Ouch

This post is a very good reminder to me.

Experimenting

So, my pizza dough turned out GREAT! It was wonderful. I was so happy. :-) I milled more wheat berries today and now have the flour soaking for waffles and muffins tomorrow. I'm very excited to see how they turn out after my success with the bread and pizza. Evan said that he was very happy I got a grain mill. Impressive, right?? ha
I bought a chicken yesterday at the grocery store, roasted it last night, and made chicken broth overnight with the chicken bones/skin and whatever veggie leftovers were in my freezer bag. I keep a freezer bag in my (can you guess?) freezer in which I put any carrot tops/ends, onion tops/skins, celery ends/leaves, tomato tops, and any other veggie scraps that I think would be okay in my broth (bean tips from fresh green beans are great!). When I am ready to make broth, I just dump whatever is in the bag into the crockpot with the bones, add a little vinegar and salt, and turn the crockpot on low. I usually let it cook for 24 hours then strain everything out of the broth. I usually make chicken noodle soup or Roman egg soup with some of the broth and freeze the rest.
I'm finding that buying organic has made me much more frugal, especially when it comes to meat. I have been able to keep our grocery budget much the same as before I started buying so much organic by cutting back on our meat consumption. And, you know, I haven't even had a single complaint! I think one of the main tricks is adding in other things such as soups, salads, and more veggies to the meal. Of course, that means more planning; but I'm working on it!
Oh, I made homemade vanilla pudding last night using this recipe. Well, I used the basic recipe. I used arrowroot flour instead of cornstarch and pure cane sugar in place of white sugar. It turned out really well and received two thumbs-up from both my guys. I made it into banana pudding the first night, and we had it plain today. Anyway, it's a good recipe!
Well, I should go. :-)

Effort

The beginning of a new year is always a time in which I think about what I need to be doing differently or what I need to refocus on. My main thought this year is Nathan's education. Last year was about getting Noelle here. :-) This year I am trying to refocus on my goals for Nathan.
So, I am rereading Charlotte Mason's Home Education which motivates me greatly and helps me remember those things I consider to be important. I have not done very well creating a schedule for Nathan, and I think we would both do well in a loose schedule (it must be loose, right?). I read to him daily, and we discuss all manner of things throughout the day, but I feel like a schedule would do us good. Especially now that the daddy is consumed (now with practicing for his brother's wedding, after with school), our evenings tend to be times of boredom (for Nathan) and hair-pulling (for me). I am hoping that a schedule will give a little more direction in those times when we are not at our best and there is no "outside" to run to. :-)
Here are my ideas: chores, music time, reading time, counting/math time (he has a game that is perfect for this), quiet time, play time (throughout the day), Bible time.
I don't think I would even put all these in one day, but I really need to put some effort into this. Hmmmm...
In other news, I pulled out my grain mill again today and milled 10 cups of wheat berries. I will make bread and pizza tomorrow (the flour for both is soaking now). I am very excited about making the pizza dough again because I had given up on it earlier this year. It was just too hard to roll out, but I'm pretty sure the problem was that the woman whose recipe I was using was using freshly milled flour, and I was not. (Whoa, bad sentence.) I can already tell the difference in the soaking step. The proof will be tomorrow after I make pizza!