Frugal Accomplishments - November 10th through 16th

This one's short since I haven't been keeping track so well, but I'll be keeping up starting tomorrow.

- Attended the Alpaca and Fleece festival (free admission).  We brought our own food, and we bought gloves and a hat for Miss F as a Christmas present, a hat for Mr. B, and gloves for me.

- An early snow on the 13th shocked the apple trees, so a local orchard was letting people pick your own apples for free.  We filled at least one grocery bag, and that was after it looked like people had raided the field.

- My mom has been storing a turkey that Mr. B got as a holiday bonus last year.  Since Mr. B just brought home this year's turkey, she offered to cook it for Thanksgiving and pay us for it.

- I made emergency bars with Miss F to prepare for the possibility of getting stranded in a car this winter.

Putting Food Up

Preserving, for me, has become part hobby and part mission.  I enjoy canning food for my family for the winter months, but I also feel like it's how I earn my keep.  Mr. B and I try hard to improve skills that allow us to be self-sustainable.  If anything were ever to happen like a job loss or something worse, I feel like we know how to grow or hunt our food, preserve it, and cook it.  We're learning to identify plants in the wild that are edible or medicinal.

In years past, I've made some attempt at canning and preserving foods.  I think my first year was probably just canning applesauce and maybe peaches.  Last year, I stepped it up and preserved:

6 quarts beef broth
5 pints and 1 quart of chicken broth
6 quarts of green beans
16 quarts and 15 pints of peaches
16 half pints of strawberry jam
14 half pints of peach preserves
12.75 quarts of tomato sauce
6 half pints of tomato paste
41.5 half pints of apple butter
3 bags of peach pie filling (frozen)

This year, even though I've been pregnant and now have a newborn, I've been a preserving machine.  In the last couple of months, we've put up:

1 ½ pints honeysuckle syrup

2 pints elderflower syrup

7.5 half pints “hard” strawberry jam

9 half pints “soft” strawberry jam

5 12 oz jars “soft” strawberry jam

4 12 oz jars strawberry jam/syrup

3 lbs frozen blueberries

12 oz maraschino cherries

8 oz cherry pit liqueur (including pits)

4 cups frozen cherries

1 ½ gallons of frozen raspberries

½ gallon raspberry liqueur

1 ½ cups dried apricots

3.8 gal of sumac concentrate  

46 heads of garlic

2 quarts of sage leaves

1 cup of thyme leaves

1 cup of winter savory leaves

1 quart of oregano

9 pint jars of peaches

7 24 oz jars of peaches

35 quart jars of peaches

12 pint jars of spaghetti sauce

5 quart jars of spaghetti sauce

26 quart jars of tomato sauce

5 pint jars of tomato sauce

15 quarts of applesauce

5 pints Pumpkin and Sausage Soup

Some of that which we put up has already been consumed, like the honeysuckle syrup and most of the elderflower syrup.  We have a lot left to do before winter comes, too, so this list will change rather dramatically in the next few months.  Now that apples have come in, I'll be canning (hopefully) a total of 24 quarts of applesauce.  I'll be making and canning a ton of broth and cooked beans when it gets cooler and around the holidays.  I’ve just started experimenting with meats and soups, so hopefully I’ll be able to can more of that as well.  The only problem I'm running into at the moment is storage space, but that's a great problem to have.

"Can Do": Overcoming Canning Fears

I have a very hard time canning because I have a small kitchen and no dishwasher.  But I desperately want to have the shelves lined with gorgeous home-processed canned goods.  Every time I get large quantities of food, I end up vacuum sealing it and freezing it because it's easier than sterilizing jars, filling the canner, finding unused lids, and processing the jars.

But now we have a cow coming in.  My freezer is FULL.  I have no room for the meat we're about to pick up.  So I put my big girl pants on and got to canning.  I started out easy, with half of a bushel of peaches.  They were on the seconds rack at our farm market.  I only lost four or five out of the whole batch to mold, which is a big deal for me.

 

I also reprocessed the strawberry preserves that I had made.  It didn't have enough pectin the first time around.

Canning those were so easy, that I asked my brother to pick up some more peaches.

With 16 quarts of peaches under my belt, I moved to tackle a big fear and source of anxiety:  pressure canning.  My mom gave me her old Mirro pressure canner a while back.  It has a weight instead of a gauge, and I had no idea what I was doing.  But I consulted the internet and my Ball canning book, and voila!

There are still some green beans in the fridge from the half bushel I bought.  I think that 6 quarts is enough for storage (for now) and that these will become ham and green beans for an easy dinner.

If You Give a Mouse Some Chocolate...

...it will want to live in your pantry forever.

We've been seriously deep cleaning and decluttering our house for about two weeks now.  There are a lot of items that haven't had a place in the rooms we've been clearing out, so they ended up in the pantry.  Namely, three large bags of gift bags, some mason jar boxes that I wanted to keep to organize the freezer, a winter blanket, a mattress pad, and some bulk kitty litter, baking soda, and vinegar.  They make it difficult to get into the pantry, but we've been eating a lot of fresh food, so it didn't matter too terribly much.

I went down to get some rolled oats for Oatmeal Pancakes a la Momzoo, and I saw something very disheartening:  two chocolate bars had the corners gnawed off.  I was just down there getting a bar of chocolate the other day and they were fine.  A closer look showed mouse-sized teeth marks.  It could have possibly been our cats, but I doubted it.  The door is always shut and latched.

Then I saw this:

And this:

We do in fact have a mouse (or mice).  When I started pulling things out of the pantry, Wicket got excited.  She jumped all over everything, sniffing it.

And when she had her fill of that, she visited the back of the pantry itself.

We left the door open for the cats to peruse the pantry at their leisure.  I expected to wait a few days before anything happened.  But *B* and I were watching TV tonight when the cats were pouncing around, and we heard a squeak.  There he was!  In our living room, a whole floor above the pantry.  *B* and I sprang into action and scooped him into an empty kitty litter bucket.

He is so CUTE!   *B* liberated him in a strategically distant location.  I'm hoping that he was the only one for two reasons.  One, I don't want to have to worry about having mice in the house.  Two, if there are more mice, there is a greater likelihood that the cats will finish them off before

Contentment

The river trip this weekend was very relaxing and gave me a chance to think a lot about my life.  My mother took care of Miss F during the six hour trip down the river.  I kayaked down the river without flipping in Compton's rapids (a big deal considering they sent me to the ER three years ago).

A large part of the times, I was floating along side *B*'s parents or my brother and his friends.  But the other part of the time, I just got to take in the surroundings, breathe the fresh air, and just be by myself.

I enjoyed the beauty of the river and felt a pang of envy as I thought about how amazing it could be to live in the area.

But it was later that night in the campsite that I really felt contentment start to set in.  One of the girls on the trip stepped in poison ivy at our lunch stop.  Her lower leg was red and itchy.  No one had calamine lotion, and she was complaining about the pain and itching.  I popped up, spotted some plantain, and told her to chew (or rather pound due to the mud on the ground) the leaves into a paste and apply it.  I knew it worked on bug bites, but I wasn't sure about poison ivy.  Sure enough, she reported that it didn't itch anymore!

I was happy to be able to help, and I enjoyed the surprised looks I got from the "adults" of the group - 50 years old and better.  They had no idea such a ubiquitous plant did anything other than grow.  It was just a weed to them.  Rather than relying on plants for cures, we've been relying solely on pills for over fifty years.

As the trip went on, I found myself talking a lot about my knowledge of plants.  From dock to treat nettle stings to chicory as a coffee substitute, I was able to hold forth on a variety of medicinal and edible plants.  I was spotting stands of sumac trees and looking to find ripe berry clusters.  We're looking forward to making tea of those berries in the next month or so.

I realized on my way home, that I'm actually making measurable progress in my goal of being able to identify many common plants and their usefulness.  I want to be that old woman (one day, not yet) who can go out to her garden to pluck a cure for what ails you.  I want to be able to go out and forage a little snack from my surroundings.  As our garden grows into the garden of our daydreams and my knowledge base grows, I feel more and more at ease with the life I'm carving out.

Emergency Car Kits with Babies

I had a rather well stocked car kit in my car for a number of years.  My dad "found" some milk crates somewhere many years ago, and each of us had one in a car full of automotive fluids and the like.  Before Miss F, I stocked it with food, water, and winter supplies as well.

The car kit ended up in the basement when the stroller took up the entirety of my two door car's small hatchback trunk.  When I bought my new (to me) four door wagon, the kit never made it back in.  Even if I did put it back, we would totally be unprepared for the types of emergencies that accompany a baby.

These are the things that you'll find in our improved car kits:


Shelter
Towels - This one we got from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  At first it was a bit of a joke, but we quickly realized how useful towels are!  The ones we have are extra wide and extra long.  They can be used as a blanket, as a pillow, for absorption, as a sun shade, as a wind break, rolled up to make the car seat level, as a seat cushion, and hundreds of other ways.  We keep three in each car.
Blankets

Clothing
Bathing suits - You never know when they come in handy.  They'll be replaced with snow clothes in the winter.
Onesie
Baby's pants
Baby's sleeper
Hats for all
Shirt for Mama - Miss F uses my shirts rather than dolls to lull herself to sleep.  And it never hurts to have an extra!
Bandanas - Like mini towels, they're infinitely useful.

Food
Trail mix (for adults and older kids)
Puffed kamut (for the baby)
Water bottles

Baby Supplies
Toy car
Diapers
Wipes
Grocery bag
Toilet paper

Automobile Supplies
Motor oil
Antifreeze
Mechanic's gloves
Jack
Tire iron

First Aid Supplies
First aid kit
Chux pad
Latex gloves
Mask

As Miss F gets older (and eventually as we have more children), this list will change.  Is there anything big missing?

Mason Jar Regret

I have only really canned once in my life.  I made a ton of applesauce and peaches and canned them in a water bath, even though I know they don't have enough acid and should have been done in a pressure cooker.  But I wanted to be the person who canned a ton of food every year and put it up for the winter months.  People who knew me thought I was the girl who canned.  So they gave me their mason jars.
I got my mom's old jars that hadn't been touched in twenty years.  I got my grandparents' old jars that hadn't been touched in forty years.  I got random jars (not mason jars) from random people who thought I might like them.  And, of course, I bought a bunch of my own.

What ended up happening?  Our cabinets were full to the brim with jars in some state or another.  Many were cracked, caked in dust, with dessicated insects in the bottom of them.  Every time you opened a cabinet, an avalanche of jars would descend upon you.  One day, *B* said they had to go.
So we sorted through them and kept twelve half gallon jars, twelve quart jars, twenty-four pint jars, and whatever jars already had things in them.  The rest were donated or recycled as appropriate.  That seemed like enough jars that I could put up some food if I wanted to.  That's probably the amount of food that we'd be capable of putting up in any given season.

But then...

We decided we wanted to start getting rid of plastic containers.  *B* uses tupperware-type containers to take his food to work.  We microwave in those containers.  What kinds of things were leaching into our food?  We had some Pyrex containers, but not nearly enough for what we needed to store.  I tend to cook in bulk and put the rest of the food in the freezer.  We talked about buying more Pyrex as we could afford it if they were on sale.  And then it hit me:  we should be using mason jars.

I had black bean soup, taco filling, "garbage" soup, and ham and bean soup that needed to be frozen right now and in single or double serving portions.  I pulled out the jars that were in our pantry and got them washed up.  Almost immediately, all of our pint jars were full.  I looked at *B* and he looked at me, and we both realized something terrible.  We need more mason jars.

It seems so wasteful that we had them and got rid of them.  But it's not like we threw them in the trash.  Those that were still in good condition likely went to someone who needed them.  Those that were in bad condition went to be made into new bottles.  And even if we end up buying more mason jars, they'll be cheaper than the Pyrex were were planning to buy.

The first time I put mason jars in the freezer, I did so with broth in half gallon jars.  The jars shattered because I must have filled them too much.  This time I did test jars in the freezer to make sure I wouldn't destroy them, but we had no issues, so I froze all of them.

These are our mason jars in the freezer.  They're labeled in tape and sharpie because real labels are expensive and hard to remove.  For some, I got the plastic caps designed for storage.  Others have the standard canning lids on them.  And a few have tin foil lids because I didn't have enough.  Those will be eaten first.

Reevaluating Our Pantry Goods

When I originally started stocking our pantry, I looked more toward shelf life and easy meals than to wholesomeness.  I did think about nutrition with respect to not getting scurvy (ha ha) and having veggies with meals but that was about it.  A few of the gems I kept stocked regularly:
Hamburger helper
Chicken helper
Tuna helper (see a pattern?)
Boxed macaroni and cheese
Cookies
Chocolate bars (for sugar indulgences, not baking)
Pudding mixes
Sauces of all kinds (sweet and sour, curry, etc)
Soda (I had soda, but not water.  Can you believe that?)

I was amazed and disturbed to read the ingredients on some of those things.  Preservatives out the ears.  So when *B* and I rid the house of processed food, the pantry was severely cut down.  We were left with canned fruits and veggies, bulk flour, sugar, and rice, a little pasta, and a few cans of tuna.

So we started trying to make more meals with dried ingredients.

Beans and Legumes
I cooked 7 cups of dried black beans to make as many meals with black beans as possible.  In our freezer, we have a ton of vegetarian black bean soup a la Panera, pork and black bean soup (which just used up all of our wilting produce), beef and bean taco filling, and some black bean burgers.  We also tend to eat corn and black bean salad, which is essentially a Chipotle bowl with no meat.  So dried black beans are going in our new pantry.

 

Pork and black bean soup

We really like hummus, but I have a hard time making enough to justify buying tahini.  I found this recipe that uses sesame oil instead, which works perfectly for us and tastes really good.  Dried chickpeas are now in our pantry.

I've always kept kidney beans around because we use them in chili.  I'm making it a goal this month to find more recipes that call for kidney beans.

Another bean that we're starting to cook with is navy beans.  I've never cooked with them before in my life.  I've never seen my family cook with them either.  I had bought them to make baked beans from scratch.  I found the recipe in a fabulous book that *B* bought for me from the library called The Food Journal of Lewis and Clark: Recipes for an Expedition.  But we had a ham bone from Easter that was taking up a ton of space in our freezer, so I ended up using them to make ham and bean soup instead.

Ham and bean soup

Grains
Cooking rice is down to a science here at our house.  I make up huge batches and we freeze it in smaller portions.  Even so, I'm still got about 2.5 gallons of rice in the pantry already.

We've cooked barley before, but we haven't quite gotten it incorporated into our weekly meals.  Miss F was the only one eating it for a little while.  Using barley more will be another goal of mine.

We already use a ton of oatmeal.  Miss F and I have oatmeal just about every single morning.  Aside from straight up, we use it in pancakes, cookies, and in apple crisp.  I'm sure I could find a million uses for oatmeal.

Fruits and Vegetables
Non-canned fruits and veggies aren't something I've stocked before.  Our basement stays roughly 55 degrees year round if we don't heat it.  As we grow butternut squash, pumpkins, and potatoes this year, we're going to try to store them in the pantry.

I saw a really cool method of storing onions the other day:  knotting them in pantyhose.  I can't wait to try this one.

Baking Goods
I found out that the whole wheat flour I was using for everything (including bread) was pastry flour rather than all purpose or bread flour.  We finally got some bread flour and it changed the way I see our homemade bread.  So we got a 50 pound bag split between two gamma buckets.

I do have a few sugar products still - brown sugar, a little natural sugar left over from our last bulk bag, and powdered sugar.  We only use these for foods for family, like Easter and birthdays.

We use a lot of maple syrup and honey now, so I'm storing a moderate amount of each right now.  If and when I see maple syrup go on sale at Costco, I will stock up.  We get our honey locally, so we only get as much as we can afford at any given time.

Cleaning Products
This one's super easy.  We're down to only using a few simple things in our cleaning routine:  baking soda, white vinegar, washing soda, and borax.  I picked up four 13.5 pound bags of baking soda and four 5 liter bottles of white vinegar.  They'll last me for years, and they're super cheap.

What kinds of whole foods do you keep in your pantry?

Tracking Food for Pantry Optimization

When I've tried to determine what we needed in our pantry in the past, I was never quite sure what to get.  I've never specifically recorded the meals we eat for the purpose of pantry building.  Saturday night, I sat down and wrote out what we've eaten.

I am absolutely ashamed and appalled at how we've eaten in the last month.  Two nights a week, neither *B* nor I are home.  He has school and I work a second job.  We both tend to (separately) grab food out.  In the interest of full disclosure and public shaming into changing my behavior, this is what we've eaten in the month of March to this point according to my calorie tracker:

1             Homemade pizza

2             Coconut-vegetable curry, egg sandwich

3             Dinner out with friends – chicken sandwich, fries, jello

4             Coconut-vegetable curry, cheese bread

5             Dinner out – chicken bol, fudge pretzels, coffee, coffee cake

6             Annie’s mac and cheese, corn, asparagus, ambrosia

7             Peanut butter sandwich, oranges, fudge pretzels, coconut-vegetable curry

8             No dinner recorded

9             Dinner out with Dad – crab cakes, fries, and applesauce

10           Coconut vegetable curry

11           Dinner at friend’s – random finger foods (meatballs, popcorn, cookie, nuts, apple)

12           Dinner out - burger and fries

13           Steak, salad, baked beans

14           Dinner out – burger and fries, greek yogurt

15           Cabbage and kielbasa

16           Ordered in - pizza

17           Burger and baked fries

18           Leftovers – cream chipped beef on a biscuit, soft pretzel, eggs, asparagus

19           Coffee and fruit cup

20           Dinner out – chicken bol

21           Dinner out – burger and fries

22           Fettucine alfredo with broccoli

23           Dinner out with family – seafood portofino (2/3 portion), salad, breadsticks

24           Leftovers - seafood portofino (1/3 portion)
25           Lasagna
26           Peanut butter sandwich, banana, coffee
27           Cube steak, potatoes, and peas
28           Peanut butter sandwich, cashews, cheeseburger, fries, apples
You can absolutely see where Saturday night's epiphany happened.  Tonight was a bit of a blip.  I got a Happy Meal after I ate my packed dinner.  I was starving!  At least I only got a small supplimental meal.  Usually that burger and fries is massive.  But next time (Monday) I'll be more prepared with a bigger home-packed meal.

In the next few months, I want to try something new.  Starting the first of April, I'm going to keep track of all of the groceries that we purchase and use.  That way, I can get a better idea of what foods we like and what foods we don't like.

At the same time, I'm going to limit our food purchases to only real, whole foods.  This idea is not new.  When *B* and I originally read Michael Pollan's books and Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, I was all for responsible food.  We slacked off in the year and some since then, and our monthly menu shows it.  But I found a website, 100 Days of Real Food, that helped me find my way again.  I plan on taking the 10 day pledge starting this Sunday.  I'm really hopeful about this, and I'm really excited!  Good food here we come!

Ready-to-bake Freezer Lasagne

I've always liked my mom's lasagne.  I don't make it often, though, because it seems like it takes forever to make.  I tried once to make a Martha Stewart lasagne that took less time, but it was terrible.  So this time around, I broke it up into a couple of steps, and finished off the easiest ever freezer lasagne.

Two weeks ago, I took an hour to make spaghetti sauce.  My mom starts with ground beef, but I made a cheese lasagne this time. All I had to do is mix 1 tsp onion powder, 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 1/2 tsp Italian
seasoning, 15 oz can tomato sauce, 6 oz can tomato paste, and 1 cup water in a big pot.  I doubled the recipe so that I could get more product out of my time.  I also used homemade tomato paste from my San Marzano tomatoes that came in last year.  Once everything is combined, all you have to do is simmer for about 1 hour.  When all was done, I threw the sauce into sealed glass jars in the fridge.


This morning, I was ready to tackle the second half.  I mixed 2 pounds of ricotta cheese with 1 egg, 1/2 cup
parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, and 1 tbsp parsley.

I bought square glad containers that work for both the freezer and the oven.  In the bottom, I put a thin layer spaghetti sauce.  On top of that, I put two no-boil lasagna noodles.  My mom said three, but only two fit in one layer in the pan without too many gaps and without too much overlap.  Then, I spread 1/2 ricotta mix over noodles, spread thin layer of spaghetti sauce, and sprinkled with mozzarella cheese.  I did the ricotta, sauce, cheese step again.  Then, I layered two more noodles, put the rest of the tomato sauce, and a ton of mozzarella on top.  Slap on the plastic lid, label, and throw it into the freezer.

When ready to cook, just pull it out of the freezer, take off the lid, and bake at 350 degrees until hot throughout and golden on top.  With the zucchini bread I made at the same time, this is a perfect dinner.  Yum!

Prepping Made Harder

When *B* and I were on our honeymoon, we read The Omnivore's Dilemma.  It is a fantastic book, but as of late it's been making my life difficult.  While I had a hard time giving up "conventionally" raised meat, *B* has really stuck with it.

Our meat comes from a local butcher shop, so it's probably not product of a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO).  I know for a fact that the beef we eat was raised in a lady's backyard - my mom works with her.  But our chicken and the little bit of bacon we get are of somewhat indeterminate origins.

When eating with *B* now, I feel really guilty about eating meat.  When we eat out at a restaurant, *B* always gets something vegetarian.  When at home, if I make something with chicken, I feel bad because I know he has reservations about eating it.  But the problem is that I have not found vegetarian meals that I like.  While he's happy eating lentil soup and vegetable curry, I'm not.  I haven't had pork loin in well over a year, and that used to be one of my go-to meals.  I just don't like sweet and sour chicken without the chicken (a meal we had last week).

Day to day, I deal with this fairly well.  I'm grumbly, but I manage.  I eat meat at school and when we go out.  In prepping, though, this issue is almost painful.  I see tons of interesting freezer meals on Pinterest and others' blogs, but they're usually based around a meat.  All of the vegetarian meals I see seem terrible to me.

The problem is that I'm very picky when it comes to vegetables.  I don't like onions and tomatoes unless they're cooked and diced fine.  I don't like olives, most beans, peppers, cucumbers, winter squash, arugala, beets, turnips, or rutabegas.  I also don't like any kind non-cow milk cheeses like chevre.  I'm not a huge fan of barley, quinoa, or couscous.  I would kill a bowl of fettucini alfredo with broccoli with no problem, but *B* isn't a huge fan of pasta.

What this boils down to is that my freezer is stocked with two types of food right now: food I'll eat and food he'll eat.  I can't find enough meals that will satisfy both of us so that we don't get sick of them.

Prepping for Baby

I'm staying home with the baby for a school year starting in June.  We can't technically afford this, so we have to be very prepared before he or she comes.  We're saving as much as possible, making freezer meals ahead of time, and stocking our pantry.

Before I became pregnant, we were paying off some debt, but I didn't realize how much more we could be doing to better ourselves.  By limiting our meals out and carefully planning grocery trips, we've freed up a lot of money.  In two months alone, we've saved $3,000 of the $10,000 we need for me to be able to stay home.  And in those two months were both of our birthdays, a friend's wedding, our anniversary, and Christmas!  Where we were freaking out before, and I was convinced I'd need to work at least 20 hours a week, now I could probably stay home the whole time.

Recently, I've been doing research on freezer meals for when the baby comes.  I want to find things that are both healthy and easy to make.  Some of our favorite freezer meals are beef bourgignon, chili, mexican chicken casserole, lasagna, curried lentil soup, butternut squash soup, shepherd's pie, and marinated meats.  For breakfast, I'll have oatmeal pancakes and waffles.  These foods are good, but I need more options.  So in my research I've found these links so far:
Mama and Baby Love: Real Food
Make Ahead Meals
$130 for 100 meals

In order to have an efficient freezer, *B* and I spent all weekend last weekend going through the freezer and reorganizing it.  Rather than throwing food in randomly, we gave the shelves purposes.

The first shelf is prepared food.  Those are foods that we can just grab and heat.  The second is food we can cook with like beans, rice, pizza crusts, and frozen potatoes.  The third shelf and the basket are full of meat: a whole turkey, a whole chicken, shrimp, beef, venison, and bacon.  The door is all of our frozen fruits and veggies, as well as some bread and butter that had no better place to go.

Since I won't have an income for a year, we also need to stock the pantry as full as possible, just in case.  In our pantry, we've got canned veggies, oil, condiments, spices, canned fruits, pasta, and beans:




We have broth of different kinds, tea, panko, light bulbs, ziplocs and food saver bags, cream of wheat, cereal, and baking needs:





We have honey, pudding, and every type of canned tomato imaginable:



And of course, we have paper products, bulk flour, bulk rice, and bulk sugar:






So for the next few weeks, I'll be scrimping, looking up freezer meal recipes, and determining what we need in our pantry in order to maintain healthy diets.  Do you have any tips or freezer meal ideas?

An All-Natural Pantry

Given our latest push to eat sustainably and healthfully, combined with my ongoing campaign to have a pantry my grandmother would be proud of, I've been mulling over the practicalities of having an all-natural pantry as of late.  When Shirley over at Choosing Voluntary Simplicity wrote her post today on what's in her pantry, I knew that it was time to start putting thoughts into words so that they'll (hopefully) turn into actions.

I cleaned our pantry out this past weekend.  We had a bag of potatoes explode all over the bottom shelf of the pantry as well as a plastic bin that holds blankets.  It's just as well, because the bin was taking up so much room that I never used the pantry anymore.  I'd send *B* down because I couldn't stretch over the bin to reach the food.  I'm ashamed to say that I had to throw out a fair amount of food because it was expired.  A few more items moved upstairs to be eaten this week, much to the delight of my co-workers who ate up my double chocolate devil's food cake muffins.  A few more items had a couple of months left on them, but we no longer eat that type of food, so they are to be donated.

When I first started loading up our pantry, I filled it with things we ate often:  spaghetti, hamburger helper, commercially canned fruit and vegetables, baking mixes, and sauces out of bottles.  As I was cleaning, I realized that we hadn't wanted or needed any of these things in the couple of months that I overlooked the pantry.  Our eating habits now have us choosing sprouted english muffins, whole grain rice, and an abundance of fresh veggies.  This is where I started to rethink our storage habits.

As my garden starts to unfold, I find myself planting many more vegetables that are able to be frozen or canned.  I have (some) time in the summer, and I plan on putting that time to good use, stocking up for the later months.  For the vegetables that refuse to grow, I will buy extras at the farmer's market.  Even if it doesn't come from my backyard, I can still get it from my area.

I'm going to get air tight containers that can hold our chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, and all of the other grains and legumes that we run across.  Right now our grains are in strange plastic bags, twist-tied, and often unmarked.  I keep meaning to try quinoa and couscous.  I know I've had one of them, but due to the labeling issue, I don't know which one.

I'm going to create my own dehydrated soups so that *B* can have (fairly) quick lunches that are nutritious and homemade (I'm not really a soup girl).  We were given some of the packaged versions for Christmas, and he seemed to scarf them up.  How hard could it be to make my own?

I will reevaluate my potato storage so that they a) don't turn to mush and b) don't sprout.  All the potatoes in the basement rotted, and all of the potatoes in the kitchen sprouted and turned green.

Considering I'm down to about 15 pounds of flour, I'm going to seriously look into buying it in bulk from our organic market.  I keep saying I will, but I actually will this time.

Finally, I'm going to stop thinking of our freezer as unreliable storage and start using it to its fullest (both capacity and potential).  Yes, the power could go out and we could lose our food storage.  But that's better than not using the space at all.  I am much more interested in eating frozen snap peas than canned green peas any day.  If it helps us to eat our vegetables and to save on food costs, I'm all for it.

What's in your pantry?

Winter Preparedness

It's just now starting to get cold here.  We haven't yet turned on our heat, but I know it won't be too long until we do.  I know that last year we turned it on sometime after Veteran's Day.  This year, we're going to hold out as long as possible.  Winter gets me in a preparedness mood, so as the cold sets in, my thoughts turn to prepping.

Where I live, the biggest emergencies that happen are winter storms.  We get ice storms and snow storms that can leave people stranded for days or weeks.  To make it even better, people here don't know how to drive in snow, and so they tend to get stranded pretty often.  To that point, a couple thoughts on winter needs.

In the Home - Everyday
Blankets are indispensable commodities at home during the cold season.  I don't believe I've ever been able to let myself get rid of a blanket.  Even right now, we're using spare blankets to keep the cats out from under our bed.  We keep a blanket permanently on the couch to prevent the desire to turn up the heat.  It's kind of like drinking a glass of water when getting hunger pangs.  If you put on the blanket and you're still cold 20 minutes later, then you can do something more about it.  The next step is preferably adding more clothing, but heat can be adjusted as well.

We tend to close off unused rooms in the winter.  Our basement door is closed, but we don't seal it off because our turtles, food, and laundry is down there.  Our office, though, does not get much use.  Starting in December, we close it off and put a draft dodger in front of the door.  Draft dodgers come in all shapes and sizes.  We tend to use an old towel, but I intend on making my own dodger by stitching a drawstring back with scraps and rags in it.  Both work equally well.  Since we have electric, baseboard heat, we close off rooms with heaters so that we're not heating a hallway.  This keeps the power usage to a minimum.  We even put foam covers inside of our electrical sockets to make sure that air could not enter that way.

Exterior pipes should be turned off and drained before the cold sets in.  On days when the temperature is above 40 degrees F, windows can be caulked and weatherstripping can be applied.  If snow is likely in your area, make sure that you have a working snow shovel, ice scrapers, and some salt in your house.  When we got snow last year, our shovel was in our shed at the back of our yard.  Fat lot of good that did out there.  Shovels and snow blowers went for a premium and sold out almost immediately when we got hit by the blizzard last year.

In the Home - Emergencies
If the power goes out for long periods of time, as tends to happen around here, there are things that can be done to keep heat in.  Blankets can be used to keep heat in one room by hanging them across doorways.  One can either set up a tent for the family to sleep in, or bring mattresses into one room to help consolidate warmth.  Be wary of creating your own heat sources in your house.  Houses burn down and people get poisoned from improperly used heat sources.  For those with gas stoves in their kitchens, the stove could be used to heat up a small area while preparing meals.

Every time there's a snow warning out here, Safeway floods with people and runs out of stock of major items.  Most mainstream stores use a just-in-time inventory strategy so that they only order as much as they think they'll sell before another truck comes in .  This is good for product rotation, bad for emergencies.  To combat this problem, we keep major necessities stocked.  Your necessities depend on your family, but toilet paper, road salt, and water are always big ones.  We make sure to always have cat food and litter, crackers, soup, cereals, and long term storage (grains).  Other pantry items vary, but those are staples for us.

In the Car - Every Day
Every day, summer or winter, I have a car kit.  My kit is in two crates - one for automotive needs, and one for human needs.  In my automotive needs crate, I have shop towels, antifreeze, windshield washer fluid, oil, car fluids, a turkey baster, a siphon, jumper cables, a jack, a lug wrench, and a 1 gallon gas tank (empty).  In my human needs crate, I have a change of clothes top to bottom, gloves, a hat, water bottles, granola bars, pen and paper, a pocket knife, an emergency blanket or two, a few flashlights, a large bath towel and a first aid kit. 

I'm actively trying to keep my gas tank at half full or above now.  Not only is it is smart so that you don't run out of gas, it keeps the engine running better.  Letting the gas get down to empty allows debris to collect and get stuck in the tank.

In the Car - Emergencies
I stocked my car kit so that it could be used in case of stranding or as a supplement to my work kit.  By keeping the kits stocked, I have supplies at the ready.  My car is a hatchback, so I don't have to worry about getting out of the car for supplies, I can just lift the lid.  I keep a flashlight and a window breaker/seat belt cutter in the well next to my seat.  They were Christmas presents one year, and I'm very grateful for them.  In keeping them next to my seat, I can use them if I somehow get stuck in the car.  I make sure that my supplies keep me warm, full, healthy, and in communication with the outside world.

A Word of Caution and a Loooong Overdue Post

When we first moved in, my dad warned us about a chunk missing out of our sidewalk.  It's a triangular, about four inches deep and four inches wide.  It actually helps me park my car without going into my neighbor's area.  Well, we've been in the house over a year, and we haven't done anything about it.

I had to put windshield washer fluid in my car on Saturday.  As I went to open the hood of my car, I fell into this crater and slammed the hood on my arm.  This is my arm three days later.  Most of the black is gone, there's still a bit blue, and it's mostly yellow.

 

So let this be a lesson - do not put off until tomorrow (or next year) what you can do today.  We'll be patching that hole this weekend...

So while I'm talking about home maintenance and taking care of one's self, I took the initiative to turn a night alone into something useful - I finally organized the pantry.

I'm somewhat ashamed at how long it had been since I last cleaned out my pantry.  Because I hadn't cleaned it, I had no idea what we had.  We lost a grocery bag's worth of food.  I know better for next time.  This is what the pantry looks like now:

It's much, much different than it used to be back when we had the blizzard here.

Training Your Instincts

Today, we had a fire drill.  It was not unlike other fire drills we've had, except for what happened on the way back into school.  A student dropped his bookbag, stumbled, and passed out.  It was very brief - he woke right up on the sidewalk.  I, of course, had a teacher with a cell phone call the nurse.  But what happened as the nurse was coming was amazing.

A fourteen year old boy took charge of the situation before anyone else could.  He cleared the crowd around him.  He had the student lie down on the grass.  He checked that he could track motion with his eyes.  He checked the student's oral intake for the day.  He had the student talk about what he last remembered happening (he didn't remember passing out).  By the time the nurse arrived, every question she has was answered.

I walked back into school with the student who helped out.  It turns out, he took a first aid training course, and it just came naturally to him.  When he was needed, he just did what had to be done.  Students like this reaffirm my hope for the future.

Sweet Deliciousness

I've been itching to can lately, and I just couldn't stand it anymore.  We went to our local orchard, and bought a half of a bushel of "grade 2" peaches.  They were half the price of the "grade 1" peaches, for no good reason!  There were no bruises, holes, or anything wrong with them.  Their loss!  Aren't they pretty?

I washed the peaches off a batch at a time.

While water was boiling to prepare the peaches for skinning, I made a simple syrup of 1 part sugar to 3 parts water.  Yes, it's clear, you're not missing anything here.

I boiled the peaches for 30-45 seconds, then threw them in a (cleaned) sink with ice water.  I cut them in quarters, and the skin just about fell off.

I'm using the hot pack method.  So I took the skinned peaches and put them in the simple syrup.  I kept them hot as I funneled the peaches and juice into the jars.

So gorgeous!  (You can even see more peaches hanging out in the sink.)

 

I used a hot water bath to can these, even though I used a pressure cooker.

I only did an eighth of a bushel, and this is what I canned!

I had some peaches left over, so I made my mom's famous peach cake.  Oh, is it good.  I've never quite made it as well as she does (and I over filled this pan below) but it will hopefully be pretty good.

 

Mom's Peach Cake

4 cups Jiffy Baking Mix
6 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 cup milk
2 egg, slightly beaten
4 Tbsp. shortening, melted
Blend together batter ingredients and spread into 1/2 mix on bottom of prepared pan. Cover with layer of sliced and peeled peaches with juice. Add other half of mix.  Put as many peaches as will fit (with some juice) on the top of the cake.  Bake 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees.