October, November and December have been all about food and water. Food With our kitchen *almost* finished, at least finished up to the point we now have cabinets to store things and our walk-in pantry in place, though not yet completed, has shelving and space to fill up. 🙂 We had a wonderful hunting season …
It’s fall in Wyoming and I have apples on the brain! Each fall we like to stock up on apples. I often order these by the case from Azure Standard or pick locally from friends. I love to dehydrate apples to have for snacking and baking through the winter but we also enjoy eating them …
Amazingly versatile and so handy. Tomato powder is probably one of my favorite pantry items. This little gem is incredibly useful. Dried, tomato powder may be used in every way that tomato paste is used and more! Simply add water to make a paste or add it directly to items to give a tomato flavor. …
As I’m writing this post it’s late-June and I have a pot of soup on the stove for supper. Two days ago it was quite warm and more salad weather than soup weather but last night a storm came through and has left a cold dreary day behind. Once again perfect for soup weather. When …
It’s easy to get distracted when there is a large task to be completed. Preparedness is one of those tasks for me. Mainly because it’s a task that in many ways has no end. We first realized that we were woefully unprepared for things like natural disasters several years ago when a major storm hit …
You may know that I have a slight obsession with beans. Beans are a wonderfully frugal whole food, they have an excellent nutritional profile, and are extremely versatile. There are hundreds of varieties of beans/legumes available which really helps keep things interesting. Beans also make an excellent addition to your food storage. For ease of …
“Then the phone call came. One cold February afternoon, Jeff called to tell me his company did a 20% pay cut across the board. Two months later, it was a 20% reduction in hours on top of that pay cut. Just one month later, I got another afternoon phone call. They had laid almost …
We recently made a decision to bump up our food storage from keeping three months on hand to twelve months. Something that we started even when having three months of storage was a Heat and Eat Bin. In my Introduction to Food Storage: Why? post I told you about our real life experience of being without …
I like making lists. I make a ‘to do’ list almost every morning of the things I need to accomplish that day. I make a menu plan nearly every week. When we have a trip or vacation coming up my planning time usually starts several months in advance (yes, I’m already planning for next summer’s …
What would you do if you could not go to the grocery store? If you were not able to go to the farm and pick up your eggs, meat and milk? And your weekly produce CSA delivery was no longer running? What if all of the restaurants in town were closed? I’ve read that the …
Last month I did a few posts on some of the methods we use for tightening our financial belt as far as food costs are concerned. We are smack in the middle of several months of belt tightening. The reason for this is we have a new debt that we are paying. And that debt …
For the month of October, we’re focusing on tightening our belt and reducing our food costs. The main thing my family does to help with our food budget is menu planning. Close to 6 years ago I began meal planning. At that time we were not eating a real foods diet. In fact, the entire …
This is an exciting season for my husband. It is hunting season. One of the reasons we moved to Wyoming 3 years ago was for the hunting opportunities. My husband, with the help of our 17 year old (Kiki), makes it his goal each year to fill our chest freezer with antelope and venison. This year we are …
A few weeks ago I made a double batch of muffins. I realized as soon as they were in the oven that I’d forgot to add any baking powder or baking soda. Oops. I expected to end up with stones instead of muffins. I was super surprised to pull beautiful muffins with a terrific rise …
A few years ago I shared my basic muffin formula. This is an adaptation from the muffin formula in The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. I changed the original formula to allow for soaking the grains (in order to reduce the phytic acid and other anti-nutrients). I expanded on the details of this basic …