Monthly Archives: March 2025

Citrus compote and homemade general cleaners

Healthy Living, Intentional Spending

I realized I need to share about this before citrus season passes!

I got two boxes of beautiful clementines, and wanted to find a way to preserve their citrusy deliciousness for a different season.

My past experience with canning clementines was terrible; they were delicious when I put them in the jars but bitter and lacking in flavor when I took them out to eat them. That was in 2021 and you can see it scarred me enough that I didn’t try to can any citrus in the ensuing years. 🙂

This time I made a delicious citrus compote with pink grapefruit, clementines, pomegranate seeds and a tiny bit of star anise. So, so good.

I cut off all the pith (the white stuff left on the fruit after you peel it) and the membranes of the grapefruits, since that’s what gives the bitter flavor. We had some of it fresh and it didn’t need any sweetener, but I added some honey for the jars that I canned.

Sectioning all of that citrus fruit was a lot of work, particularly since the grapefruits were small. But the taste was fabulous!

(You can see the citrus compote in the jars in the background below.)

Then I canned clementine sections using honey and water as the syrup to can them with. Those also turned out nicely. In the winter I like to have homemade applesauce and peach/apricot compote for Shabbos dessert from the fall and summer seasons, and I’ll save the citrus compote for the summer when citrus is no longer in season. It makes it more special to enjoy it when it’s not in season.

After I finished, I was left with a huge amount of clementine peels. (I had to take my boys to an appointment in the middle of working on this. I was very embarrassed that a friend we haven’t seen for twenty years unexpectedly come to visit when I was out and walked into the kitchen to see the island covered with jars, fruits and peels.) While my goats would have gladly eaten the peels, I wanted to use them to make a big batch of general purpose cleaner.

Okay, get ready for a very complicated and time consuming project.

All Purpose Citrus Cleaner

You can use peels from any citrus fruit – lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, oranges. They all have a chemical in their peels called d-limonene that is a natural compound that removes oil and dirt from surfaces.

Put the peels in a container. Cover with vinegar so that the peels are completely submerged; you don’t want to have peels sticking out because they’ll get moldy. Close/cover the container and let sit from two weeks to two months. (It can sit longer if you don’t get around to dealing with it.) Strain. Put the peels in your compost pile (or if you’re me, everything goes to the chickens) and pour the strained vinegar into a spray bottle and add an equal amount of water.

You can use this to clean most areas – bathrooms, windows, sinks, stoves and ovens. It’s strong and effective, but doesn’t have any chemical smell or danger to your skin or lungs. (You can also use this citrus vinegar for salad dressings. I know, it’s kind of a funny thought to be able to ingest your household cleaner.)

I made a very large recipe, using all of my peels along with two – 4 liter jugs of vinegar, purchased at the bulk store for 8.50 each. When mixed with water it will result in sixteen liters of cleaner for under twenty shekels, and that will be enough to last me a very long time.

Avivah

Setting limits on gift giving

Intentional Spending, Self-Growth

Tonight I got a call from a parent of my eight year old son’s class. She was tasked with calling all the parents to collect the money for Purim gift baskets for the teachers.

There was an evening event for mothers last week, and no one mentioned the class gift so I assumed that this year I’d make my own gift baskets for the teachers. By the time I got the call, I had completed my order for everything I needed and it was too late to cancel my order.

However, I always participate with the class gifts, even though they are for the morning and afternoon staff, and my son is only present for the mornings. So I asked how much it would be.

“250 shekels”, she said.

I got a call the day before about contributing to the class baskets for ds12’s same size class in the same school, and you know how much it was? 100 shekels. Totally fine.

I told her that 250 shekels is way too much. I feel responsible in part for these spiraling prices because until a year ago, they were asking 150 shekels from each parent. At the mother’s evening last year they were hesitating about the price, and asked me and the other woman I was with if they should charge 150 or 200. The woman next to me said ‘200’ and I agreed it was fine with me. We were the first people asked and if we had said it was too much, it would have been adjusted accordingly.

In the moment I felt it was okay because I had the money and it didn’t cause me financial strain. But it caused the bar to be raised, and it’s likely it caused others to feel pressured. When they collected for the end of the year gifts and said they wanted 200 shekels from each family, I told them that I was wrong to agree earlier in the year to a higher price and they needed to hold the bar at 150 shekels.

Well, obviously that didn’t happen and the bar was raised again.

I very clearly expressed why I won’t contribute: it’s too much money and it puts pressure on parents and there has to be a limit. The person calling agreed with me completely and said she wished that I had been one of the first to be asked this year instead of the last, that if someone else had said this earlier on then the price would have been lowered. (Don’t think that everyone will send in the money – they won’t, they will act as if it’s fine with them and then not pay.)

I like to participate with group efforts and of course no one wants to look like they’re being cheap. In this case I’m not worried about how people look at me – for years I’ve consistently contributed willingly and promptly. I genuinely feel like someone has to put their foot down and I’m willing to be that person.

What will I send to the teachers instead? I’ve bought gold metal baskets and will include in each a large bottle of natural grape juice, a family size bag of hamantaschen and some fruit. I may add a can of tuna or some other canned good. I’ll wrap it nicely in cellophane and ribbons, and it will look lovely.

It’s a beautiful thing to be generous but it’s easy to be swayed by your concern of what people will think of you. It’s so easy to go beyond your limits when it comes to gift giving because of how you want to be perceived. Be honest with yourself: does it feel good to you, or do you feel you’re overly stretching yourself? Does it give you joy and are you giving in a whole hearted way, or do you feel like you have to even though you’d rather not and it’s too much for you?

Learning to be honest with yourself and respect your needs and limitations is a really important ability to develop. See requests such as these as opportunities to be respectful and loving of yourself, rather than putting the wants of others before yourself.

Avivah

Adding more chickens to our flock?

Micro Homesteading,

Thank you to all of you who took time to comment and share feedback on what you appreciate reading about here! If you haven’t yet commented, it’s not too late to share what interests you – I read and appreciate every single comment.

Today dd7 has a siddur party; they’ll be rehearsing in the hall where it will be held, and she needs to be picked up early. I’ll need to drive there to get here (it’s an hour away), then go back together with her for the performance after an hour or so at home. That will give her time to shower and for me to braid her hair, and to eat something before we leave. That means that most of my day will be busy with getting her to this performance and then attending it, with us getting home in the evening past her bedtime.

Of course on such a full day I need to add completely voluntary activities to my schedule, like going to look at some purebred Brahma chickens for sale locally before I leave to pick up dd.

Why am I thinking about getting these chickens?

On Friday we finally processed our homegrown roosters. (That same morning we had an amazing hatch rate from the eggs my son incubated; we now have almost fifty chicks from a batch of a bit over 60 eggs!) Previously we had five roosters that were shechted (slaughtered) by someone who wasn’t expert in mixed breed chickens (they swallow their windpipe when alarmed and that causes problems in the kosher slaughtering) and they all came out not kosher. We took the eight remaining roosters (we’re keeping two of our purebred Plymouth Barred Rock roosters) to a new shochet (kosher slaughterer). Six of the eight were kosher, and we were very satisfied with his price, approach and skill.

My husband and sons are able to pluck, clean and kasher the birds. Not having a shochet who could kill our birds was our biggest impediment to raising our own birds for meat. Now that we have a reliable way to process our homegrown roosters, that changes everything for us.

If you can’t eat them, roosters are mostly a liability. But if we can eat them, then we have a good source of high quality chicken that we can produce ourselves.

Until now, my focus was on eggs so it didn’t matter to me what breed we had because if they reliably laid eggs, that was what we wanted. With the possibility of eating our chickens comes new choices to make.

The chickens I’m going to look at are a large breed that would be ideal for meat birds. They have a calm and gentle personality and are decent but not amazing egg layers.

My hesitation is that to keep the chickens purebred, they need to be kept separate. When my son bought two pairs of purebred Plymouth Rocks three years ago, his intention was to create a purebred flock. Plymouth rocks are good layers and good meat birds, so they’re called dual purpose chickens. They also are fine in our hot climate and have pleasant dispositions, so we’ve never had to worry about aggressive roosters.

However, he never separated them from his mixed flock, since it would have meant either getting rid of all his mixed hens or building a new coop. That meant that we continue to have a mixed flock with a few purebreds mixed in. All of their eggs look similar, so I don’t have the option of only hatching the purebred eggs. The mixed chickens are smaller which is fine for laying hens but not so much for eating.

I could easily sell off all of our laying hens and start again with only the bigger purebreds, but am reluctant to do that because we’re finally getting a good amount of eggs a day and I expect it to increase in the next few weeks as the youngest hens mature and begin laying- right now we’re getting 10 eggs daily, which is a nice amount. It takes at least five months for a chick to grow into a layer, and Brahmas can take a year until they begin laying.

To keep them separate, which would be the obvious solution, I’d need to build another coop and I don’t know where or when we would build it, plus that’s more financial outlay on top of the cost of the new chickens.

However, we’re already doing the work of hatching our own eggs and then raising the chicks, so if we could get offspring that would be a good size.

Sometimes decisions like this take so much headspace, the thinking and rethinking and thinking again…and no motion happens in any directions.

I finally decided I’ll just go look at the chickens and seeing them will hopefully help me have clarity and I’ll put all of this mental circling around to rest.

Avivah

Please…I need your feedback!

Uncategorized

I started this blog in 2006 as an act of service for young mothers, as a way to share my experience in navigating the parenting path for those earlier on in their journeys.

As readers asked questions, I responded with posts addressing their points of interest. This led me to diverge from the exclusive focus on parenting that I began with, to share about health and nutrition, homeschooling, home management, frugality and more.

My life continues to evolve as time goes by. Whatever I do, I want to live consciously and with intention, to actively craft a life that is meaningful to me and that brings me contentment. That’s been my focus from the beginning and will continue to be my focus, regardless of the specifics that I share about at each given stage.

My family has expanded with the addition of foster children and that means that I continue to be actively involved as a parent to young children as well as teenagers. At the same time, I have six married children and am a grandmother to many grandchildren (the newest addition was born to my second son and his wife almost four weeks ago!). I’m now 51 and one area of reflection for me right now is about how to navigate the next stage of life gracefully.

I would like to share about whatever topics that are on my mind. However, this blog isn’t for me – it’s for you. My purpose is to share my experience, insights, tips, and struggles in an authentic way to help you. To do that, I want to know what kind of topics are of the most value and interest to you.

Your questions and comments to what I write are the most helpful way for me to know what you’re thinking. Otherwise, I’m guessing if you love it or hate it what I wrote…or are completely indifferent. Without your comments, I’m left not knowing if what I wrote was of benefit to you.

Sooooo…. I’d love to hear from you! What is it that keeps you coming back to regularly read what I share? What topics interest you, what do you love and what topics do you want to hear more about? Please share your thoughts and suggestions below!

Thanks in advance for helping me to share content that is aligned with your needs and interests!

Avivah