Time For a Reboot

Well hello, friends!!

I am back.  I am going to pick up where I left off because so much has happened in almost 2 years, 2 years!!!  Anyway, I am going to blog to please myself, record my hum-drum life so that I can remember these precious days the Lord has blessed me with.  So let us do get on with it!!!  :)

My most beloved kitchen appliance, my slow cooker, died last week.  I have been known as The Queen of the Crockpot around my circles for awhile. I mean I really loved that thing!!!!  We were joined at the hip.  And it was a nice one, an All-Clad!!!  It lasted for over 10 years.  I always told myself that if anything happened to it, I would rush out and get a new one.

Enter the Instant Pot!!  My father purchased this Instant Pot a few years ago and never used it beyond the first few times experimenting.  He, bless his heart, decided to give it to me, way before my slow cooker died.  I was always curious about them and scared to death of them at the same time!  Silly really.

I have decided to give it a go, a real go.  I am going to wait for 6 months and see if I can live without my slow cooker.  This one is a basic model, 6 quarts.  I think it will do fine with my shrinking family.  (3 in college this coming fall!)

I just love how the Lord orchestrates things like this.  He knew my slow cooker was going to die. He knew my Dad had an unloved Instant Pot. He even knew that Walmart pick up was going to give me 36 eggs for the price of 12 this week.  (What??)  So my first pressure cooking will be of hard-boiled eggs!  Wish me luck!!

Finally a System!

Since 2009, I have been keeping household journals that have evolved from a place to hold my to-do lists into a weekly-at-glance with a to-do list, memory verse, counting my blessings, write down recipes, quotes, notes, ect., book. Not exactly a bullet journal, but close.  I have filled up 9 composition notebooks, working on number 10. Nothing fancy, but it works for me! 

Fortunately, I started out by numbering pages and making an index in the front of all but the first.  If I wanted to find a recipe, I would dig through the indexes and there it would be.  That is ok when you have a small number of books, but wow, dig through 9 and you have a job.  So....  my dear husband says,"Take a picture of each index and store it on your phone in an album."  Wow!  He's a genius!  It works!  I'd like to say that I used his suggestion as soon as he offered it, but after a few more times digging through the 9 journals, I decided to give it a try.  It's brilliant!  And that's my tip of the month, perhaps the year!

Protecting the Food Supply

Protecting the food supply is one of my most important jobs as a homemaker.  It involves so many aspects of economy.  Aspects that I have had to develop over the last 22 years.

The biggest part of this job is shopping for food. Looking for deals, using coupons, writing a menu and making a list takes time. Going to more than one store is also a good idea, thus shopping the sale ads.  I admit that I do not do this as often as I should.  One of my excuses being that we have too small of a small freezer.  One day I hope to have a separate freezer in the garage again.  Another excuse being that I dislike shopping.  I really need to work on this attitude.  I realize that I am blessed to have the resources to go to different stores to seek out bargains.

Another big part of protecting the food supply is rotating the food that I buy.  I have a dark, small, but deep pantry.  It is so easy to put things in and forget that I have them.  It is also easy to open a new item before using up an old of the same item unless I keep a watchful eye on things in the pantry.  At the beginning of the year, I took everything out of the pantry and reorganized.  I also updated my family on the new arrangement so that they would be able to help maintain order.  So far, so good!

Cooking the food might seem like a no-brainer part of protecting the food supply.  How many times do I buy something and then forget to make it before it goes bad?  Vegetables usually fall into this category.  I really hate tossing produce.  I have also been known to buy something because it is a bargain and then have no plan as for how to use it.

Storing the food properly is also crucial to protecting the food supply.  When I get home from a shopping trip, I must put things into the freezer that will be used later in the week.  I must make sure that leftover food is used up or frozen.  Eating leftovers cuts down on waste only if they are indeed eaten.

Reducing waste is a top priority and a big job.  Because I have the privilege of staying home to care for my family, the job falls to me.  It helps us stay out of the drive through, too!

Let's Get Perking

As it happens often, I find myself rediscovering an old treasure, when faced with necessity.  Just last week, we happened to have a sample of this amazing coffee while out shopping one evening.

Problem is that we no longer own a coffee maker and this coffee doesn't come in the coffee pod we need.  And, I had to have some of this coffee because it is just that yummy.  So, I went home empty-handed yet determined to find a way.  Should we buy a small, inexpensive drip coffee maker?  Should we get some reusable coffee pods? I weighed the pros and cons of both options and decided to order some reusable coffee pods.  In the meantime, we went back to the store and got the coffee on another trip.

That brings us to today.  I had the coffee and the pods were still on their way.  So, I decided to dig out my stovetop percolator.  This was a gift to me many years ago from my kids for camping.  Turns out we never needed to use it to make coffee.  I used it for tea water, so it was not a bad gift.  But, I never had used it for coffee, always being a bit intimidated by the process.   I mean, I love my push-button coffee maker.  We are a perfect match.  It always delivers the exact same coffee, day after day.

But, I wanted to have my yummy coffee, so I got brave.  I watched a couple YouTube videos and then gave it a try.  Of course, it worked.  I was very pleased with the results.  I do need to tweak it a little, but that will come with practice.  It was a bit strong.  I will just use less coffee next time.  Hooray!