Depression Era Cooking

This is an awesome lady with some great advice for us young whippersnappers! I am gonna search youtube to see if she has some more recipes and advice but enjoy this one that I found.

Learning to be frugal (or just plain cheap)!

Money is really hard to come by these days and even though we earn money it is buying less. This is just going to get worse in the coming times so learning to be frugal is a blessing. The first step in learning to be frugal is to know where your money goes and how much goes where. This is the step where you need to be extremely detailed. For instance, it is not enought to say that you spend 500.00 a month on utilities. You need to break it down as to what amount goes to which utility. By doing this you can see exactly where you might be able to cut down a few dollars. Going to the grocery store these days is an expensive endeavor, but do you know the value of your food dollar? The next time you shop, keep your receipt and break down how many meals you get from the amount that you bought and spent. Then look to see where the majority of your money went, did it go to convenience foods or "junk"? By thoroughly analyzing your grocery spending you can find ways to cut down. For instance, did you buy a frozen lasagna for dinner one night? Can you buy the ingredients and have several meals instead of one? For our family of 4 (one is very little though) I can make three meals from one chicken, sometimes 4 if nobody is really hungry one night. Keep a notebook for one month to see where your money is going and to find the areas in which you can save. It can be done, but it takes some work and effort on your part. Good luck.

Spanish Moss

We have a lot of Spanish Moss in our area and often have to clean it out of our trees because it gets so heavy that it will break branches, especially in our very old oaks. Well you know me always looking for a way to use what I have instead of getting something else. So I started doing some research and I found out a lot of interesting things about Spanish moss. For one it was used in the old days as livestock feed especially in the winter. Apparently it does have some nutrition as well as fiber in it. Also, it can be used as bedding for livestock due to its incredible ability to absorb moisture. Then there is spanish moss tea for the garden. Simply soak spanish moss is water for a couple of weeks and then pour the tea on your garden, awesome organic fertilizer. Then the most awesome thing is that most of the saddle blankets for the Confederacy were made from....you guessed it, Spanish moss. Apparently inside all that gray there is a long black fiber kinda like a horsehair. These fibers can be woven into blankets. Wow, who'd a thunk it?! So many great things from this one plant growing in my trees. For now we will be using it to bed the livestock and see how that goes. If the horses colic, I will be sure to let you folks know.

Storing Beans and Grains

I thought I would pass on a little tip when storing beans and grains coming from the grocery store. Normally, we would simply put the unopened packages in our pantry or if these were for long term storage put them in a bucket of some type. Well, I go one extra step before I put them in their permanent storage home. And here is why. One grocery trip I loaded up on beans and grains because my supply was getting pretty low. I brought them home and left them in the grocery bag for a couple of days (just a couple of days) while I gathered my storage containers and made sure they were cleaned out and no old stuff left in them. Well, when my couple of days was over and I had all my nice clean containers ready to be filled, I opened my grocery bag and pulled out the first bag of beans only to be confronted with the ugliest most vicious looking critters I have ever seen...grain beetles. If you have never seen these critters you don't want to. My beans were infested with the eggs when I bought them and they had hatched and were very hungry. I don't really know whether it was just one bag or several, but I do know that everything in that grocery bag went into the trash. Fortunately, nothing else in my pantry was affected because I keep everything in glass jars. I was mad because that was such a waste of money which is tough to come by these days. Ever since then when I bring these types of items home from the store I open the package and spread the beans on a cookie sheet. I then place them in the oven at 150 degrees for about 20 minutes. The heat kills any beetle eggs that might be in your beans. I have not had any beetles since then. For my grains like rice and flour, I will put those in the freezer for a couple of weeks and then they are fine to sit on the shelf in my pantry. No more grain beetles when I get home. So take these simple precautions to keep grain beetles out of your pantry because they will hitch hike home from the store.

Lent

We are now in the season of Lent. It actually started this past Wednesday. It is the remembrance of the 40 days that Christ spent in the wilderness. It is a time usually of self sacrifice, penitance, and a renewal of our commitment to God. Catholics usually forgo all meat except fish for the 40 days of Lent. We Episcopalians are allowed to choose how we spend Lent. Some of us give something up and some of us don't. One of my big vices is not drinking enough water. I drink a lot of sweet tea during the day. So, I have given up sweet tea and will be drinking water instead. Lent is not just a time for us to sacrifice, it is also a time to reflect on our relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ. Are we as close as we should be? Am I living according to His example? Just a couple things to ask ourselves. Sometimes Lent is a good time to start a habit, such as daily Bible reading. Getting up a few minutes early can give us some quiet time for reflection and growth in our personal spriritual walk with God. So reflect this Lenten season on the sacrifices made for you and where you can grow in your walk with God. Whether this growth comes from sacrificing something you love, or giving some extra time to be with God that is up to you individually. We all need to grow in different ways and in different areas of our life. The importance of Lent comes from knowing that growth is still needed and learning is not yet finished. May God bless you in your journey today and may this Lenten season bring you closer to our Savior.

Spring Cleaning

Even though I do a lot of purging when I go through my deep clean sections of the house each week, I still have spring cleaning that needs to be done. Since it is now March 2 and for us we only have a couple more weeks of cold weather left I am getting to my spring cleaning. So I will post the spring cleaning task for the day just above the deep clean sections. I am so ready for spring!

Snow!!!

It is snowing today!!! This is an odd thing for us down here in the deep south, so we get rather excited about it. My husband and youngest daughter have already been out in it. Don't know how long it will be here, but it is fun to get what we get. I will post pictures today of our little bit of snow and the completed chicken house. Have a great day!