Month: November 2009

And you thought I’d forget to post about this… 😉 Gathering Supplies: When I wanted to make mozzarella I knew the place to go was cheesemaking.com. I had heard of Ricki Carroll the “Cheese Queen” more than once. She is the go to person for beginning cheesemaking. I am not going to describe the cheesemaking process step by step here. Instead I’ll offer up what I learned and refer you to her site for the rest. I was going to buy her 30 Minute Mozzarella and Ricotta kit. After breaking down the price and reviewing the mozzarella recipe I decided to order my ingredients separately. It was more cost effective for me because a)I already had a thermometer and b)I didn’t need muslin that came with the kit as I didn’t plan to make ricotta (and would probably make due with something else anyway). I placed my order on a Wednesday for two items: Vegetable Rennet tablets (item R4) Citric Acid (item C13N) I was seriously impressed when I opened my mailbox on Friday (only 2 days later) and found my order in there. I paid for it with my debit card and they didn’t actually debit my account until

I like this post so much that I think you should all go read it right now.  It’s safe to click, I promise. It describes what I have trouble saying… yes I care about the environment and yes I want to keep myself healthy but I really could take that way too far if I tried.  I was laughing out loud the whole time I was reading it!  Enjoy! 🙂

At the risk of sounding cliche, I’m beginning to think in terms of goal-setting as we approach the new year. I want more focus in my life. Perhaps this is just how life goes but lately I feel like I’m running in 10 different directions! Dave Ramsey says (yes, Dave says Dave says Dave says, I know, just bear with me) a big part of why the TMMO principles work is because they call for focused intensity. You zoom in on one debt at a time and nail it to the wall. Why not apply that kind of focused intensity to other areas of life? The first step to accomplishing this is to identify what activities are draining your energy and causing you to lose focus. I’m going to start today by identifying some of those little things that take up a lot of my time. Internet: If I’m home, I have the laptop open. This isn’t all bad. However, I have several irons in the fire with this blog, the Living Like No One Else forums, Ravelry, MySpace, and now Facebook. Not to mention e-banking through two different banks, constantly checking my e-mail, watching crop prices, googling new recipes,

I served this tonight at my sister’s birthday party. Everyone was raving about it! I was a little apprehensive when my sister requested a carrot cake but it was very easy to make. I’m not going to repost the recipe here since I didn’t make many alterations to it. The recipe can be found in its entirety as Carrot Cake III on allrecipes.com. There it has over 2100 reviews and still gets 5 stars! Here are my alterations: -I followed the cake portion exactly except to add in a couple dashes of nutmeg and omit the nuts. -For the frosting I dropped the confectioners’ sugar to 3 cups and added splashes of milk until I got a nice shiny, smooth consistency. The original recipe would have been way too stiff! I also omitted the nuts. -I baked mine in (2) nine inch round cake pans. After cooling they were flat enough to stack without any trimming. One batch of frosting was plenty to go between the layers and frost the outside. I even had enough to dye some orange and add “Happy 17th Tresa” on top and a border around the bottom. And eat a little, of course. I would

This is my post for Works for Me Wednesday. Check out other great tips today over at We Are THAT Family. ***Imagine a big picture of my pumpkin here. You know – that picture that I haven’t got around to taking. ;)*** I love gleaning things. According to Wikipedia: “Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.” In a more general sense I consider gleaning the process of taking unused foodstuffs from people who don’t want it or don’t have a need for it. This time of year is great for gleaning pumpkins. Our neighbors sell pumpkins but I never got around to buying any this year. Without kids around no one really seems to care or notice if I decorate so I didn’t bother. I was really craving pumpkin seeds though! My cousin gave me 4 pumpkins that she had sitting by her back door. She didn’t have time to carve them with a new baby around. Unfortunately I left my tailgate down and lost 2 of them. Good thing they were free! Then I brought home a big

For the most part I think the readers here are the type to make sacrifices in an effort to either help the environment or save money, or both. Around here we’ve given up almost all processed and prepackaged goods. I generally don’t miss these things. I really miss Kraft Mac N’ Cheese. In a box. Really, really miss it. So quick. So easy. And cheesy. And delicious. Oh my. I really miss it, did I mention that? Am I along here? What do you miss?

If you were expecting a post about our family history sorry to disappoint! Brian was working up the field that borders one of our pastures and he hooked this alfalfa plant. Wow! I had no idea the roots ran that deep.

Instead of “every light in the house is on”… every apple in the house is peeled. Sure there are a few eating apples left but every apple that was destined for a jar is in one now. Last year I think I was done with apples in September. Not so much this year! I made applesauce for a long time. When I got to the end I did some apple pie filling. Aren’t they pretty? Note: be patient and heat apples through first to avoid this half filled look. I thought they were warm enough but I was wrong. Here’s the aftermath: Whew! Another canning season under my belt! I’m a little disappointed in my total amount of applesauce. I didn’t count them yet to know exactly what I have but it doesn’t look like as much as I wanted. However, I did can more pears and peaches than last year so we still might have enough fruit to get through the year. Pantry update coming soon! 🙂

This post is linked to Frugal Fridays over @ Life As Mom. Click the image below to check out the other great tips! You may recall that awhile back we joined a cow share program. I had really good intentions of making all sorts of things with the milk but have yet to get around to most of it. That, combined with the fact that we’re still not quite comfortable drinking it raw, plus the fact that it only stays fresh about a week, all means that we have a lot of milk building up. I had 3 gallons of souring milk in the fridge already when I picked up a fresh gallon yesterday. I made mozzarella with the new gallon (more on that later!). What’s a girl to do with all the sour milk? Use it! That’s the nice thing about raw milk: it sours instead of rotting. It works wonderfully in all that bread I’ve been making and freezing. The recipe I use calls for dry milk and water. I substitute the same amount of milk for the water and leave out the dry milk. I shake the gallon really well first, heat to the proper temperature, stir

This posted is linked to Works for Me Wednesday. Check it out for other useful tips! I’m lovin’ homemade bread now that I can make a good loaf consistently. My schedule doesn’t allow for baking every day or every other day so I like to make several loaves when I can and freeze them. This is how I’ve been doing it. The bread tastes as good after freezing as it does before, albeit not as warm and tantalizing as it is fresh from the oven. I do use plastic bags. I bought a “value size” box of storage bags on sale for less than $3. It includes 75 bags and twist ties to close them with. 1. Let each loaf of bread cool completely, then slice if desired. Put the loaf in to the bag, press the air out, and tie snugly. 2. Put 2 loaves into a paper grocery sack, side by side so that the long sides of the loaves touch the creased sides of the bag. 3. Fold the bag over as shown and tape or staple securely. 4. Label clearly along the front and stack in your freezer. To use I take a bag of 2