Food

It seems my existence revolves around food.  Whether it’s eating it or preparing it for somebody else, it’s always in my forethoughts.  What shall we eat next?  What can I do to keep everybody eating their veggies?  How can I keep loosing weight?  What’s for dinner?  Jesus said not to worry about what we will eat or drink, but rather we should trust God, who knows we need these things.  I’ve been trying to take that approach and let my food prep be more spirit-led if you will.  I still make grocery lists and I still plan ahead (at least weekly) but I try to keep some things unplanned, so I can practice NOT worrying, instead I practice listening and letting the Holy Spirit inspire me.  It’s kind of fun, because surprisingly, He always gives me a good idea!  Always!

We joined a CSA this year.  That stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Every week we get a gorgeous box full of organic, locally grown veggies and sometimes fruit.  It has been a tremendous blessing!  I don’t always know what to do with the bounty I get, but I’m learning!

Roasted CSA veggies with butter and seasonings.  Scrumptious!

I’ve got tomatoes coming out of my ears!  I find them in my CSA box, in my own garden and my neighbor brings them over!  So I decided to dehydrate some.  I read that I can pulverize them and use the powder to make tomato sauce and tomato paste.  They turned out so pretty that I might just keep them this way.

Besides tomatoes, I’ve been dehydrating apples, nectarines and pears.  I find dehydrating to be the easiest way (besides freezing) to preserve food.  No sugar is needed and I can just keep everything right in my big pantry.

I’ve also been freezing onions, peppers and berries.  Squash season is starting, my absolute favorite!

Bless the Lord , O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his benefits; who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. Psalm 103: 1-5

He forgives, heals, redeems, crowns and feeds us! 

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Keeping my Treasures Warm

So every summer I go garage saling.  Every summer I find warm beautiful winter jackets.  Every summer I try to prepare for the coming winter and every summer, I get too many jackets!  I was over at a friend’s house who was going through clothing, she has a mega-sized family so it was a lot of clothes and I found a really nice jacket in her stuff for Bubble Gum and came home and realized she needed it but that Laffy Taffy had 3 jackets.  He doesn’t need that many.

And so the sorting began.  I started by going through  the house:  garage, front coat closet, back hallway, laundry room closet and totes and found all the coats or jackets that had been left out since early spring when it was still cold or stored away for the future.

Then I started hanging up jackets in birth order starting with me and working my way down to Marshmallow.  That hot pink coat near the wall is my winter jacket.  Next comes Chocolate, he has a winter coat, a fall/spring coat, a jean jacket, a leather coat and a pair of snow pants.  He’s set.  Everything in his size that I don’t need is going out of my house.  Next is Strawberry.  She has a winter coat, jean jacket, spring/fall jacket and snow pants.  She’s on the look out for a trench coat from a thrift store. Everything else in her size is leaving my house too.  And down it goes. 

To deal with the left over stuff, it went in one of four places.  Either here (my laundry room closet), these are coats that are VERY nice and someone will be able to wear in the next couple years, like Adrielle or Jonathan.  Or they went in the basket you can see with doll chairs sticking out, I’m taking those to Once Upon a Child because I don’t have friends with baby girls. 

Or into a bag for donating.

Or in this pile to take to the beach for my friends to dig through.  There are many coats in here, including nice coats that were mine but are too big now.  It’s so fun to be able to share our blessings with people!  I love seeing all the coats and jackets and snow pants lined up, knowing that my family will be warm this winter.  And now I don’t have to look for coats at garage sales anymore this summer!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Monday Munchies~Turkey & Cheese Roll-ups

 

These are an every once in a while snack I like to make.  I will only make them with the Trader Joe’s refrigerator crescent rolls though.  I’m just too much of a food snob, but I do NEED to do things simple sometimes, so when I do, I’m extra thankful for Trader Joe’s.

Super easy to make.  I take the crescent roll and before rolling it up I lay in a half slice of turkey lunch meat and a little bit of cheddar cheese.

Roll them up tightly and lay them on a lightly oiled cookie sheet.

Bake them at 350 until golden brown. Between 12-18 minutes.

Such an easy and semi-nutritious snack! (grin)

The teens really love these too!

Now go feed somebody!

Mrs. Taffy

What does love look like?

Love has a lot of faces and Valentine’s Day always gets me in the mood to share my love and show my love to the people around me.  In our house, the kids have come to accept that Valentine’s Day is a holiday for married people, after all, the history of St. Valentine’s has to do with keeping marriage lawful.  Still, it’s hard not to succumb to all the pink and heart and chocolate and diamond advertising everywhere.  And I do enjoy making them a delicious treat and flooding their ears with terms of endearment.

I’ve given up having expectation about Valentine’s Day.  There just isn’t really any point or the point is to express my love to others, not expect to receive love from others.  That being said, my husband has pretty much astounded me this year.  I’m mean, really astounded.  He read my blog post of about my longings and set to do something about it. What?  I’m still so surprised at his thoughtfulness and generosity.  I didn’t get a diamond or a trip to Hawaii, I didn’t get an elaborate date night with loads of pampering  and culinary indulgences.  I got a freezer full of meat.  Yup, you read that correctly.  Meat.

             

I took these pictures before he was actually done.

And while on the surface that might seem really bizarre, it’s so amazing that I fear I can’t express my gratitude enough. 

Not only did he plan out what to buy, he bought it, then repackaged it (with my input) in portions that would be helpful for our family.  He cooked, cut, washed, labeled, stacked, counted and prepared all this meat for me.  He saved me so much time, so much money from my normal weekly food budget.  He wrote a blog post about it here.  You can read it from his perspective, complete with charts and prices and what we packed up, specifically.  Amazing!

So now our family joke is that I don’t get diamonds for Valentine’s Day, I get a freezer full of meat.  Well, I already have all the diamonds I’ll ever need and a freezer full of meat satisfies my longing for simplicity.

I’ll be forever grateful. 

So for me, this Valentine’s Day, Love is Meat.

I shall eat of it daily.

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Budgeting

Do you have a budget?  A few times through our almost 20 years of marriage we’ve had a budget.  We could never do anything like Larry Burket or Dave Ramsey because we just didn’t even make enough money to do it.  We had various financial trials throughout our marriage too, but I look back on the times of budgeting as a blessing.  Sometimes my husband was paid on commission, or monthly or weekly, it seems our finances are always changing, unpredictable.  Those times were hard to make a budget for as well.

My husband has turned in his resignation at his permanent position at a Bank here in the Twin Cities.  He had a VP title, health insurance, 5 weeks of paid vacation.  But at the end of the day he was miserable.  The commute is awful.  The environment…I’ve never worked in an office environment but the times I’ve gone to his work, I can’t believe how quiet and dull it is.  I would be asleep in 5 minutes! The hours were long, the work thankless. He was offered at contracted position at another bank in the Twin Cities, one closer to home, one with set hours and an hourly wage, no more health insurance but more freedom.  He’s worked there before and got the job without a formal interview.  He’ll be getting paid more money and will be able to work less hours.  With this new job we’ll be getting paid every week.  It’s predictable. So we decided to make a budget.

We went out to breakfast one Saturday morning, took the laptop and a note book, the bills folder and our thinking caps.  It was a wonderfully productive meeting.  The best earthly feeling, in my opinion, is being on the same page as your spouse!  I love to have a unified goal.  Love it!

Our categories look like this:

• Mortgage
• Food
• Bills (Includes: water, trash, cell phones, our Compassion Child, etc.)
• Consumable Household (Includes: toilet paper, napkins, toothbrushes, Goodnights, etc.)
• Non-Consumable Household (Includes: Printer ink, laundry baskets, brooms, photo prints, car keys, rugs, paint, stamps, etc.)
• Auto (Includes: gas, insurance, maintenance)
• Medical (Includes vitamins and Minute Clinic Visits, Dentist appt.)
• Clothes (Broke down per person, per week)
• Education (For homeschool stuff and fees for classes and tests for the teens)
• Savings (This is just a general savings for agreed upon family things.  i.e. Vacations, large car repairs, large medical bills, minor emergencies and Offerings, snow blower, etc.)
• Fun (This includes eating out)

We will also have another savings account that will hold all the money that goes beyond what we’ve allocated into these categories.  It’s complicated how we figured out the base amount, but he should be getting quite a bit more than what we budgeted for, that extra will go into a separate savings account, to be saved for emergencies or when we need a new car or sending Chocolate off to college or whatever, we want this account to keep growing.

Some of the numbers in the different categories are pretty small.  For instance, our clothing category.  It looks like this:

• Mr. Taffy- $25 a month
• Mrs. Taffy –$25 a month
• Banana Taffy- $15 a month
• Chocolate Taffy-$15 a month
• Strawberry Taffy-$10 a month

And down it goes, $10 a month per child.  That’s not much.  Mr. Taffy’s has more because he really needs some new work pants, mine is more so I can get a pretty dress for the boy’s graduation, the boys is more because we want to buy them each a suit for their graduation gift.  Could you spend $10 a month on clothes?  It’s going to be a stretch.  But like I was just telling Strawberry, “If you save all that money until May, you’ll have $50 to spend at garage sales.  You can get a LOT of clothes at garage sales for $50!!”  Some of numbers might be too aggressive.  We may have to re-evaluate in a month or two, but for now we are going to give it our best.  The kids can always use their own money if they want something new too.  They have no lack, trust me. 

Mr. Taffy has a LOT of experience in building data bases so he is working to build us our own to keep track of our purchases.  I’m going to teach Strawberry how to enter our purchases into each category.  I want her to learn how to itemize and organize.  She loves to find coupons and good deals, so this will turn into a nice .5 credit economics/accounting elective for her. 

One thing I’m doing to help me not be tempted to buy extra things is unsubscribing to all the email lists that send me wonderful amazing deals practically everyday!  Hello Gymboree?  Bye bye!  Good riddance!  I’ve given you enough money!  lol  Very Jane.  Sniff sniff…that one will be a little harder. 

It is a challenge living on one-income.  It’s even a bigger challenge when you consider how the price of food is increasing every day and how it looks like our taxes are going to be raised again.  It can be overwhelming.  I’ve been tempted to open a day-care in our home.  But God is in control and we are purposed to be good stewards of what He’s given us.  Mr. Taffy does NOT want me have a day care in our home (me either really), so we will do what we need to do and if that means we don’t get to eat out whenever we want too or if I have to spend more time in the kitchen because I’m cooking all the time, well so be it.  It’s a fair exchange to be home for my family!

What’s the hardest thing about budgeting to you?

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Playing with Pumpkins

Food gets me so excited!  Especially fresh produce.  The more the merrier!  Recently I purchased, ready for this…400 pounds of produce!  All at once!  Wanna see? 

I got 4-50 # bags of acorn squash and 2-50# bags of butternut squash.  I also got 100# of potatoes and 20# of onions.  I  guess that’s a little more than 400 pounds huh?

I’ve been reading about the Pilgrims and the incredible trails they encountered when coming to America, about how they had to grow and store all their food over the winter in order to survive.  It may sound funny, but they really inspired me.  Surely if they could do that, survive that, thrive in that, I can take care of and manage 400 pounds of produce. Surely.

I was honored to be able to purchase this food from a farmer, what I bought was part of his left overs from the year.  I spent a total of $148.00 on all this food, which still just sets me at awe!  All the produce came in burlap bags like the squash photo from the top.  It’s a handy way to transport them, but not so handy to retrieve, especially if I’m sending children out to get them.

  So in my garage I set up a table and portioned out some of the food into boxes.  All the potatoes are in a box so they stay nice and dark.  I also put the onions in a box.  One bag of acorn squash was divided between my big pantry in the house and chicken box from Sam’s Club.  All the produce is off the floor and covered with a sleeping bag in order to keep out the frigid winter air.

It’s not very attractive but I don’t care. (grin)

Since I’m showing you around my ugly garage I might as well show you my other food storage.

Buckets with bags of dry goods.  Mr. Taffy and I  feel pretty passionate about having a little bit of food on hand for eating and for emergencies.  We don’t live in fear, but I feel like part of my job as resident Homemaker is to make sure that there is food here, continually and Mr. Taffy always encourages me to stock up a little bit here and there. Plus it’s such a blessing to be able to go shopping in my garage and not be at the mercy of grocery store prices and the fluctuating market.

Along with the produce I ordered, the farmer gave me some canning pumpkins, or sugar pumpkins or pie pumpkins, not sure exactly what they are called, but they are the kind of pumpkins that make delicious pies.  I don’t really make pumpkin pies but I love to put pumpkin in EVERYTHING else.  So even though it was a stretch for me, I spent an evening “processing” those pumpkins.  With a little help from my best girls of course!

I figured out it was easier to sort of “milk” the seeds out of the center of the pumpkin, rather than scoop out everything  all at once and separate the seeds afterward.  (I washed, soaked and roasted the seeds. My husband LOVES the salty pumpkin seeds to snack on!)

So slimy!  I think we processed 8 pumpkins, I still have 2 more, but I’m going to use them for my Thanksgiving Table.

I got to wondering if I could just bake the pumpkin pieces in my roasting pan.  Guess what?  It worked, beautifully!  I roasted them in two layers, with a sheet of tin foil in between.  I baked them at 325 for about an hour and the pumpkin came out of those shells as easily as could be!  After it cooled I ran the pumpkin through my Squeeze-O and then froze the pumpkin in one and two cup portions!  No added sugar or preservatives, just look at that lovely color!

It was a pretty messy job but I’m glad we took the time to do it.

Off to make some Pumpkin Bread! 

 

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Homemaking Helps~Chicken

Since I wasn’t taught how to be a homemaker and never even prepared a whole chicken (you know the kind that comes fresh in a bag, with or without the innards) until I was 28, I thought I’d share some things I do to make my life easier.

Today’s topic:  Chicken. 

I cook so MUCH!  I’m always cooking, always thinking about the next meal, always planning ahead.  One of the things that I have started doing that has a been a real blessing to me is preparing the chicken ahead of time and using it all week.

Like this morning, I usually buy those big packages of fresh chicken breasts from Sam’s Club.  Actually, I buy them by the case, but I freeze each tray and then use them throughout the month.  Last night I thawed out a big package of those fresh/frozen chicken breasts and this morning before breakfast I put the whole package in the crockpot, with salt, pepper and garlic. 

I cooked them on high until we were done with our morning studies, about 11:00 am.  I let them cool while we had lunch, then I cut them up and put them in a container then into the fridge. 

The great thing about doing this is that now whenever I need chicken for various things I’m making this week, it’s already prepared!  This week I’ll use the chicken for:  Mexican Chili, BBQ chicken Pizza, Chicken Fried Rice and I’ll use any left over for a quiche on Friday morning. 

If I’m feeling really ambitious I’ll get out both my crockpots and put a whole fryer into each of them and let them cook on low overnight while I’m sleeping.  Then in the morning, I let them cool while we eat breakfast and then debone them after breakfast, clean up the dishes and have a ton of chicken for: Soup, Enchiladas, Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole, and more! 

Either way, it helps me tremendously when it comes time to actually make dinner.   And I find that I can make the chicken last longer this way too, one package of chicken breasts can last our family of 9 a whole week this way!  A little goes a long way!

Happy Homemaking!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy