Can you clean a filthy oven using baking soda and vinegar? An investigative report.

03/11/2015 Nichole 7 Comments

I have never, in all my decades of using ovens, done a deep-clean on one of them. I did the line-it-with-foil trick in all of the properties we’ve rented (which Real Simple and other sources say is a bad idea), but I never did it once we actually bought a house.

We use our oven a lot, and it was a filthy doom pit in there. Really. Here’s an unaltered picture to prove it:

See? Hideous.

After more than three years of pizza, pie and casseroles, I decided I should probably go ahead and clean the oven. I’d heard that the self-cleaning cycle could damage the oven, and I didn’t want to use any harsh chemicals. After a little research, I decided I’d give TheKitchn.com’s baking soda and vinegar method a try.

First I made a too-thin paste using baking soda, water and a little bit of salt, because I have a bad habit of not actually measuring things. I added some more baking soda to fix it, then I started glopping it onto the floor and walls of the oven. TheKitchn suggests using rubber gloves for this. TheKitchn is smart, but I didn’t have any rubber gloves so I just used my dainty little paws. The bad news: I may or may not have fingerprints now. The silver lining: My hands are pretty well exfoliated.

Twelve hours, two loads of laundry, and trips to the grocery store, Target and the library later, I sprayed some plain white vinegar over the baking soda and went to work with my brand-new scrub brush. The result? A good bit of the baked-on badness came off, but there was still a lot left to go.

It would seem that there was a large spill in there at some point, and it wasn’t giving up so easily. So I mixed up some more baking powder paste and applied it, and the next morning the scrub brush and I went once more into the breach.

The floor of the oven looks considerably better now. You can clearly see that I didn’t get any of the grease spatter off of the walls, though. I had a very hard and awkward time reaching the back one, and the baking soda & vinegar combo didn’t work very well on the sides.

So I wasn’t able to get the oven entirely clean with baking soda and vinegar, but it’s much much better than it was this time last week. I’m going to go ahead and use some oven cleaner to finish it off, but I suspect that the baking powder and vinegar combo would be sufficient on an oven that wasn’t as far beyond as mine. I’ll try it again the next time the oven needs a cleaning; hopefully that won’t be three years from now.

menu plan Monday

The sort of menu plan I make when I’m congested

03/09/2015 Nichole 1 Comment

Poppy and I caught Pete’s cold, and today is the first day of co-op. This is not the best timing.

In happier news, we had a great meal for Sunday night dinner yesterday. I made Ina Garten’s lemon chicken, roasted some Brussels sprouts and tossed some spaghetti squash with butter, sautéed garlic and salt and pepper. I’d intended to sprinkle it with Parmesan cheese, too, but I grabbed the Italian blend instead. I put it on the squash before I noticed that I’d grabbed the wrong cheese, but it turned out just fine anyway. The full meal was a little work-intensive, but it made for a very pretty plate and I’m told the flavors were excellent.

Monday: Tortellini

This is one of Poppy’s favorite meals, and it’s super-simple. I’m going to walk her through making it tonight so she can add it to her repertoire.

Tuesday: Take out

It’s Kids Eat Free night!

Wednesday: Breakfast for dinner

Because it’s probably been two weeks since last I made an omelet. I have to keep my omelet skills on point.

Thursday: Tacos

When I do taco night, it’s a pretty basic affair. When Rockford does taco night, it’s an all-out toppings and accoutrement assault. I like Rockford’s version better.

Friday: Pizza

My favorite pizza place closed for good a few weeks ago, so I’m currently yearning for a Big Green Egg so I can try to replicate their pizzas at home. For this week, though, we’ll probably order a pizza or two.

Want more Menu Plan action? Check out OrgJunkie.com!

Homeschool

This week in homeschooling: Schooling while sickly

03/06/2015 Nichole

Pete has been sick for most of this week, so our schedule has been really wacky. So instead of telling you what we did from day to day — a lot of napping with a little schoolwork thrown in here and there — let’s talk in more general terms.

Memorization

Naturally, we started our most recent memorization effort by watching the 1946 Disney version of “Casey at the Bat”. “Casey” is a very long poem, and we’re taking it a stanza at a time. They’re working on the sixth stanza this week.

Read-aloud

We started reading “Fortunately the Milk” by Neil Gaiman, which promises to be a ridiculous, hilarious read-aloud.

Grammar

We’re about halfway through the first level of Michael Clay Thompson’s grammar program. It’s quite different from other grammar programs that we’ve used, but the information seems to be sticking.

Math

Poppy leveled up on her math curriculum a few weeks ago. A lot of what she’s doing right now is review, so math has been pretty stress-free for her lately. Pete is chugging along on his curriculum. It’s been a lot of patterns lately, and they’re starting to introduce the concept of fractions.

History

This week’s “Story of the World” chapter was about the lead-up to the American revolution, which is also what the kids have been talking about in their US history class. So it was pretty much just review.

Piano

Poppy has a piano recital coming up, so she’s been focusing on the two pieces she’ll be playing for that. One is from her piano book, and the other is “Let It Go.” She also decided she wanted to teach herself to play “Clocks,” so we’re been hearing that a lot lately.

Free reading

Poppy reads so much for fun that I took it off of her daily to-do list. Pete isn’t as enthusiastic about reading just yet, though, so he still has the daily reminder on his task list. He’s been reading a lot of “Garfield” comics and “Into the Air: The Story of the Wright Brothers First Flight.”

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!