French Onion Soup

What a great soup for the first day of Autumn, french onion soup with a french baquette. I just love making this soup with vidalia onions because they are not to harsh, more on the sweet side of the onion family.
So here`s the recipe I use;

Ingredients

1/2 lb firm vidalia onions, -- sliced
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons corn or olive oil
3 tablespoons flour
1 quart chicken broth
1 quart beef broth
8 slices French baquette bread
1/2 cup swiss cheese, -- shredded
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, -- grated

Directions

1
Saute onions in butter and oil until onions are transparent, but not well browned.
2
When tender, turn heat to lowest point and sprinkle with flour, stirring vigorously.
3
Pour into Dutch oven and stir in broths.
4
Heat thoroughly and divide among 8 oven-proof bowls.
5
Mix equal parts of cheese to smooth paste and spread over bread.
6
Float a slice ofbread atop each serving.
7
Place all bowls on oven rack 4" from broiler heat and broil until cheese melts.
8
Serve at once.
9
Leftover soup freezes well up to 6 months.


You have really got to try this, its really delicious!!!

Now onto the other end of the spectrum, in the Fall we start closing up windows and odors stay inside with us. So here is an all natural recipe for an air freshener for your home, minus all the chemicals...

I love the concept of Febreze and other products that are intended to remove odors and freshen things up. Goodness knows that our home has lots of places that can use just such a spray-- the kitchen garbage can, the diaper pail, the downstairs bathroom, the minivan.

When I began to switch over my household cleaning supplies to gentler versions that cleaned minus the toxic chemicals, I thought that my air-freshener days were over. Though it smells great, when you start researching the ingredients in products like Febreze (Benzisothiazolinone, Sodium Polyacrylate, Cyclodextrin, and synthetic fragrance, for example), you quickly discover that it's not the sort of thing that you want floating through your home.

Sometime last year, I discovered this simple recipe for making my own freshening sprays. This is incredibly inexpensive, it smells pretty, it works on odors and it takes so little time to make.

You can double this depending on the size of your bottle.

12-15 drops of pure essential oil (I like grapefruit, orange, lemon, and lavender, but go with any scent that you enjoy)

1/2 cup white vinegar

1 1/2 cups water

You can also make an even stronger version of this spray by using a higher ratio of vinegar to water and upping the essential oils (more like 20 drops) to use in a small diffuser bottle. This works better for just a quick spray into the air to freshen up a bathroom before guests, as opposed to the less concentrated spray that you would spray directly onto/into items.

Thats all for today!

Have fun freshenening your inside air, you can pick up any of these scents of essential oil at your local health food store.

As Always!

Keep It Clean!

JoAnn

AuNaturelle