Thank You!!
As a new blogger I’ve been very excited to watch my readership grow and am happy to announce that today I topped 100 page views for the day! I know in “real” blogger terms this is still small, but to me it’s huge. Thank You to […]
Month: January 2012
Prepping – Call Me Crazy
Well folks here it is. I secretly love the idea of The End Of The World As We Know It. Truth be known I’d probably love the actual scenario a lot less than the idea. However I’ve spent the last couple years trying to boost […]
Organization
If ever anyone had an Achilles heel…
This is the time of year when many of us begin looking around wondering where all this stuff came from. And where should we put it all? First, let me say organization is just about my biggest challenge. There are days when I live in fear of the doorbell, because our house looks a bit like, well, THIS:
I have never been well organized in my personal life. I do, oddly, manage to stay organized at work where I don‘t keep much stuff. Also there was a period of about six months a few years back when everything had a home and lived in it. Unfortunately this was the result of a house fire which left us with almost nothing. Its easy to organize and tidy just a few items. Which brings me to my point. I’ve realized that there is no number of neatly labeled storage totes or cute shelves that can tame the beast named Too Much Stuff. So I’ve started a three part campaign against the accumulation of unused or otherwise annoying items in my home.
First, I’ve set the goal, and stuck with it so far, that one box or bag of items we’re not using gets given away each week. So far I’ve sent about a third of my clothes, a tiny dent in the toys, and a bunch of kids clothes and shoes to thrift stores or directly to new homes. The kids clothes are a bit of a sticky subject since I try to run most of them through both kids before I send them away, and I buy for the biggest kid a couple sizes ahead if I find a great deal, so we use a bunch of storage on waiting clothes. Still, I plan to stick with sending things away until all the clothes and toys can be put away at the same time. Do any of you always have clothes in the laundry room because there isn’t enough closet space for it all to be clean and put away at the same time? Are you truly short on closet space, or do you just have too much stuff? The same idea could apply to kitchen cabinets or basement storage spaces.
Second, I’ve started to get just a little ruthless about which items come into the house. Let me explain. My kids currently own, oh, about a million or so toys which they may or may not play with. I’m not sure. The toys are certainly making their way out of the toy room and into the rest of the house, I just never actually see a child in possession of any of them. As a result I’ve decided that the majority of gifts I purchase for my kids and others will be consumable, not toys. I try to buy things that get used up and don’t add to the clutter. I love crayons, paper, paint and coloring books for this purpose. The kids love them, use them up and they can always use more, but since they do get used up there aren’t a ton of them lying around. As an added bonus these things encourage creativity. I’ve also adopted this pattern in buying for adults. For instance, I’ll be getting my husband ammo for his birthday (which he’ll love, and will magically disappear) instead of yet another funny tee shirt. Obviously there will be times when this doesn’t work, but even half time it makes a difference.
Third, I’m trying to eliminate accumulation bottlenecks. Simply put, if there isn’t a coffee table, there won’t be a stack of mail, drink cups and magazines on the coffee table. Same goes for that table I thought I’d use to fold laundry in the mud room. It turned into a place for us to dump whatever we needed to get out of the car in a hurry. There were coats, backpacks, and basically anything we didn’t want to actually put away. So one day I dug in, cleared it off and got rid of it. Right now we’ve got a major bottle neck in our back hall, which I’m slowly whittling down. It started as a coat rack and baby-changing table. Now it’s a massive heap of junk, all of which has a home somewhere else in the house, but which we were too lazy, busy or impatient to put away. This one is also a matter of changing habits, UGH…that’s another post.
Also, while it doesn’t get much out of the house, I’ve started asking my husband and children to spend ten minutes tidying up while I cook dinner. It is amazing how often they fail to realize it’s been more than ten minutes and keep cleaning until I call them to the table.
I’m sure there is plenty more one could do, but this is a start and often a start is just what we need to reach the finish.
What do you do to eliminate clutter and stay organized? Seriously, I need the input!
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Easy Whole Wheat Artisan Bread
My sister asked me to post this recipe, but I think some of you will like it too. If you’ve never made bread this one is almost goof proof. I’m sorry there’s no picture, it’s usually eaten before I think of taking pics. You’ll need a […]
Honey Whole Wheat Bread
Today I’m linking up with Homestead Barn Hop, so I thought I’d share my tried and true recipe for Honey Whole Wheat Bread. This recipe makes two 5×9 loaves. Originally it called for only two Tbsp honey, but my husband likes it sweeter, so I’ve adapted it to […]
Woodstove Baking, Take One
Folks who know me will tell you I’m always learning to do something new. In this case I tried something old.
I’ve been making my own whole wheat bread for a few years now, and if I may toot my own horn, it is delicious. But I’ve never tried making it without using my electric oven before. So I decided to try baking it in our woodstove. This is a wood burning fireplace insert, not a wood cook stove. Naturally my first step was to Google it. There is a serious lack of information out there on baking in a wood stove. But I adapted the things I found on hearth cooking and wood burning ovens, and got to work.
First I made a medium sized fire and let it burn down until I had what looked like enough coals. Then I pushed the larger coals to the back of the stove and made a thin, even layer of coals on the bottom of the stove near the front. Next I filled a dutch oven with about an inch of water, and placed my bread pan in the dutch oven hovering over the water. I was worried that if I put the bread pan directly in the coals the bottom would burn. I placed the dutch oven and bread pan combo on the thin layer of coals and closed up the stove.
I chose the worst possible night for my experiment as it was crazy windy. Wind kept coming down the chimney and blowing ashes up onto my loaf. It couldn’t have helped that I kept opening the doors to check on progress.
After 20 minutes I rotated the loaf so that the other side would face the larger coals at the back of the oven. After another 20 minutes I removed the loaf. While it was still in the pan it looked a little paler than when I use the electric oven, but I turned it out onto a cooling rack anyway. I could see immediately that the bottom was sinking in, indicating that the center was not done.
Since my coals were weakening, and every time I opened the woodstove I got a face full of ash from the wind, I decided to give it a few minutes in the electric oven to finish. Ten minutes later I had a slightly ashy, and not quite as lofty as usual loaf of bread. It was a little smoky, but definitely edible.
Next time I will choose a less windy night for my baking. I will also clean out the ashes, and build a bigger bed of coals to work with. Also I’ll probably be looking for a camp grill to put under my bread pan instead of the dutch oven. I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Have any of you tried alternative cooking methods?
Building A 72 Hour Kit
It has been an unreasonably pleasant winter here in our corner of the world. But it seems we’ll be paying the piper over the next few days, as we are in for a massive winter storm.(hee hee!) News reports are urging folks to stock up […]
Dehydrating Celery
It seems our family rarely uses and entire bunch of fresh celery before it turns limp and yucky. I’m not sure why this happens, but I think it has something to do with the clutttered state of our refrigerator. As a result, I started dehydrating […]
Here Come The Seed Catalogs!
It happens each year. Just as you begin to itch with cabin fever, you open the mail box to find the first harbingers of Spring. Seed Catalogs! Perhaps you spirit them away to enjoy them alone for a bit. Perhaps you fly into the house waving them for all to see. Either way, it is very likely you’ll thumb through time and again, dreaming of warm soil between your fingers and toes, imagining the culinary possibilities. If you’re like my husband you’ll make a long list of everything you’ll grow this year. If you’re like my husband it will be a too-long list.
We’ve been gardening on our farm for two years. Both of them our harvest was impeded by our scattered interests resulting in too much variety in too small a space, and needing too wide an array of conditions. We simply tried to do too much (and at our busiest time of year, professionally) to do any of it very well. We still got vegetables for our table and a few to share, but with a bit more narrowing we could have had much more. Since our goal is to have vegetables for the table, storage food for winter, and eventually a long term pantry, we need to tighten things up this year.
I’ve decided that this year we’ll keep exotics to a minimum. I’m not completely against trying new things, mind you. It’s just that if I’m going to spend time, energy and resources to grow something, I need to know my family will eat it. Therefore I’ll be taking a look in the cupboards and freezer to get an idea which veggies we already eat.
Another thing I’ll be considering is growing conditions. By minimizing the variety of growing conditions I need to provide, I can greatly streamline my efforts and make things easier during this busy time. It would be great if I can just water twenty minutes morning and evening, pull some weeds, and reap what I’ve sown. I’m not much of a dreamer am I? I’ve realized that I need to grow plants that can tolerate a little…um, shall we call it independence? Yes, that sounds much better than neglect.
The last thing I’ll consider is storability. Since we are busy parents, and much of what we grow will need to be pressure canned or dehydrated, I’d like to grow some crops which do not require lengthy processing for storage. These are things such as potatoes and dried beans which, once properly cured, are pantry stable from several months up to many years.
Here is my list so far:
Green beans
Peas
Broccoli
Corn
Cucumbers
Mixed Greens
Sauce tomatoes
Potatoes
Squash, summer and winter
Drying beans
This list might look very different than my husband’s list, so we’ll probably meet somewhere in the middle.
What will you grow this season?
Look What I Found!
About 5 days ago when I went out to close up the coop for the night I noticed we were short one barred rock hen. I looked around a little, but since I didn’t see any sign of predation I figured I’d see her in the […]