Camping Foods - make ahead meals to take with you on the road.

So, I started this post about 4 months ago...

Not my fault though, because I finished it and it was glorious and then the internet ate it and did not give it back. I will try again, because it was just that good and you deserve this in your life. Plus, I haven't done a food post in a while.

A few months back I polled fb for my friends favorite camping meals.
Okay back up a few steps, a several months more back we decided to buy a travel trailer. We shopped around and started looking at used pop-up campers >>> which turned into new pop-ups>>>which turned into used travel trailers 30 feet or less and used 5th wheels>>>which turned into new travel trailers>>>which turned into a 37 foot bunkhouse with three sinks, two refrigerators, and air conditioning. FOR TWO OF US! When we do things we go big and ridiculous. 

Say hello to Winona...she is glorious and ridiculous, but mostly glorious.

Okay, back to food. One meal I decided on was zucchini enchiladas. Yep. No/low carb enchiladas and I swear you won't even miss the tortilla.

Directions included. If you miss something scroll down.

Now that we live in the Chicagoland area and are close to the countries third largest city, we have access to amazing food both made for us and for us to make ourselves. A few miles from the house we have a tienda that has not only the most amazing tiny restaurant, but you can buy the product and bring it home and make it yourself. Since I am a veg, I will have to take Mark's word for it that the al pastor and the marinated skirt steak are out of this world.

For my enchiladas I cut up a few portobello mushrooms and seasoned those just like I did the meat.

If you have ever seen me cook I am not really a measurer. I make a semi effort, but I generally am a taster and adjuster because of being a taster.

Preheat oven to 350 (unless you are making these to freeze and cook later).

Start by dicing up your onion & garlic and sauteing those little tasty bastards until they get to know each other really well.

Now add in the cumin & chili powder...ummm smells divine! 

Look how happy they all get to be together!

Prep filling. In a separate pan cook filling (if needed - since I was doing one veg and two non they all got there own pans).

 

While all of the goods are cooking prep your zucchini. I sliced mine on a mandolin, but you could use a good veggie slicer too...just don't mandolin your hands!!!! 

Mix filling with spices, onions, & garlic.

 

Now you can add cilantro here if you want....uuuummmmm cilantro. Add in half of your red or green enchilada sauce to the filling and simmer while you lay out about three zucchini slices parallel to each other. Next fill with a spoonful of you filling and don't worry about them being perfect, they will soon be covered in more sauce and cheese and no one will ever know.

 

Roll up and place into a baking dish. Repeat until you run out of everything. I had a little left over filling so I just dumped it on the top and then covered it with the cheese and additional enchilada sauce. 

 

Put these beauties into the oven and let them cook for about 20-25 minutes until the cheese is all melted and bubbly and yummy.
Serve & garnish with sour cream & cilantro or whatever makes your heart sing at that moment. 

These are seriously amazing and you are going to love them whether you eat the right away or freeze and take for later.

SSSOOOOOOO GOOOOOODDDD now I want enchiladas....

Black soap for a better clean? You betcha!

Activated charcoal & bentonite clay soap - a natural way to get the grime out.

Charcoal has been used for centuries from the ancient Egyptians that used it as a wound poultice to water filtration by the Hindus. It seems contrary that using charcoal and clay can help get you clean, but both have amazing properties that you can take advantage of daily.

These amazing benefits are exactly why we use this combo in our clay ninja soap. All of our castile soaps have the exact same base...olive oil, coconut oil, canola oil, distilled water, lye, & stearic acid.  That's it. After that we may add in herbs or in this case clay & charcoal, essential oils, or fragrance oils. Done.

These soaps are amazing. They moisturize, they clean, they rinse clean with no residue, they make your skin happy, and don't do nasty things to the environment. 

Making soap is so cool...

If you have never tried a charcoal soap, maybe it is time that you did. You can find our clay ninja in our castile soap collection on our website here!

Why castile soap?

Going back to the beginnings again.

Lately I have been talking about the evolution of our company and how we came to be. Yep it all started with the laundry detergent, it then evolved into not wanting to pay high store prices for natural soaps. 

So soaping commenced (am I the only one that thinks the word commenced should mean end instead of begin? Like prohibit. Pro=for, so why does prohibit mean no?).

We started small since it was just for us. We used bread pans for molds or whatever we could find and we lost sooooooo much essential oil by burning it off because we had no idea oils have flash points and when you exceed these you basically cook off the oils. :( 

Years later we still follow the basic recipe we started with. Why? Because it is awesome and it does everything you want a soap to do - it lathers, smells good (or not if you like unscented), it rinses clean, it moisturizes, and it makes you happy (well, hopefully it makes you happy).

I ask you, what more could you want from your soap?

When soap is almost soap.

Ugly soap?
We refer to our soap as ugly soap. We make a hot process soap which is freaking amazing in so many ways, but it is less easy to make those gorgeous soaps you see in shops and markets (these are almost always cold process soap - we can discuss later). 
We are actually in the process of changing our soap molds to ones that will allow of to make bars faster and this will change the look slightly, but not too much. 

Soaps in our current 3.5oz molds.

I always equate our soap to a gorgeous plated fancy meal...the presentation is amazing, but you are still gonna chew it up. Our soap is the same...it may not be the most handsome man on the block, but it still does what soap is supposed to do.

One day when I am feeling ambitious I will post more about making the soap, but for today I will keep it short and sweet. If you want to know more about our soaps (or other products) send us a message. If you would like to shop our soap and other goodies you can click here to get to our website.

For now I will leave you with images of a few of our soaps...

1969 is sweet orange, clove, lavender, & patchouli.

Groves & cloves is sweet orange & clove.

Right on has oats, brown sugar and is scented with oak barrel cider & pumpkin. 

Orange crush is sweet orange & lemon and filled with crushed walnut shells for lots of exfoliation (lots of exfoliation - do NOT over exfoliate!!!).

Brief musings on laundry detergent & why commercial detergents suck.

Now we get to talk about laundry detergent.

Say what? What's wrong with my laundry detergent?

In short, everything is wrong with your commercial laundry detergent.
Going back to why we started our company it was laundry detergent. Skin is our largest organ. It absorbs stuff into your bloodstream and frequently people don't even consider that the detergent and/or fabric softener is full of all sorts of crap that your skin sucks in. The other factor we often don't even consider is what happens to the water that gets washed down the drain? That water is full of all the stuff in the detergent, the softener, and all of the stuff you are washing out of your clothes. Have you ever thought about what all of that does to the environment? 

We didn't either until...well, until we did. And then the questions began. Then research. Then the actual making.  That was at least six (6) years ago and we have never looked back.

So, have you ever looked at the ingredients on your laundry soap, wait you can't. They aren't printed on the packaging. You actually have to go search it out on the company website and look through the MSDS (material safety data sheets) sheets. 
What? STOP ALL THIS INSANITY! 
As I was doing some additional research for this post I pulled up ingredient lists to the most popular laundry detergent, as well as, several 'natural' brands and that one detergent all new parents use (SLS really). I thought about linking to them, but you know what I don't want to give them any extra traffic.

What the hell are those words. What do they do. Why do you need them? Ugh. I could go on. You know what? They are filled with so much junk. Junk you don't need. Junk fishies and froggies don't need either. 

Here are just a few of the ingredients listed and what they say they do:
      Ingredient:                                      What they say it does:

• ethanol                                         process aid
• alcohol sulfate                              surfractant
• linear alkylbenzene sulfonate       surfractant
• sodium laureth sulfate                  surfractant
• silicone                                         suds supressant
• polyethylene glycol 4000              process aid

And sooooo many more.
WHY???
Earlier I mentioned this is pretty much why we started this journey. While over the years we have dabbled with several versions of laundry detergent, but in the most simple, the most pure, our detergent has just three (3) ingredients:

1. sodium carbonate
2. sodium borate
3. castile soap (our unscented plain jane soap)

And guess what? It works! Join the revolution and free yourself from all that extra stuff you just don't need!!!

You can find it here.

We are always happy to customize size and do much larger orders. Our product is all natural and safe for HE washers and people and fur babies too...


If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to us.
 

What are you doing to your hair? Stop with the shampoo!

A facebook post got me thinking...

The post was about how frequently people wash their hair, something most people don't give much thought to right?

You should. You really should. 
This post will be about shampoo, but I will also talk about all the other crap in future posts.

Washing you hair is something we just do...right? But why? For millennium there was no shampoo and people seemed to do just fine. Yes I know there were funny wigs and powdered hair, but most people simply just didn't wash their hair with any regularity if ever. When did it change? Most likely around the turn of the century when basic hygiene was made a priority by people trying to sell you stuff lol. It wasn't until about the 1960s that what we know as shampoo came to market and really into the 70s before people really went bananas over the idea of washing their hair all the damn time.
 
Before we started using shampoos that strip all of the natural oils from our hair and scalp there was no need to wash frequently. Our bodies are amazing and they really do give us what we need and this includes our hair and scalp. Have you ever considered that your hair feels greasy because you strip away all of the good stuff our bodies make naturally and your sebaceous glands got into hyper drive to replace what is lost?

Your scalp being part of your skin (which is your largest organ) absorbs stuff into your body. Have you looked at what is in your shampoo? Can you pronounce all the ingredients? What do they do when you suck them into your body? Of course there are some really natural and pure shampoos out there, but most are pricey and not within the average persons budget. Have you ever thought that if you use a decent natural soap (Hey, I know where you can get some amazing soap...because we make amazing soap. You can shop bad hippies here and yes this is a shameless plug.)  you can use that too. Just lather that bar right onto your head. Most shampoo bars sold in specialty stores are basically just soap bars relabeled. 

1969 castile soap is made from olive oil, coconut oil, canola oil, stearic acid, distilled water, lye, & sweet orange, clove, lavender, & patchouli essential oils. This could easily be used as a shampoo bar!

These are just some things to think about. We need to keep asking questions. Researching. Ultimately we need to just be informed. Read labels and think about what those ingredients will do to you, your kids, your fur babies with continued use for days, months, years, even decades.

I promise if you met me in person you would never know it has been years since I 'washed' my hair...

What do you think??? I know ridiculous selfies...but taking pictures of brown hair is hard lol.

Want more info?
Check out this awesome blog from urbanMamas about this exact topic and how they broke free from shampoo as well.

From heathen to hippie...

One of the questions we get on a regular basis...bad hippies? There is no such thing.
While I agree I will explain.
For me I consider myself an 80/20 hippie. Okay, what the hell does that mean? 80% of the time I do my best to be the best steward to myself, those around me, & mother earth. I use our all natural bad hippies products, recycle, reuse (you should see the garage - I may need an intervention), I am a vegetarian and eat mostly vegan. I try to be aware of the products that I use and how they can be processed by my body, but also what happens when you use them or wash them down the drain.

This is basically how we birthed the idea for bad hippies, but more on that in another post.

When I was younger, being a child of the 80s and 90s, everything was excess. Big Macs can in Styrofoam, there was no such thing as bulk sizes, and you would run out of toilet paper in three uses. As I grew and got mildly wiser I started to question some of these practices. Can this planet sustain them...do turtles really enjoy eating plastic bags? The answer is nope, not even a little bit.

So the hippies came to be several years back in the living room on Candela Lane in Clay, NY.

I digress...so what is the 20%?
As many of you know I am the owner of two businesses, bad hippies being one and I am also an independent consultant for Rodan + Fields which is a premium skincare company. I love the product, the company, and all of the amazing people that are part of my team. It is working, but only kind of because when you have passion it isn't hard to sell what you love. So if you are interested in learning more about the product or business give me a shout (<<<<<shameless plug!). So I use quality and effective skincare that is part of my 20%. I also color my hair. And I have zero time to mess with henna. I also am currently using conventional toothpaste...shhhhh. 

The more I look around the more I realize how people choose not to see.
Whatever you choose to do in life or products you choose to use just be informed. Know what is in them, where them come from, how they were treated in life and in death.

These are my thoughts for the day. Short and sweet.
I hope you all have a beautiful day!

Getting crafty with indoor/outdoor carpeting

Many of you know we are creators and own a couple of businesses. With one we do markets and craft shows and since we are new we are always looking for ways to improve our booth and how we present ourselves to our current and potential customers.

Finding ways to differentiate your self from others with similar products can always be a challenge. We know our product is the best, but how do you get people to come in and discover it for themselves.

Normally I am always telling people to look up and see stuff in front and above us, but not today. Today I am encouraging you to look down.

The ground/floors at these shows can be pretty boring and even downright ugly, so what's a crafty person supposed to do? Well of course spray paint! It is my answer to so many questions...even the ones you don't ask.

So after my small display disaster (not really a disaster, more circus clown nightmare than hippie at the start) I used the paints for a spur of the moment craft that I must say turned out pretty cute!

Flashback...
When we first started camping we bought a cheap piece of green grass indoor out carpet and used it outside out tent or pop-up to help from tracking in ALL THE THINGS. Now we have Winona (our big beautiful brown camper) and we found a much nicer outdoor rug on clearance. The old green stuff was just getting lugged around and taking up space and not being used.

Fast Forward...
We have a few events that are hosted in parking lots and bare ground sooooo....let's use the old green stuff, but make it cuter. Old green fake grass carpet meet spray paint. It was love at first spray.

Now for a little create spray paint liberty and we now have a super cute display to catch those shady people that don't want to make eye contact (I blame mall kiosks).

She will probably need a touch up once in a while, but I am pleased how it turned out and I think it is super cute for the shows with bare floors...

Do you have tried and true unusual ways of sprucing up spaces? I would love to hear about them...

From hobby to reality - taking a small business live

bad hippies becomes a reality...
Many moons ago Mark and I talked about all the junk we consume both internally and externally. 
Yuck. 
Think about any average American on any given day and think about the amount of crap we consume every single day.
From fast or pre-made processed food to the shaving lotion, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, styling products, not to mention the crap we wash and dry our clothes in and then put them on our largest organs (our skin people...our skin). 
Oh and then we started to think about what happens when you wash all the stuff down the drain...where does it go? How do we get rid of it? Is it doing harm to our beautiful Mother Earth? 
So, we did some digging and it wasn't pretty. In fact it got downright ugly. We decided to make a change. 
A change for us in our tiny corner of the world. We made an intentional decision to reduce our carbon footprint. Did we go all militant about chemicals? Nope, but we did make some small and easy changes (that every single person can do without really noticing) to make our lives a little less harmful to the world at large.

So what does all of this mean?

Here is the story of our tiny company and how we can to be.

bad hippies...a brief history
As I explained above Mark and I wanted to get rid of some of the nasties in our lives like sulfites and sulfates and sulfra-all-the-things. So we looked up how to make laundry soap and we were taking our first steps into all things hippies.

Off to the store to buy Super Washing Soda and Borax and fels naptha soap. A few bloody knuckles from grating soap later we were in business.
But wait...what is in fels naptha?
Sodium tallowate.
What is sodium tallowate?
According to howstuffworks.com:
Sodium tallowate is a true soap made by combining the fatty tissue (or tallow) of animals, such as cattle and sheep, with lye, typically sodium hydroxide [source: Cavitch].
Yep, you read that right. 

 From the Merriam Webster Dictionary Website:

Definition of tallow

: the white nearly tasteless solid rendered fat of cattle and sheep used chiefly in soap, candles, and lubricants


Tallow is made from animal fat and as a veg head I was not so down with that.
So, what are our options? Enter castile soap for the win!

There are many amazing castile soaps out there and we were happy to use them...for a while. Then one day we thought - hmmmmm- how hard could it possibly be to make our own castile soap? 

That is our story and I am sticking to it!

Now we are soapers.
Fast forward a few years and now we have a mess of soap scents and when we make soap we save and use the bits left over to make our laundry detergent. It is the ultimate in recycling. It makes your clothes happy and it makes your skin happy too! Oh and no crap heading into the water system and it makes the world a little less full of the sulfra-all-the-things!

We are also dabbling into making laudry pod type thingies, but we aren't quite sure how to best package these bad boys in an efficient and eco-friendly and cost effective way, but super cute way.

Are you curious about our products?
Visit our website: www.badhippies.com

Share with us how you are helping make the world suck a little less...

This hippies first tie-dye experience

What kind of horrible hippie am I?
I have never tie dyed anything...not even the obligatory summer camp tie dye. I have no idea how I managed that, but here I am 42 and a tie dye virgin.

As many of you know I run two small businesses and one is call bad hippies <<< (click there to check it out & of course buy stuff) - well I have earned that title with my lack of the quintessential hippie tie dye experience.

NO MORE I SAY!

As a beginner I did what we all do and googled tie dye kits. I grabbed two varieties made by Tulip you can get these all over the place including here. And since I am all about instant gratification I grabbed one for a local store and grabbed a pack of v-neck 100% all cotton undershirts. You will need to make sure you are using an all natural fiber shirt and not a blend, because the dyes won't adhere. And ain't no one got time for a tie dye fail. I also grabbed a twin set of all cotton white sheets to dye for a table covering and possibly at some point to hang in our craft booth like tapestries. Oh and one 18 month all cotton t-shirt for grandthing #2s first birthday.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of how to tie dye, for that you just head to YouTube and catch up on a few videos and you are good to go.

Start by pre-washing whatever you are dying. New clothing can contain sizing and such that will screw with your tie dying. Do NOT use any type of fabric softener and use the most natural laundry soap you have. I dyed right out of the washer using the wet method...
Some sites recommend soaking the items in soda ash prior to dying to help the colors adhere and such. One of my kits came with soda ash so I used it on my second go around.

HINT: Soda ash is sodium carbonate...which you can find in lots of grocery and super stores in the laundry aisle labeled as Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda or you can get it on Amazon click here to see what it looks like.

Yes, wear gloves or make sure you have on hell of a good exfoliator for after...(this is coming from a woman who dyes their roots about every two weeks and never ever ever ever wears gloves for that - this is way different!).

NEXT:
The dye is super easy to mix, you just add water and shake it like a shake weight. The directions that came with the kit were pretty easy to follow and the patterns were surprisingly easy to achieve.

Break out the rubber bands!
Now to twist and swirl and band up your items and get crazy with the dye. As I have mentioned in previous blogs sometimes I am really horrible at documenting these journeys, but you will get the idea. If you are seeking to create something specific I am quite sure YouTube and Google have you covered.

I went with a few of the basics and classics.

I moved outside with the banded goods and sat on an old drop cloth in the back yard and went to town! There are zero right ways and wrong ways to tie dye there are no bad color combinations so just jump and make it happen.

It did get messy and I am sure I could be more careful in how I apply the dye and how close to the bands you get...but I was a fan of some of the blending of colors and yes yellow and blue do make green!

HINT: Another lesson learned was...if you scoot around on the drop cloth, you will dye whatever touches it, including yourself. The next day at an event I realized I had tie dyed my legs as well.

Now comes the hard part. You put your dyed items into a plastic bag(s) and then your hardest to forget about them for as long as possible. From what I have read the minimum they should sit is two (2) hours, but the longer you leave them the more vivid the colors and penetration.

After the looooonnnggg wait you unbag those bad boys and remove the rubber bands. I took them off, but some cut them - just be sure not to cut your fabric.

Now the rinse. Fill a big bucket with water and start the dunking. You will need to change water several times and you want to get to where the water runs clear. This can take a while and you need to get your hands in there to un-bunch the fabric.

HINT: WEAR GLOVES WHEN  YOU ARE UN-BANDING THOSE SUCKERS. GLOVE FAIL!

After that you are going to wash the dyed items. Use the warmest water you can get away with and you may need to run it through more than once...

Now let those suckers dry and bam you have created something amazing. See you can do creative!

One of the t-shirt creations.

The twin flat fitted sheet. I love this!!!

And here is the baby tie dye!!!
It turned out super cute!

Go now...you know you want more tie dye in your life...

What should I tie dye next?

Another scape adventure - scape pesto!

The summer we have been blessed with about a million scapes.
Okay maybe not a million, but way more than I can use to make hummus, no matter how much you love hummus when you are only using two per batch...so what to do with the other 900,000 scapes?

I wasn't in the mood to can so I didn't want to pickle them so pesto it is...

Pesto is actually pretty easy to do and there are about as may versions of how as there are stars in the sky (again probably a bit of a stretch). I based mine based on a few different recipes, and as per usual I don't really put too much effort into measuring.

Just in case you forgot what a scape look like still attached to the garlic plant.

Cut these bad boys off before they flower...then make stuff with them!

They can be pickled, sauteed, used like garlic in various cooked dishes, grilled, added to hummus like my previous post...you get the picture and I am starting to sound like Bubba Gump with scapes in place of shrimp.

This is what I used...
Chop up the scapes so they fit into your food processor (you could probably use a good blender as well and it might even come out smoother - but I went chunky in the cuisine art).

I added:
About 1/3 C of raw sunflower seeds.
Probably 15 scapes (some were pretty small).

About a cup of fresh basil.

Enough olive oil to blend.

About 1/2 C Parmesan and Romano cheeses.

Toss that stuff in the food processor and turn that bad boy on. Let it run for a few minutes and add additional olive oil if it is too paste like.

Occasionally open the top and scrape down the sides to get everything all blended and happy.

That's it. Done.

It does come out thick and I have been diluting it down with more olive oil to make it more manageable to use.
I will not be able to use it all before it gets weird so I plan on freezing it in ice cube trays for usable sizes for future yumminess.

So far I have tossed brussel sprouts in the pest and made a bizarre, but delicious mixture of cauliflower rice, sliced tomatoes, diluted pesto, and fresh sliced mozzarella cheese all melted up. It has also been added to spaghetti squash both with and without marinara.

How do you like to use either basil pesto or garlic scape pesto? I could use some new ideas!