just call me becky home-ecky

One of the major inconveniences blessings of living out in the woop woop is that I can't a)run to the store to grab that ever so illusive missing ingredient; or b)run through the local Wendy's on a busy night.

<Insert sobbing here>

Both situations have proven to be dearly missed.

Like the other day when I had to make those awesome pumpkin muffins. You know those incredibly easy ones that call for only 1 box of spice cake mix and 1 can of pumpkin?

Well it was vitally, yes vitally, important that I make them that second. If I didn't, I'm pretty sure my head would explode and my feet would fall off. And who wants to clean up that kind of mess? (ewwww....gross)

And so I threw open my cupboards only to find I was missing the cake mix.

In other words, like 50% of the ingredients. So, like any good girl should I consulted the Internet.

Mr. Internet brought me some pretty great news. Fantastic news. Did you know you can make your own cake mix, just like the box from scratch?

Seriously! Just mix it together, throw it in your freezer, and whip it out whenever you need it! Wha-la!

I found the recipe from one of my very favorite cooking sites - melskitchencafe.com. This is the link to her yellow cake mix recipe. I added generous measurements of the following to make it into a spice cake mix: 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon cloves.

All the rich, moist consistency of a regular box mix without all of the crazy preservatives they put into that stuff.  Can I get a Holla?

And then I figured, if you can make boxed cake mix from scratch, wouldn't you be able to make a lot of other ingredients from scratch? After all, I hear there were people who lived on the earth before the 1950's and they had to eat something didn't they? And I'm guessing they didn't have a lot of the prepackaged, chemically preserved funky stuff that we do.

And so my quest has begun.

So far, I've found and used the following from-scratch recipes for ingredients I didn't have on hand. Each and every one has tasted about 1.75 million times better than its' store bought counterpart.

Homemade Buttermilk
Homemade Taco Seasoning
Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk
Homemade Yellow Cake Mix
Homemade Hot Cocoa

As inconvenient as it is to not have a store close by, I think it will force me to sharpen my cooking skills, knock out preservatives from our diet, and add that extra "something" to our meals.

That's right.

Just call me Becky Home-Ecky.

And then run to that ritzy place called the grocery store and watch me cry.