Taking a Break from Crowd Cooking

If you've been following my posts on how I cook to feed 40 people on a budget, you may have noticed I haven't written a new one in awhile. I was scheduled to have another crowd meal a couple weeks ago, and had it all planned out, only to find that most of the group wouldn't be showing up that day, toddler wasn't feeling well, and my sister-in-law had already made a huge pot of soup that needed eaten. So I didn't end up doing a crowd meal this month. I'm going to be on break from the meals for a couple months while I recover and enjoy my new baby (yet to arrive. I'm not due for another week). I have enjoyed keeping track of the meals and sharing what I've done with you all! Just hold tight. I'll be back this spring with more.

Counting Our Blessings

I've been asked before what foods and how much we can for our family of three. Canning our own food is one of the ways we save on our grocery bill, and I'd say it's one of the biggest ways we're able to cut down on grocery store expenses. By having a variety of foods in our pantry, we have a selection to choose from to give variation to our meals. We have a few staple meals for wintertime that simply require a walk down the basement steps, some spices, and maybe a few simple ingredients like butter or milk to go with it. While at times I prefer a bit more variety in my meal plan than what we've been able to grow so far, I never have to go shopping for side dishes. I could stand to be a little more creative using what we do have, but when I set down and make a point to cook from on-hand stock, I find it often isn't much of a challenge. As I've said before, as long as I have butter, milk, and eggs on hand, we can eat pretty well staying away from the grocery. 

Our goal in doing our own gardening and canning is more than just keeping our food budget low. We want to eat healthy and become as self-sufficient as possible, not depending on conventional farming via the store to feed our family. This year we took the "eating healthy" part up a notch, and decided we were going to cut out sugar and white flours from our home cooking. This meant purchasing a 5-gallon bucket of honey locally and using it to sweeten our pickles and ketchup. This decision came shortly after strawberry season, where I accidentally misread my notes and added 3x more sugar than I did the previous year. We already had been keeping our sugar consumption low, and multiplying it by 3x what we did before still kept it less sweet than what you'd find in Walmart, but that was a big oops nonetheless. 

You'll notice in my chart below that some of the later-season crops weren't recorded very well. In 2015, I had just given birth to Adam and paused my canning for a couple weeks, had others helping me with it, and well, I just didn't do so well keeping track. This year even though I tried harder, I still forgot to record some of the squash and broths as well as I would've liked. 

Our garden yield wasn't quite as good in some areas as I was hoping (partially due to no rain, and lots to do with my laziness), but thankfully we had enough canned goods from last year that I really only needed to add a few things that we were getting really low on. I think ketchup was the only thing we absolutely ran out of from the 2015 canning season. This next year I'm going to need to pay attention that I get salsa and pizza sauce, as we only have a few more jars of each. I have a few gallons of whole tomatoes that I stuck in the freezer to process this winter, and need to get to them still. I am out of plain tomato sauce pints, so I figure I'd use them up that way so I don't have to be opening quart jars when I only need half of it for my recipe. It's easier to waste food when I stick the remainder in the fridge and don't have a plan for the other half of the jar. 

Last year we planted two varieties of potatoes and had loads of them to last us all the way through until summer. This year we planted two varieties again, but were only able to get one of them harvested due to not being able to get our tractor into a very wet garden. That was really disappointing for me, because my husband grows the most delicious potatoes I have ever set my teeth into. The ground didn't freeze until much later than normal this fall, but that still didn't help the fact that it was rather swampy out there until then! The one variety we did get was a red potato, and I think we both decided from now on we're only going to plant that kind. Not only was the flavor really sweet, but the very first potato Aaron dug this summer was bigger than his hand! We chopped it up and made a huge panful of fries, and both ate to satisfaction from ONE potato. That one ended up being the biggest of the crop, but there were a whole bunch that weren't far behind. It has been nice not having to deal with a bunch of littles! I still have a few pounds in the basement, and figure they should last us another month or so, depending what we decide to cook and if we can stay faithful keeping the eyes from getting out of hand. This year was an early one for them to start sprouting eyes for some reason. 

Besides all that, I still have a few more pounds of beef bones to cook down for broth, and would like to turn some of our applesauce into apple butter. Aaron loves apple butter, and with as much jam as we consume in a year, it would be nice to have one more option to accompany our bread. Also, I would like to mention this list isn't everything we plant in our garden, just what we stored for the winter. We always plan on extras for fresh summer eating. So now you have it ... this is what we've stocked up the past two years! Not much longer before it's time to plan our garden of 2017.........

Nesting

Here I'm nearing the end of my second pregnancy and I'm not even sure I know what nesting is. I always thought it was a high-adrenaline sort of urge to clean. Unlike so many women out there, I'm not a cleaner. I can't stand it. I would rather be doing almost anything else. But knowing baby is almost here, I feel like I have a duty to keep a nicer house and get things all in place since I won't be doing much after the birth, so I have been trying to keep myself busy by straightening the house. I'm kind of at the point where "if it's going to get done, I'd better do it now". Today I finally am ordering the birthing supplies I've been needing to have on hand....

When I was pregnant with Adam I remember one time I might have been nesting. It was an evening where right before bedtime I did get an urge to get things done and clean the house. That was weird. It kind of surprised my husband, but he encouraged it and even helped some. I'm sure he thought I was being ridiculous as I love my sleep dearly and here it was me who wanted to skip out on some shut-eye to get something done! It ended up lasting less than two hours and never showed up again. 

Today I felt kind of productive as I got both bread and yogurt made this morning and did a batch of dishes! Notice I said batch. It has been a daily goal of mine for almost a week to catch up completely on dishes. I came so close to making it several days ago, but I'm behind again. I have plenty enough to do to keep me occupied these last three weeks if I can just find some motivation and not be forgetful of what needs done! And now I'm starting to feel bad for wasting toddler's nap time right now... I should go run a load of wash and keep chipping away at my list of tasks while I'm not exhausted and before the day is gone. Maybe I'm nesting? Or just not exhausted today because I've had a nice relaxing weekend? Or maybe it's that chocolate kicking in. 😜 

Canning Soup

Well I guess I've been quiet on here for awhile. Between the busy Christmas season and preparing for a new baby (due in four weeks!), I haven't had gobs of time. My free time has been spent napping or hanging out with Adam. This past week I've been getting quite a bit slower with this growing belly in front of me starting to make it hard to move, so daily tasks take more time, cutting into time I get to devote to just playing with him. Thankfully he is more content following me around doing what I am, but I still like to set aside some one-on-one fun time with him, too. 

The week after Christmas our beef was ready to be picked up! We had ordered 1/2 cow from a local friend. We had been mostly out of good meat since fall, and had to wait another couple months before the butcher had an opening to get ours in. This was my second time ordering a partial cow, but first time getting a half. I had bought 1/4 beef right before our wedding, and that lasted us just shy of 2 years. I made the last quite a few months to almost a year stretch as much as I could, knowing that most people don't take their cows in until the fall and we were still a ways away from that season! Aaron and I had been having a hard time figuring out where to get our next beef as I didn't really know farmers around here and neither of us wanted to take a chance on 200+ pounds of meat that we didn't know would taste exceptional. So it was a huge blessing when "by chance" we heard of this grass-fed cow going in! Our freezer had just enough room for all the meat and bones I had ordered. Okay, minus the big batch of bones I started for broth as soon as we got home - I couldn't quite get all of them in the freezer and I needed to get them done anyway. I still have enough for another batch of broth. 

Thinking ahead to after this baby arrives, I had been wanting to have a few meals in the freezer so I wouldn't have to worry about getting up and figuring out what to feed my family right away. It's so convenient not having to cook!!! My gracious husband said he'd take care of it, but I still wanted to help lighten his load some and at the very least have a few loaves of bread in the freezer. Several weeks ago my sister had her first baby and she requested the meal I bring be freezable, so I went ahead and made a couple pans of freezer enchiladas for us, too.

In effort to make some room in our freezer for bread, and also get some more extra meals made, I decided to try my hand at canning soup. The butcher had given us a bunch of "soup bones", which was more like a giant partially-gristly steak on a little piece of bone. It seemed like a huge waste of good meat for just broth. I almost would've preferred them put that meat into ground beef and give me the bones separate. I decided to use it for the canned soup and just cube the meat and save the bones to make broth when I get to making that other batch. Canning soup is something I've never actually done before, so I didn't really know where to start. My Ball Blue Book had a recipe in there for "Beef Stew with Vegetables" that looked very much like the yummy beef stew I make that we like so much, so I decided I'd try that one. It's just a simple beef, onions, carrots, celery, and potato kind of stew. I doubled the recipe so I'd have two canners full and a little extra for supper that night. Thanks to my 16-quart cooking pot, this wasn't a difficult feat. I love having a big stock pot! The downside though, was the huge amount of vegetables that needed chopping and I had to do it all myself. It took me most of an afternoon to accomplish the prep work! When it all came together I was kind of disappointed that the broth it made wasn't richer and heartier. I like my stew nice and thick and rich, like a gravy. I know I've heard you're not supposed to thicken soup before you can it (and I didn't), but even then the broth just seemed watered down to me. I guess it's because I added water and it made its own broth, where normally I would use straight beef broth to make my stew. I was a bit disappointed, especially after spending all afternoon on it, but dearly hoped it would taste acceptable. Supper was a bit delayed simply because of my discouragement and almost not wanting to serve it since I knew it wasn't like the stew I knew we loved so well! I whipped up a batch of biscuits and we ate it anyway. And let me tell you. This soup was delicious! The broth was oh, so flavorful. I couldn't believe my tastebuds! It made me feel so much better about the 14 quarts that were coming off the canner that night. There was a little left for Aaron to take in his lunch the next day, and upon coming home he exclaimed that it was the perfect, most delicious meal! He said he could eat it every day, which is his ultimate compliment that he really liked it and honestly would enjoy having it in our regular meal plan. Success. I agreed that it was yummy enough to make again and again! Don't know what I was worried about. Guess I should've tasted it before making any assumptions. Normally I don't have a problem (or should I say I do have a problem?) sampling while cooking!

So now we have 14 quarts of stew on the shelf, which I figure should be enough for 7 meals. Now not only do I have food stored for those days I'd rather not cook, but there is space in the freezer now for more stocking up.