Frugalbeas

Food Storage

Its cloudy drizzly here in Washington this morning, last night we saw a flash of lightening and one crack of thunder, VERY rare for this area. Of course it freaked the boys out and they were positive we were going to have the storm of the century! They just arent used to thunder. I have spent both my days off on the couch with a cold, and its a tough one. I dont get sick alot, but these last couple months its one thing after another. Between colds are root canal infections I dont feel like Ive been working up to speed for weeks. I go back to work tonight, and wondering if there will be a change in attitude at my Lab. Last saturday and sunday hardly anybody on shift had even heard about the flu outbreak and the ones that did didnt think it was any big deal. Wether it turns out to be or not, the Lab will be impacted, with lots and lots of people decending on the hospital at the first cough or sniffle thinking they have it. My biggest worry is that we are already running a skeleton crew and an true outbreak would be taxing on the lab to say the least. Lets hope for the best........

Of course this outbreak got me looking even closer at our food storage, making sure we could go for weeks or months without leaving the house. What I found is how pitifully our medical supply is stocked. I have read you dont really find out where the holes are in your food storage until you need it, and that is so true. I started working on the medicines right away and will make that a priority. Not just for this but for the long term.

A couple people at work were asking about food storage and complaining because they couldnt afford to go buy hundreds of dollars worth of canned and boxed food. I explained to them that whereas I do buy up extra cans and boxes when its on sale, the majority of what I do is take meals back down to the most basic element. I started with bread, Buying flour and yeast in bulk. Then moved on to rice, spices, bulk beans, cocoa, sugar, cornstarch, powdered milk....In fact when I first started, the idea of bulk long term food storage was so daunting that I started one recipe at a time buying bulk ingredients for that recipe, each payday. For instance pudding. I need the cocoa, sugar, conrnstarch and Powdered milk. Then muffins, flour (already bought for the bread) sugar (already bought for the cocoa) powdered milk (already bought) and baking soda and baking powder, so I bought those two things in bulk. All those ingredients cover what I need for waffles and pancakes, so all I needed to buy was a couple gallons of syrup to add that to our menu. Moving on to dinners, chicken and dumplings or  chicken pot pie. I needed to add chicken boillion, chicken and crisco. So Id grab those. Cake......needed to add powdered eggs and confectioners sugar for frosting. Each recipe I added to our "survival menu" helped me to reinventory what we had, keep that stocked and add new meals to the stock by just adding a few more ingredients. We use and rotate our food storage and that has saved alot of money. The month of April we only spent 312 on groceries, and added to food storage to boot.

So thats my advice to anyone just starting with food storage and/or looking to reduce thier grocery bill while building supply. Start with bread. If you dont know how to bake bread, learn. Like I was telling my sister, if you and your husband have to split one can of chili, it will be a heck of alot more filling with a couple of fat slices of homemade bread. (dont forget to can and freeze some butter for that bread!! lol) After that, just pick something you normally eat (even if its storebought) and find a way to make it homemade and then buy bulk basic ingredients for it. You will find that as you go along you will need to only add a few bulk ingredients and so you dont have to buy "hundreds of dollars" of extra food. Having the basic ingredients in bulk will add variety and keep people alot happier. Yes it is more work to prepare and yes it takes planning, and yes, if you dont know how to cook you'd best get on that and learn!!! It is worth it. Someone at work is simply storing rice, beans, pasta and powdered milk. I told them they better add some sugar and cocoa to that, (among other things) or thier children are going to revolt!!!! Point being, if you are in a position that you HAVE to use your storage, You can leave the house or the stores are running low, To be able to make tasty meals and sweet treats will really keep moral up. Yes I know food shouldnt make you happy, but in a situation like that, it simply does.

Hopefully this helps those of you who have been asking me about food storage and where to begin. Good luck and take care

.

Knitting, canning and frugailities

Last week I joined an online local "meet-up" group that is devoted to knitting. I have been looking for someone to teach me to knit for about two years. I couldnt and wouldnt pay for lessons, and my holding out paid off. Last night the group met at a Barnes and Noble and the leader of the group was thrilled to have found someone to teach again. Everyone in the group was so nice and offering advice. There is more to it than crochet I am finding though. After an hour and a half I had stitched a 2X6 in chunk and was starting to pick up speed. My teacher was amazed at how fast I picked up on it and one woman refused to believe I had never held a pair of knitting needles before. I was quite proud of myself. Even though my mind doesnt entirely understand the process, my fingers seem to know what to do on thier own. One woman had a drop spindle and was spinning yarn at the table. I looked over and said "Thats next!" A drop spindle is much smaller and cheaper than a peddle spindle, (which I will own one day) so I think I am going to start with that.

Today Im canning chicken breast and pork, and trying to get caught up on house stuff before I go back to work this weekend. I want to quilt somemore and practice knitting also. I want to be really good by the time the group meets again in two weeks. I hope to be making socks in a month. Id be happy if every pair of socks in this house was knit by me and we never bought another pair of hanes again!

I promised a friend of mine that I would post on some of my daily frugalities. To some these things seem bizarre, and others have been doing the same for years. Ive stumbled across information through books, the internet and studying the great depression.

I make my own laundry soap and just love it.  I shave and chop fine 1 bar of ivory soap and add 2 cups of Borax, and then add 2 cups of washing soda which is just sodium carbonate, and can be found in the pool and spa section of walmart. I am probly going to change that to just baking soda, since Ive read that the sodium bicarbonate is hard on clothes. Regular baking soda might work just as good. Ive seen recipes with it. I recently tried to make a liquid "gel" version and it turned out horribly, like chunky egg-drop soup, even though it cleans just fine Im going back to my powdered version. I just use 1/4 cup in each load. The clothes smell so clean and wonderful. I also use Vinegar in a downy ball instead of fabric softener. Fabric softener has some really nasty chemicals in it and the vinegar works just as well. I have noticed a significant improvement in my sons asthma since changing this a few months ago. I do buy bleach, but use it sparingly. Im still looking for a more natural whitener for the laundry. I do keep a bottle of diluted bleach (1/8 cup in a quart of water) and use it for the counters, and the bathroom, especially the caulking.

I dont use paper towels. To me they are such a waste! I have a large basket in my kitchen window that I keep dozens of washcloths. Works great. I also only use Ivory soap in the shower. Even for my hair. I happened apon that by accident when there was no shampoo in the shower, so I used that. I loved how my hair looked and felt after, less frizzy and shinier. I only use that now. I read about using diluted vinegar in your hair in place of condioner, and am going to try that this week.

So I just stepped away from the computer to check the canner and got busy doing all sortsof other stuff. Looks like today has been a kitchen day. Bread rising, chicken and porks in the canner, cookie dough ready to bake, apple turnovers are baking and a roasts in the crockpot. All of this being made from scratch, from ingredients bought in bulk,  it amazes me how little it costs to feast. Of course the flip side is it takes all day! The other flip side is that we eat like farming families, but dont work like farming familiies.....We really have to watch out or we could gain alot of weight. Next saturday we are taking the boys out to a working farm to volunteer for the day. Its a farm that relies fully on volunteers and all the food grown gos to foodbanks. It will give us some good exersize and some experience. Id like to find other farms to volunteer at a few times a month around the puget sound. Maybe Ill work on that.

Lastly, we have decided to Homeschool Gabriel next year. We dont think High School is such a good idea. So Im doing alot of prep work for that. I have homeschooled before, my oldest, who is in college now. But I will need to take different approaches with Gabe. He is really looking forward to it and we already have activities and field trips planned for may and june with the local homeschool group.

Well, better get back to the canner, everyone have a great day!!!

Coupon adventure happiness!!!

So its taken me awhile to post about my coupon adventures due to a sick tooth. The menacing tooth is going to be removed tommorow morning, so it cant keep causing me trouble. We have tried twice to save it, but its not ment to be, so it must go.  I have had 4 days off (one of them I had to call in to work due to my face pain and taking pain medicine). Its rare to never that I get 4 days off in a row without taking vacation. I wish I would have been on top of my game, I could have gotten so much done around here! I havent even baked bread in 4 days! I have however been able to sit and absentmindedly clip coupons, and scour over details of sale papers to try to save some money. I must say I am very happy! I have always seen on the news these people at the grocery store that buy 200 dollars worth of groceries for 35dollars, or something like that. I decided to try it myself. I sort of got the hang of it with the "grocerygame" and I am still a paid subscriber, but I only log on to get an idea of whats going on at Safeway and Albertson, I actually found several things this week she didnt have on her site. So I have this mass of coupons(a friend at work hooks me up with all the ones that she doesnt use and I buy 3-4 Sunday papers and Ive bought a couple of sets of 100 off eBay for .99cents)  that I organized in my little pink organizer,(I may have to recheck them, I did this on the couch on Vicodin, so some things have popped up in strange places.) I found stuff onsale and matched them with coupons I had, and its really as simple as that. I save coupons even for things and brands I dont normally buy, because I would buy them if they were mega-cheap or better...free!!! (as my son walks by slurping a FREE danibals yogurt smoothie!!! I love it.  The standard I hold all prices to is "walmart generic". If I can buy a name brand for cheaper than walmart generic then I will grab it. If not, Ill pass. This week I made several trips to Albertsons since they had "double coupons" going on. But you could only double three coupons at at time per trip. So the first trip there was a sale, buy 3 boxes of cereal get a gallon of milk for free. The cereal was on sale for 1.99-2.19. I had 2 coupons for 1.00 of those cereals. And I had 3 "double it" coupons. So two of the cereals were free. I also had a coupon for 1.00 of half gallon of chocolate milk. I doubled that so the chocolate milk was only .69cents. All said and done, I got 3 boxes of cereal, half gallon of chocolate milk and a free gallon of milk for 2.99!!! Saved 16.69 according to the receipt. So of course i went back! got three more boxes of cereal, another free gallon of milk,  and double a coupon for Quaker rice cakes, for 4.50!! Yes, I went back. (two more times actually) I got two free vitamin waters, (on sale 10for10 and I had a 1.00 off coupon) Another chocolate milk and 2 more rice cakes. Paid 1.99!! The last trip, I was out of Doublers coupons, so I concentrated on matching what was on sale with coupos I had. I got 4 Lipton onion soups for .70 each, 4Lipton rice sides for .70 each, 2 danibals yogurt smoothies 6packs,  .69cents,(one was free with a double coupon)  2 danaibals crush cups yogurt (4packs) .69cents and 12 lit and fit yogurts for .30cents each. 2 cans of pringles chips,(free) Original total was 39.98. I paid 9.10..........So it CAN be done! It takes time and some organizing. But its worth it.  I saved 58.23 this week. (Albersons prices. Probly saved 35.00 walmart prices) It helps to have multiple coupons ready to go when stuff gos on sale, so start hoarding coupons!!!. This is a good way to help stock the food storage, buying multiple items for very cheap and storing some away. There are a bunch of coupons that I wont use no matter what, dog food, diapers, paper towels, etc. I decided to lump those together and post those on eBay, and hopefully recoop the cost of my newspapers. Heres the item numbers for the two Ive posted so far. Just put the number in the eBay search bar. 170319800223 and 170319814135

 I have another pack of all food coupons that I need to add to, and will post that one next week. So for those of you waiting for me to post on this Im sorry it took so long. My goal is starting next month to transfer over the money I saved into our savings account to save for our farm. That could really add up fast. Thanks to almost 1,000 in car repairs this month, I plan on starting that next month. Take care everyone, Molly

Productive days off

So I got most everything done on my last two days off that I wanted to do, I worked alot more on the quilt, I have half the horizontal stitching done. I canned 24 pints of veges, so there was room in my freezer to put meat that was on megasale, which I will grind/can my next couple days off. I made huge easter cookies for the kids after school.  Baked some bread and made bread pudding out of a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread that I had made a few days earlier but didnt get eaten.

On Monday Brian took me out to a little yarn shop in Allen, I finally got a bunch of questions answered about 'felting' and bought 4 skiens of wool to start a felted handbag. If it works out well, I know what everyone will be getting for christmas.!! I will post pics of the bag as it comes along. I really need to learn how to knit. I only crochet right now, but I want to make knit wool socks for everyone. Id be happy if we never bought another pair of "hanes" socks again!!!  Im still looking for lessons to take somewhere, or just someone willing to teach me.

My sister reminded me I forgot to put up my recipe for homemade refried beans, so I will post that . Work today, and even though I am grateful to have a job, theres just a ton of things at home Id love to be doing!!!!

Refried Beans: 9 cups water,3 cups beans, 1/4 cup dried diced onion 2 Tbsp minced garlic, 5 tsp salt, 2 tsp black pepper, 1/4 tsp ground cumin.

In a slow cooker cook on high for 6-9 hours depending on your slow cooker. If more than one cup of water evaporates, replace it.  when the beans get soft I start mushing them to i can stop the cooking when they are the right consistency. Anything from watery to hang from a spoon thick. If its a side, more runny, if its for burritos, then thicker.  I have only had to store them in the fridge because they get eaten up within a day or two. But I may double the batch and freeze some as well. Enjoy!!

Getting Started

So my big project I am so exited about is the quilt I am making for Brian. Nevermind that it was suppose to be a christmas present.  I have had the top done for awhile, and bought a second hand sheet and clearance blanket for the middle and back.  I decided to hand quilt this one, with a giant quilt loop and lots and lots of thread.......and time.......and patience....... It will be the first one of this size I have hand quilted. So far so good. I didnt think it would be as hard as it is to get those little stitches so even in size and spacing!! The more I do it the better I get though. I will post pictures of it soon.

I have the next two days off and Im hoping to get some canning done, I have a bunch of frozen veges that I bought in bulk that I want to get out of the way. I also want to make a big batch of refried beans and can those as well. Tommorow I will be posting my recipe for refried beans (super num-num) and canning instructions as well!!!!!!