Homemade Fragrance Stones

Fragrance Stones

1-1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup salt
1/4 tsp. cornstarch
2/3 cup boiling water
1 tbls. fragrance oil
Colorant of your choice

Mix all dry ingredients. Heat water in a Pyrex cup in the microwave or on the stove. Add the f/o and the color to the water. Stir water mixture into flour mixture. Mix as best you can and then knead the dough with your hands. At this point you just want it to look like pie or dough. Roll it out about a quarter of an inch thick. Cut into shapes or use cookie cutters. Another option is to stamp the flat shapes. Let the dough stones dry. They get hard as rocks and will last for months.


I have not tried this, but it looked easy to make, and would be cheaper than buying one. Most of the ingred. you would have, except for the fragrance oil. In my case I would have to buy some.

Homemade Stock for People with Better Things to Do Than Make Stock

You can’t hide from me, I can see you.

I know who you are.

You’re the one reading cooking blogs and magazines every day, always trying to figure out what to cook next, often getting a little perturbed at restaurants because you know you could’ve cooked your entrée just a little bit better than the chef did. You’ve purposefully sought out recipes marked “difficult”. You’ve mastered pie crust, can roast the most succulent chicken in a five-mile radius, and can roll a perfect French omelette every flippin’ time.

And you still buy canned stock.

Don’t try to hide it behind the cans of tuna or the cereal boxes; I know it’s there. Maybe you buy the wax-coated aseptic boxes, or maybe you buy the jars of stock concentrate, but we all know what’s going on.

I know, because I used to be just like you.

Yes, for years, even a culinary school graduate like me, who prides herself on her homemade everything, couldn’t be bothered to make stock. For me, the problem wasn’t the requisite 4 hours of simmering, it was the ingredient list. The very specific ingredient list. The very specific ingredient list that, if deviated from, would turn any effort into nothing but a massive waste of time.

As I was taught, and as many recipes indicate, a proper homemade stock requires the following: bones, lots of them, and all from the same kind of animal; a meticulously diced mirepoix of onions, carrots, and celery, in a perfect 2:1:1 ratio; and a bouquet garni of parsley stems, bay leaves, fresh thyme, and black peppercorns, preferably tied up in a cheesecloth bag.

And people, I don’t mind spending time in the kitchen, but that’s an awful lot of work for something you can just buy at the store when the need arises.

So I made sure the need would arise only rarely. I learned to quietly avoid recipes that used words like “use homemade stock if possible”. I learned which purchased stocks were the best. I lived a risotto-less, chicken-soup-less, pan-sauce-less life. I carried a twinge of shame within me that I crushed easily and repeatedly with a flippant, “That’s too much trouble.”

I’m here to tell you that it’s all a lie. Stock is easy! I am now a converted stock-maker and -freezer. And therein lies the secret: the freezer. Well, the freezer, and a plastic zip-top bag.

It struck me like a great striking thing, when I recently read on a blog (which one is now forgotten, unfortunately) that there are brilliant people out there who save vegetable scraps and trimmings in bags in the freezer, solely for the purpose of making stock. They even had a clever name for it: a stock bag. Everything goes in one bag, then into the pot when there’s enough. I’ve ambitiously saved bones before (and then very un-ambitiously thrown them away months later) , but never thought to save vegetable odds and ends.

True, it’s not a classically correct stock, and you might never get the same result twice (which I find exciting), but it’s the simplest way I’ve heard yet to keep your fridge stocked with (ahem) stock. Whenever you cut up vegetables for anything, keep the scraps. Pile them all in a freezer zip-top bag. Everything goes here, as long as it’s been washed, from onion skins, to carrot peelings, to parsley stems, to snapped-off asparagus ends.

Whenever you have them, save bones of all sorts, wrapped in foil. Even shrimp shells will make an excellent stock. The only caveat is to avoid mixing meat and fish. Pork bones and chicken bones will go together, but not so much beef bones and a grouper skeleton. Other than that, it’s as simple as simple gets.

Here’s the method: empty the bag of frozen vegetable bits into the biggest pot you have. In this batch, I’ve got scallion ends, celery root skin, leek tops, shiitake stems, and lots of other random scraps. I happened to have half an ancient onion in the freezer (God knows why), so that went in as well.

Add any bones you’ve got, though this is actually optional! This is a pheasant carcass…

…and I threw in some chicken leg bones too, for good measure. If you remember, a bay leaf or two, and a small palmful of black peppercorns are nice additions, as is a branch of thyme, but it’s fine to leave them out too.

Cover everything with cold – that’s important – water. (Luckily for you, since all your vegetables are frozen and will chill your water further, even room temperature water will work here. Don’t use hot water, is all.) Things will float up as you add water; just gently push them down.

Bring everything just to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Depending on how frozen your vegetables are, and how cold your water is, your pot may condense.

If your pot is very full, things might not stay submerged as they simmer, which will lead to darkening (which you don’t want). If this is the case, cover the top with a round of parchment paper.

Simmer uncovered, or with the lid slightly askew, for at least 2 hours (3 if you’re using bones), and up to 5 or 6 hours for the most extraction of flavor. The timing is up to you; there’s no correct amount of time to simmer everything. Classically, they say to simmer at least 4 hours for stock with bones, but if you’ve only got 3, then I say it’s close enough. Simmering longer won’t do any harm, though, and it will probably make a more flavorful stock. Oh, and no stirring! Stirring will make a cloudy stock.

As it cooks, keep an eye on the liquid level. If it drops below the top of the ingredients, just add a little extra water. Things will start to look drab, as the color and flavor leaches out of the vegetables and into the liquid.

When the time is up, lift the solids out of the stock into a fine mesh strainer set over a large bowl. Press on them to extract as much liquid gold as possible, and then discard them. When all the big solid pieces are out of the pot, gently pour the stock through the strainer into the bowl. Straining like this (as opposed to dumping everything into the strainer all at once) will make for a less cloudy stock, and will make much less of a mess. (Trust me on this one.)

Cool the stock to room temperature as quickly as possible (but definitely within 2 to 3 hours). You can do this by splitting the stock into multiple smaller containers, or by setting the large bowl of stock in an ice bath. Do not simply put the huge bowl of hot stock into the refrigerator! Unless, that is, you’d like to spoil all the food in your fridge in one go.

Once the stock has cooled to room temperature, either freeze it or refrigerate it. If you’ve got no room in the fridge, you can reduce the strained stock by boiling it; add extra water back in whenever you need it.

stock photography

And that, Gentle Readers, is how I learned to stop worrying and make stock. Despite the lengthy description, it’s really this easy:

1. Put frozen vegetables and/or bones in pot.

2. Cover with water.

3. Simmer. Go about your day.

4. Strain and cool.

5. Profit.

No more excuses, now. Get yourself a gallon zip-top freezer bag, and start saving those scraps! They’ll add up before you know it, and you’ll soon be savoring your very own, very simple, homemade stock, ready for you to cook rice in, make soups with, deglaze pans, even make risotto with. I won’t fault you for keeping an emergency can of stock in the pantry, but you might end up forgetting all about it with the wealth of stock you’ll have in your freezer.

Take it from one who knows.

Homemade Scales for Weighing Things

Oftentimes one finds that something needs to be weighed (massed), and there is no balance or scales available. Not to worry! A scales that is usually good enough for most measurements is readily made from a pencil (F), ruler, two light cardboard pans (P), and coins (C). The mechanics all follows the law of levers. The following is for a scales useful for small weights or masses.

How to set up your scales. (By the way, the word is plural because there are two "pans" on it. Besides using the plural, diminishes the confusion when you speak of a scale or a dial.)

1. Find a FLAT, STIFF ruler that has inches and/or metric inscribed on it
2. Find some light cardboard such as is attached to the backs of writing tablets. Cut out TWO squares that are about 3 inches on a side.
3. Using drops of glue placed very near the ends of the ruler on the side with the numbers, affix the two squares you've cut out. Allow the glue to dry.
4. Place the ruler upon a pencil such that the pencil is at the very MIDDLE of the ruler (using the numbers).
5. As the cardboard squares might not be of equal weight, trim the heavier one such that the ruler will balance at it mid-point. You now have a scales.

Now for your known weights against you will weigh or mass things. Coins are quite regular when newly manufactured. So obtain a few that are not more than 5 years old and are not damaged or very worn. Here are the weights of the most common coins in the USA:

dime = 2.2 g; penny = 2.5 g; nickel = 5.0 g; quarter = 5.7 g
(For the weights of other nations' coins, you can ask a dealer in collector's coins.)

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Using Your Scales

Suppose you need to weigh out 4 grams of a powder (notice: only 1 significant figure!) And suppose that your scales is constructed from a 12-inch ruler.

1. First you must do some math: you need to know where to place a coin or coins on the ruler.
   1. Say that you select as your weight the nickel, which is 5.0 grams.
   2. Using the formula under the picture you determine that you should place your nickel exactly ___ from the fulcrum,
      X = (4 g x 6 inches)/5 g = 24/5 = 4.8 inches
   3. Place the nickel 4.8 inches away from the fulcrum, which is at the 6-inch mark
   4. At this point in time, the nickel will cause the ruler to tip its direction.
   5. Onto the MIDDLE of the cardboard square, slowly spoon on (THOU SHALT NOT DUMP!) small amounts of your powder until the ruler just tips lifting the nickel's side of the ruler.
   6. You will have 4 grams of powder on the square.

There are other TRICKS you could discover for yourself, but why waste time. Here are three. (A) It is often easier to measure volumes than weights, so adjust your volume so that, in the above example, you could use 4.4 grams. Then all you would have had to do is add two dimes to the center of one cardboard square and balance with 4.4 grams of powder. (Again: your directions said that you needed make 100 ml that contained 4 grams of your powder and then you were going to use 50 ml of that solution. It's just as good to make 110 ml containing 4.4 g and use 50 of it.)

(B) When making up reagents for quantitative analysis, remember to think! Every reagent is in excess except for ONE. Know your chemistry of the analysis. Carefully measure out THE critical reagent, and then make sure you have added enough of the others, which can often measured out rather crudely.

(C) When measuring out components for growing microbes in petri plates or flasks, you can be extremely free. Do you weigh out your meat and vegetables to the nearest 0.01 gram? No! Bacteria and fungi are much less fastidious than you are! This author's students once determined how much freedom there was in making growth media for E.coli. They found they could add three times more than the recipe called for and the bacteria would grow just as well. And if they added only a tenth of what was called for the bacteria grew faster! The most critical component of petri plate making is usually the amount of agar - you don't want either mush or concrete. The bacteria don't care, but you do!

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For even smaller weighings

In principle this wire model is the same as that of the larger "ruler model," above. Here are a few of its salient points.

1. The end of the wire is bent downward and then horizontal again so that the overall center of gravity of the scales will be lower than the fulcrum (where the thread [red] is tied) to the wire. This will prevent the scales from tipping over and dumping what you have placed on the "pan."
2. You may wish the pan to be made of metal foil or plastic so that it will not absorb drops of liquids (
3. With the pan empty, you shall first want to determine the balance or equivalency point of the scales by sliding the thread's attachment point to and fro until the wire hangs horizontally. Once you have found this point, you will want to use a knife blade to scratch a circle around the wire to prevent the thread's slipping to and fro. (If your notching was imprecise, trim small bits from [or add very small drops of glue to] the "pan" until the scales will become horizontal.)
4. You shall want to have a "V" of wire to be your sliding weight that you will add to the long arm and be able to move it along the wire until it balances the mass you have added to the pan. You will want to know the mass of this slider. A jeweler should be able to give you its weight.
   THOU SHALT NOT LOSE THIS SLIDER!
5. As with the ruler-scales, you will move the slider until it will balance the unknown's mass. In similar fashion the inverse proportions of distance will be made.
6. A more precise wire-scales can be made IF you have a hanging "pan" rather than a fixed one. In a hanging pan, the placement of the sample doesn't matter as the pan's hanging point on the wire will be fixed. With a fixed pan it is important that you place your samples exactly in the center of the pan.