Damsel just learned this TODAY. She doesn’t fool around with gold all that often. Still, it’s interesting to know.

Thanks to all who entered–and for all the faithful students of the Old School. Best class ever!

Since you’ve been such good students, the Damsel has been authorized to offer one lucky person an awesome gift–a copy of the scrapbooking program “My Memories Suite.” , a $39.97 value.

This program is pretty sweet. The Damsel was given a copy for a test drive, and she was quite impressed by its array of cool features. For those interested in digital scrapbooking, this program is top notch.

Digital scrapbooking fits the goal of the Old School fairly well–doing old fashioned things with a new twist. For the Damsel, the whole problem with this scrapbooking is not the desire…it’s just having the time to do it. So the Damsel thought she’d test how quickly she could make a page.

Understand that there are about a billion ways a person could make a scrapbook page–the options go on and on–but the Damsel had set herself a specific goal here. Speed. That’s it.

The Damsel hates to brag but she made this page in two minutes, using one of the application’s templates and a few highly adorable pictures of her grand-sprog.

Can the Damsel just say that she’s weary of contests where you have to do a whole raft of things in order to have a chance? **heavy sigh**  For this contest, you need do only two easy things.

1. Be a follower of this blog, via the Google Friend Connect button on the right sidebar or via RSS feed. All following instructions can be found by clicking the “subscribe” tab at the top of this page.

2. Leave a comment, making sure there is some way to contact you if you are chosen. If you follow this blog via email, you’ll need to click through to the site to leave a comment. The Damsel will look kindly upon you if you name an Old School post you’ve enjoyed, but it’s not required.

The contest will run until Friday, Jan. 6 at 10pm MST.

Also, any Old School student may have a  $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store – $20 value. Just enter code STMMMS92539.

Good luck!

Here’s an “infographic” about what we’ve been up to:

Things were a little more compartmentalized back then. There were no such things as super-mega-marts that sell everything under the sun. There were cobblers, and chandlers (candle-makers), and millers, and tailors, and yes, butchers.

The Damsel remembers as a child being taken to visit Great Aunt Hazel, who worked as a butcher. She wore her hair in a towering red beehive, and had a wonderfully big, husky laugh. She seemed a little bit scary in her red-streaked apron, wielding her giant cleaver.

Beehive hairdos are alarming, aren’t they?

You may be surprised to know that butcher shops still exist in most areas, if you take the time to search them out. You may find, as the Damsel has, that they have good prices and high quality. Check out this bacon:

Bacon this amazing would be super expensive in the grocery store, but from the butcher shop, it’s pretty reasonable. In order to get the good price, one has to buy it 10 pounds at a time, but since bacon freezes so well, that’s no problem.

The Damsel simply puts a couple pounds each of this nice, thick bacon into ziplock bags. Then she dreams of the deliciousness that is to come. Most people agree there’s really nothing quite like the smell of bacon cooking. (try baking it…it works great. Here’s how: bakin’ bacon)

At the Damsel’s favorite butcher shop, there’s more than good deals on bacon. There are roasts, steaks, sausage, and pretty much any carnivorous thing you hanker for. So look up “butcher” or “meat market” in your town, and you may be surprised at how much you like buying meat old school style.

Maybe you’re like the Damsel was before she saw the light. Maybe you think there is something magical that makes peanuts into peanut butter–some special process taking elaborate equipment and people in white overalls. And that “natural” peanut butter, costing approximately $123456789, is something even more complicated to make.

Gather close, dear students, and the Damsel will show you the truth.

It’s easy to make your own peanut butter. All you need is:

• peanuts (The Damsel was striving for a Jiffy-like result, so she used roasted, salted peanuts, but you can use any type you like)
• oil (vegetable or peanut oil; olive oil may taste off)
• something to puree it, like a food processor

That’s it.

Acquire two cups of shelled peanuts. Tedium Alert: Shelling your own takes time. When the Damsel first attempted this, scavengers ate the peanuts as fast as she could shell them.

This got less and less fun, and she at last resorted to child labor in the form of her adorable nieces who just happened by at the right time. One must shell a goodly amount of peanuts to yield 2 cups.

Put the peanuts, along with about a teaspoon of oil, into a food processor with the blade in place. Crank it up and let it go for a couple of minutes or until you’ve achieved the smoothness level you’re looking for. The Damsel loves crunchy peanut butter. In case you were wondering.

You may need to scrape the sides of the food processor and have another go, although the Damsel did no such thing. If it seems too thick, add a bit more oil, but the Damsel begs you to do so in very small increments. It’s easy to get too much.

Depending on how badly you want to duplicate “store” peanut butter, keep in mind that commercial crunchy peanut butter is made by adding chopped peanuts to creamy-style peanut butter. This detail may be lost once it’s between two pieces of bread. Your mileage may vary.

Yield: about a cup.

You just made peanut butter! It’s that easy. Your celery can now be filled properly.

Keep it in the fridge, since it’s got no nasty preservatives. You may or may not need to stir it a bit before using.

The ammonia worked really well but the Damsel hated using it because of the smell. Oh, the smell. Like sticking your head in an old-school diaper pail. YUCK. And the Damsel would like to say to people who market ammonia as “lemon fresh scent” or some such: “LIES. NOTHING BUT LIES.”

At the Cottage By The Mountains, there is no yucky stove hood. Indeed there is no stove hood at all because of its type. But there are grills that sit on the stovetop, and there are a lot of messy children. Over the years, the Damsel has spent a great deal of time scrubbing those grills. It was super hard work, and even after a huge effort, the grills still didn’t look pristine.

As if anything looks pristine at the Cottage. Just keeping it real.

At one point the Damsel even asked her Knight if he would spray paint the grills (normally gray but covered with black grodies) with black high-temp engine paint. Seemed like a good idea at the time. He cruelly refused.

So she half-heartedly scrubbed the grills every few weeks, but never felt happy inside about it. Then she remembered her auntie, and learned about a special trick to do with ammonia.

Put the grills (or any item with baked-on grease that’s small enough) into a plastic bag. Pour in some ammonia…maybe a cup or so.  Close it tightly and let it sit overnight. The ammonia doesn’t have to cover the yucky parts. It’s the fumes–oh the fumes–that work the magic.

The Damsel has only tried this with stovetop grills, but she assumes that anything that wouldn’t be harmed by ammonia would be ok to do this on. (Remember to keep ammonia and bleach far far away from each other.)

The next day, the Damsel braced herself and opened the bag. Once the terrible stench was rinsed away, she started working on the grill. Now let us be clear. The crud didn’t just rinse off, but wow. Nearly all of it came off with VERY light scrubbing, and the few stubborn specks came off with comparatively little effort. The Damsel felt like skipping and singing.

The dream of actually having a nice looking stove suddenly seemed possible–a thing the Damsel didn’t think would happen in this lifetime.

This is her wish for you.

You know in a traditional lasagna recipe how it tells you to boil the noodles first and then layer them? Have you done this? Have you tried to get the slippery, slimy noodles from the pan only to have them tear, flop, splash and goober? Have you?

If so you may have taken note that stores now sell “oven ready” noodles that don’t need to be cooked first. You just layer them in, all stiff and hard, and they cook and soften just fine.

Your mileage may vary, but the Damsel has been doing this for years with REGULAR lasagna noodles, not special “oven ready” ones and nothing bad has happened.

She doesn’t know what the difference is between “oven ready” and regular noodles since they both look pretty much the same–except the price. There must be a difference. Surely this isn’t some grand conspiracy. Right? Right?

What the Damsel does know is that doing lasagna this way makes a formerly-complicated dinner into a pretty darn easy thing to make. Plus, and this is her favorite part–the lasagna turns out nice and firm, not soupy.

Here’s how it’s done at the Cottage:

Cook one gigantic pot of spaghetti sauce by combining a #10 can of crushed tomatoes from the Huge Mart with cooked ground beef and onion. Season it in whatever way seemeth thou best, marinara style, whether that means packets of spaghetti sauce mix or fresh herbs or something in between.

Serve it to the teeming masses over spaghetti noodles. Watch them hork most of it down.

The next day, use the leftover sauce to make lasagna. Layer sauce, uncooked lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese (how to make your own), other cheeses of your choice, and repeat layers 3 times or until you feel like stopping. The top layer should be sauce and all the noodles should be covered. (Parmesan on top is okay) You’ll love how easy it is to spread ricotta on top of hard noodles instead of goobery ones.

Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350 degrees F. about an hour, until the noodles are soft. (Poke with a fork in the middle and on the edge) If you feel nervous, check it after 45 minutes and add a little water to the pan if necessary. But normally, the moisture in the sauce is enough to soften the noodles. Bonus: the noodles are absorbing saucy liquid instead of plain water and are thus extra delicious.

Just in case oven-ready noodles really are part of a conspiracy, you’ll have struck a blow for right and truth.

1. it’s cheap, and in the olden days, people loved making something cool without spending a lot of cash

2.  it uses up something that might otherwise be thrown away

3.  it took only a speck of time, reserving that precious commodity for other Old Schoolish pursuits

First, a confession. The Damsel is a Halloween grinch. She thinks it’s a silly holiday, and only barely convinces herself to put up with it. She doesn’t like to be scared, and dressing little children up like icky dead cheerleaders and such has never been her bag. And then there’s the whole thing about sending these children out door to door, begging candy, with the threat of nasty tricks if the person doesn’t comply.

Seriously. The Damsel gets it that it’s all in fun, and she actually likes costumes and such. She’s acquired a live-and-let-live policy on Halloween.

To each his own.

The Damsel’s sprog have somehow grown up in spite of the grinchyness, being forced all their lives to dress up like superheroes or cowboys or gypsies or other non-dead things. They’ve survived the madness that is their mother.

So, enjoy those witch finger cookies, all! Gobble them right up. And here’s a fun, easy idea for lanterns for your Halloween porch.

Take a glow stick, such as you buy at the dollar store, and an empty glass jar.

Cut the glow stick so that the magic liquid inside the glow stick drips into the jar. The Damsel found it a little hard to cut through but not too bad. Careful if you use a knife, though.

The liquid isn’t dangerous, as far as the Damsel is aware, but try to get all the liquid inside the jar. The more, the better.

Put the lid on and shake so the liquid spreads over the inside of the jar.

The Damsel took the jar into the bathroom, (the only room with no windows and therefore dark) shut the door, and took this picture.

Cool! Make a few of these and set them on your porch. The pretty little princesses and dead football players will love it.