The Harried Homemaker Preps

Is it Possible to Make Artisan-Style Pizza in 5 Minutes?

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Here comes an admission that I find pretty embarrassing: I regularly buy frozen pizzas.

We reserve such pizzas for crazy days like the one we'll have tomorrow. Mondays start bright and early at our house since we have to get ready for a visit from Sweetie Pie's speech therapist. That means I have to get all of us bathed and dressed (as well as vacuum up the graham cracker crumbs that mysteriously got ground into the living room carpet) by 8 AM. There is also a piano lesson for The Thinker and separate basketball practices for The Thinker and Mini Me. (Did I mention that basketball practice is a 45 minute drive from our home?) In between all the appointments, I manage to squeeze in homeschooling and laundry.

Frozen pizza just fits our schedule on days like that.

But what if it was possible to make homemade pizza in the same amount of time it would take to bake a frozen pizza? What if you could save money, cut out preservatives, and break yet another link to the processed food industry? Oh, and did I mention it would taste far better than frozen fare?

Enter the book Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day. After I read an article on this quick method of making homemade pizza in Mother Earth News, I decided to spend part of my February prepping budget on the book.

The method literally could not be easier. Mix up a four ingredient pizza dough, all from your food storage. Refrigerate. Use any time within 14 days. The refrigeration actually improves the dough, making it easier to handle and giving it a bit of a sourdough flavor. Plus, you can make enough dough for eight+ pizzas at once, saving you time and dishes to wash!

Here's the recipe for a basic crust. This will make enough dough for four, 12-inch pizzas:

1-1/2 c. lukewarm water
1 T. yeast (instant or dry active - doesn't matter)
1 t. table salt
3-3/4 c. unbleached, all purpose flour (The authors of the book say the recipe won't turn out right if you use bleached flour.)

Add water to a large mixing bowl or other container. Add yeast and salt, stir. Add flour and mix until combined. Cover the bowl with plastic or a loose lid (you don't want it to be perfectly air tight). Allow to rise at room temperature for about two hours. Refrigerate for up to 14 days or use right away. The dough is easier to handle after it has been chilled.

This pizza is designed to be baked at high temperatures on a baking stone,which gives the crust its wonderful texture. You can also use a heavy duty baking sheet if you would prefer.

You can use canned pizza sauce if you like, or do what I did and make sauce ahead. I took 2-28 oz. cans of crushed tomatoes and seasoned them with minced garlic, oregano, basil, and crushed red pepper. I simmered the mixture over low heat for two hours. I then measured out 1/3 c. portions (enough for one 12" pizza) and froze them individually. Now all I have to do is quickly defrost however many bags of sauce while I preheat my baking stone for 30 minutes at 550 degrees.

The crust is rolled out to 1/8th inch thick and is topped with about 1/3 c. of pizza sauce and whatever else you like. I used 1-1/2 oz. turkey pepperoni and 3 oz. fresh mozzarella.

The trickiest part of the process is baking the pizzas, or rather, transferring the crust and toppings to the baking stone without it sticking to your pizza peel (I don't have a peel so I used a baking sheet like this one.)

Turkey pepperoni and fresh mozzarella pizza

After about eight minutes in the oven, I became nervous about the pepperoni burning so I took the pizza out. That was a bit too early as the crust wasn't quite as crispy as it could be and the cheese should have browned more. I'll get all the ins and outs figured out with practice. Even so, the pizza tasted amazing! The kids snarfed it down so fast you would have thought they were in a competition. And would you believe that a 1/4 of this pizza is only 225 calories and 7 grams of fat?

This was so quick and easy to make, I think it is safe to say that we've kicked frozen pizza to the curb.

Here are some resources if you're interesting in trying this method out:

Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, MD and Zoe Francois. The book has many different crust recipes (including whole wheat!) and topping ideas.
"The Secret to Incredibly Easy Homemade Pizza" in the February/March 2012 Mother Earth News. This gives more details about the recipe than I wrote above.
"Pizza-Making Supplies: Build Your Arsenal", also from Mother Earth News. Links to kitchen items you'll find handy for this recipe.
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ The authors' website. Good information here, too.

The Perfect Survival Chicken: Selecting a Chicken Breed

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:28:00 +0000

This is part two of my chicken keeping series. Those of you who have been keeping chickens for years will have to excuse the new girl's giddy excitement. And please chime in with your own opinions in the comments!

If you missed part one, check it out here:
Part I: Peeps or Pullets? Ways to Get Started in Chicken Keeping

-------

Once I coerced Hubby Dear into the whole chicken keeping business and decided to start with chicks ordered through the mail, it was time to decide on a chicken breed. If you've never paid much attention to chickens before, it might surprise you to find out just how many breeds there are out there. The hatchery I settled on as the source for my chicks, Meyer Hatchery, carries literally dozens of breeds.

What should you buy? That depends on your answer to the following question: Why are you keeping chickens?

Are you mostly interested in eggs? There are breeds out there that will reliably pump out 300 eggs a year.
Do you envision your chickens mostly as a meat source? You'll want to raise chickens that dress out into plump carcasses and put on weight quickly.
Would you like chickens for both their meat and eggs? There are breeds that are good for both, though they will not produce as many eggs as the best layers or put on weight as fast as the dedicated meat birds.

From a preparedness standpoint, it makes sense to choose a breed from the last category, the so-called dual purpose breeds. If you were facing a crisis of some kind that would definitely be the type of bird you would be interested in because they are so versatile. Here are some other considerations for those of us of the preparedness mindset:

Some breeds are better at foraging for their food than others. In the event that you have to completely free-range your chickens, it is important to select a breed that is active and does well outside of complete confinement.
You'd want a breed that would go broody (attempt to hatch chicks on their own). We humans have removed broodiness from the genetic makeup of many poultry breeds. That's great if you want to create birds that lay continuously (broody birds stop laying and focus completely on their clutch of eggs), but that is not so good if you want to expand your flock naturally (ie. without an incubator or a hatchery order). It goes without saying that you'll need a rooster if you want fertile eggs. Chickens will lay eggs without a rooster, but it still takes a rooster strutting around the chicken yard to make babies.
You would want a breed that agrees with your climate. Some chickens tolerate heat well; others are perky even in bitter cold. In a grid down situation, you're not going to be able to heat or cool your hen house artificially. And who wants to do that, anyway? Why not pick a breed that is suited to your climate and make it easy on everyone?

A last consideration has less to do with survival and more to do with you. What kind of personality do you feel comfortable working around? Some breeds are more flighty or have a history of aggression. Others are usually calm. Some breeds tend to be friendly and personable with their human caretakers while others couldn't care less about you.

After sifting through all these factors, we decided to select a dual-purpose breed that had known broody tendencies, does well free-ranging, handles cold weather and is generally docile. That still left me with many, many chicken breeds to pick from. In the end, I couldn't pick just one breed. I selected nine! We may decide later that a certain breed is our favorite and stick with it, but for now I can't help but smile in anticipation of the multi-colored display that will soon be pecking around my chicken moat.

These are the breeds we selected for our seventeen chickens:

Buff Orpington
Image from backyardchickens.com

Buff Orpington is the breed we ordered the most of. We want a rooster for our little flock and decided to purchase a Buff Orpington cockerel, too.

Black Australorp
Image from backyardchickens.com

Columbian Wyandotte
Image from http://chicksnchillens.blogspot.com

Golden Laced Wyandotte. Could they be any more spectacular?
Image from http://www.freewebs.com/djchooks/goldlacedwyandotte.htm

Silver Laced Wyandotte - too pretty to resist!
Image from mypetchicken.com

Easter Eggers
Image from redtractorranch.com

Easter Eggers are kind of an interesting breed. They are a bit of a mongrel breed that is kept primarily because they lay eggs in shades of green, blue, or pink. From what I've read, they vary on the outside just as much as the color of their eggs. Who knows if my girls will resemble the pullets pictured above?

Delaware - The Thinker's pick for prettiest chicken
Image from http://www.hobbyfarmliving.com/chicken-breeds-backyard-flock/

Speckled Sussex
Image from washingtonfeatherfanciers.webs.com

Barred Plymouth Rock
Image from Wikipedia

Any good book about chickens will have charts detailing the attributes of the various breeds. My favorite chicken reference for this purpose is Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens. I found the hatchery websites to be very helpful, too.

If you raise chickens, what breeds do you have? Do you raise them primarily for eggs, meat, or both? If you don't have chickens but wish you did, what do you think you would do?

Using Your Food Storage: Chocolate Caramel Graham Crackers

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:42:00 +0000

Looking for a quick and easy treat for your sweetie this Valentine's Day? Look no further!

These Chocolate Caramel Graham Crackers taste like buttery chocolate-covered toffee and best of all, I didn't have to go to the store to be able to make them. All the ingredients are ones I have as part of my three month and/or long term food storage. Try it - I promise you'll love it!

If you can stop after only eating two pieces, you have far more self-control than I do!

Chocolate Caramel Graham Crackers - Slightly adapted from a recipe published in the January 2003 Gourmet magazine

12 graham crackers (If you don't have graham crackers in your food storage, you c ould even make your own!)

1-1/2 sticks of butter

1/2 c. packed light brown sugar

1/8 t. salt (If you use salted butter, feel free to skip this.)

1-1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1 c. chopped pecans

Preheat your oven to 375. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil, leaving a 2" overhang it each end. Line the bottom of the pan with the graham crackers.

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium low heat. Add brown sugar (and salt, if using) and cook, whisking constantly, until the butter and sugar are smooth and well combined. The mixture be separated at first, but a minute of whisking over heat will bring it together. Pour over crackers, spreading evenly. Bake until golden brown and bubbling, about 10 minutes.

Scatter chocolate chips evenly over crackers and bake in oven until chocolate is soft, about 1 minute. Remove pan from oven and gently spread chocolate. Sprinkle nuts over chocolate and cool in pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Then pop the pan in your freezer for 15 minutes.

Lift the crackers from the pan by grasping both ends of foil. Peel foil from crackers and break them up into chunks. Devour!

Supposedly these crackers will keep, chilled and layered between waxed paper in an airtight container, for two weeks. I wouldn't know since they've never lasted that long at my house!

January 2012 in Review and February Preps

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:23:00 +0000

January was a quiet month for me on the blog, but not so much at home. I have been so busy. Between my kids' homeschooling, extra-curriculars, and the normal insanity of having two toddlers (including one who is doing her best to give up her afternoon nap), life has been pretty nutty. Hubby Dear and I have also been going full-throttle with diet and and exercise, which has eaten up time I normally spent on the computer. My derriere is thankful for the change, however, and I've managed to lose 10 pounds in the last month!

Even though I didn't get time to blog, I most certainly worked on preps during the month of January.

1. Sales!

I hope many of you were able to take advantage of the sales at markdown.com and Honeyville Grains. I am very happy that I was able to stock up on both Tattler canning lids and freeze dried foods.

2. Reading, reading, and more reading

I read quickly through The Small-Scale Poultry Flock and have been mulling over all the interesting ideas it gave me for the role poultry can play on our homestead. Next, I bought a copy of The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way. Talk about wow. If you are interested in growing fruit organically, you've got to get your hands on this book! The focus of the book is building plant health, starting at the soil level and working up. It has me re-imagining the layout of our orchard and has piqued my interest in permaculture. I really can't recommend this book enough.

3. Miscellany

I socked away items like work gloves, bandannas, and safety pins. These are all cheap, readily-available preps that could be important to have on hand in an emergency. Bandannas alone have countless uses.

4. Chicken business

Our chicks are due to arrive in early March. I spent a good portion of my prepping budget this month on various chicken paraphernalia.

Feed storage

I bought a couple of galvanized steel trash cans to store feed in and a couple of bales of pine shavings. Since I intend to use the deep litter method of manure management, I need mucho mas pine shavings.

Random chick stuff

I also picked up the supplies I'll need for our chick brooder. Hubby Dear and I weighed out a variety of options (including crafting our own brooder out of a plastic storage bin), but for reasons of ease, the number of chicks we'll be brooding, and because I'm a total sucker for a so-called complete kit, we bought the Deluxe Brooder Starter Package from Randall Burkey.

The Deluxe Brooder Package from randallburkey.com

You're supposed to have at least 1/2 a square foot per chick in your brooder. This set up will give me just about the right amount of space for the 17 chicks I'm expecting.

I also bought chick-sized grit, a bag of starter feed, and forage cakes. I'm glad that February always flies by so quickly because I am more than ready for my chicks to arrive!

Oh, and there's this little something that arrived via tractor trailer.

After some trial and error (including a dead lawn mower battery and creative use of a tire iron),
Hubby Dear got the coop hitched up and moved it around to the back yard

This is an 8x8' chicken coop built by Horizon Structures. The delivery driver arrived after sunset one evening and decided that he couldn't make the turn into our driveway with his 75' long trailer. That meant he had to put the wheels on our coop and unload it directly on the country road we live on. Then he and I wrestled this nearly 1700 lb coop off the road and up enough of our hilly, rutted driveway to finally make it onto our yard. Hubby Dear, of course, was at work and missed all the fun. ;) The next day, he hitched up the coop to the lawn mower and moved it around back to take its place of honor in the chicken moat.

It was tricky business to get the coop positioned in the moat. It took many tries to get it right.

Horizon Structures is located in Pennsylvania and I... am not. Take a look at the amount of road dust that collected on the outside of the coop during the long journey to our home! It would have been better to buy locally, but I didn't have any luck finding something with the size and features I wanted.

In place and ready for action! Now we just need to finish the chicken moat.

This coop has a lot of upgrades, including an easy-clean glassboard floor, electrical package, and automatic chicken door. I'm pleased with the overall quality of construction, but was disappointed that the roof and paint got damaged during transport. Thankfully, Horizon Structures is not only sending me touch-up paint and extra shingles but also hiring a handyman to make it right. That's a business that knows how to treat its customers.

What's up for next month?

February Preps:

1. Books - You know I had to have more books on my list! Continuing the theme of permaculture, I plan to get (the unfortunately named, but useful) Gaia's Garden. I also find the concept behind Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day to be very intriguing. I make all of our bread, but the recipe I use for homemade pizza recipe takes long enough that I don't make it very often.

2. Chickens - I still need to get a few odds and ends for the chickens, namely a long, high-quality extension cord so that my coop can have power. We need to finish constructing the north wall of the chicken moat as well.

3. Orchard planning - Our apple trees and blueberry bushes will arrive in March. Ahead of that, I need to work on our plan and get some of the supplies that I can't find locally.

4. Garden - We are expanding our square foot garden next year and so we need to build a few more boxes and make more Mel's Mix.

5. First aid preps - I have a huge list of items that I have yet to buy. I hope to make inroads on this.

6. Feminine products - After my ill-fated cloth pad experiment, I kind of abandoned this area of preparedness. Time to get back to it.

So that's me. Any big plans for February or accomplishments from January you'd like to share?

In Which I Turn My Kitchen Into a Hazmat Site

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:08:00 +0000

We grew 18 pepper plants in 2011. One of those was a cayenne pepper and it was a bit of an impulse buy. Hubby Dear and I were looking at the pepper transplants for sale at a big box store in the next county and it caught our eye. We had never used fresh cayenne peppers before, but we felt that surely we could find something to do with them.

The collection of dried cayenne pepper pods

The plant did really well and produced hundreds of slender green fruits that ripened to a dark red. We decided that the best use of the cayennes would be to turn them into either crushed red pepper flakes or ground red pepper, so we laid them out in a corner of the kitchen to dry.

They have been dry for several months now, waiting for me to get off my tuchus and get around to grinding them. Yesterday was the fateful day.

Although you may wonder after you read about the rest of my misadventure, I'm not entirely clueless when it comes to chile peppers. I knew I should wear gloves while I was working with the cayennes so I didn't get any of the oils on me. I put on a pair of gloves and began pulling off the stems of the peppers. After the stems were removed, it was a simple matter to shake out the seeds and then pop pieces of dried pepper into my spice grinder. Easy peasy, right?

When grinder was full of pepper pieces, I put the lid on and let it rip. It didn't take much grinding before I noticed pepper dust sprinkling my counter. Hmm, I guess the lid isn't exactly airtight. No matter. I proceeded on.

Then I started sneezing. Huge, messy, half-choking sneezes. Ever heard an elephant sneeze? Me neither, but I imagine that's what I sounded like.

Hubby Dear helpfully hinted that perhaps one of those N-95 masks I have stored would be useful at a moment like this. Since my gloved hands were covered in cayenne dust, he ventured out from living room, held his breath and hurriedly put the mask over my nose and mouth. He retreated quickly to watch his basketball game and thanked his lucky stars that he had an excuse for missing the kitchen shenanigans.

In his haste to exit the premises, the Hubster hadn't properly situated the mask on my face. My exhalations were somehow getting channeled up towards my eyes. The moist air (keep in mind that the amount of cayenne pepper dust I had already inhaled had me breathing like Darth Vader) fogged my glasses. I'm not sure exactly what I did or how it happened, but the culminating event was a puff of cayenne launched into my eyeball.

To his credit, Hubby Dear did use the DVR to pause the game and check on me while I frantically washed my eye out with cold water. He sympathized with my irritated lungs during TV timeouts. Thanks, honey. I'm glad to know that I rank only slightly lower than our alma mater's basketball team. ;)

Nearly 1/2 c. of very potent ground red pepper

I only made it through half of our dried pepper pods before the above-described disaster. That yielded me nearly 1/2 a cup of ground red pepper, plenty for the next few months. It is much brighter in color than the cayenne I buy at the local grocery store. Hubby Dear says it smells really good, too. I can't say I've tried it yet. After the Unfortunate Incident and the following Hazmat-style cleanup, my lungs seize up if I even think about cayenne!

This may be my most painful exercise in self-sufficiency yet.

Postscript: Our 2012 garden plan includes more cayenne peppers. I guess some people will never learn!

Yet Another Deal Alert

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:03:00 +0000

The new year has brought some great bargains on preparedness products. Hopefully the deals will just keep coming! The next one is from Honeyville Grain. As per the email I received yesterday:

"OUR BIGGEST SALE EVER! SAVE 20% ON YOUR ENTIRE ORDER* from Thursday 1/12/2012 through Tuesday 1/17/2012. Stock up and save on all of your favorites, and try some of our great new items. Simply enter coupon code 2012 during checkout. ORDER NOW! SALE ENDS ON TUESDAY the 17th of January."

I have bought many products from Honeyville, from 50 lb sacks of hard white wheat to freeze dried fruits and vegetables. I can vouch for their quick shipping and fine customer service. I think I'll take advantage of this sale and add a few cans of freeze dried meat to my food storage. 20% off makes a big difference on such a pricey product!

Deal alert!

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:47:00 +0000

As posted by the Tattler Company on Facebook:

"‎40% OFF! That's the deal TATTLER will be offering this Thursday, 1/12/2012 on www.markdown.com ! This is a limited, one time offer of 100 Regular lids and 100 Wide Mouth lids bulk packed and shipped for $85.75! Quantities are limited on this custom pack, so tell your friends and visit markdown.com this Thursday 1/12."

I use Tattler canning lids and love the fact that I am able to use them over and over. You'd better believe I'll be jumping on this deal!

My 2012 Prepping Goals

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Happy New Year everyone! Do you remember when you first heard about 2012 being such an ominous year? I do. I learned about the whole Mayan calendar deal from my seventh grade science teacher. Mrs. Spracklen delighted in sharing tidbits of knowledge that were either outrageous or disgusting. I still refuse to walk barefooted across the lawn because of her lesson on how hookworms get transmitted to humans.

Back then, 2012 seemed light years away and I couldn't fathom being 30+ years old. Of course I thought that anyone over thirty was over the hill. The intervening years melted away surprisingly quickly and I'm thankful that, although I'm now a prepper and presumably paranoid about such things, I'm not too worried that the world will end in December. I trust what Jesus had to say about this issue.

TEOTWAWKI, on the other hand, is a different story. There's been a few bits of positive economic news recently, but there is still the potential for a complete crash of our economy or some other mayhem. We continue to prepare.

My goals for 2012:

Homestead related:

1. Chickens!

I ordered 17 chicks to arrive in March. We need to get a coop and finish building the chicken moat. I'm really looking forward to fresh eggs and (possibly) meat.

2. Gardening

Hubby Dear and I have spent the last month pouring over seed catalogs and made our orders for 2012. We're going to be growing some of our favorite crops from 2011 with a few changes and new additions. We are growing more open pollinated, heirloom varieties this year.
We are also expanding our garden slightly as we work towards our goal of doubling our garden's size.

3. Composting

We haven't really done much in the way of composting before. Our two existing pet rabbits plus the chickens we have coming will provide us a lot of manure that we can use to boost our garden's fertility. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock has given me a lot of ideas on how I can get the chickens do most of the work of incorporating kitchen scraps, garden waste, etc. into our garden fertility plan.

4. Research other methods of adding fertility to our garden

I'd like to learn about what cover crops I can use in a raised bed.
I'd like to plant comfrey, stinging nettles, and other dynamic accumulators. This is not only a wise practice for organic gardeners but it is also great for preparedness since it will make us less reliant on outside inputs into our garden.

5. Continue to build our orchard

We need to take care of our newly planted pecan trees.
We hope to plant apples, pears, blueberries, and hardy almond trees in 2012. We're going to try again to expand our raspberry and strawberry plantings after last year's plants failed to thrive.

General Preparedness:

1. Finish getting the remaining odds and ends of food storage.

We more or less have a year's worth of food stored. I have a few more items I need to add to our food storage. We will be replenishing our supplies as we use it.

2. First aid and hygiene items

I want to finish our first aid preps this year (finally). I've got quite a bit of the basics, but we need both a deeper and broader base of supplies.

3. Miscellany

We will stock up on some of the basic tools and miscellaneous items we are missing - things like socks, work gloves, aluminum foil, etc. The Master Preparedness List from the LDS Preparedness Manual will be our starting off point.

9. Add more books to our survival library

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I like books. :) Information is important so I have an excuse to indulge my book addiction.

7. Diet/Exercise

I'm trying to attain a more healthy lifestyle. I have a thyroid disease which makes losing weight challenging, so I'm going to focus more on nutrition and fitness than on the scale.

What are your goals for 2012?

What This Closet Prepper Got for Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:00:00 +0000

I am still "in the closet" about my prepping to my family and friends. I prefer it that way due to OPSEC concerns and to avoid the inevitable taunting. My dad and brother were discussing rifles at our family Christmas gathering. When I declared my interest in getting a rifle for shooting varmints, everyone got a look on their face like I had begun singing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" and performing the Can-Can right there in the living room. I hadn't even mentioned anything about zombies! Yes, indeed, it is much easier for me just to stay under the radar.

However, that doesn't mean I can't receive prepping-related presents from my relatives for Christmas! I have two Amazon.com wish lists. One is public and has items that even a supposedly wimpy, squeamish person like myself would want. My other wishlist is set up to be private. I use it to keep track of more "hardcore" prepping items that I want to remember to add to our gear but do not want to let the whole world know about. I was fortunate enough to receive a selection of items from my public wishlist and I thought I'd briefly review each. You may want to add these to your own wish lists!

1. A Coffee/Spice Grinder

Neither Hubby Dear nor I are coffee drinkers, so I didn't get this for the first function. Once you grind spices in a coffee grinder, you wouldn't want to use the grinder for coffee, anyway, unless you like your coffee to have a kick! Whole spices last longer than ground ones do, so they are better for long term storage. This little gizmo will quickly grind whole spices into a fine powder. I got this primarily to turn our homegrown cayenne peppers into ground red pepper. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on that process.

2. A Galvanized Chicken Fount

Both of my in-laws grew up on farms that raised chickens for eggs. They don't have the fondest memories of chicken keeping and I think they are privately expecting our chicken experiment to crash and burn. Nevertheless they bought me this chicken waterer. That's what you call love.

And now for the books....

3. The Heirloom Life Gardener by Jere and Emilee Gettle

Many of you are familiar with Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. If you aren't, you should be! I truly admire the founder, Jere Gettle; how can you have anything but respect for someone who starts a groundbreaking seed company at the age of 17? When I found out that he had put out his own gardening book, I knew I had to have it.

Once I read it, however, I was a bit disappointed. Don't get me wrong. It is full of gorgeous pictures and it is an unintimidating introduction to gardening. I was sad for two reasons. First, it was written with such a bland voice. I am sure that anyone who wears the colorful duds that Jere Gettle favors is much more entertaining than this book lets on. (Do a Google search for him and look at the photos and see what I'm talking about!) Second, and most importantly, it just didn't have that much new information for me. It would look cute on my coffee table, but not get much use.

Here's my advice: just get the free Baker Creek catalog. Many of the photos and some of the text are reprinted there! If you are interested in more in-depth information, I prefer Seed to Seed for information on seed saving and All New Square Foot Gardening, Four-Season Harvest, Mini Farming, and The Resilient Gardener for general gardening info.

4. Chicken and Egg: A Memoir of Suburban Homesteading with 125 Recipes by Janice Cole

When my old college roommate read on Facebook that I was getting chickens, she recommended that I get this book. Since I love "city girl goes country" type memoirs, I thought this would be perfect for me and added it to my wish list. Chicken and Egg is a nice book, but I would classify it as mostly a cookbook with a bit of the author's life thrown in. The recipes look delicious and I'm sure to turn to this book once my 16 (!) prospective hens start laying. If you're looking for a true memoir, try The Dirty Life,which is one of the best books I read in 2011.

5. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook from Scratch by Jennifer Reese

This book is based on a fun concept. What commonly store-bought foods are worth making yourself? Which should you have no guilt about purchasing? Jennifer Reese spent years perfecting recipes for items like Worcestershire sauce, Camembert, and tahini. This book reminds me of "Julie and Julia" - the movie, that is, not the book. (The movie was cute, but I do NOT recommend the book for those who are offended by foul language and loose morals. It made me feel dirty when I attempted to read it.) I'm looking forward to trying some of the more obscure recipes in this book. I've made my own laundry detergent and grind my own wheat, so I guess this is the next logical step!

6. The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips

I'll admit that I was first attracted to this book because of the photo on the front cover. The author looks like my brother, a Deadhead and youthful-troublemaker turned responsible husband and father. That has nothing to do with apples or this book, but I thought I'd throw that in there! ;)

I had the chance to borrow the first edition of this book from our local library and I was immediately impressed. If you want to grow apples organically, this is a fabulous resource. The book I bought is the revised and expanded edition. It has color pictures and even more useful information. Hubby Dear and I will spend a lot of time pouring over this book and putting the information into practice.

7. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers by Harvey Ussery

I saved the best for last. I love, love, love this book. It is certainly the most helpful chicken book I have read, and believe me, I've read them A LOT of them. It has color pictures and is full of very down-to-earth, detailed advice. It is the perfect book for those of us who are interested in self-sufficiency since it gives instruction on how to grow your own feed and breed your own chicks. This book and Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens are destined to be my go-to guides on chickens.

Did you get or give any prepping-related gifts this Christmas?

My Top Five Prepping Successes of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:25:00 +0000

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas. We had a lovely time with our extended family and it was quite a jolt to have to get back to everyday life on Monday. We homeschool our children and I wanted to squeeze in a few more school days in the hopes that we might complete our school year in May. This sounded like a perfectly sane and logical plan when I concocted it in November, but as I sat at the kitchen counter helping The Thinker with her Latin lesson, I seriously regretted my decision to forgo Christmas break. This led me to entertain some fanciful ideas about what I would do if I could get my hands on the ancient Roman responsible for the evil grammatical construct known as the declension. My fantasies were surprisingly creative considering the general stupor I was in at that time of the morning. That, my friends, is a classic case of Post-Festivity Latin Declension Disorder (PFLDD for short) and is a key reason why you should never skip Christmas break.

Now that I'm mostly recovered, it's time to turn my attention to cheerier matters than dead languages: my top five prepping successes of 2011.

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5. The Great Chicken Moat Build

This little fencing project was a huge undertaking

The chicken moat is not technically finished, much less put to use, but I had to put it in this countdown because of the sheer amount effort that went into it. Hopefully the chickens that will live in this moat will greatly cut down on the insect and weed pests in our garden, contribute delicious meat and eggs to our diet, and will be a source of fertility for our soil. The potential benefits made this difficult project worthwhile.

4. No more store-bought bread!

Much better than sliced bread!

I have been baking bread since I was a teenager, but I never before attempted to make all of my family's bread products. After I bought a NutriMilland then a Bosch Mixer,it became ridiculously easy to grind wheat and bake as much bread as we consumed. So I started doing just that and even figured out how to use a Sun Oven to bake bread.

It feels really satisfying to make something so delicious and healthful for my family.

3. Explored new ways to preserve food

I have a few new tricks up my sleeve when it comes to food preservation. I've been water bath canning for a few years now, but pressure canning was new territory. Not only do I now pressure can with the best of them, but I regularly can meat, something that was very intimidating to me in the beginning.

Dehydrating oregano

I also learned the ins and outs of dehydrating. My new Excalibur Dehydrator is awesome, though I must admit I find it very tedious to place all the pieces of food meticulously on the trays.

Vacuum sealing with the FoodSaver

My favorite new trick, however, is using a FoodSaverto vacuum seal mason jars of dry goods. I have stored brown sugar, nuts, chocolate, raisins, shortening, herbs, and many other items with this little gadget.

2. One year of food storage*

Some of the comfort food items I bought during our Food Storage Blitz Month

We finally have one year's worth of food storage! Sorta. If you go by the number of calories stored, we do, but we are still short several key nutrients (such as calcium and Vitamin C) and I want to add more meat to our supply. And then we'll need to add more food as our children grow and need more calories. And more fruits and vegetables would really be nice... You get the picture.

I can't exactly rest on my laurels here, but I'm pleased with what we've accomplished.

1. Garden re-do

Our new square foot gardening boxes

Hubby Dear deserves most of the credit here. He transformed our decidedly sub-par garden of years past to the Garden of Eatin' by adding square foot gardening boxes. That involved a lot of carpentry and an insane amount of soil toting and mixing.

This year was so successful that we plan on adding 19 more square foot boxes to our garden, albeit in stages. This will double the size of our current garden. I can't wait! (Read this post if you are unfamiliar with square foot gardening.)

What accomplishments in the area of preparedness are you the most proud of? Was 2011 a banner year or a bust?

My Car Kits Keep Springing a Leak!

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Back when I created our vehicle emergency kits, I thought Aqua Literz would be the perfect water storage solution. The 5 year shelf life, compact container, and ease of use sold me on them. I wasn't long, however, before the first batch of Aqua Literz I bought mysteriously sprang a leak, leading to a comical email exchange with the retailer I had purchased them from. I bought their reassurance that Aqua Literz are indeed ideal for car kits and decided to buy another case.

Fast forward to today. Hubby Dear was moving things around in the back of our van and found this.

Leaky and moldy!

That's not dirt you see in the above photo! It is mold. Eeew! All five of the Aqua Literz I had in my van's emergency kit looked like this.

I never found a real hole on any of the Aqua Literz. It appears that water had been slowly oozing out, contained between the layers of cardboard of the packaging. No wonder it grew mold! I have no idea how any of this occurred since they were all stored securely.

Not just mold but multi-colored mold.

Obviously, I won't buy this product any more, but how should I store water in my vehicle kits?

Here are the options as I see them:

Commercially bottled water - This would be an easy route to go. I am concerned with the possibility of the plastic leaching chemicals in the water, especially in a hot car. I'd also have to rotate this fairly frequently.
Used juice bottles - I think the plastic in these are probably better than what is used in bottled water. I can't say that for sure, though. I'd certainly have to rotate these frequently, they might leak, and I'm afraid the water would taste funny.
Canned water - Canned water is relatively expensive. It is hard to think of a more durable container to store water in, however, and it boasts a 30 year shelf life. I'd have to make sure that I keep a can opener handy and it isn't exactly the easiest thing to use on the go.

Am I missing something? How do you store water in your vehicle kits?

The Money Saving Mom's Budget: A Review

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:28:00 +0000

I was really excited to be given an advance copy of The Money Saving Mom's Budgetby Crystal Paine, the author of MoneySavingMom.com. Crystal's blog is one of my favorites. I have saved a ton of money over the past few months by following tips I've found on her website, so I knew that her book would have to be dynamite. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint.

This book isn't another collection of money saving strategies, though you will certainly find plenty of those here. Crystal has seven rules to financial success and only two of those directly relate to couponing and cost cutting. The rest of the book will help you set goals, create a written budget, and live well on a small income. If this sounds a little bit like something my hero, Dave Ramsey, would espouse, you are correct. The section on couponing is extremely easy to understand, even for the mathematically challenged. And even though the topic of finances can be dull, this book was fun to read and full of great examples from everyday life.

Let's face it: everyone can stand to save a little money. This book can definitely help you make the right choices for your family's budget and help free up some cash to devote to preparedness. Remember, if you don't have your finances in order, you're not truly prepared. (I did a series of posts on this subject, in case you missed it. ;)

The Money Saving Mom's Budget is available for pre-order at Amazon.com and will be on sale everywhere on January 10. Crystal is giving all her proceeds from this book to Compassion International, an outstanding charity that our family also supports. Check them out!

Taking Stock

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:13:00 +0000

I've been creating a stockpile of food for the better part of 18 months, with emphasis on the pile.

Piles of boxes filled with food

I took the opportunity this week to shift the whole mess around a bit and managed to clean up the storage room somewhat. I also inventoried my stockpile. I have a much better idea of what I have and when it expires. I thought I'd share with you some of the ways I keep track of my preps.

Our Long Term Food Storage Inventory

The most useful tools I've found for organizing my food storage are the Long Term Food Storage and 3 Month Supply Excel spreadsheets from Food Storage Made Easy. If you don't have Excel, they have printable versions available, but it is so nice to have the computer do the calculations.

When I updated the spreadsheets this week, I found to my surprise that I have 30 lb of peanut butter stored. I guess I won't have to worry about that peanut shortage after all.

Another online tool that I really like is Emergency Essential's Food Storage Analyzer. It's not perfect, but if you put the time into personalizing it by adding in your pantry items, it can give you a good estimate as to how far your food storage would go. The analyzer said we have enough food for 397 days, but we only have 56% of the RDA of Vitamin C, 93% of Vitamin A, and 87% of Calcium. That gives me direction for our future purchases.

Another problem to tackle is replacing items before they expire. I have a spreadsheet with preps such as batteries,water purification tablets, etc., their dates of purchase and their expiration dates.

I have one for #10 cans, too. Some of them will stay viable for 30 years, others expire in 3-5. Each individual can is labeled with the date of purchase, but this spreadsheet enables me to see at a glance what I have and when it expires. If I had my #10 cans in other locations besides my food storage room, I would also note that.

This last list is all the items I consider essential to our preparedness pantry (excluding long term storage items, such as wheat). These are the items that are in our 3 month supply and I found that typing them up in an alphabetized list was more user-friendly than the Excel file.

I find it essential to go through my canned goods like vegetables, soups, and fruit on a regular basis. If I come across any that I think we will not consume before they expire, I give them to my local food pantry and buy new stock. Most canned goods will actually be just fine for quite some time after the expiration date, but since our family gives to the food pantry on a regular basis anyway, this helps rotate our food storage. Note: food pantries cannot take expired food. My oldest two children and I went on a tour of the food bank last month and they had a whole freezer full of expired Hot Pockets and a shelving unit of expired canned goods. They were allowing volunteers to take home the expired food since they could not legally hand it out to the needy.

That's how I keep track of our inventory. Do you have any tips for organizing your preps or keeping track of expiration dates?

My Top Five Prepping Failures of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 02:00:00 +0000

It's mid-December, which is a great time to put down the eggnog and Christmas cookies and reflect upon the past year. I made progress in our preparedness but have definitely experienced some failures. I'll talk about what went right in 2011 in a future post. Today is the day I get to expose all my inadequacies to the world. ;)

Top Five Prepping Failures

5. Sun Oven

The Global Sun Oven

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with the Sun Oven itself, other than an initial chemical odor that can lend your food a nasty aftertaste until you cleaned it thoroughly. Once I finally purged the Sun Oven of the noxious fumes, the only problem was me! There is a definite learning curve to the Sun Oven and it took me a month to figure it all out. By the time I had it mastered, my family was ready to stage an Occupy the Sun Oven protest. I guess they had enough raw potato soup!

Thankfully, the experiment ended on a high note.

Bread baked in the Sun Oven. Success at last!

This is a very vivid illustration as to why it is so important to USE and PRACTICE your preps.

4. Fall Garden

Remember this garden plan? We put a lot of effort into researching fall gardens. We learned about the best varieties, methods, and timing for our part of the country.

The results were even less stellar than the toxic chocolate chip cookies I baked: a handful of carrots, a few small heads of cauliflower, and some radishes. We couldn't even get Swiss Chard to grow and all the authorities I've consulted say that chard is pretty much as foolproof as vegetables come. We didn't get any beets, lettuce, spinach, salad mix, or cabbage. Our broccoli sprouted and grew tall, but they never formed heads.

Obviously we'll have to go back to the drawing board for next year. Our summer was abnormally hot and dry and that didn't help. Maybe things would have performed better if we had planted transplants rather than direct seeding. Perhaps we could have used floating row covers to shade the soil so that it wasn't so hot while the seeds we germinating.

All I know is that I am not cut out to be a subsistence farmer.

3. First aid

The beginnings of my first aid stockpile, February 2011

One of my goals at the beginning of 2011 was to develop and deepen our first aid stockpile. I bought a few first aid basics last winter but didn't really progress any further. I picked up some supplies here and there for free (hurray for coupons!), but nothing in massive quantities.

I guess I wouldn't classify this so much as a failure but a result of a shift in my priorities. Getting a full year's supply of food has been project number one. I've also slashed my prepping budget in recent months and focused instead on saving money for the chicken moat and coop.

You can bet that I'll definitely focus on first aid again in 2012.

2. Diet/Exercise

Like so many of my fellow Americans, I am a bit out of shape. Four kids, stress, and a penchant for snacking have wreaked havoc upon my once shapely figure. Hubby Dear and I vowed that 2011 would be the year we got our flabby butts in gear and got healthy.

Although it started promisingly, our New Year's resolutions fizzled and we remain the same girth that we started the year with. We'll try again. I don't need to be supermodel thin, but I do want to make sure that I'm healthy and capable of working hard.

Lastly, my number one, most pitiful prepping failure of 2011 is

1. Cloth Pads

I had so many good intentions!

When my mom delivered a vintage sewing machine to my house last January, a world of possibilities opened up to me. How cool - I could sew clothing for my family if need be. I didn't want to wait for TEOTWAWKI, though. I wanted to create something practical that I could use now. Since I am not only concerned about preparedness but also increasingly interested in sustainable living, I became strangely excited about sewing my own cloth menstrual pads.

I tried, I really did. But when you carry the Un-crafty gene, there's just not much you can do.

My best effort was only good for a demented hand puppet

No matter what I did, I couldn't keep the needle threaded. Part of my problems might have come from the thickness of the four layers of absorbent material I was sewing through. I'm sure the failure is mostly due to my own incompetence, however.

If I want cloth pads, it looks like I'll have to buy them from someone else.

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Now that I have this all out in the open, I feel much better. I'll take a cleansing breath, take another swig of eggnog, and think of 2011's successes. But that is a post for another time.

Experienced any prepping failures? Share your tales of woe below.

Using Your Food Storage: Crockpot Sloppy Joes

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:00:00 +0000

I've been meaning to share this recipe with you all for the longest time. This is the best version of sloppy joes that I've ever tried and it uses a slow cooker, the favorite appliance of harried homemakers everywhere. You know what's even better? Using food storage will streamline the preparation of this meal and make it come together very quickly. Try it - you won't be disappointed.

Crockpot Sloppy Joes
Recipe adapted from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook

1 lb lean ground beef (OR 1 pint of home-canned ground beef, drained)
1 onion, finely chopped (OR approx. 3 T. dry onions, rehydrated according to package directions)
1/2 large red bell pepper, finely chopped (OR about 1/4 c. dry bell pepper, rehydrated according to package directions)
1 large rib celery, finely chopped (OR about 2 T. dry celery, rehydrated according to package directions)
1 clove of garlic, minced (OR 1/4 t. garlic powder)
1-6 oz. can tomato paste (OR 3 oz. tomato powder mixed with 3 oz. water)
2 T. apple cider vinegar
2 T. firmly packed brown sugar
1 t. paprika
1/2 t. dry mustard
3/4 t. salt
1/2 t. chili powder
1/4 t. ground black pepper
1 t. Worcestershire sauce
Dash of Tabasco sauce
Dash of cayenne pepper
Buns for serving

If using fresh ingredients: Brown beef in a skillet with onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic. When the meat is cooked through, transfer the mixture to your slow cooker. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine.

If using food storage: Heat the canned meat and rehydrated vegetables together in a skillet. When the mixture is warm, transfer it to your slow cooker, add the remaining ingredients, and proceed with recipe.

Cover and cook on low for 5 to 7 hours. If you let it cook past 5 hours, keep an eye on it because it might start to get overcooked on the sides, depending on how "hot" your slow cooker cooks.

Ladle mixture on buns and enjoy.

Peeps or Pullets? Ways to Get Started in Chicken Keeping

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

This is the first of a multi-part series chronicling my entry into chicken keeping.
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I've wanted chickens off and on for much of the past decade. The notion came to me in my Martha Stewart-idolizing days when I found out that she had a large flock of chickens in a custom-built "palais de poulet". And they weren't just any chickens. Her fancypants chickens laid eggs in shades of blue and green.

Martha's Palais de Poulet
Image from farmhousemusings.blogspot.com

The idea of gathering Easter eggs laid by chickens housed in a decorative outbuilding was the subject for many a daydream. The fantasy would inevitably end with Hubby Dear and I beating eggs for an omelet in a scene reminiscent of "Ghost", complete with the Righteous Brothers singing "Unchained Melody" in the background.

There are striking differences between Martha Stewart and myself. And not just the fact that she is a convicted felon and I have an over-active imagination. Martha has people. People to walk her dogs, mow her expansive lawns, and muck out her chicken coop. I have no people and I wasn't sure that I wanted to add chicken poop patrol to my job description.

Fast forward to 2011. Chicken keeping has become much more mainstream and hipsters in urban areas all across the country have chickens. If they can have chickens and like it, why not me? After all, I have plenty of space and more than an inclination for self-reliance. After pouring over a thick stack of books on poultry from the library, I threw my doubts to the wayside, coerced Hubby Dear into cooperating via the magical powers of the chicken moat and started making plans for the spring.

Which should come first? The Chicken or the Egg?

One of the first questions you have to answer once you decide to embark upon the enterprise of chicken keeping is what kind of chickens do you want to get? No, I don't mean what breed of chicken (that will be discussed in an upcoming post), but rather, do you start with hatching eggs, chicks, or pullets?

Hatching eggs

Hatching eggs are fertilized eggs that could potentially develop into chicks, given the right set of circumstances. You can order hatching eggs from professional hatcheries, buy them online from poultry fanciers, or get some from a neighbor who keeps chickens (assuming that neighbor also has a rooster and the eggs are fertile).

Eggs come in a variety of colors
Image from backyardchickens.com

How cool would it be to raise your own chickens from the egg up? As a homeschooler, this is one of those projects that appeals to me for the sheer educational value for my children.

There are some downsides to choosing hatching eggs as the means to get a flock started, however. First, you'd have to find a source of hatching eggs in the breed or breeds you desire. Hopefully the eggs would make it safely through their journey to your house, but even then, the danger is not over. It takes 21 days in an expensive incubator with careful turning (so the yolk does not stick to the shell) and proper humidity for a chick to develop and hatch out of an egg. Some eggs will never develop at all and some chicks may be too weak to survive. What if all the chicks that hatch out are roosters? Then what? You'd have to start the process all over if you want those fantastic fresh eggs.

Chicks

Image from marinhomestead.com

The second, and probably most popular, way of starting a flock of chickens is buying chicks. You can get a wide variety of chicks through the mail from professional hatcheries, at your local feed store in the spring, and even on Craigslist at times.

Baby chicks can survive for two days without food or water because they are still absorbing the yolk sac from the egg. This marvelous fact means that newborn poultry can be shipped across the country and arrive healthy and (supposedly) happy at your domicile. Most hatcheries require a minimum order of 25 chicks to insure the chicks stay warm, though there are a few that accept orders as small as three chicks.

You even have a good shot at getting the right sex of bird. You can specify the exact number of each sex you would like or ask for "straight run" (luck of the draw). This is especially useful if you live in an area that bans roosters and you don't want to re-home or eat any male birds. The sexing process is not foolproof, however. Those chicks and their parts are tiny! Most hatcheries claim to have about a 90% sexing accuracy.

Chickens rapidly grow past the cute fluff ball stage but it takes a while for them to start laying. From my research it appears that a few breeds might lay at 18 weeks of age but 22-25 weeks is more typical. That is a long time and a lot of feed to buy before you get your first egg. That leads me to the last way to start your flock.

Pullets and Hens

A Welsummer pullet
Image from http://www.north-western-poultry-society.com

You can save a lot of time if you buy chickens that already are old enough to lay eggs. A pullet is defined as a female chicken than is less than a year old. After a year, they have earned the venerable title of hen. You can buy started pullets from a hatchery and almost immediately start collecting eggs. There won't be any surprise roosters included in the bunch. Although started pullets are more expensive than chicks ($7-15 dollars per pullet vs. $1.50-4.00 per typical chick), when you factor in the cost of feed, etc., it's not really that bad a deal.

An even less expensive option would be to check and see if your state agricultural college sells pullets to the public. One of my neighbors bought 8 pullets from the poultry unit at the Ag college. They were 18 weeks old, fully vaccinated, and ready to go when they brought them home.

If you watch Craigslist or the local classifieds, you might find listings for hens. I would approach these with caution. After two years of age, most chickens will lay significantly fewer eggs. As an inexperienced poultry keeper, I would be afraid that someone was trying to pawn off an old hen that had stopped laying.

My choice

For me, the choice was easy. I decided to buy chicks for the cute factor, the educational value of watching them grow, and the ability to get exactly the breeds I wanted.

I also determined that I would order the chicks from a hatchery versus buy them at the local feed store in the spring. My father is a veterinary epidemiologist and has seen the effects of Exotic Newcastle disease and other poultry epidemics firsthand. He strongly recommended that I buy my chicks from a certified disease-free hatchery rather than take the biosecurity risks that come with feed store chicks. Feed store chicks get handled by a lot of people and are housed in an environment that can be a breeding ground for disease. Hatchery chicks, on the other hand, go more or less straight from the incubator to your house.

Hubby Dear and I decided to order about 15 hens, plus a rooster, from a hatchery that would ship less than 25 at a time. Then we were faced with the next big decision: what kinds should we get? That's coming up in Part II of my series on chicken keeping.

Do you have chickens or chicken fantasies? ;) How did you start your flock?

November in Review and December Preps

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:48:00 +0000

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving and have your Christmas preparations well under way. I am about 3/4 of the way done with my Christmas shopping, though I avoided the complete madness of Black Friday. Hubby Dear and I stayed at home in our pajamas and did our shopping online. We may not have bought any waffle irons for $2, but we stayed safe and sane, thank you very much!

November in review:

1. Gardening

We planted 1 lb of garlic cloves and mulched heavily over the top. Hopefully they will survive the winter depredations of field mice and emerge in the spring. We cleaned up all the garden debris and have everything clean and ready for spring plantings.
We finalized our plans for a survival orchard and planted three pecan trees.
Hubby Dear went through his garden journal and tallied up the final harvest totals. We learned a lot this year and I'll be sharing this information with you in a future post.
We have a tentative plan for next year's garden. We're expanding our garden yet again, which means we'll be building yet more square foot boxes.

Finally! Some cauliflower! The heads were small but very tasty.

2. Food Storage

I processed the pumpkins we grew in our garden into puree and froze it in 1 cup batches. Although I was initially disappointed with the flavor of the puree, I used it as a substitute for butternut squash in a pasta recipe I make regularly and it worked just fine.
I experimented with bouillon cubes and a vegan substitute for chicken broth.
I bought another couple of bucket of oats and wheat as well as more clarified butter from Emergency Essentials. I also bought 50 lb of sugar and packed it in a mylar bag and bucket myself.
I took advantage of holiday sales and stocked up on baking ingredients like chocolate chips and vanilla extract.

I hope this captures some of the beauty of this particularly pretty sunset, despite my lack of camera skills!

December Preps:

My major goal this month is to finalize my year's supply of long term food storage items. I need to go over our inventory and see if there are gaps. I think we are complete other than in dry milk.
I need to pre-order my chicks to be delivered in March!
My Christmas present to myself is the mack daddy chicken coop that will be delivered in January. I can't wait to share it with you all.

That's it for me. Are you gifting yourself or others with any preparedness items? If so, please share in the comments.

The Results of the Green Tomato Ripening Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

As you may remember, Hubby Dear and I decided to try two different ways of ripening the green tomatoes we were left with when frosty weather set in last month. We wanted to see which method, if any, could extend our harvest of fresh, ripe tomatoes into the winter months.

October 18: Green and under-ripe tomatoes saved from the frost

The first, most tedious method, involved picking the remaining tomatoes from each plant, dipping the tomatoes into a bleach water solution, allowing them to air dry, and then placing them in a single layer inside a newspaper-lined cardboard box. This took a while to accomplish and then I had to find an out-of-the-way place to stash the cardboard boxes.

At first, the bleach/cardboard method seemed to work just fine, but after a few weeks, the tomatoes started shriveling up as they ripened.

November 19: Something doesn't smell so good...

By mid-November, things had taken a decided turn for the worst and we had to throw away the remaining tomatoes.

October 18: Fresh from the garden

The other procedure we tried involved uprooting an entire plant and placing it upside down in our garage.

November 26: the foliage is brown, but the tomatoes are still ripening

This couldn't be easier. All we have to do is pick the tomatoes as they ripen. I don't think they taste quite as nice as your typical backyard tomato, but they sure beat anything you'll find in a grocery store. Every so often, one of the tomatoes will shrivel, but not to the extent of the other ripening method.

The winner by a landslide is obviously method two. Unless a tomato plant is simply too large and unwieldy to bring inside without mutilating it, this is going to be our go-to procedure.

Homegrown tomatoes during the Christmas season? I'm loving it!

Bouillon Cubes vs. Veggie Broth Mix Taste Test

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:00:00 +0000

After I posted about an interesting alternative to bouillon cubes that used nutritional yeast, I quickly ordered a can of the mysterious substance. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it so I could put it the supposedly-delicious broth mix through its paces.

When the nutritional yeast arrived, I have to admit that I was blown away by just how much nutritional yeast lives up to its name.

Nutrition facts for KAL nutritional yeast.

I'd like to see you match that, salty, junk-filled bouillon cube! I took a tentative taste of the yeast flakes and found that they actually taste pretty good. It has a savory, almost cheesy taste.

I measured out 1-1/2 cups of the yeast and followed the recipe as written in my previous post. All of the other ingredients for the broth mix are common pantry ingredients.

The finished mix

The next step was to see how the broth mix fared in a test with that most basic of survival foods - rice.

The cast of characters: bouillon cubes, chicken broth, a rice cooker, broth mix, and white rice

Here's how it worked: I cooked 2 cups of rice in 2-1/2 cups of liquid - chicken broth, reconstituted chicken bouillon or reconstituted veggie broth mix. I didn't add any additional salt or seasonings. I used my rice cooker for all batches for consistency's sake.

After all three batches of rice were finished, I turned my crack team of taste testers loose (ie. my children and husband) and asked for their honest feedback.

Clockwise: Chicken broth-cooked rice, bouillon rice, veggie broth mix rice

The verdict

The rice cooked in chicken broth was the winner. It was well-seasoned and tasted chicken-y. It was a definite improvement over plain rice.

The rice cooked in bouillon was the big loser! All but one of us put it in last place. It didn't taste anything like chicken and was overwhelmingly salty.

What about the rice cooked in the veggie broth mix? Well, it was definitely tasty. The problem was that I had a hard time looking past the textural problems. If you look at the photo above, you can see that the rice came out mushy and a bit over-cooked. I'm not sure why that happened since cooking rice in a rice cooker is usually foolproof. The rice didn't taste like chicken, but it was definitely flavorful. Hubby Dear said it kind of tasted like Rice a Roni, which is NOT a compliment coming from him. Besides the funny texture of the rice, my major issue with the veggie mix batch was that it lacked salt. That's an easy fix. I'll just add more salt to the broth mix than is called for in the original recipe.

Conclusion

Chicken broth was the overall winner, but it is bulky and relatively expensive. The cheaper alternative, bouillon cubes, produced results that were deemed unpalatable. The veggie broth mix is a viable alternative to bouillon cubes. It tastes good (when you tweak the recipe a bit), is healthy, and has an equal storage life to bouillon cubes.

I think I'll stick with chicken broth for my everyday cooking but kick the bouillon cubes to the curb. My food storage just got a little healthier. :)

The Birth of our Survival Orchard: Planting Pecan Trees

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:00:00 +0000

We began our survival orchard by planting pecan trees.Why pecans? I'm glad you asked! I think nuts are really important survival foods because of their protein and fat content. We are at the northern most part of the country where pecans can survive, which violates my principle of choosing only trees that are unfailingly hardy in our area. Walnuts (among other nut trees) would have been a better choice.

Well, Hubby Dear detests walnuts and most other nuts besides pecans. As I needed his help planting and maintaining the trees, pecans it would have to be. Besides, I spent a couple of years of my life living in the midst of a pecan grove down in Louisiana and I have been a fan ever since of the graceful, productive pecan tree. We chose the most cold-hardy varieties we could find (Starking Hardy Giant, Stark Surecrop, and Colby) and are crossing our fingers that they like our chilly hilltop homestead.

How could I resist the opportunity to have my own mini pecan grove?
Image from pawpaw.kysu.edu

The other issue with pecan trees is that they take a long time to bear fruit. It can be anywhere from 5-12 years to get a crop of pecans and 20 years for a pecan tree to reach its full size (and they do get BIG). Pecan trees grown in containers tend to transplant better than bare-root trees and grafted pecan trees tend to produce nuts earlier, so keep that in mind if you're looking to add one or more of these fruitful giants to your landscape. And don't make the mistake that we did. We procrastinated and did not place our order for special "Select" pecan trees from Stark Bros. until they had already been for sale for two weeks. By the time we placed our order, they were sold out of Select trees and we had to settle for the runts of the litter. Our procrastination cost us at least two additional years before we'll see nuts.

A view of the southwest corner of our property

Pecan trees get large, but luckily we have lots of space to fill. They need to be about 40' apart and well away from any power lines. We selected this space at the southwest corner of our 5 acres. We decided to be responsible citizens for a change and call to get our utility lines marked before we planted the trees. Hubby Dear gave a very specific description of the area we would be digging in when he filled out the online form for One Call:

"DIG AREA WILL BE ON THE SOUTHWEST PORTION OF THE PROPERTY, IN AN 80 FT X 80 FT AREA FROM A LINE CONNECTING THE ELECTRICITY POLE TO THE SOUTH FENCE, GOING EAST."

Seems straightforward to me.

I'm glad to know my backyard is OK...

Apparently not. This is what ended up getting marked - the area between our house and the chicken moat! Oh well. At least we were able to scavenge the flags the doofus left behind to mark the spots where we wanted to plant each tree.

We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't hit anything, marked out positions for the three trees and got to work. Thankfully we had gotten 3-1/2 inches of precipitation over the previous week and it served to loosen things up slightly.

See the line of demarcation between topsoil and clay?

I have a long history of bemoaning our poor soil. I was surprised to find that this portion of our property actually has several inches of topsoil. This is MUCH better than in our backyard garden area. I was excited to find lots of earthworms as we dug.

One hole down...

The goal is to get a hole that is roughly 2' across and 2' deep. We dug down to 18" pretty easily, but past that point the clay was impenetrable to our shovels. Oh well, it would just have to do!

We took the topsoil and the best bits of the clay and mixed it in a wheelbarrow with some peat moss and compost. We used this mixture to fill in the holes. The addition of peat moss and compost will help loosen things up a bit for the trees. The trees themselves were tiny and came in 4"x10" pots. By the time they grow enough that their root systems fill the hole we dug, they should be strong enough to contend with the unamended soil that surrounds the place they were planted. That's the theory, anyway!

Our teeny tiny Colby pecan tree. Don't be fooled by the much larger bamboo support stake!

We tamped down the soil mix tightly around the tree, eliminating air pockets that could cause the tree to dry out and die. Then we watered, watered, watered. Pecan trees really need a lot of water but unfortunately, these trees are far away from any faucet or hose. I'm comforting myself by the thought that lugging 5 gallon buckets of water around all summer is sure to build up my biceps.

We used some of the most dense pieces of clay to create small berms around the planting site. They work nicely to keep water around the trees and prevent it from running off downhill before it can soak in.

Stark Surecrop Pecan Tree with Typar weedcloth circle and mulch

The next step was to lay a circle of landscape fabric around each tree and cover it with several inches of mulch. This will help to retain soil moisture and make mowing and trimming easier.

The finished product. As you can tell, it took us all afternoon to complete the job.

The final step was to place a tree guard around each tree. Tree guards are white plastic coils that protect trees both from rodent damage and sunscald.

That's it! Hopefully the little trees will thrive and grace us with beauty, shade, and lots of pecans.

Planning a Survival Orchard

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:20:00 +0000

We've made a lot of progress towards self-reliance on our little homestead this year. We converted our vegetable garden to a square foot-type garden and had our first successful growing season since we moved to this location. Good thing, because it was a lot of work building all those boxes and filling them with 1,000s of pounds of Mel's Mix! We're also set up to get chickens in the spring. The next step is to begin planting our homestead's orchard.

I know not everyone lives on acreage in the country, but that's not a reason why you can't plant something. If you live in an apartment, why not try a window box of strawberries? If you have an average-sized suburban yard, you have lots of options. Many fruit trees come in dwarf varieties. Or you could train them against a fence, put a colonnade-type fruit tree in a pot on your deck, or even fill your flowerbeds with gorgeous, edible landscaping. Have you seen The Prudent Homemaker's garden? Wow! Talk about inspiring! Also, check out the book Landscaping With Fruit by Lee Reich for lots of great ideas.

You can train fruit trees against a sunny wall
Image from allaboutfruittrees.blogspot.com

When considering what types of trees to plant in a survival orchard, you may want to keep these things in mind:

What can I plant that will give me the most vital nutrients?
How easy will it be to care for?
How will I use the fruit?

Vital nutrients - fruit and nuts as survival food

Many of us today are over-fed and under-exercised, myself included. In the future, instead of counting calories for weight loss, we might be trying to scrape together enough calories to survive. A survival orchard would be very useful in such a scenario. Take pecans, for instance. One cup of pecan halves contains approximately 700 calories, 71 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber. Pecans also have a decent shelf life, particularly if you store them in the shell. Or you can shell them and then freeze or vacuum seal them. This makes the pecan - or any nut, for that matter - a great survival food. Check out this post on Survival Blog for someone else's take on the apple as the ultimate survival food.

Ease of care

When it comes to fruit trees, there are so many choices. Take apples, for instance. My favorite nursery, Stark Bros., sells well over 30 varieties of apples. The selection is mind-boggling.

Once you select the kind of apple you want to grow, then you have to consider how large you want your tree to be. Dwarf fruit trees generally run 8-10 feet tall, semi-dwarfs are 12-15 feet, and standard sized trees are about 18-25 feet. Dwarfs are obviously smaller and therefore easier to care for, but they also have a shorter lifespan and do yield less fruit per tree. A standard sized tree has a long life span and will yield a ton of fruit, but you have to contend with harvesting and pruning such a large tree. We have decided to go for the best of both worlds and get semi-dwarf trees when we have that option.

Semi-dwarf apple trees
Image from mainelyapples.com

Yet another consideration is disease-resistance. We try to garden organically, so selecting disease-resistant varieties is really important for us. Even if you don't garden organically now, when TSHTF, you may be forced to. A survival orchard is best served by selecting varieties that thrive in the weather conditions of your area and that are resistant to the prevalent pests.

Fire blight - a major pestilence around here
Image from ipm.msu.edu

Don't forget to plant pollinators, if necessary. Some fruit and nut trees self-pollinate, others must be pollinated by another tree, and still others bear more fruit if they have a pollinator nearby.

How will you eat it?

Lastly, think about how you exactly you will be using the fruit. Have you ever noticed that some apples that taste like ambrosia when eaten out of hand sometimes taste like nothing when baked in a pie? Certain varieties of fruit are best for canning. Others are great for drying, stay fresh even after months in a root cellar, or are best appreciated fresh off the tree. Decide how you will be eating the fruit now so you will not be disappointed later.

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With all these factors in mind, we've created a general outline for building our orchard here in USDA Hardiness Zone 5.

Our Existing Perennial Fruits:
1. Blackberries - 3 Chester and 3 Triple Crown. This is just about the right amount of blackberries for our family.
2. Raspberries - Heritage. The raspberries we planted this spring to add to our existing patch didn't make it. We'll try again in the spring.
3. Strawberries - Earliglo (June bearing) and Tribute (everbearing). The majority of our strawberries mysteriously died, but they will be replaced next year. The strawberries that survived produced fruit that tasted amazing.
4. Sour cherry - Montmorency. This freebie has never gotten the TLC it deserved. I'm going to pamper it next year and see if I can't get it to do something.

Triple Crown Blackberries, Raspberries in the background, May 2011

Orchard Planting Plan (Type of plant, varieties, date of planting):

1. Pecan trees - Starking Hardy Giant, Stark Surecrop, and Colby, Fall '11.
2. Apple - Goldrush, Enterprise, Jonafree, Spring '12
3. Blueberries - Bluecrop, Blueray, Jersey, Spring '12
4. Almond - Hall's Hardy Almond, Fall '12
5. Pear - Varieties to be determined, Fall '12
6. Plum - Varieties TBD, Fall '12/Spring '13
7.Peach - Intrepid, Reliance, Contender, Spring '13
8. Cherry - Varieties TBD, Spring '13
9. Lemon* - Meyer Lemon, Spring '13

*The lemon tree is the one plant we've selected that is not hardy in our area. I am a true lemon lover, however, and cannot imagine a world without lemons. We plan on planting it in a container and bringing it indoors in the winter.

Fruit and nut trees do take several years before they will bear fruit. Ideally, we would get all the trees into the ground now so they would be productive ASAP. We have to balance that desire with reality. We are expanding our homestead rapidly and are likely to crash and burn if we don't pursue moderation.

We broke ground on our orchard over the weekend. I'll post all the hairy details in an upcoming post.

Do you have any fruit or nut trees? Plans to plant some? Do tell! :)

A Possible Replacement for Bouillon Cubes in Your Food Storage

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:13:00 +0000

I hate bouillon cubes. First of all, I can never open the stupid foil papers they are wrapped in. When I finally get the cube out and pop it in my soup or whatever I'm cooking, I'll usually find stubborn pieces of foil floating to the top. Even worse, the ingredients in most bouillons are scary. Here's the list of ingredients in the Tone's Chicken Bouillon I have in my food storage:

Salt, sugar, partially hydrogenated palm oil, monosodium glutamate (MSG), cornstarch, and less than 2% of onion powder, chicken fat and meat, garlic powder, turmeric (color), disodium inosinate, spices, TBHQ (preservative). MADE ON EQUIPMENT THAT ALSO PROCESSES WHEAT, MILK, EGGS, SOY, SHRIMP, AND FISH.

Does that make you hungry? No? It practically gives me an anaphylactic reaction to think about eating all that junk, and I don't even have any food allergies! Not exactly the feeling I want to have when I'm preparing food for my children.

Yet it can't be denied that bouillon is one of the cheapest, most versatile seasonings that you can have on hand. If I was living on a diet of beans and rice, I wouldn't care how much sodium or MSG was in that bouillon cube; I would be thankful for its punch of flavor.

There are other alternatives to the humble bouillon cube, of course. You could store cans of chicken broth. The problem with that is cans of broth take up much more room and are more expensive per unit. You could also buy some of the premium chicken bouillons that are out there. I have had people tell me good things about Shirley J's Chicken Bouillon. It does have only about 1/2 the sodium of standard bouillons, but it also contains hydrolyzed soy protein which is a source of MSG. What to do?

I went ahead and stocked up on cheap bouillon cubes during my Food Storage Blitz Month, but I haven't felt good about that decision. Then a friend shared this YouTube video with me. It seems there is a quick and easy alternative to canned bouillons and broths that is very food storage friendly!

Here's the recipe shared in the video:

Veggie Chicken Broth Mix
1-1/2 c. nutritional yeast
3 T. onion powder
2-1/2 t. garlic powder
1 T. salt
1 t. celery seed
2-1/2 T. Italian Seasoning
2 T. dry parsley

Mix in ingredients in blender and then store broth mix in an air-tight container. Add 1 T. of mix per cup of water and use as chicken or veggie broth in recipes.

So what is nutritional yeast anyway?

Nutritional yeast is the same kind kind of yeast that you use to make bread, but it has been subjected to a process that renders it inert. It adds a lot of nutrition and flavor to food. You might be able to find nutritional yeast in your local health food store, but if you are like me and live in a place where you can't dependably buy high-class food like boneless, skinless chicken breasts, you can order it on Amazon.com here. The rest of the ingredients are items I always have in my pantry.

Nutritional yeast has a shelf life of about 2 years if you store it in an air-tight container in a cool location - approximately the same shelf life as a bouillon cube!

And how does it taste?

My friend reports that it is delicious! She used broth made from this mix in French onion soup and her family raved about it. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to order some nutritional yeast, whip up a batch of broth mix, and report back.

What place does broth/bouillon have in your food storage? Are you bothered by food additives or could you not care less?

Ask the Readers: How do you keep frozen bread tasting fresh?

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Homemade bread - including my successful Sun Oven experiment

Please allow me a bit of a brag: I have stopped buying bread at the store altogether. Between my NutriMilland my Bosch mixer,making bread with wheat from my food storage couldn't be easier. I bake four loaves at a time (the Bosch can handle six, but I only have four bread pans!) and freeze them.

Here's the problem: my frozen loaves just aren't as moist and tasty as they are when fresh.I have experimented with the type of sugar I use in the bread - white sugar, honey, or brown sugar. I have experimented with the type of wrapping I give the bread before freezing it - a freezer bag, foil, or a layer of plastic wrap, then foil.

Nothing I've tried seems to make much of a difference.

So I ask you, gentle readers: what are your best tricks for freezing bread so that the taste and texture when it thawed is like freshly baked bread?

Some Not-So-Sweet News About Honey

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:39:00 +0000

Honey is a major part of most food storage plans and for good reason. It is versatile, has a very long storage life, and is a compact source of a lot of calories. (It sounds funny to think of a time when the fact that something has a lot of calories would be a good thing, doesn't it?) The LDS church recommends that each family store 3 lb of honey per adult and 1 lb per child.

I came to the conclusion that we need to store much more than the recommended amount of honey for our family. The main reason is because I prefer to use honey as the sweetener when I make bread from my stored wheat. I calculated how much honey it would take to make bread for a year and that led me to the amount I have stored - around 45 pounds. (Check out my post on what types of sugar I have in my food storage if you missed it the first time around.)

With that much honey hanging around, it isn't surprising that this article posted on Facebook caught my attention:

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey

If you read through the article, you'll find that Food Safety News tested massive amounts of honey from all over the country. They bought honey at the places the average citizen is likely to frequent - grocery stores, warehouse clubs, and even the individual serving packets found at fast food restaurants. The vast majority of the samples didn't have even a trace of pollen.

You might be wondering why the absence of pollen is a problem. There are several reasons to be concerned. First of all, to quote the Food Safety News article, "In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey." Comparing natural honey with pollen to ultra-filtered honey without pollen reminds me of the differences between dark chocolate and white chocolate. Both dark and white chocolates are sweet products that contain parts of the cacao plant, but white chocolate is missing the cocoa solids of real chocolate. The cocoa solids are what provide that delicious, chocolate-y flavor I depend on to make it through my some of the traumatic moments in my harried life. White chocolate is OK, but it definitely is not the same. Following this analogy, why would I choose to buy honey that was missing all the good stuff?

Next, the pollen in honey is what provides all those wonderful health benefits to those who consume it. It also gives each type of honey (ie. clover, tupelo, etc.) a distinctive taste. It is pollen that keeps honey from being just another sugar syrup.

The last thing pollen does for honey is give scientists a way to track where the honey originated. Without the pollen, a honey distributor can mix together honeys from different regions or nations and it will all pretty much taste the same. That cheerful plastic bear hiding in your pantry might very well contain honey from China. Chinese honey is NOT something you want to have as part of your diet. It is common for Chinese honey to contain dangerous antibiotics that are banned in the USA or to be diluted with corn syrup. As the article relates, Chinese honey is making its way into the US in massive amounts and the government isn't trying to stop it.

I have been buying my honey in 5 lb bottles at Sam's Club. No more! That honey is on the list of pollen-free honeys cited in the article. I'm going to look for a local source of honey and may get into beekeeping myself someday. It may be a bit more expensive and require some effort to find local, less-processed honey, but at least I'll know it will be chock full of pollen and poison-free!

Read more about Chinese honey here.

My Conflicted Mind

noreply@blogger.com (The Harried Homemaker) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Sometimes I feel like I live between two different worlds and I can't tell which one is reality.

The first world is the one explored in books like Patriots, Survivors,and One Second After. The end of the world as we know it is discussed as fact on many of my regular Internet haunts and, increasingly, in the mainstream media. In this world, it is apparent that the old ways are passing away and something new - and quite possibly sinister - is approaching.

One Second After still haunts me

The second world is optimistic and sparkles with cheerful consumerism. According to this version of reality, there may be slight bumps in the road, but life will always be good in the US of A. Nothing really bad can ever happen here. The comfortable lifestyle that my family enjoys is secure because we have plenty of that green paper stuff that passes for wealth.

One world urges me to focus on preparedness. NOW. The other entreats me to stop being a killjoy and start planning my next vacation. Which world reflects the true reality?

My guess is that reality is somewhere between those two visions. I pray that we never have a total breakdown of society such as that depicted in the aforementioned books, but I do believe that harder times are coming. I feel led by the Holy Spirit to prepare, specifically in the area of food storage. That is reason enough for a Christian to venture into prepping, however, it's not always easy. It gets very tempting to give up when I think that I could be remodeling my kitchen instead of buying MREs!

Do any of you struggle with conflicted feelings regarding preparedness? Why do YOU prepare?