Homemaking on the Homestead

  Today has been a quiet kind of day around here.   I slept in a little, which was nice!   When I got up Emily was just coming back from having taken Leanne to her nanny job.   Leanne is filling in for her so that Emily can have some more study time.   She is doing a lot of studying for her pre-calculus clep test.   She went all the way through Advanced Math with the Saxon books but that has been a few years ago.   She has been clearing the dust in her brain from those days..   as they say..   “if you don’t use it, you loose it”…   well she has not lost it..   just needs to be pulled down off the shelf and brought back to her current memory.   She was struggling with a few concepts and Tobin (our resident math genius ) helped her work through some of that this morning.      After the kids got up and going and the chores were done they all settled into the school routine and I got some r...

  I felt very rested when I got up this morning and started my day off running as my feet hit the floor..   ok.. well not quite..   I had to have my coffee first and give myself some wake up time.      While my coffee was sitting in my French press coffee pot steeping I went downstairs and got a fire going to start warming up the house.      Then I started some laundry and since my grain mill is in the laundry room I also started grinding up 10 cups of wheat (half of what I needed)..   my bucket of wheat was empty and so I went to the freezer to pull out another 50# bag.   The bag had gotten ripped and I had wheat spilling out.   I got a plastic garbage bag and managed to get it around the bag of wheat so I did not loose too much or make a huge mess in the freezer!   AT this point I had hefted and moved around so many huge bags of grain that my back was killing me and decided to wait until Tobin got home to pull that ripp...

So far so good on my working to meet my new goals (see blog post here ).   My sauerkraut turned out wonderful.. so delicious. I did have to move it to a warmer location to insure that it did not cool down to much overnight.   That did the trick and it came out perfect.      I made my beef broth (as seen in my last blog post).   And yesterday I made a new gallon of kefir to have on hand to use for soaking flour for baking.   I also made over a gallon of fermented salsa from Sally Fallon’s recipe.   Actually the recipe was pretty much like what I make except for the addition of the whey and some lemon juice.   If you want the recipe for this, then I highly recommend purchasing her book ..   lots of great nutritional information and recipes.    Here is a pic from yesterdays endeavors….     So my next goal is to make more yogurt so I can get more whey and more yogurt cheese.   Then it will be time to mak...

  I have had a few goals for this new year to improve our health (see the blog post where I discuss this HERE )by incorporating more food preparations on a regular basis from the book Nourishing Traditions (by author Sally Fallon) . One of those goals is to make stock on a regular basis. I am trying to avoid as much food as possible that contains MSG. Beef and/or chicken bullion cubes are loaded with MSG. I buy a better alternative which is a powdered stock seasoning from my health food co op but regardless it still contains forms of MSG. The only way to have flavorful broths and soups is to make stock from scratch, the way our grandmothers did it!  ~smile~ Homemade stock, aside from being MSG free, is loaded with good quality minerals that your body needs. Homemade stock is an excellent way to improve your family’s diet with high a super high quality food source. Before you begin you will need to purchase beef soup bones. I have seen them at butcher shops so I know the...

    I should say happy belated birthday! My son Jacob turned a big 15 years old on Sunday!   Wow…   Each year all 8 of my children grow another year older and my reaction still seems to be the same..   Wow!   Where did all the years go?..   I guess as I live day to day I don’t really reflect on the time passing by. However when a birthday comes along I have a few minutes to reflect and think about that child and the years that have gone by.  I realize that my babes are growing up!! Which is good in many ways and sad in others.    Jacob is growing up to be quite a mature, responsible young man.   He is a hard worker and very reliable.  This year he has shown great tenacity in his own personal goal of finishing two Saxon math books.   He plans to be done with the Algebra 2 book by the end of the month and then will start the Advanced Math book.   For anyone familiar with those books they are not e...

  After getting home yesterday from shopping I was able to get my cabbage cut up and start my sauerkraut.   This can be a couple day process just to get to this point ! LOL..     As I mentioned in my last blog post one of my goals is to try and make some type of fermented on a weekly basis. On Thursday I started by making some whole milk yogurt.   I had a small amount of Nancy ’s (brand name) Yogurt in my fridge but not enough to collect the needed amount of whey.      So I pulled out my yogurt maker.   I have made yogurt in many ways over the years but for me the easiest is with a yogurt maker.   A couple of years ago I purchased a Salton Yogurt Maker and have loved it. I even bought my daughter Carolyn one and she says she has been very happy with it too.   It makes 1 quart of yogurt.   It is reasonably prices as well.   For just under $25.00 you will have the ability to make lots and lots of y...

  Our visit with our son was wonderful! He was here 3 weeks and we so enjoyed that time with him. He left yesterday to head back to Ft. Bragg .   He really enjoyed the time at home too, it was necessary and needed recovery time from Iraq for him. He left with some fresh enthusiasm and better defined plans for the upcoming year and I am very excited for him!       But now it is time to get my life back in order and get the family back on our regular schedule.   We will start school officially on Monday.   Sierra and Isaac already picked up their math books and started getting a few lessons done this week.   But the rest of the school work will start back up on Monday.      Today I need to head to the grocery store and run a few errands.   Leanne and Sierra will come along to help.   After that there is laundry and food preps on my to-do list.       In the Kitchen: Nourishing Traditions   One of my...

  We have been focusing lots of our time with my son.   His visit home has been wonderful.   He said it has been just what he needed.   The girls and I have been keeping the meals and baking going almost non-stop since he came home.   I am glad to see him enjoying home cooking so much.   He still has a couple more weeks with us.   Today some of life needs to go back to normal.   Emily starts work again (after a couple week holiday break) and I think I will have the youngest kids do a little school.   Jacob may go out and about in town with Richard today so he may not start school yet.   He is way ahead of schedule anyway so I am not too concerned about it.      On my to-do list today is laundry and housework.   I need to get some floors mopped and some dusting done.   Wood heat seems to create a lot of dust!   I also need to get the kids back to my daily house cleaning chore list today.   With all the ...

  Happy New Year!