Category: Community

Works for Me Wednesday: Budgeting foods

Last week I explained how we shop once a month for the main bulk items and then every two weeks for the stuff you are bound to run out of or which will spoil.

Now, our whole family is home all day everyday.  My husband works from home, so do I, and we homeschool our three little lunatics angels.  We don’t do menus or even planned meals because we are together constantly and interact constantly and eat pretty much when we are hungry and what we are hungry for.  This means that we will go on food kicks and the kids will eat all the eggs in less than a week or my husband will eat all the pretzels or I will eat all my chocolate  almonds.  Whatever.

The point is that yes, we do run out of things. We will run out of things.  We are bound to run out of things.   In the past this is what got us into trouble.  The whole point is NOT to run out to the store just because we are out of saltines since that is when I spend extra money.

Instead, everyone knows that I bought this enough food to last a month and other than a few perishables that I will pick up  on my “small” grocery trip at the two week mark, it will ast us till the next big shopping trip.  I have my grocery days on the calendar so the kids know how long before the next shopping trip and if they decide that they want to eat all the waffles this week then they will have to wait for the next “big” shopping trip for more waffles.  If they finish off the eggs or some other “small” item (anything that is refrigerated falls into this category because our family owns a fridge that once belonged to my single aunt–its a bit small) then they wait for my next two week trip.  Both are marked on the calendar.

This way everyone knows that if they want waffles during the rest of the month they had better not eat them all the first week.  I like to think of it as training them to budget their foods so the good stuff lasts. 🙂 It also teachesd them patienc and wisdom and saves us money.

And Giant Reptiles

I read this post this morning and the burst of laughter issuing forth from my lips brought my husband over to investigate. It took a bit of explaining the situation.

His response?

“That is a very good reason NOT to move to Florida–well that and the giant insects, oh and the reptiles, and freaking dinosaurs or whatever they have down there.”

I guess he is not so keen on Florida and yeah, he has a bug thing. 🙂  I wonder what he thinks about our having to go to Florida for my brother’s wedding?

Poor FiddleDeeDee, having to put up with all that misery just so we can get a good giggle out of it. 🙂

Bloggy Love

I have received the E is for Excellence award from Seeking Faithfulness and Diary of 1.

I have been pondering for some time who all I should pass it on to. At least in this one it doesn’t matter so much who all have already received it. (I am always a bit slow on these things and everyone I know has already done all the memes.)

The rules are as follows (oh and I am bad at rules.) By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, you have to award it to 10 more people who’s blog’s you find Excellent Award worthy. You can give it to as many people as you want but please award at least 10. Thank you out there for having such great blogs and being such great friends! You deserve this! Feel free to award people who have already been awarded… (Those awarded are listed below the following.)Read More

Thursday 13: Artistic Influence or 13 children’s book illustrators I love.

I have been pondering what has influenced me as an artist and where to go from here. I have some favorite fine artists most of which are well known and which everyone has heard of. More importantly I was surrounded by many books illustrated by great illustrators. I spent a lot of my childhood perusing those books, often trying to imitate their drawings and paintings.

As an aside I will say that this is the way most of the best artists learn, by imitating other great artists, absorbing the style elements they love and rejecting the bits that don’t work for them. Very few great artists learned their art by being taught how to draw and paint each element, instead they were inspired by other artists and grew because they loved the work. If you have a child who loves art don’t get them art lessons, give them lots of resources–good books with great illustrators, books of famous artists prints, get them good materials, quality paper and pencils will go a long way towards helping a child develop his artistic talent.

That said the following is a list of the illustrative artists that I found inspiring, which helped me develop (and continue to help me develop) my own style. If you have a moment take a peak at these brilliant artists and their work. There are some great artists here.Read More

WFMW: Leftover Cranberries

I meant to share this a while back, you know when it would be more useful, but for some reason it never happened.

After the holidays I snatch up all the cranberries I can find on sale and stick them in my deep freeze.  No we aren’t fans of homemade cranberry sauce or cranberry bread or muffins or whatever.  We are fans of cranberry juice and with 5 people in the house who don’t believe in juice glasses and several members who can’t have preservatives, corn syrup, or dyes–well the preservative free  plain old cranberry juice with no extra sweeteners is EXPENSIVE, plus you still have to sweeten it with stuff they can use (usually honey).

So, instead of spending $5 for a bottle of unsweetened cranberry juice I buy up cranberries and make my own.  

Before you panic and run the other direction–it is easy.  Really. 

First, fill a large soup pot up about 3/4 of the way with water.  Set it to boil.

Next, rinse two bags of cranberries then  pour them in (you don’t want to use a small pot because it will overflow and that is messy.)

Cover and once it is boiling, turn down the heat and let simmer until all the cranberries pop open. (kind of like popcorn only less dramatic).

Add whatever sweetener you like (my pot holds about 2 gallons and I add about a cup of honey or maple syrup at this point–we have also used Splenda in the past, this works pretty well too.)  You can add more sweetener later to taste.

Once all the berries have popped and the sweetener is combined with the liquid, grab a pitcher, a sieve, and a ladle.   Put the sieve in the pitcher and ladle the cranberries plus juice into the sieve, using the ladle to squish the berries into the sieve.  (If you don’t like seeds you will want to use some cheese cloth in the sieve as well.)

I then pour the contents of the pitcher into glass jars (jelly jars, honey jars, you name it–the kids LOVE to drink the juice right out of these and they work as well as bottled juices when you are on the go.)   These get stored in the back of the fridge until they are gone (it only takes a few days around here.)  They aren’t officially canned but I have found that usually they seal quite tight due to the heat of the juice.

When I can’t get cranberries I buy concentrated grape juice at the health food store (it comes in glass bottles with plastic lids. )  I make it up similarly, without the cooking, and store it the same way.   The bottles make several gallons and the juice is much better than the frozen concentrate from the grocery store, plus I can adapt the sweetener to suit and often add a bit of magnesium powder (from the health food store) to give it a bit of a fizz.