Marmee's Pantry ~ For Such a Time as This: Butter vs Margarine

Marmee's Pantry ~ For Such a Time as This: Butter vs Margarine

This is a good link to why I am choosing real butter over margarine now. I have a few boxes of margarine squares that I use for baking (and feel pretty guilty about), but after they're gone, it's just butter and good oils and pure fats for us from then on in :)

Episode 2 Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

I think I posted about the first episode on my other blog but since it's food related, I'll write about it here.

All I can say is wow. I was totally flabbergasted at the kids in this episode. They did not know what a single vegetable was in it's natural form. I mean really, they didn't know what a tomato or a potato was? My jaw literally dropped. I think I had tears of gratitude that my kids know what everything is. I love taking them around the produce isles and if they don't know what something is, we find out. We often buy new things to try, although they usually pass in the end. I'm glad my kids know what to do with vegetables, they know how to peel, cut, even how to grow them. They just don't like to eat all of them, lol!

I was also shocked after the chicken nugget demonstration, how disgusted they were with the ground up chicken carcass, bones and all. They wanted to eat it simply because they were hungry, yet turned their nose up at real chicken. So basically because it resembled what they knew, they ate it even if it disgusted them. Now I'm not opposed to not wasting. Chicken carcass is great for making stock.

I was also surprised at the visual of the fat and food. Again, I'm not opposed to fat but when it is overly processed junk that has no nutritive value, it isn't good for little bodies, day in and day out.

It was shocking when they went to the doctor. I think of that poor boy and how drastically life altering it would be if he was diabetic, how hard for the family. I know I am worried about it and honestly surprised I am not diabetic. Their whole family just seemed so sad and unhealthy and I hope that was the wake up call they needed.

Food is one of those hard things. We need it to live but it can kill us if we do not eat the right things. There are so many good food options in this world that we have options. It makes me want to eat healthier :)

2010: Ushering in the Decade of Food and Agriculture

Steve Ettlinger: 2010: Ushering in the Decade of Food and Agriculture

I posted this to Facebook but I'm not sure if it went through properly. All I can say is Hear Hear. Get the junk off the shelves and help us eat real food!

Gluten-Free Crusty Boule

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day � Gluten-Free Crusty Boule

I have been perusing this site because I want more information on the 5 minute a day bread (which I will make as soon as I arrange my fridge a little better). I was pleasantly surprised to see there was gluten free bread! I don't know if I can get the ingredients here but maybe someday. Sometimes it is nice just having the option.

As a side note, I don't think I am going to be buying and grinding our wheat. I have my limits. It is too hard, time consuming and I don't get favourable results.

Another side note, from the above site, I finally found out how to make proper hamburger buns. Bake them in english muffin tins! How easy is that? I had one but it got warped so I went and bought all they had at Bulk Barn (note, they are sold as large 4" circle cutters but they are exactly the same as the ones online and much cheaper). I didn't realize you actually baked it with the dough in the round. So that will make making buns easier, especially if I keep dough in the fridge. Now, if I could only figure out hot dog buns....

Do Nut? No, Donut! Or is it Doughnut?

We love doughnuts. It is something I don't miss often but when I do, it can be hard to resist. I made some sprouted wheat doughnuts last week and they were really good. However sometimes you just want a doughnut quicker. Here is a simple solution!

Bread Machine Doughnuts

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/4 cup sugar or honey
• Pinch of teaspoon salt
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• (after though that I should of added a couple pinches of nutmeg)

Directions

Measure into your bread machine pan and put on dough setting. Let it run through the whole setting (it is 1.5 hours on my machine. You can take it out after it has totally mixed and either rise, cut out doughnuts to rise or simply cook at this point).

Start heating up your deep fryer or a pan of fat (be extremely careful if doing on the stove and have a box of baking soda close by just in case! Better safe than sorry!). You can even bake them if you wish, but I am not sure how long it would take.

If the dough has run the cycle in the bread machine, roll and cut out in doughnut shapes. I used a round cookie cutter and an apple corer, which made perfect doughnuts. Deep fry two or three at a time. I was cutting them out as they were frying so I wasn't just standing there doing nothing while they were cooking.

After they are done, either leave as is, roll in sugar or cinnamon sugar, frost or glaze. We used sugar on half and cinnamon sugar on the other half. In the future when we have maple syrup and more than a tiny bit of honey, I will use those as glaze. Ethan can't wait for me to make maple doughnuts!

They came out of the deep fryer all puffed up, soft and golden delicious. Lovely little air pillows they were. I got about 3 dozen out of this batch. Although I paid the piper, I had ate some and they were good. The only thing I would change would be to add some nutmeg since I grew up eating doughnuts with nutmeg in them (but forgot when I was making them). Ethan ate at least a solid dozen on his own, lol! He told me they were way better than Tim Hortons, which is high praise indeed. Everyone else, including some neighbors, got to indulge too.

This morning, this was all there was left:

One lonely doughnut. Not as puffed up and soft anymore but I'm sure it is still delicious. I will not eat it though because today I am getting back on track with strictly gluten free and lower carb.

Giving Up On Wheat

I mean that in a number of ways but mainly in that I am giving up my make everything from home ground wheat. I love the notion of grinding all our wheat but I can see it's not feasible for me. If I want to make everything from scratch, I am not going to drive myself crazy doing it the most natural way possible. I woke up this morning and realized that it doesn't mean I love my family any less. If I weren't making everything myself even with store flour, they would be eating store bought, which isn't as healthy. Sure, I know flour doesn't have as many nutrients as it does when it is freshly ground and it is isn't as flavorful. It is one of those "Choose your battles" and I can't see myself grinding 200lbs of flour and having every loaf a chance. After 3 or 4 bad loaves of bread and one successful one with home ground, I'm going to go with what is almost always successful.

On a related note, we are possibly going for a weekend away next weekend (not the one coming up but April 9-11). I have been scouring places to find out what is in season in the valley. I found a place that has honey for $1.75 a pound! I'm getting a bucket, lol! I am also trying to find places that sell maple syrup. Last fall we got it at Forsythe's and it was about $12 a liter, cheap when you consider that at Sobeys it is $22 a liter. Real Maple Syrup goes a really long way too. I think we were using that liter from September to December and using it regularly. I want to get about a gallon, at least.

I checked and saw that many of the farm markets were either open or will be open. I know there isn't a ton that is in season now but I'll take what we can get :)

I am also going to be doing a meal plan Monday but I need to get my thoughts together on that first. We have used up more storage and there is some we have to toss so my freezer list has changed.

Bread FAIL!

So I wanted to get back into the swing of regular bread making again. I made a few good loaves with home ground flour with the addition of some regular flour in the bread machine. I had a bad one but the next day I realized it was because I did not have warm water to activate the yeast since I had it soaking overnight. I knew for next time.

Today I wanted to make some bread. I put it on the sandwich setting, which is a 3 hour setting. It rose beautifully. I had to leave and when I got home, it looked bad. It is the loaf on the far left. After cutting into it, it totally sunk. I used half regular flour and half sprouted wheat flour. I tried to figure out what was wrong. Apparently it rose too much and didn't have enough flour to create a solid loaf, so it sunk when it started baking. Boo hiss. Tastes good though, although it didn't fully cook in the middle (which I didn't realize until later). Sprouted wheat flour acts as an enhancer for dough which makes the bread rise more so I probably added too much yeast causing the collapse.

So after the bread machine cooled down, I thought I would try another loaf, my regular way with only half a cup of the sprouted wheat flour. I did the quick setting, which is one hour, start to finish. That is the bottom right loaf. I don't think it cooked all the way through. It is pretty short and solid and not done on the top. After taking it out, it sunk a lot in the middle. It hasn't been cut into but I suspect it isn't baked through. Sigh.

My banana bread came out great! I made it in the crockpot in a silicone loaf pan. I should of packed some foil around it to keep the loaf shape as it spread out in the middle. Still, otherwise really good!

So what I may have to start doing is baking it in the oven. If I have to do that, I will bake more than one loaf at a time and also do buns and rolls. If my bread maker isn't cooking all the way through, it's pointless to keep using it. It is still good for mixing and kneading the bread. It is hard for me to do it manually so it will still serve a good purpose. I need to start having a baking day each week.

Kefir

I love this stuff. It is so expensive in the stores though. I cannot get the bubbly yeasty taste of the store bought stuff at home. I have been trying to hunt down some grains with no luck. I think I have found a good solution.

Kefir is a wondrous drink. It is filled with tons of pro and prebiotics, way more than yogurt. It is very healing and good for your body. It is made in the same manner as yogurt; you heat the milk, cool, add the starter and let it culture about 24 hours. Since I don't have the grains, it finally occurred to me I could just make kefir the same way I make yogurt.

I bought some Yogourmet kefir starter, but at $4.50-ish for a box of 6 starters, not so cheap since you need a liter of milk for each batch. I always have trouble with the starter. Twice it did not come out at all, even though I used a candy thermometer to make sure the milk was at the precisely correct temperature for each stage. The most recent batch I tried came out...ok. It was almost cottage cheese-y in texture. When I was getting low, I decided to use it to culture a fresh batch instead of using starter again.

I brought a liter of milk to almost the boiling point and let it cool until it was warm. I added a quarter cup of kefir and mixed well. I poured it into a mason jar, covered and by morning, I had a beautifully cultured bottle of kefir. It was almost solid after 12 hours where usually 24 hours barely gets it going. It worked really well! I wish I would of tried that before messing with starters. I may of gotten better kefir with the store bought kind. I'm hoping I can keep making it like this as it will save money and I get a better product.

(note, the picture above is not mine. I just wanted a picture to display what it looks like)

Easy Garlic Cheese Sauce

Last night we had broccoli for supper and Mark always likes cheese on it. Shaylee said she would eat some if it had cheese on it. Ethan wouldn't touch it knowingly with a 10 foot pole. I wanted to get a little creative with the cheese instead of him just slapping a cheese slice on it (I keep them on hand for grilled cheese sandwiches).

In a small pot, place one cup of grated cheese and add a cup of milk. Add as much grated garlic as you care to have; for us, the more the merrier! I used 4 cloves. Stir over medium heat until the cheese is melted and it is starting to boil. Take it off the stove and add enough heavy cream until it is the consistency you desire (I added about a quarter of a cup). Serve over your veggies or anything you would like with a garlic cheese sauce.

I thought it was really yummy and told Ethan that it reminded me of garlic toast. Of course he then wanted garlic toast, so I put some of the garlic cheese sauce on bread and toasted it. He ate two pieces and wanted more!

After it cooled, it was the consistency of Cheez Whiz. If wanted, you could leave out the garlic and use it in place of that. A good way to avoid the fakiness of the processed stuff.

So a simple cheese sauce that makes a great topping for garlic cheese toast and possibly has lots of other uses. Very easy!

Simple Soup

I think we sometimes complicate food. Food doesn't always have to be complicated. It does not always have to be a big ordeal to prepare.

I have two simple recipes I made the other day that were big hits.

My first soup actually started as leftovers. For supper the night before, I took an onion, green pepper and a red pepper, julienned (a fancy word for cutting into long, thin strips) and sautéed it in extra virgin olive oil. When still crisp, I added a can of tomatoes. I heated through and it served as a side dish. The next day, I pureed it in the blender, added some cumin and served it as a cold soup. It was delicious, but would of also been good heated.

For the second recipe, well, it is too easy for words. I am trying to get the kids to eat more veggies. My son does not like about 95% of vegetables. He turned his nose up at my vegetable concoction, wouldn't even try a piece of plain tomato. So for their soup, I pureed a can of tomatoes and, since I am in the process of weaning them, added a can of Campbells tomato soup. I didn't add any water or anything. I heated it and they thought it was the best tomato soup they ever had. I was worried the seeds would turn them off but I don't even think they noticed. Eventually, it will be pureed tomato and cream. Still simple.

I don't like using canned vegetables and in the near future, I hope to use all home canned but that is hard to do in the winter. Somehow we got stuck with a lot of cans of tomatoes and I have to figure out how to use them up. I have a pile to donate to the food bank but we still have tons. I need to find some recipes that call for lots of canned tomatoes!

Finding My Way

It has been quite a while since I have posted. I have come a long way and want to go a long way yet! I have had Traditional Foods on my mind lately. Local eating is a big concern. Organic...well, we can't afford it but when we can, we try. Food storage and emergency preparedness is still on my mind.

We have had a big problem I am having to deal with. Our food storage. There is a lot of food we will never eat. Remember to store what you eat because you will be eating what you store!! Now grated, I did not know I would be gluten free. I didn't know when I stored BPA would be a big concern. I didn't know a lot of what I canned we would never eat. I didn't know that I would buy too many beans and my intentions of using them would go awry.

I have been going through our stores and picking out what we won't use that is still good to donate to the food bank. This still leaves us with a lot.

Today, I went through our basement freezers and condensed all the food into one. I have a lot to toss that is no longer any good. I also kept track of everything so that I can meal plan. I want to eat the freezer down so we can invest in the side of beef and side of pork again this fall. I don't want to keep relying on the grocery store for our food and want to get it from the farmer where ever possible!

So, here are the contents of our freezer. I didn't write every little thing down (like the popsicles, juice and seed/nut meals).

Fruit

1 large bag of woods strawberries

2 bags raspberries

1 bag jumbleberry mix

2 jars strawberry freezer jam

Vegetables

3 1kg bags of broccoli

4 1kg cauliflower

1 1kg peas

1 1kg peas and carrots

4 bags of veggie blends (500-600g)

2kg bag california mied veggies (I don't know if these are still good)

300g package of spinach (may not be good for use)

Cheese and Dairy

4 110g packages swiss cheese

2 pkg provelone

3 blocks cream cheese

6 180g pkgs organic feta

1 jar 100% fresh parmesean

2 large packages of mozza cheese strings (I use these to make low carb garlic "bread")

2 200g packages of organic sharp cheddar

1 cup grated mozza

3 500g blocks mozza

5 1lbs blocks of butter

Pork

3 shoulders, approx. 1.5kg each

2 small packs of pork chops (0.5 lbs each)

5 large packs of pork loin chops

11 packs of loin roast (these are all about a pound each)

4 smoked shoulders

1 rack of ribs (2kg)

1 pack larsens sausages

13 packs of bacon

Beef

Hamburger, 2lbs natural, 0.5lbs pack, 2kg pack and 1.40kg pack from store

2 packs of liver (about a pound each)

1.125 pot roast

1 small steak

Chicken

1 large pack of breasts (1.25kg)

2 small packs of breasts (0.65kg each)

3 bags of 4 quarters

4 small whole chickens

Turkey

4 whole turkeys

1 pack of 2 small turkey drumsticks

1 small pack of turkey tenderloin slices (1lbs)

Other

Hot Dogs 5.5 packs of 12

1 1lbs package of moose meat

1 3.5 oz pouch of scallops

1 small whole wild salmon (2 or 3 lbs)

1lbs pack of wild salmon

2 frozen pizzas

1 small garlic fingers

4 tubs of 150g slivered almonds

1 pouch minced onion

Whew. That doesn't include what is in the fridge freezer. I know there is some in there I need to toss.

Here are some things that I have learned today:

Today I have learned today is not to prepare food for the freezer unless it is part of a meal plan. I am going to have to toss a lot of soup and other things I made that didn't freeze well.

Another thing is that some foods do not freeze well. For instance, I bought and froze a lot of cottage cheese over a year ago. It doesn't freeze well (unless you use it in a recipe, but I know I won't. Good thing it was really cheap).

Only buy items out of the ordinary to freeze if we plan to use it soon. Sometimes Mark or I will buy something different and it never gets used. We will save a lot of money by doing this.

Use older things first. I have a lot of food that is a lot older than recent items that we have eaten. Rotating is especially important for freezer food.

Only buy frozen veggies as I need them. These get freezer burnt pretty fast. I have a lot of cauliflower as I planned to make a lot of cauliflower crust pizza. I probably still will. It is yummy :)

I couldn't help thinking of my Great Grammy D who used to joke about having food that was old enough to vote, lol! I hope I never get anything that old in my freezer. She would of happily used up any old thing as she let nothing to waste.

So I need to come up with a meal plan to make sure we use our food before we start bringing more in.

I also want to be more accountable for what we buy and use as food. I need to keep better track of how much money we spend. I have been doing a lot better. We cannot afford to waste food.

I have so much to write about so I won't write it all today. This will be fun again!

Freezer Afternoon

Whew, the kids and I spent most of the afternoon defrosting the old freezer. We had everything out and I took a pic, but the camera is still in the basement. I put everything back in neatly and there is a ton of extra space in there now! I could probably fit half a cow in there (if only they were free, lol!). So now I can open the freezer, grab what I want and be on my way. I also tossed some stuff. You know it has to be bad if I toss it.

I can't decide if we're having ham or turkey for Thanksgiving (we have two turkeys in the freezer). If we get our smoked ham in time, maybe that :). I have to find out what MIL is making and plan accordingly. I also found a nice beef roast that needs to be used up.

Big Post Today!

Well, it has been a busy week here. We made candy apples the other day. I'm soon going to make caramel apples if the family doesn't eat all the caramels first. Here's Ethan enjoying a big ol' candy apple:



This is a bag of bananas that I got for free. Yeah, free! There were about 40 big bananas and most of them weren't even that smooshy. I bagged them up to put in the freezer for banana bread and smoothies:



I've been busy with our new breadmaker. I made a deicious brown bread today. Here is the recipe:

New Brunswick style brown bread
(make a 2lb loaf in your bread maker)

* 1 1/4 cup warm water
* 1/4 cup molasses
* 1/4 cup brown sugar
* 2 1/2 Tbsp butter
* 1 1/2 tsp. salt
* 3 1/4 cups flour
* 1/3 cup rolled oats
* 2 1/2 tsp. yeast

I also made pizza dough in it that was very yummy but I don't feel like getting the recipe right now :)

Now, here is what I have been putting off posting, a nearly full view of our food storage. I did not include the freezers and there are some things which aren't put away, but it represents a good chunk of what we have. I didn't include another pic of our TP ;).

I call this our "snack trolly", although I am trying to move away from our unhealthy snacks. It was a Bits n' Bites display and it is good for things which are not stacked:



Here is our cereal rack. It has most of our dry cereal on it and our 55lbs bag of baking soda on a plank underneath:



Here is my "canning cupboard". It has most of what I have canned this year, although most of it is in boxes. I have not put my chow chow on it yet, which I made today. I also have some mixes and dry goods in jars here. I have an 11.6L bucket of brown sugar, a container of wheat berries, more cereal, 4L jug of ACV and some other things on top:



This is a wide view of a couple of shelves. One has most of our condiments on it. We also have corn meal, barley, cocoa and oats on top. Under we have a layer of squash and pumpkins, a shelf with a box of apples and a case of sugar and a cabbage and a case of sugar on the bottom. We then have cleaning and household supplies on the next shelf over:



This is our canned goods coke rack. We have lots of canned milks, veggies, fruits, soups, pasta, beans and more. I haven't been buying much in the way of canned goods lately:



Our little stash of individual bottled water and molasses. We keep bigger jugs of water elsewhere and try to limit the small bottles but like to have them on hand for traveling:



Cases of pureed food (sounds better than baby food, lol!), which I use in baking and may use in smoothies. Lots of boxes of beans. Each one has from 20 to 50lbs of beans in them. I have lots of navy beans, lentils, chick peas, kidney beans, barley, soup mix and more. I have more in the kitchen which I have close at hand for sprouting. I also have about 100 cans of tuna, chicken, ham, turkey, clams and salmon. I also keep a few rice mixes for quick meals as well as a few things of pickles, mixes, sauces and some shortening in the back. Oh and that bag hanging in the front is full of pretzels:



Here I have a shelf of various grains, flours, rice, some canned goods and kraft dinner in the back:



The upper corner with a huge container of pizza sauce, a box of juice packs (for emergency kits) and some cans of soup mix in the back. There are 4 or 5 big bags of powdered skim milk, a couple jugs of oil and two big cans of ham on the middle shelf. I also keep some sugar back there as it used to be my storage spot for it:



The ceiling is further away than it looks in this pic. It kind of looks like the fiberglass is right by the food, but it isn't. I keep some rice cakes on the top as well as a few jars of apple sauce and lots more oats. Then a full shelf of tomatoes, more tomatoes, lots of Oriental veggies, cans of pasta sauce, more tomatoes and lots of canned beans. The chick peas are very versatile. I have a cake and a cookie recipe which calls for them I need to try some time :) :



Ooops, tomatoes and beans again ;). A 20kg bag of flour and various juices. We used to keep the beans here but there just got to be too many so boxes were better:



Here's our stash of popcorn, a favorite snack as of late. I also have more corn meal here, about 10 jars of peanut butter, some pasta sauce, jarred tomatoes, then our goodly hoard of pasta, lol! The kids will only eat spaghetti lately, although we occasionally have Mr. Noodle. More juice on the bottom:



Ethan's favorite, Hamburger Helper. I also have a bunch of taco shells, lemon juice, various Kraft Dinners, some mixes, corn starch, and salt on the top. Then we have some soup mixes, baking soda, stevia and powdered egg. And of course, tons of pasta sauce to go with all our pasta:



Here we have a box of freezies (good for sick kids ;) ), some pectin, cuppa soup, stuffing mix, syrup, more pasta sauce, juice mix, and various sauces, oils and dressings:



And here we have our cracker shelf. I have more in the car to put away. Then we have jellos, puddings and other dessert mixes followed by herbal teas and hot chocolate. Odds and ends fill the rest of the shelf:

Busy Friday

First off, I tried our new bread maker and it works great! I made a couple of mistakes but the bread still turned out so great I could of ate it all. Best of all, it looked like bread, rounded top instead of in a tube, one of the things I didn't like about bread maker bread (we used to have one, but the heating coil eventually died). It also has 10 settings so you can make about anything in it.

I also canned pears. What a lot of work for few pears. Most of them were too rotten to do anything with. I may see if Wallace Brothers still have pears as I'd like to can more.

Yesterday was a busy day in the kitchen. I canned grapes! I did 4 quarts and 7 half pints. I had to scrounge for jars. I was keeping grains and spices in them, but I transferred them to other containers. Then I found a couple cases I forgot about, which I don't mind. Our water bath canner is kind of small for quarts, I was only able to do 4 at a time and by the end, I realized that the tops weren't covered when the water boiled off, but I got good seals.

I also made green tomato mincemeat. Mmmmmm!! It is so good! I didn't put the suet in or use any fat/oil to substitute and I didn't use as much sugar as it called for (called for 6 cups and I used 4). I did put more raisins and fruit peel in as they make it super yummy. It was all I could do not to crack a jar open to have some last night, but I know it will improve with age. I may make more since I have a ton of green tomatoes, plus I'd like to give a jar to my IL's since they gave me the tomatoes :)





We got our side of pork yesterday, yay! So, what does a side of pork look like (minus the hams and bacon which were sent away for smoking):



It took quite a while to get it all ready for the freezer. There was a lot of meat! I couldn't believe all the back fat! Mark will be in his glory, lol! He likes to fry it up for snacks. I've been trying to find out how to properly salt it with no luck, so I froze all but 3 slabs, which I put in a brine in the fridge for the time being. I'd like to do it a la Little House by layering it in a barrel with salt, but I fear poisoning my family, lol! Everything I read has a warning to keep in fridge no more than two weeks. Well how did the Pioneers ever survive since salt pork was a staple and they didn't have fridges in those days (other than the fortunate ones who had ice houses).

I bought the kids a pack of popcorn chicken last night and in my getting the pork ready for the freezer, I forgot to stick it in the freezer. I didn't remember until this morning and it was too late. I hate it when I do that. $3.50 down the drain :(

When I finish get my food storage in order (well, everything put away at least), I'm going to have an other updated post with pictures. It has grown a lot since the last time I wrote about it. Shoppers has an excellent sale today so I'll be stocking up even more. Real butter for only $1.99! Mark and I will each try to go a couple times each to load up since there is a limit of only 2 per customer. They have other great things on sale too.

If you're interested in Food Storage, here is a series of great food storage videos on YouTube. They also have a website called Simply Living Smart. I think the guy is a food storage specialist for my church, so a lot of the information I am already aware of. There are 7 key categories of food plus water, which is something you cannot exist without (1 gallon of water per day, per person for two weeks is basic, plus purification for water beyond the two weeks). The categories are: Wheat & grains, Sprouts, Legumes, Oils, Salt & Seasonings, Honey & Sweeteners and Powdered Dairy. I have all those categories well covered! Well, more whole wheat would be great, but I will be putting an order in soon. I hate to keep oil on hand as it usually goes rancid before we use it (not as much of a problem since we got our deep fryer though), but I keep lots of peanut butter and frozen butter on hand since I feel the oil category should really be "fats and oils". I also keep nuts in the freezer to grind for nut butters as the freezer keeps them fresh.

I love food storage. I would love to be a food storage specialist. It's such an interesting topic for me.

I should have a meal this weekend in honor of Little House; baked beans, cornbread and fried up salt pork. Ahhh to live in a simpler time when you didn't care if every meal was the same, you were just grateful to have something to eat!!

Manic Monday

Well, not really manic.

Ethan just said he wanted falafel. I wish! That's one of my favorite foods, yummy! They feature food on CBC kids and the kids sometimes tell me they want to try what they have but I don't think they would actually eat it. They say they want to try, so maybe I'll make some. I usually use a mix but someday I need to get adventurous and make them from scratch if I can find a good & easy recipe.

My side of pork is all ordered up. I had to tell them what cuts I wanted. I wanted lots of chops and steaks. I know the kids will eat those. I was all "huh?" half the time. I told him I never ordered one before so I had no clue. I probably won't next time either, lol! I'm getting my hams and bacon smoked, mmmm! Those will take a little longer but we'll get the fresh stuff on Friday. He said it would be around $100, not including the smoking.

Apparantly there is a potato crisis going on. I don't know if it will affect Canada or not, but Red & White has 50lbs bags of new potatoes for $7.99 so I think I'll pick one up. We have about half of a 50lbs bag, but you can't go wrong with potatoes. After we have our meat, I am going to do the assembly line cooking thing for fries. Every time I shop, I go to grab frozen fries but what's the point when I can make them for pennies and the kids like the ones I make better. I need to get more oil in storage. The price of that has shot up.

I made a delicious smelling casserole for someone yesterday. I fried up some green peppers and onions with lean ground beef. I put in some fresh tomatoes when they were nearly done so they didn't overcook. I then mixed sun-dried tomato Alfredo sauce with milk to thin it out a bit. I stirred this into the ground beef mix. I put a layer of whole wheat rotini in a casserole dish, layered with some marble cheese and topped it with the ground beef/Alfredo mix. It smelled so GOOD! I was drooling over it. I am definately making this for us sometime. I wanted to do something with gravy but tomato goes better with pasta, but Alfredo kind of seems in the middle.

I have decided to make more sit down meals with more veggies but it's so hard to work around Mark's schedule. I need to figure out a way to use up all our potatoes and carrots before they go bad. I also have lots of apples and pears. I am going to can the pears when I can get a hold of the pressure canner. I am going to water bath them, but my pot is not big enough for quart jars. If I could get a hold of some peaches I would make fruit cocktail as I have lots of grapes. I could just can them. I got a ton of organic red grapes for only 99 cents a pound last week!

I have been in super stock up mode and it's making Mark crazy! I am concerned about hyperinflation happening due to the economy crisis in the USA. I'm not freaking out about it, I just think we need to buy now while prices are reasonable. I figure if we buy now, we can save money while we are eating our storage. That's how we managed to save a lot of money last time.

Well, I need to take advantage of this beautiful day :)

Blech!!

I had to wait to dehydrate the peppers since the tomatoes were taking so long. I tasted on and they were gross! I don't know what is up with them (edit to add that Shayee was playing with cleaning supplies around the sink and I think some got into the peppers). Most of them were from Sobeys. I may have to go to the Fruit and Veggie stand to get some fresh ones because I was looking forward to having dried ones over winter. The tomatoes are fabulous! I had to stop myself from tasting them, lol! It's amazing that you can take about 6lbs of something and dry it to something that will fit in a quart mason jar (roughly).

There is a buy one get one free sale at Sobeys starting tomorrow. I need to go through the flyer. I got to the BOGO whole wheat pasta and got too distracted, lol! The kids go through a lot of pasta and I'm getting low. I bought a 5lbs bag of regular but I prefer whole wheat. I'll probably load up and they won't like it anymore, lol! That happened with the macaroni and Kraft Dinner, now Ethan won't touch it.

Triumphs and Losses

I forgot to mention I bought a new food processor. I broke mine a while back while I was trying to make relish, but it was just a tiny little thing so it was pretty useless. I mostly only used it for hummus as it wasn't big enough to do much else with. I borrowed Veronica's but I haven't gotten around to using it. I've been meaning to make more relish. Well, I was at Walmart the other day to see if there were any cheap kids clothes and went through the housewares department. They had a really nice General Electric 11 cup food processor for only $19! That's not much more than I paid for my little one. I hadn't gotten around to using it yet, but last night I had a pile of peppers I needed to chop, hot peppers and green peppers. I just had to seed them and chute them through (looks like I missed a few seed :o). It took less than a minute to chop up 11 cups worth! Wow! That would of taken me all night and I would not of had them cut uniformly. I think the food processor may just win a spot on my counter :)

Well, I made bread yesterday. I don't know what went wrong but my bread was hard as a rock and my banana bread was soggy, even after cooking it twice as long as I should (I baked the banana bread for the proper amount of time, but I tried a different banana recipe this time; I won't use it again). I think I need to get new yeast. I buy it bulk at the health food store and keep it in the freezer. At least the bread dough made delicious pizza crust, which is what we had for lunch. We need to get our oven looked at as the temperature is wonky and I can't trist it to cook things properly. I've been saying it for ages but if I want to start making more bread, unless I get a bread machine, I need a good working oven.

Behind

I am really behind in keeping this food blog up. I am terrible lately with blogging anyway. Sometimes I sit to write and draw a blank.



I wrote in our main blog about our Valley Day, which resulted in all the food in this picture here. I have been kind of lazy and haven't done much food processing since. I did cut up all the peaches and froze them as they were on the verge of total ruination (they make wonderful smoothies, but not good for much else) and froze some other things. I need to do something with the rest soon as it will spoil otherwise. I was going to make green tomato mincemeat but the tomatoes turned red before I got a chance, lol! I think I'm going to dehydrate them instead.

I did get my carrots all buried in sawdust. Shaylee had a lot of fun helping me. I think I am going to do the same with my beets as I haven't had the energy to can them and this method is good for all root vegetables (or so I've read).

Today I'm also making bread. I want to stop buying it from the store, even though it's more convenient. Eventually I'm going to start buying our own wheat berries and grinding our own flour, but things keep coming up which makes it hard to budget a couple hundred bucks for wheat.

I was looking at a website called Living On A Dime and this thing popped up at me: "Five Simple Steps To Save $500 A Month On Your Grocery Budget". It totally doesn't apply to me as I try to spend a lot less than that (except when I'm building up my food storage). I can't possibly imagine a way to spend less than I do except if I were to raise and grow everything myself and right now I'm willing to pay for that convenience living in an apartment and all.

Speaking of food storage, I have been totally stocking up. I want to be ready to face the winter. My goal is to try and only spend about $100 a month over winter for groceries but also have an extra $100 a month in reserve in case there are good buys (although the sales have stunk lately!). I have really been putting a lot of effort into having enough and getting our storage in. I even bought a side of pork; they are $1.39/lbs at Red & White but I have no idea how big or how much. I was going to go with a quarter side of beef, but that would of ran us around $500, which is a little pricey. I want to try to budget for it to buy one next year as it would be soooo good. So I've been making room as with all the frozen fruit and veggies, one freezer is solid full and the other is about half. At least if the economy crashes, we'll have enough to eat ;)

One really good dish I made this week was just fried peppers, onions and tomatoes with a can of chili beans served over rice. I also made a really yummy cornbread in the microwave which went well with everything (especially homemade jam). It's good kept in the fridge with pieces sliced off to serve with soup/stew/chili or eggs for breakfast. I have probably said that I have given up the microwave but it is in the basement. With the oven not so reliable, sometimes it's better, especially for brownies and frozen foods/dinners.

Here's the recipe for Microwave Cornbread:

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. corn meal
1/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. milk
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten

Combine dry ingredients. Stir in milk, oil and egg and mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour batter into ungreased 9 inch pie plate or round microwaveable cake pan. Microwave at HIGH 5-6 minutes, or until surface appears dry, rotating pan after 2-3 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

What's this?

So, what do you get when you mix 50lbs of carrots with a big bag of sawdust? Carrots that will last all winter long! I heard about this at a food storage meeting ans thought I would give it a whirl. For $10, it's not an expensive experiment. It was only $4.99 for the carrots and $5 for the shavings! Wow, that's like 10 cents a pound for the carrots, 20 with the shavings. They were sold as deer carrots but they're just smaller than the ones they sell for a lot more. They are good, sweet, crisp and very tasty! I'm going to either put them in a big box or tote (haven't decided yet) and they should stay well and crisp until next year.

I have really been on a buying kick. I am getting my larder in for winter. Things are so cheap now that I hate not to take advantage. We got 50lbs of new potatoes for only $8.99! I am going to try to bury them in the sawdust too. They're supposed to keep well.

I'm thinking of turning part of my basement into a cold storage room. The far side of the basement would be a great since there is a window that opens to the outside. I just need to find a cheap way to cordon it off. I'm also going to try to store apples and lots of squash. I have read about different ways to store things so I'm open to try. I'll still do up some apples, like applesauce and pie filling, maybe more chutney. I'm also going to dry some more this year. Apple chips are so yummy :) I'm also going to dehydrate some green peppers.

I need to read over the Little House books to see how Ma Ingalls and Mother Wilder did things. I love reading what they did. Of course it was a lot colder back then and they could rely on hanging meat outside and in the attic in the winter where we couldn't do such a thing today (thanks global warming, lol!). But we also have a global system of food transport where you can eat fresh strawberries in the dead of winter, but I want to try to eat more seasonally and locally.

Well, I have things to do before bed but I'll try to write more. Autumn is such a yummy time of year!

Canning Tons

I have been meaning to write here, but I keep putting it off. Part of it is the last post I wrote. I honestly don't know if I'm gluten intolerant and feel bad making such a big deal of it. I don't know what's going on with my body and I should see the doctor, but I'm scared. Just being honest.

Well, I have been canning up a storm. I've made tons of salsa, chutney, relish and sauces plus jams. I've probably done close to 150 pints of preserves so far. I love canning! It's hard, hot work but so worth it!!

Here are some images of what I've been up to:



Fresh, local Fred Kingsbury tomatoes. I've gone through more than 30lbs of these babies :)



My part of my first batch of salsa. I also did more.



The chopped up ingredients of one of my batches of chutney.



mmmmm!!! Yummy, simmering tomato chutney. I love this stuff! I went through a jar in one day, it was so good.



My zucchini relish ingredients. Looks like little fingers got into it, lol! My food processor broke halfway through, so I had to use the blender, which didn't work too well since the zucchini was on the dry side. I'm going to borrow Veronica's food processor so I can make cucumber relish.

I thought I had more pictures of the canning I've been doing but sometimes I just forget. My counters have been covered but I'm finally getting things put away. I wish I had more counter space, but I make do with what I have :)

I've also been up to more yummy things but I will save things to write about later.

Ta!