Home Life

If you haven’t read this magazine yet, you’ll want to.  I just got a free copy and will be subscribing - the magazine for starters is huge.  Almost 200 pages! 

There are great articles on gardening, DIY solar power, making garden fences and trellises, natural relief for headaches, an article on eggs and chickens, making portable chicken mini coops, stories of homesteading, growing sweet potatoes and the list goes on. 

I haven’t had a chance to explore their website but they supposedly have a large archive of past magazine articles on their website for you to view.  The website is www.MotherEarthNews.com

Another FAVORITE newsletter of mine is called “New Harvest Homestead” and it covers the many topics of homesteading.  I find this newsletter great because it’s e-mailed to you (to cut down on costs, paper waste, etc.) and has many of the topics that are important to us on a daily basis and it does a great job at catering to any living style - from small apartment city living to the great outdoors in the country.   Find it at www.newharvesthomestead.com/

There are many great resources online - what are yours? 

Thankfully, my computer didn’t die.  My keyboard, however, did.  Keeping in mind that my computer is a laptop…

It involved a full chai and my son’s perfect aim with a sippy cup.  Yes, I should not have drinks around the computer, but it was late and the kids were supposed to be asleep (and I always have something yummy to drink when I’m working on the computer at night!).

Anyway - my computer lives.  I am typing with an external keyboard and have since taken my laptop apart, cleaned it and let the misc. peices dry in front of a fan.  It’s back together again and seems otherwise unharmed.  And, by the way, it is complete torture not being able to type when you have otherwise full access to your computer.  I could recieve e-mail and surf the web, but couldnt respond to email or blog or anything.  To do some bare basic essentials I had to copy and paste my messages letter by letter (hence my short message about my being gone for a few days). 

I’ll be back to blogging tonight.  After some forced time off the computer I had fun stocking my deep freeze with yummy meals.  Tonight I’ll try to share some of those recipes!

my computer died be back in a few days

I guess a downside to making all of your own food means you end up having more dishes.  My sink (both sides) ends up overflowing by the days end or at least until I can’t fit anymore in and they start invading counterspace that I need to prepare food.

We don’t have a dishwasher, so I wash every dish by hand.  My daughter who is 3, loves to help by sorting and putting away the silverwear and rinsing dishes off in the sink before handing them to me to wash.  Really, she is very helpful!  She also loves to splash in the sink water, and transfer water from one measuring cup to another…  But, she’s a kid.  My son loves to crowd her on her stool and just splash in the water, or run off with a full measuring cup and shower one of the dogs… But, he’s a kid.  Very much so.  I want to get a hold of one of those Learning Towers (ever heard of them?) which is essentially a platform kids can use to get up close to tables, counters, whatever they might need a chair or stepstool to stand on for, and it has a railing around it so no one falls off.  I should actually try to convince my hubby to make one, but if he did we’d never be able to move the darn thing because it’ll be so reinforced! 

Typically, when I do the dishes I do what my husband not so affectionately referrs to as “dr. suessing the dish rack” where I have dishes precariously stacked one upon another so they all dry and I can fit as many as I possibly can into that little rack.  I’d still have dishes left over needing to be cleaned and dried despite my best efforts!

So we just bought a second drying rack.  It took me about 5 years to realise that I’d be able to get the dishes done all at once unless motherhood calls, and now when I’m done with a single stance at the sink, all of my dishes are done and the sink is glistening (and it makes me want to cook and prepare more food!  I love to cook, and will cook when I feel like it and just freeze the meal so I have them for another day when cooking might not come so easily).

Of course, I could just take the time to manually dry each dish and put them away before filling the rack up again.  I gave that an honest try, but it just takes too long.  Even though the 2nd drying rack takes up valuable counter space (I have space on either side of my sink for the drying racks), it doesn’t take dishes long to dry on their own and I put a nail in the wall next to my pantry to hang the rack and it’s attaching mat so it can dry and be out of the way when I don’t need it.

A shiny sink gives peace to the kitchen!  I’d love to hear your routine for handwashing dishes and how you’ve tamed your sink at home

I guess a downside to making all of your own food means you end up having more dishes.  My sink (both sides) ends up overflowing by the days end or at least until I can’t fit anymore in and they start invading counterspace that I need to prepare food.

We don’t have a dishwasher, so I wash every dish by hand.  My daughter who is 3, loves to help by sorting and putting away the silverwear and rinsing dishes off in the sink before handing them to me to wash.  Really, she is very helpful!  She also loves to splash in the sink water, and transfer water from one measuring cup to another…  But, she’s a kid.  My son loves to crowd her on her stool and just splash in the water, or run off with a full measuring cup and shower one of the dogs… But, he’s a kid.  Very much so.  I want to get a hold of one of those Learning Towers (ever heard of them?) which is essentially a platform kids can use to get up close to tables, counters, whatever they might need a chair or stepstool to stand on for, and it has a railing around it so no one falls off.  I should actually try to convince my hubby to make one, but if he did we’d never be able to move the darn thing because it’ll be so reinforced! 

Typically, when I do the dishes I do what my husband not so affectionately referrs to as “dr. suessing the dish rack” where I have dishes precariously stacked one upon another so they all dry and I can fit as many as I possibly can into that little rack.  I’d still have dishes left over needing to be cleaned and dried despite my best efforts!

So we just bought a second drying rack.  It took me about 5 years to realise that I’d be able to get the dishes done all at once unless motherhood calls, and now when I’m done with a single stance at the sink, all of my dishes are done and the sink is glistening (and it makes me want to cook and prepare more food!  I love to cook, and will cook when I feel like it and just freeze the meal so I have them for another day when cooking might not come so easily).

Of course, I could just take the time to manually dry each dish and put them away before filling the rack up again.  I gave that an honest try, but it just takes too long.  Even though the 2nd drying rack takes up valuable counter space (I have space on either side of my sink for the drying racks), it doesn’t take dishes long to dry on their own and I put a nail in the wall next to my pantry to hang the rack and it’s attaching mat so it can dry and be out of the way when I don’t need it.

A shiny sink gives peace to the kitchen!  I’d love to hear your routine for handwashing dishes and how you’ve tamed your sink at home

Let’s talk bread baking – by hand.
As a part of my “back to basics” living approach in my own life, I’ve tried to master the art of baking bread by hand, without machines.  I used to have a bread machine, but truth be told it took up too much space and I didn’t like the bread it baked, so I freecycled it and decided if we wanted bread in our house, it would be home made.  Ok, well, bread for me and the kids. My husband likes rye bread and I haven’t found a recipe for that yet (anyone have one?) so I’m just baking whole wheat bread mostly and occasionally some white bread (using unbleached flour, to keep away from the bleaching process).
Upon learning how to bake bread, I didn’t realize there are a few “secrets” one must learn.  Once these secrets are learned, baking bread can be a breeze.  For me, the most time consuming part of baking bread is the mixing and kneading.  I have two toddlers at home and lately they seem to take this opportunity to get into the things they shouldn’t… So I try my best to do my kneading during nap time, or at bed time (then I usually freeze after the first rise because I’ll never be up long enough for the 2^nd rise and baking part at this point).
So some “tricks of the trade” for great bread:
-          Yeast can die. Yeast is what gives the bread it’s rise, and without it you’ll end up with a bread loaf the consistency of a brick.  Test your yeast by sticking it in a glass of warm water with some sugar – if it doesn’t get all foamy and poofy within about 10 minutes, it’s dead.  Be sure to store your yeast in the BACK of your freezer or in a deep freezer if you won’t be using it often.  If you’ll use it often, store it in the BACK of your fridge and put it away after each use – don’t let it sit out.  I made that mistake too often and when I buy my yeast in bulk (because we bake so much bread!) I end up loosing a lot of it.
-          Proof your yeast.  A lot of recipes I find call for mixing yeast, sugar, flour, salt and shortening (I use butter), then mix in the warm water and continue mixing.  I have found much better luck adding the amount of water, yeast and sugar (sugar feeds the yeast) and letting them sit for about 5-10 minutes before adding them to my flour and salt mixture.  I like to use raw cane sugar in my breads as it is a healthier option than white or brown sugar, but you can also use honey.  However, honey is harder for the yeast to feed off – but they still will.
-          Melt your butter.  I’ve had better results using melted butter when shortening is called for.
-          When you are letting your bread rise, calm the stampede around the rising area.  Rough handling and lots of bumps or vibrations can cause your bread to fall, resulting in a smaller loaf.  I stick my bread in the oven (off) – seems to be the safest place – and stick a light hand towel over it.  You can also use plastic wrap, but I hate throwing stuff away and try to stay away from disposable stuff as much as possible so the towel works for us.
-          When you bake your bread, stick some foil over it during the last 20 minutes to prevent a very hard and dark crust.
-          When the bread comes out, immediately butter it. Yuuummmmmmm!  Oh and stick it on a drying rack so the bread doesn’t get moist and icky from sitting in a breadpan.
-          Let the bread cool a little bit (we give it about 5 minutes – just long enough so we don’t burn our hands! LOL) before cutting it. Use a serrated knife or one of those nifty electric knives (we just bought one recently and LOVE it).  Let the knife do the work and don’t squash your bread in the process.  If you don’t have an electric knife you’ll probably have to let the bread cool and stiffen up a little more than usual so you don’t squish your bread as you try to cut it.
If you choose to make several batches of dough and freeze them, go through your normal process all the way through the first rise.  Upon punching your dough down and shaping into loaves, get your dough into the freezer (I put my dough in a foodsaver bag – about the length of a breadpan – so it can freeze in a shape that will easily fit into a breadpan when I want to bake it).  If you don’t have a foodsaver, you’ll want to keep your bread in it’s pan so it keeps it’s shape. You might want to put some wax paper between the dough and the pan so it won’t stick, or prepare your dough in the wrappings of your choice and let it sit in the pan until frozen.  When you want to bake a frozen loaf, bring it out, unwrap it and let it defrost at room temperature for 3-6 hours, then bake as usual.  Your bread will rise it’s 2^nd time as it defrosts.   You can also bake a bunch of bread and freeze the finished product.

Another blog (I also do Birth and Babies, as I am a childbirth and new parent educator and have a passion for, well, birth and babies!).  Despite the fact that life is busy enough as it is, homemaking and homesteading are two things I try to learn new things about daily.  If I can make the time to learn a new skill or gather new insight on something, I should be able to make the time to share it with you!

Anyway - my idea for the blog is to #1 help others who desire but lack domestic homemaking skills (this was me, and still is to an extent! LOL) and #2 encourage, inspire and educate anyone else about homemaking, homesteading (or rather being more self sufficient, using the land and resources we have available to us), and back to basics living.  By back to basics living I mean getting away from the convienience stuff - machines that do it all for you - and learning the basic skills needed to run a home no matter where you live. I firmly believe that home is where the heart is, whether your place of living is a tiny apartment or a huge sprawling country estate.   And I also firmly believe that elements of self reliant living can happen anywhere.

If you have any specific interests let me know and I’ll get started on them right away.  Until then, stay tuned.