Can You Cook Without Eggs, Milk, or Butter?

Tonight I saw a post of Facebook by one of my friends/family who, by the way, has four children that said   "I have no milk and no cheese!  How do you cook dinner without milk and cheese?"  This gave me such a laugh because I can vividly remember being a young wife and mother and finding myself in the same situation!  Unfortunately for my family, that was before my preparedness skills had been developed.

Having a well stocked pantry can save you in more ways than one.  If you are like us and you are totally busy all day, everyday, then running out to the store for one or two missing ingredients is just a pain.  Many of you have young children and know quite well how inconvenient it is to load the kids up and drive to the store for one or two things, so much so that you would almost rather do without!  What if you could find a happy medium like something that would save you when you realize that you are missing one essential ingredient, like milk, eggs, or butter?

I have the answer for you!  It's dehydrated or powdered substitutes.  I know many of you are turning up your nose at the word 'powdered', but please remember we are using it to cook with, not eat as is.  In stocking my pantry for the unexpected, whether it be the loss of a job, an extra high utility bill, or an unforeseen major car repair, etc., these items are worth their weight in gold when I call them into use.

In my personal research and preparation I came across a company, Shelf Reliance, that sells all the essentials in a long term, shelf stable form which will hold for up to 25 years in most cases!  These items can be costly if you try and use them as everyday essentials, but if they are part of your stockpile or 'back-up' pantry then they are well worth it.  Tonight one of my grown kids turned their nose up at the idea of using powdered milk for their cereal until I told on myself and let them know that I've refilled the milk jug more than once with powdered milk and they didn't even notice!  This is really not my normal MO, but sometimes you just do what you gotta do.  My challenge for you is to look at the staples you use.  If you can find them in a shelf stable version then buy just one of each to begin your stockpile pantry in order to save yourself not only an inconvenient trip to the store, but buy just a little insurance as well.

Sidenote:  We've mentioned this site on one previous occasion on this blog.  In case you missed it, let us know in advance if you intend to actually purchase something from them.  We have a way to get you a discount on the items beyond the normal prices listed on the site.  And, for full disclosure, we have no affiliation or involvement with this site or anything like that, we just happen to think they have wonderful products that are tough to find elsewhere.

Function vs. Beauty - It Can Be Done!

Function and beauty at the same time!

I'm the type of person who loves a clean, organized house.  I love to wander through the storage section of any store, and looking through a catalog that has endless organizers and containers gives me the *warm fuzzies*.

This can become a pain for the folks around here because everything has to have a home, and if it's not in it's home I get all grumbly.  Let me defend myself for a minute here.  This obsession has come in handy more times than I can count.  At one point in my life I condensed a 3,000 sq. ft. house and five people into a single wide mobile home with room to spare!

I believe organization is key to living a life wherein you take advantage of all your assets and use every item that comes into your home (which follows the main tennent of this blog). No matter the size of your home, if you can't find your stuff and have to buy it again or you are tripping all over your possessions, then that's wasteful.  Have you ever forgotten you had something because it was misplaced or lost?  Have you ever donated or tossed something into the trash because you couldn't find the piece that would make it work?  I have, and that drives me insane!  Just when I get rid of whatever it is, the missing piece turns up... Grrr!

Our house is no different than yours!  It gets trashed and we trip all over ourselves too.  Who wouldn't have a messy home occasionally when there are five adults living in 1050 sq. ft..  This set of photos were taken after my two adult kids (18 & 20) and their significant others spent the night here and then left for work the next morning. They know the rules, so that day I threw away a pair of jeans, a tank top and a pair of shoes.  I know that sounds harsh, but if they can't be bothered to clean up after themselves and they disregard their items enough to leave them on the floor, then the trash is the best place for them.

Our kitchen table can easily become a catch-all, so we try to have folks walk straight to their room before they drop their stuff.  However, that doesn't always work as you can see by this picture. We try though!  Honestly, as I sit here and look at this picture, half the stuff on the table is mine! Shh, don't let my kids hear me say that. ;-)





So let's get organized!

Where do I start you may ask?  My suggestion is to start in the busiest room of the house.  I know for some that might be a scary place to begin, but you will see the biggest difference right from the start which will motivate you to continue.  In our home the kitchen and dining areas see the most traffic so we started there.  Your kitchen should fit your families lifestyle and the way you live.  Most kitchens are designed by people who rarely use the space for anything other than making a cup of coffee or reheating take-out.  I remember that in my first custom built house I let the cabinet maker design the layout of the cabinets.  I was a young wife and mother, and I was naive enough to think that a 'professional' would know better than me.  To my surprise, when the cabinets and counter top were installed (no going back now), I realized that I had NO PANTRY!  What good is a kitchen when you have no place to hold the ingredients you are supposed to cook with?  I asked the company about this, and their answer was that most people just use a few cabinets to hold their canned and boxed goods, and that a separate cabinet to house food was for older style kitchens.  "Oh, you mean back in the day when families use to cook and eat at home?", I thought to myself.  IMHO, that's not a working kitchen, that's a glorified dorm kitchen with the requisite microwave!

So here is where we started.  We reorganized both the kitchen and the dining room to maximize our working space.




I took all the big kitchen items that take up a lot of counter top space and put them on a handy shelf in the garage.  This way I don't have to toss the item but its not eating valuable counter top space.

We had an old kitchen table that was taking up space in the attic, so we brought it to the garage which is right off of the kitchen so it's convenient for use.  We placed the most frequently used items on it and plugged them into a power strip so they're ready to go.  In the summer this is another way we control the heat that a working kitchen generates.

We moved our pantry outside to the garage, and since we buy most things in bulk, this makes it easier to store larger items. (this is a bad pic, we were reorganizing at the time and half the food was on the floor)

  This was our original kitchen pantry which we turned  into an "above ground root cellar" to hold all our fruit and veg as well as the recycle bin.

We have a small spiral staircase that has a little nook of space underneath.  Underneath it we have a recycled plant rack Racey found on the curb of a house where the residents were moving and couldn't be bothered to take it with them.  McClane and his granddad cut wooden shelves to serve as a solid base so I could use the space more efficiently.  This now holds many of my 'go to' items that I use several times a day.

We had a coat closet next to our dinning area.  It had mirrored sliding doors and was just wasted space in my opinion.  So we took the doors off, hung a long curtain in its place, and now it stores our large containers of bread flour, all-purpose flour, self rising flour, and sugar.  I use the old coat rack as a pot rack, and I found lid holders at Goodwill and mounted them on the wall.












Our home is very small and if we can find all this storage and organizational space, I know you will have success as well.  It's all about deciding what things you want to accomplish in each room and start to think out of the box.  The fact that just over 1000 square feet functionally fits the needs of a family of five is proof that you can do whatever you really need to do, and it can look plenty nice at the same time!  Just check the pic at the top for proof!

Frugal Kung-Fu Part 4

Take your Sword of Frugality and slice up your food bill so you can eat healthy... affordably!

Join a Food Co-op!

    Joining a food or farmer co-op of some kind can be a huge benefit and have a solid impact on both the health and budget of your home and family.  If you aren’t a part of one, start searching the internet or asking around for what’s local to you.

Melissa surfed around a little one afternoon and came across a farmer co-op in our area called Farmer's Market Baskets.  Joining this co-op and getting involved with the community there has literally changed our lives.  We began by volunteering twice a week and our involvement has grown exponentially in a very short time.  I am now their delivery driver and take anywhere from 100-150 baskets of produce to various drop off locations around the area.  Melissa and McClane help me run the route and they also cashier twice a week.  We also recently facilitated the opening of a new location across town to continue to expand and spread the blessings.

Another great reason to join a local farmer’s co-op is that while it’s not a guarantee, it’s much more likely that you’ll be eating produce grown at least somewhat locally.  While I’m not going to digress into a discussion about peak oil, believe me when I tell you that the days of the 3,000 mile Caesar salad are quickly coming to an end.

 This house is now overflowing with more fresh fruit and vegetables than we can handle.  Each week we end up with enough fruit and veg for three families and it literally costs us nothing except a few hours of our time.  We fight a constant battle to deal with everything we get before it goes bad.  We dehydrate, can and freeze like crazy people and then see that we give the rest away to family, friends, and neighbors who need it.  A couple weeks ago we ended up with nine huge cantaloupes.  Now, we like cantaloupe, but could you eat nine of them before they go bad?  We actually did, but you get the point.

Obviously not everyone reading this lives in the Kennesaw, GA area, but if you happen to be local, leave a comment with your email address and I’ll get in touch with you about hooking you up with Farmer’s Market Baskets.  You basically get 2-3 times the amount of produce you could get for the same price in the grocery store, or the same amount for half to one-third of the price, however you want to look at it.

Frugal Kung-Fu Part 3

 If you're reading this series then congratulations!  You've probably already done at least one or two things to improve your Frugal-Fu skills.  Think you're ready to move up the ranks of the frugally minded and really be able to say you're becoming a master of Frugal-Fu?  Meditate on today's lesson about home energy use for a while and you'll certainly be on your way.

The Household Energy Audit

If you haven’t done so, perform a household energy audit and look at simple ways you can change what you’re doing to save you money.  Even if you’re not overly concerned about the environment, you’ll be impacting that too.  There are certainly more things you can do than what’s listed here, these are just the things we’ve actually done to our home.

• Check your water heater temperature.  Many people have theirs set overly high.  Your temperature in general need not be above 165°F.  You can honestly probably be just fine with a temperature of 145°F.  You’ll use either less gas or less electricity.  Also, purchase and install a water heater insulating blanket if your water heater is in a non-environmentally controlled space in your home.  

• Clean your air ducts.  Your home will both heat and cool more efficiently using less energy, and you’ll be healthier for it by reducing the amount of dust and particles in the air in your home.  

• Get low flow shower heads if you don’t have them.  Generally a low flow shower head is considered to be anything that runs at 2.5GPM (gallons per minute) or less.  I think this is bogus.  There are great shower heads that run at 1.5GPM or less and have ‘miser’ settings you can use as well.  We have 1.5GPM heads in both of our bathrooms.  Then what I do when I take a shower is get my temperature comfortable, then I push the handle back in so it’s only producing enough flow to keep the shower from kicking back to the bathtub faucet.  Many times I’ll set it to the miser setting on top of that, especially if I’m just standing there shaving.  I’ve measured my usage by getting a gallon pitcher and measuring how long it takes to fill up.  With my method and settings I take a comfortable shower using a truly conservative 0.75GPM.  If you do the math, in a 15-20 minute shower you’ll go from using something like 60 gallons of water on an average 3GPM shower head to just over 10 gallons on a low flow head with the method I described.  Multiply the saved 50 gallons of water times the number of showers you take in a month.  At this rate, and considering one shower each day, you’ll save 1500 gallons a month.  And that’s just one person!  Consider a small family of three saving nearly 5000 gallons of water a month.  That’s certainly enough to lower your water bill.  

• Take a look at your dishwasher.  This can be an iffy option for most people.  If you’re really pressed for time on a regular basis you probably won’t have time to do all your dishes by hand.  Many dishwashers do recycle their water, but when our older dishwasher went on the fritz we didn’t bother replacing or repairing it.  We now use it to store mason jars and do our dishes by hand and though we haven’t really measured it like we have baths and showers, we feel like we’re saving water and money to use a small amount of water in the sink and a bottle of dish liquid instead of buying dishwasher detergent.  This may or may not work for you but at least consider it.

• Take a look at your washing machine.  If it’s old and your budget permits, you can get really miserly washing machines that sip the water instead of chug it.  Our older washing machine uses almost 100 gallons of water to do one load.  We don’t have the money to replace it, but we do what we can to limit how much laundry we produce such as using towels to dry off after a shower at least twice.

This is ours in the backyard

• Consider your clothes dryer.  At 220 volts, they really suck up the electricity.  So what did we do?  We bought a nice collapsible clothesline and now we hang all our laundry out to dry.  After a month of two of our dryer simply sitting there unused we just gave it away and now we don’t even own a clothes dryer.  You may not be able to go that far, but consider putting up a clothesline of some kind and at least using it when you have time and the weather is nice.  We also got a stand alone laundry rack that stays in the garage to hang the laundry on to dry in the winter when it’s 30° outside and the water in the clothes will freeze instead of drying.  

• Cooking outside as much as possible is something we do during the summer when it’s really hot out.  We have a charcoal grill as well as a propane stove we use as much as we can because around here it gets so hot in the summer the air conditioner can barely keep up.  Fire up the oven and burners and such in the kitchen and it gets just miserable.  I’ve heard many people complain about this happening in their own homes, and cooking outside is the solution.  Outdoor propane stoves with at least two burners can be had for under $50.   

• Killing the summer sun and block cold air by applying heat reflective films to your major sun windows.  There are great films out there that don’t tint or darken your light if you prefer to keep your light as well as tinted types that will give you as much or as little shade as you want.  As usual, we didn’t have money for these nice films so you know what I did?  I got flat black paint and literally painted our sliding glass doors until they were covered solid and didn’t let in a single bit of light.  Now that it’s getting to be winter I just took a razor and it all came off perfectly clean in about 15 minutes.  This may not be something you’d do, but around here                                                we get things done however we can, even if it’s a                                                little… odd

• Get some compact fluorescent or LED bulbs and install them in your most used sockets.  When they first came out, the math didn’t work when comparing cost savings to the cost to purchase the bulb, but that’s changed.  If you look there are coupons out for these types of bulbs now.  Wait for a sale, use a coupon, whatever.  Installing these throughout your home will create a situation where it costs just pennies a month to light your home.  

 

• Check the insulation in your attic and crawlspaces throughout your home.  If any of it is missing or seems old and broken down, replace it.  The cost savings here should be obvious.

• If you don’t have what’s called a ‘pro-vent’ in your attic you should certainly install one.  Lowering the extreme levels of heat in your attic will make your air conditioner run less.  We didn’t have one so we installed one at a total cost of about $200.  This was a tad pricey, but we had the labor done for us so that figure includes the cost of installation.  Regardless, the cost savings over just two summers will certainly pay for the cost of purchase and installation.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, these are just a few of the things we’ve done ourselves that have noticeably impact our recurring bills.  These tips should also be enough to get you started.  Once you’ve performed the Quality of Life Assessment recommended in the previous Frugal-Fu post and you’ve gone down the list of things suggested in the Home Energy Audit you’ll hopefully be looking at things a little differently and will have no problem finding plenty of additional steps you can take in your own home beyond the things listed here.  So pull out the ninja suit and start killing those utility bills with your mad Frugal-Fu skills!

Passing On The 'Old Ways'

Yesterday was a very busy day for me.  I woke up early and headed to the farm where I picked up 1 1/2 gallons of fresh raw milk.  Then I drove to Loganville and sold 17 Farmer's Market Baskets at our new location which is the little cottage industry I sometimes refer to.  While 17 baskets is a small haul for the amount of time and distance I have to drive to get there, I see it as a starting point.  I am personally so thankful for the benefits my family receives from the baskets that I want to pass it on.

While I was there I had the chance to pass on some of the 'old world' life skills Racey and I are passionate about.  I took the raw milk and taught the family who's home we use as the drop off point how to make butter from the cream in the raw milk.  The kids took turns shaking and laughed and played as if it were a game!  I think that's an important concept in this style of living.  You have to involve the children in the daily chores to make everything work in the long term, but it also needs to be fun so they don't really feel like it's work.  By doing this you're teaching them valuable life skills like being self sufficient and making their own products, but also a responsible work ethic.  The butter isn't going to make itself.  If you want butter then shake some cream!  Forget the tendency to just pop into some big box store and pick something up that you have no clue when or where it was made and from what.

After the butter was finished we had butter milk left and in the mindset of waste not want not, we used it to make a pan of biscuits.  Once again the children were as interested as the mother.  They pulled their chairs up to the counter and watched every single thing I did.  They insisted that the flour tasted good.  The two year old, Corbin, dipped his little fat fingers in the buttermilk and sucked it off till his mama moved the bowl!  I wish I had taken more photos, but with four little ones five and under in age, picture taking wasn't very easy.  After the biscuits were finished cooking, everyone had a hot butter biscuit as a treat.  Yes, it was a TREAT!  The family was as happy to have the hot homemade butter biscuit as if it was something special from the store.

As the last person picked up their basket, the question came up of how to you use real carrots.  I started laughing and thought she was joking at first.  I asked her, "have you never eaten carrots before?", and she replied, "yes, but they are always cut up and ready to eat."  Again I laughed and shook my head.  It's really only funny if you've ever been as modern and spoiled as this.  I have, and when I look back at all the money I wasted on pre-washed, pre-cut, ready to eat convenience foods I realize the joke was on me.  It's silly, I know, but as a society we are being dumbed down when it comes to self sufficiency.  The more knowledge they take from us the more they can make us pay just to eat and survive.  Okay, okay, I'll get down off my soapbox here... maybe ;-)

As I left, I took a fruit and veg basket to my children's grandfather who is by himself now that their grandmother passed away last November.  I hate to use the term ex-father-in-law when referring to family as I have found when you have children even if the marriage doesn't last the family connections do.  He was very grateful for the veg, and we talked about the kids and life for a little while.  When I left he seemed a little happier than when I got there.  It's somehow nice to know that just a little food and companionship cane make a difference.  I had a 1/2 gallon of raw milk that was supposed to come home with me, but knowing who I was visiting and his love of 'old style' living I left the milk with him.  He was really excited about that, and of course then the stories started about how when he was a boy that's all they drank!

I backed out of the driveway and glanced back one more time before driving off and saw him through the kitchen window drinking strait from the jar like a kid!

By the time I made it home it was dark and I had been gone for almost 12 hours.  I was welcomed into a clean house with dinner ready on the stove, and my hubby waiting for me around the fire pit.  For all the hard work it was overall a great day.

Snow On The Pumpkin

I woke up this morning feeling all warn and toasty till I climbed out of the bed.  It was a little chilly in the house, so I grabbed the throw blanket off the couch and mosied over to the weather station.  Why I do this I don't know, it's like I need modern technology to confirm my feeling of being hot or cold!  The weather station read 58° indoor and 44° outside.  Technically, this temp qualifies us to turn the heat on or start a fire in the rules and regulations of our self imposed Freeze Yer Buns Challenge 2011-2012.

But with it being 10:30 am., and McClane gone to church, I figured the two knuckle heads that came up with this idea could tough it out 2°.

So I took my blanket and sat down at the computer for a little surfing and what was the first story I came across? Millions left without power and several deaths attributed to rare October snow. What? Rare October snow?!?  Where? Maybe here!  I run and look out our window and then the ferries pop me in the head and remind me I live in the devils pocket here in the south!  It couldn't possible snow till say ... who really knows anymore.  So I'm left with my "Prepper" wheels turning.  If our friends from Virginia to Massachusetts (who normally get a ton of snow) are caught unprepared for this type of event what can we do to possibly prepare ourselves for a tough winter.

Here are a few things I came up with for the average family who traditionally does not worry about things like this, but wants to cover their bases this winter.

• If you have a fireplace have at least 3-5 days worth of DRY wood available even if you don't normally use your fireplace.  If you're not familiar with fire starting, have some type of fire starter logs to help start it and keep it going.  If the power is out you will want some way to warm the house.  Even if you have a gas furnace the blower won't run.
• If you don't have a fireplace and there is no power for a period of time you should have enough heavy blankets for each person in the household.
• If you are lucky enough to have a generator (you know who you are /e sticks tongue out at him) have enough gas to run it for 3-5 days.  This part is very important! What good is this recourse if you can't get the gas to run it.
• Have a full tank of propane for your gas grill.  If you don't have a gas grill you should have at least one or two large bags of charcoal.  Not only can you cook this way you can heat water for bathing of little ones. 
• Have two or three preplanned hot meals in the pantry that can help keep the family warm.  Soups, chili, casseroles, etc.
• Water, Water, Water. Did I mention Water?  If you have no power or it's extremely cold, it's only a mater of time till the pipes freeze.  Bare subsistence calls for at least two gallons per person per day. This amount is what you will drink, cook with, and use for personal hygiene.  If you are like me and either can't afford or don't want a huge drum of water in the garage then at least start saving your empty plastic soda or juice bottles.  Fill and prepare them for storage before there is an emergency.
• For those of you who have little ones still in diapers or Pull-Ups you should have at least one spare package that you don't touch till you are ready to move to the next size.  There is nothing more nerve racking than bad weather and a little one who is low on diapers! The same goes for formula.
• Serve hot drinks, whether it's hot chocolate or coffee, broth, soups, etc.. This is a easy way to keep little ones warm and still get a little food into them.  You can easily heat these things on a gas or charcoal grill if need be. 

I know this seems like a lot to prepare for a situation that might never occur, but remember last year!  We had unusually heavy shows here in Georgia that left a lot of us stuck in our homes for nearly three days.  Racey tried to go out once just to get to a store that's barely a mile away and couldn't even get the car up a tiny little hill because it was so icy.  Remember, it's always better to have and not need than to need and not have.

Home Cooking Saturday - Meatloaf

Today's Homecooking Saturday meal is meatloaf.  Meatloaf is one of those dishes that can be prepared countless ways and have countless ingredients.  In our house several people claim they don't like many of the ingredients in traditional meatloaf so I tend to lean towards fewer ingredients. As their taste grow and change I slowly add a few items into the mix.

Here is what I start with:

• 1 1/2 pounds of lean ground beef
• 1 1/2 pounds of ground pork
• Homemade bread crumbs
• 2 farm eggs
• 1/2 cup of homemade onion soup mix (dry)
• Water
• Ketchup

First I mix the beef and pork until well blended. If you have a free standing mixer this is very helpful, but if not, no biggie.  Just recruit whoever has the biggest, strongest hands in the family.

Next I incorporate all the ingredients listed above.  If your family likes any of the extra ingredients such as whole sliced onions, bell peppers, brown sugar, dry mustard, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, etc. this is the time to add it.

Since I just blogged about the The Tools of My Trade, I wanted to take a picture of my meatloaf pan. This is a fairly new item that has been added to my toolbox in the last year. I love it!  Notice how it has two pans that nest inside each other. The one on top has holes in the bottom to allow the grease to drain off the meat.  This is  very convenient and reduced the amount of grease in the meat. I also have a Pampered Chef stoneware pan that I have used for 10+ years that was my favorite and still runs a close second to this one.

You might want to lightly grease your pan with a little oil if it's not seasoned well so the loaf doesn't stick to the pan.  Divide the meatloaf into two portions and pack it into the loaf pans.  I used three pounds of meat because I wanted to make two loaves at once and freeze one for a later meal.  This is a really easy way to feed your family a home cooked meal when the time you have to work in the kitchen is just not there!

Lastly you will want to place the meatloaf in a preheated oven @ 350 and bake for one hour.  If your pan doesn't have drainage holes like mine then you'll want to drain some of the grease off as it cooks.  After an hour if you have a meat thermometer you can temp the loaf to verify if it's done in the middle. The temp should be between 165-170 degrees.  If it's not at the proper temp continue to bake until done.

Once it's done I drizzled it with additional ketchup and put it back in the oven to brown or glaze.












Meatloaf is easy to reheat as a leftover.   If you have never tried, a heated meatloaf sandwich the day after it has been cooked you are missing out.  Here are a few different recipes your family might enjoy.

• Beef or Turkey Meatloaf
• Paula Deen Meatloaf
• Alton Brown - Good Eats Meatloaf
• Glazed Meat Loaf II

I really hope this meal makes it into your recipe box.  Trust me, your family will love you all the more for it!

Gone to the dogs!

Tonight I cooked sauteed beef tips, quartered new potatoes and boiled with salt, pepper and butter, made white rice for McClane, and roasted a head of cauliflower.  Last but not least I whipped up some homemade brown gravy from the sauteed beef drippings!  Yes, I know my southern roots are showing here but bless my heart!  Anyway to the point here... Woofus, my little Maltese, was the only loved one other than myself who would try the cauliflower.  He LOVED it!  Every time he finished a piece he was snorting and 'woofing' for more.

Normally this behavior is annoying and gets him tossed in the kennel, but tonight it was nice to have at least one male in the house who didn't turn their nose up at the cauliflower.  I loved it and even if no one else eats it I'm going to keep making it for me and the dog!

So what's the motto here..... umm... the neighborhood, um, I mean, the dinner, has gone to the dogs!

See you guys tomorrow!  Saturday will feature another installment of Homecooking Saturday, so please stop by sometime this weekend.  Also, Racey is working on a really large piece of content that will be added in the next several days sometime (and it's so long it'll probably take you several days to read the darn thing) so keep your eye out for that.  Between the two of us, I'm the whimsical, non-grammatically correct one and he's the long-on-facts-and-information-and-short-on-whimsy one.  We hope we're both worth reading  =)

Our story: Part 1

Our story is not that different or unusual in our eyes, we see our self as part of a movement of people who are tired of the rat race, tired of being mass consumers who are never satisfied, tired of taking our natural resources for granted, tired of settling for less while the modern world tells us we are getting more!

This journey of ours began quite by accident really.  I was working full-time and Racey was in school full-time pursuing a degree in Chemistry after being laid-off from his IT job.  We had a blended family of three teenagers.  Life was quite normal if you were looking at it through the crazy lens of 2000-and-something!  The one problem with all of this was that I was so tired! I was sick of my job, I was worn out by the demands on my time, and I was sick of never being able to really sit and talk with my kids.  I was disgusted with having to eat so much  fast food, and I was just exasperated with having what I felt like was little or no control over my own life. So it became time to evaluate things. 

First I started with my job. Yep, the biggie!  It wasn't that the job itself was so bad, and it wasn't that I disliked my coworkers.  It was the simple fact that I had to trade 10 or more hours a day of my time just to run the rat race.  I felt like that kind of time could be better used to do other things with.  To me time is the most precious thing we have in this life.  We come into the world with an undetermined amount of it and we are constantly losing it.  Sure, we can do things to hopefully increase our time just as we can do things to decrease our time, but no matter what it is always ticking away.

I realized that I had to quit working outside the home and focus all my energy on the people inside my four walls in order to deal with the feeling of dissatisfaction I had with how my time was doing it's ticking.  But how in the world could I do this?  I was our only income!

When I came home and talked with Racey about it, we both knew it would take drastic measures to allow us to continue to keep a roof over our head and food in our mouths.  To make it happen would plunge us headlong into a world we couldn't even imagine at the time.  It has since become our life... and the story of that will be spilled onto this blog for the world to see...