A Pretty Picture and a Recipe

We went grocery shopping today and picked up some oats and produce. I cannot explain it, but I find joy in coming home and putting away our newly bought produce. In the picture we have bananas, apples, limes, tomatoes, avocados, garlic, and jalapeno peppers. I just find a display of fresh fruits and vegetables to be really pretty.

Also, today I made up a batch of Crockpot Refried Beans. We like this recipe because it's easy and it makes a large batch. I do this every so often, use what we need, and then freeze the rest.

Crockpot Refried Beans

3 cups dry pinto beans
8-1/2 cups water
1 onion, diced
1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 t. cumin
2 t. salt
1/2 t. black pepper

Combine all ingredients in crock pot. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Drain out most of the water. Mash beans with potato masher, adding some liquid back if needed. Can be portioned out and frozen for later use.

Enjoy!

Eating Out Of Our Pantry Challenge - Menu and Update

Well, for the first two weeks of the challenge, things were pretty easy. My menu came together pretty quickly and there were very few things that I ended up purchasing. This coming week, though, is proving to be a bit more challenging for me. I had a harder time coming up with a menu because I felt like I was having to choose between purchasing extra ingredients versus eating the same meal over and over again. I did eventually come up with a menu, but I'm not entirely pleased with it. Here's the plan for this week:

Breakfasts:
oats with maple syrup and milk
pumpkin muffins
egg sandwiches
pancakes
leftover pancakes
Mighty Tasty cereal and fruit
Homemade granola cereal and fruit

Lunches:
Leftovers
Chicken Chowder

Suppers:
Spaghetti and Cheesy French Bread
Leftover Mexican casserole from our freezer, cheesy refried beans
Steak, roasted sweet potatoes, peas
Grilled chicken, roasted potatoes, boiled carrots
Stovetop Beef Stew, homemade bread
Beefy Spanish Rice, guacamole, chips
Roasted chicken, herbed rice, steamed broccoli with lemon butter sauce

Snacks:
Homemade pineapple gelatin
Blackberry cobbler
Sunflower Seeds
Pumpkin Seeds
Peanuts

Last week our grocery purchases came to $14.62. This included 8 cans of tomato sauce, a large bag of oranges, a large bag of organic carrots, bananas, and lemons. So, the total amount of grocery spending since December 23rd (2-1/2 weeks ago) is now at $49.27.

Since this week was so intimidating I'm really dreading next week! I'm running out of ideas!

Making Homemade Laundry Soap

I made laundry soap yesterday and took pictures of the process. I know that I used to have the desire to make my own detergent, but was intimidated of the process of making it. Hopefully, if anyone reading this is apprehensive about making it, the pictures will help show you just how easy it is to do.

My sister (Hi Angie!)got me started making this detergent. She did it first and gave me a free sample to try. I love it and always use it even though I have two full bottles of the store-bought stuff still sitting in my laundry room. It is especially nice since we try to avoid artificial fragrances. Ivory soap does have some fragrance in it, but the Feingold Association has found that those with sensitivities usually tolerate it well.

First thing...make sure that you don't have any laundry that needs to be done for 24 hours. Your detergent will need to sit for an entire day, so get all necessary laundry done before you start making your detergent.

Here are the ingredients you'll need:



1/2 cup washing soda (NOT baking soda)
1/2 cup Borax powder
1 bar Ivory soap

You will also need water and a small bucket.

First, you grate the entire bar of Ivory soap.



Add the grated soap to a saucepan and add 6 cups of water. Heat it until the soap melts. Here's a photo of the soap/water mixture right after I've put it in the pan.



And here's what it looks like after the soap has melted.



At this point, add the washing soda and Borax. Stir until everything dissolves. Remove the pan from the heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket.

(Honestly, the most difficult part in making my own detergent was finding an appropriate bucket to use. I ended up using an old cat litter bucket that we had around the house. I don't know what size it is because all it says is that it holds 30 pounds of cat litter! However, the detergent recipe that I use says to use a small bucket that is around 2 gallons.)

Here's my bucket. I put it next to my KitchenAid mixer so you can kind of get a visual size comparison.



After adding 4 cups hot water to your bucket, add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir some more. Your soap mixture will look like this...basically cloudy water.



Let this sit for 24 hours. During this time, the detergent will gel. It will become semi-solid. The best term I can think of to describe its consistency is "gloopy." You can see in the picture that it's solid enough to support a measuring cup on top.



After the 24 hour period, give your detergent a little stir to distribute the water better. Use a 1/2 cup per load. I tend to give my detergent a stir each time I get ready to use it.

I haven't had any trouble using this detergent. However, don't expect to see the pretty white bubbles that you get from the store-bought stuff. This is a low-sudsing soap, so you won't see suds.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Happy cleaning!

You Ain't From Around Here, Are Ya?

So, Shawn has heard this remark both yesterday and again today. We're a little amused by it, so I thought I'd share.

Yesterday Shawn went in to the local hardware store. He was looking at the No Trespassing/No Hunting/Private Property signs when two local men came up to him. "Having problems with trespassers?" one of them said. Shawn replied, "Well I just moved here and noticed a lot of deer on our property. I thought I'd be pro-active so no one decides to hunt on my land." The local man replied, "Where ya at?" Shawn said, "Oh I got a place east of town." At this point the local man nudges the other one and snickers and says, "He don't want us to know, does he? He wants to keep all them deer to himself." They laughed and said, "That's ok, that's ok." The man then said, "You gonna have problems with road hunters then?" Shawn said, "Well road hunting's illegal and I don't want anyone to be tempted to road hunt off my property." The local man nudged his friend and said, "You don't know anything about road huntin' now, would ya?" The two men had a great laugh over that and proceeded to walk away. When Shawn was at the check-out counter, the clerk was talking to him about the items he was purchasing. Shawn explained to the clerk that we just moved here and there were a few projects that needed to be taken care of around the property. Then Shawn heard a familiar voice behind him, "Yeah, you can tell he ain't from around here!"

Then today Shawn went in to the local lumber store. The clerk explained that he would take Shawn's order, then give him a ticket. Shawn would then need to take the ticket, drive around to the other building, present his ticket to a man over there, and his lumber would then be loaded. Shawn got tickled when he drove to the other building only to find out that the man he presented his ticket to was the same man that just took his order. :)

Later, the clerk was loading up the lumber and Shawn was preparing to tie it down using the hitch of the truck. The clerk gave Shawn a confused look and said, "You ain't from around here, are ya?" Shawn replied, "Well, we just moved here." The man then said, "Yeah, I could tell...ya ain't got a knob on your truck." Apparently we're odd because Shawn doesn't keep the knob on the hitch of his truck all the time. So, we are now accepting donations of boat trailers or horse trailers or flatbed trailers..anything that requires a hitch. Come on...don't you want us to have friends?

So, I guess it's pretty evident that we're doing a great job blending right in to our new community. At this rate, we might make the front page of the newspaper.

Living Without Television

One of the luxuries that we gave up when moving out to our homestead was television. Actually, it wasn't something that we had intended to give up. We had discussed doing without TV, but ended up putting in the order to move our service out to our new property anyway. Then we learned that we wouldn't be able to get local channels at our new home. They simply weren't available out here. Shawn wasn't very happy about that and decided that he wasn't going to spend money on a bunch of satellite channels that we didn't watch when the channels we did watch weren't even available. So, we cancelled satellite TV.

We haven't had any television in our home since December 16th. Honestly, I am enjoying it. I was worried about it at first because Sam is very, VERY into TV. Part of his autistic behavior involves him obsessing over certain shows and memorizing them. He could recite the Dora Christmas Carol Adventure to you from start to finish and even include sound effects! So, it's not surprising to know that the most noticable improvement has been in Sam. I've noticed that he's using his imagination a lot more than before. He'll go to the magnetic letters on the fridge and spell out "shows" that we're going to watch. It's funny because he's limited to only the words he knows how to spell. This is one of the TV show lineups that will end up on the fridge:

3 HORSE
4 BATMAN
5 SAM

Then he'll yell at me, "Momma, Momma..at 3:00 we'll watch Horse, at 4:00 we'll watch the Batman computer, and at 5:00 we'll watch the Sam show!!" He gets so excited that you'd think they were real shows he was planning to watch.

So, instead of our normal routine of:
6:00 Local news
6:30 Wheel of Fortune
7:00 NCIS or Biggest Loser, or whatever
8:00 put kids to bed and then Shawn and I would settle in front of the TV with a snack until 10:00 when we got ready for bed

Instead of doing this, we're spending the evenings actually interacting with the kids. Sarah and I wash the dishes by hand while Shawn plays with the boys. There's no longer the constant "noise" in the background. Once the kids are in bed, Shawn and I spend our time catching up on emails, researching future projects, or working on something around the house. It's really very nice and I'm glad we got rid of TV. I think it's really a good thing for our family and our budget.

Eating From Our Pantry Challenge - Menu and Update

So far our challenge has been going well. We've been able to have yummy, filling meals simply by using what we have on-hand. This past week's grocery purchases totalled $34.65. This total included two gallons of raw milk and six dozen farm-fresh eggs.

Here's our menu plan for the coming week:

Breakfasts:
blueberry muffins
homemade granola and bananas
eggs and bacon
more homemade granola and bananas
eggs and cinnamon toast
waffles, mandarin oranges
leftover waffles

Lunches:
Leftovers

Suppers:
Cheeseburgers, fried potatoes, peas
Chicken Noodle Soup, hot rolls
Homemade pizza and salad
Fettucine Alfredo with Broccoli and Chicken, mashed sweet potatoes
Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans
Frito chili pies, peanut butter sandwiches, pineapple
Supper with family

Snacks:
Sunflower seeds
Peanuts
Homemade pineapple gelatin
Popcorn
Ghirardelli chocolates (for mom!)

So...so far so good!

Miscellaneous Thoughts and a Recipe

Shawn and I were so excited this morning to get up, open the curtains in the living room, and see a group of deer walking across our pasture. They had come out of the woods on one side and crossed to get to a small creek on the other. When we first saw them, Shawn said he saw a total of six deer. As we watched them longer, we noticed another, then another, then another. There were a total of NINE deer drinking from the creek that's 100 yards away from our front door. It was amazing to watch. Needless to say, Shawn's getting rather excited about his first deer season on this property.

Since this is an earth-berm home, the north side of our house is built into the ground, but the south side has a lot of windows. Our living room has two large picture windows. Outside one of the windows is a Bradford Pear tree that we've hung a bird feeder on. We enjoy looking out those windows and watching the birds outside. At one point yesterday I had two turtledoves, a woodpecker, two cardinals, and about five of some unknown cute, little gray bird all eating at the birdfeeder.

On a less happy, but still very interesting note, Shawn also found fresh coyote tracks in a patch of mud that's 40 feet away from our front door.

Since it was such a sunny day yesterday, I spent a little time out in the garden. I was able to tear out the previous owner's old pepper plants. While doing that, I ran across a small carrot that was still in the ground. I pulled it and gave it to the kids. It was only about three inches long, but it was a pretty, bright orange and the kids liked that it came out of our garden. I am really looking forward to working in the garden with the kids.

Oh, how I love it out here!

Finally, I figured that I'd leave you with a recipe that I tried recently for the first time. I discovered it on one of the healthy eating blogs that I visit, then adapted it a bit. I call it "Healthy Fudge" because it has some really good ingredients in it. Shawn and the kids all really liked it too. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Healthy Fudge

1 cup cocoa powder
1 cup unrefined virgin coconut oil
3/4 cup honey
natural peanut butter

Melt halt the coconut oil in a small saucepan. Place remaining 1/2 cup of solid oil in blender with cocoa and honey. Add melted coconut oil and pulse until smooth and blended. Line a bread pan with saran wrap or parchment paper. Pour fudge into pan and place in fridge until solid, about 1 hour. Remove from pan. Spread a layer of natural peanut butter on top and cut into squares. Store in fridge. Yields approximately 15 squares.

I hope everyone has an enjoyable Sunday!