Category: homemade

books / cat / chickens / dogs / homemade / sheep

Oreos and Rain

Most of the snow is gone now and it has been raining since sometime last night. Once lunchtime came at work all I could think about was coming home and cuddling up with a book, a movie, 3 dogs, and a cat. Brian is working late tonight as he is on lookout for flooding across the roads. After working my way up the wait list I was able to pick up Multiple Blessings from the library on my way home from work. I did chores and got attacked by the mean Leghorn rooster. I am so fed up with him I’d like to make him dinner but that would be a lot of work for 1 rooster. Plus, I just don’t like the idea of the hens being out there without him. Today was the first time he’s managed to get me good with his spurs and my hand was bleeding the prove it. Oh the joys of farm life! About the oreos: I just love oreos. I think they’re great. However, I sacrificed my oreo habit when I started trying to eat mostly local and mostly without HFCS. I found this great homemade version online and use it to

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food storage / homemade / recipe

Waste Reduction and Chocolate Muffins

I am very excited to be taking on the the Food Waste Reduction Challenge hosted by Crunchy Chicken (see sidebar for link). To start out I tossed any old food that I found in the fridge so that we can start fresh. Most of what I tossed were old dressings and sauces that we never use and brought here with us from the old house. I also threw out some shrimp and cocktail sauce from Christmas and one thing of leftovers from a restaurant. I plan to use my postal scale to weigh anything we throw out in February. When I got to the freezer I was relieved not to find much that needed to be tossed. I did pitch some leftover cheesy potatoes we had frozen from our wedding. Then I came across the several bags of frozen shredded zucchini from last years garden. I had yet to use any of them. So, what’s a non-wasting girl to do with all that zucchini? Make muffins! Yeah, chocolate muffins to be exact. I pulled together a recipe from a few different ones to come up with the following: Chocolate Muffins with (Shhh!) Zucchini2 2/3 cups whole grain pastry flour (or

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bread / flour / food storage / homemade / local / local flour

A Local Loaf

Today I picked up another order of local flours from Hampshire Farms (see sidebar for link). I got: 25# 100% whole grain bread flour10# 100% whole grain pastry flour2# cornmeal5# sunflower seeds (dehulled) Randy Hampshire, who filled my order was more than happy to show me around their farm. They have a USDA approved kitchen on site along with the brick oven that Randy built himself. It was very impressive! The farm also boasts a nice warehouse in an old grainery, where all of their flour and wheat is stored. They also have, meandering around the pastures, a family cow. She is a nice looking Jersey and had a few other cattle keeping her company. I have given a lot of thought to having our own family cow and have thought about it more and more seriously lately. I don’t think it is the right time for us, and it would take a lot to convince my husband. He probably has a point – it is a lot easier to find someone to throw in some grain for our animals then to milk twice a day when we want a vacation. In any case, of was jealous of Randy’s family

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bread / homemade / self-sufficiency

A Twinge of Self-Sufficiency

I like to play this game where I try to stock up enough food and staples that I don’t have to go grocery shopping for a long time. After a lot of practice I finally got to where the only things on the list were dairy products such as milk, cheese slices, cheese sticks, and butter. Apple juice also had a permanent spot on the list. After a few good sales we now have lots of cheese and butter in the freezer and many, many gallons of juice in the pantry. We’re down to picking up a gallon of milk here and there when we stop at the local meat market for lunch meat. Today when I came home from work I walked in to the kitchen and sat my tin I Love Lucy lunch box on the counter as usual. From there I looked over towards the fridge and could see that two lines at the top of the grocery list had writing on them. Darn! I thought, what could we possibly be out of!?! bagelscream cheese Bagels – hmmph! The last package almost got moldy before I pointed that out and my hubby quickly scarfed them down as

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cards / christmas / homemade / recycling

Homemade, Last Minute, Cute, Kinda Green Christmas Cards!

Okay so this morning I started shopping around for Christmas cards online. I’ve done this many times in the past few months and always got discouraged because the recycled cards are sooo expensive. I was going to give up on that idea and instead created a cute card with some caricatures of my family on the front. I was almost at the point of entering my credit card number to the tune of $50 for 50 cards. That was $30 for the cards, $4 for some matching gift tags I’d fallen for, and the rest was all shipping and handling (just to get them here in 7-10 days – kinda close!). Anyway, one of the last options before checking out was to download the caricatures for unlimited use on your computer. The cost was $1.99 per caricature or $6.99 for the whole group of six. I was a little concerned that the company wouldn’t allow you to purchase just the images without an additional order but after deleting the printed cards and gift tags, only the download charge remained!! No tax and no shipping, just $6.99 total billed to my card. When I got home tonight I used MS Works

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detergent / dishwasher / homemade / recipe / soap

Greening Your Dishwasher

So a little more than a year after moving in and rearranging our kitchen to make room for a dishwasher, it is finally up & running. And I sure am loving it. I have lived without a dishwasher for most of the past 4 years and I really thought that maybe I wouldn’t use it much once I had one – WRONG! With all the baking I do now I still have quite a few things to hand wash but it is very nice to just put the rest of the dishes right in there and have it all done for me. However, I was a little worried about how environmentally friendly this was going to be so I thought I’d do a little research. Please see the links to my sources thoroughout. Apparently, if your dishwasher is more than 10 years old it is worth investing in a new one. The energy cost of running such an old machine is prohibitive. One article I read mentioned possibly donating an old machine. In my opinion it would be much better to call someone who will cut it up for scrap and find uses for the motors, fans, etc. Our dishwasher

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