Sally Mae LOVES to help me in the kitchen!

Look what she helped with today!

Every time she asks if we can get out the small pans so she can make loaves I have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter if I’m in a hurry.  God gave me a daughter and it’s my happy duty to teach her all I know.

OK, not all.  I don’t want to teach her to be impatient with her children.

So, every time she asks me to get out the small bread pans, I get them out and show her how to form loaves.

She is so eager to learn everything to do with preparing food and I want to nurture that.

It won’t be too many years before she is doing all the baking herself.

Do you have daughters that help you in the kitchen?  I’d love to hear what they can make.

Linked to:

• Content Thursday
• Food on Friday
• Foodie Friday
• Finer Things Friday
• Beautiful Life Friday

Have I mentioned that teen aged Cowboys eat like vultures?  I have?  Well, I’m sayin’ it again!

My only tricks for keepin’ ‘em fed without breakin’ the bank are as follows.

• Feed ‘em beans.
• Homemade food is cheaper than store bought junk.
• Home baked bread is FAR cheaper and FAR more wholesome than any other bread you can buy.

I thought I would try to break down the cost of my home baked bread and compare it to the (at least) $3/loaf that I would otherwise have to shell out.

I’m not gonna factor in the equipment I use, because, #1.  I expect it to last my whole life and I don’t yet know how long I’m gonna live, and #2. You could use a different kind of mill than I have and you could use a different kind of mixer or just your hands and still make bread.  Too many variables for this time of night.

But, we can have a good look at the ingredients.  (Oh yeah, not gonna work out how much it costs to run my oven either.  Sorry.)  So, just the ingredients.

I make a 5 loaf batch.  The costs are for a whole batch.

• Wheat berries – $1.32
• Olive Oil – $0.75
• Honey – $0.93
• Yeast – $0.32
• Sea Salt – $0.08

Ready for this?  Total cost of ingredients to make 5 loaves of the healthiest bread I know how to make is $3.40.  For FIVE LOAVES of bread!  That’s $0.68 per loaf!

Shocked myself just there!  Wow!  I knew it was saving us a bundle, I just never ran the numbers before.

If I were to serve only store bought bread we would use about 10 loaves a week.  $30 minimum.  The home baked bread gets made an average of 2.5 times per week.  $8.50 + electricity to run my mill, mixer and oven.

No contest, folks!

You may be wondering, why we would eat more loaves of home baked bread than of store bought bread.  Well, I guess you might wonder that if you’ve never eaten home baked bread.  It’s delicious!  And it’s so wholesome that I just don’t hesitate when the kids ask for another piece of bread.

Here’s a site with lots of wholesome bread recipes. And here is a thorough tutorial on how to make bread by hand. And one for those of you who want to try the soaked method.

And if you don’t mind getting your toes stepped on a little bit, check out this marvelous article called The Bread of Idleness by Sue Becker.  Read that and then go have a productive day!  :D

Linked to:

• Gratituesday
• Tightwad Tuesday
• Toot Your Horn Tuesday
• Tempt My Tummy Tuesday
• Tightwad Tuesday ( Canada Girl)

I know, I know, homemade cornbread is already very frugal.  But, my new recipe is much more frugal than my “World’s Best Cornbread” and I might have been a bit hasty with that title, because I like this cornbread better.  And since I’ve been making cornbread every day lately, I figured I needed to find a cheaper way.

The main difference between the two recipes are the old way uses butter, vanilla and sugar, where as this one calls for olive oil , honey, no vanilla and one less egg.  Oil is cheaper than butter and since the vanilla is the real deal it’s quite pricey.  The flavor in the honey makes up for that and has the added benefit of not being sugar.  And of course one less egg is another $0.10 or so.  This bit o’ frugality is not enough to pay the rent, but every little bit counts!

Frugal Cornbread

• 1½ cups cornmeal
• 2½ cups milk
• 2½ cups flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp sea salt
• ½ cup honey
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup olive oil

In a medium bowl combine the milk and cornmeal, stir and let sit while you get the rest ready.  Preheat your oven to 400° and spray oil into a 9×13 pan.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.  To the milk/cornmeal mixture add the honey, eggs and oil.  Stir well.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.  Mix until smooth.  This is a rather runny batter, fret not, it’s gonna be great!  Bake @ 400° for 30 – 35 minutes.

This cornbread has a very nice texture and tastes wonderful!  Give it a try!

Linked to:

• Ultimate Recipe Swap
• Frugal Friday

Yeah, maybe all three, the second 2 at least.  Anyway, my week is shot.

Patience is not my strongest super-power in the face of a migraine, so minimal school for now.

Today I only have 3 kids at home and one of them is Tex, so I can “take the day off” if I wanna, and I really do.

So what have I been doing to fill my afternoon?  Finding online educational games, of course!

Here are two games to help you brush up on your typing skills.

Dance Mat Typing is a hoot, but that’s just my opinion, even though it’s spot on. (Certain Cowboys think it’s weird, to which I respond, “So?”)  TypeRacer is a blast if you like racing against real live people.

Next, you should enter a spelling race at Tutpup. This one is a blast, but not if you keep making typos!

The math races are very fun at Arcademics Skill Builder.  Slim enjoyed the jet skis!

The one we spent the most time and brain cells on is Fantastic Contraption.  This one makes you think.  I love finding out that my kids are way smarter than me homeschool geniuses.  Yes, really.  I know the big guys are geniuses, but when I found out Slim could improve on my ideas I realized I should play this after he’s in bed he’s one smart hombre.

And for dessert. . . (what? we weren’t talking about food?  Dang headache!)

Tex is gonna make this super simple sounding Peanut Butter Bread by Paula Deen.  (He should double it and serve it with pineapple preserves, again, just my opinion!)

Paula Deen is to food as Phil Donahue was to daytime tv.  (What do I know?  I don’t even watch tv.  And I’ve never even seen Paula Deen, so really, what do I know?)

But Faith showed me this recipe and on this ranch if it has beans or peanut butter Cowboys will smile, because it’s rude to talk with your mouth full, even to say thank you.

Before I forget, here’s how Hubs has restored the dumbpot to it’s former status of Smarty-pants-pot.  See?  Handles!  And beans!  Hooray!

Have you followed where I’ve rambled?  I hope you left a trail of bread crumbs so you can find your way back because I think it’s time for me to take a shower, take my temperature, and take a nap.

Don’t get excited!  I do not have piglet flu!  More like Eeyore headache.

Slim is so happy that I was able to adapt the squash muffin recipe to fit within the new, healthy, sugarless, whole wheat parameters of our new diet.

Preheat your oven to 350° and spray oil in 24 muffin cups.

You’ll need:

• 2½ cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup oats
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 t sea salt

——————————————-

• 1 cup honey
• 4 eggs
• ¾ cup butter
• 2 t vanilla

——————————————-

• 2-3 cups squash, grated

Mix the first 4 ingredients in your large bowl and set it aside.

In a medium – large bowl cream butter and honey, add eggs one at a time, keep beating, add vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix together.  Now fold in the squash.  Judge how much squash to use by the moisture of the batter.  It should be the consistency of any other muffin batter.  Sometimes squash is very moist and you’ll use less.  Sometimes the squash is more dry and you can use more.  Just use your own judgement on that part.

Spoon the batter into oiled muffin tins and bake at 350° for about 20 minutes.

This recipe is Slim’s favorite way to eat squash.

Here’sw your link back to Real Food Wednesday!

This was surprisingly easy.

You’ll need to have a cast iron skillet to make these delicious tortillas.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat flour (you can use white flour if you have to)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 5 Tbsp lard
• 1½ to 1¾ cups warm water

Mix the dry ingredients and add the lard, cutting it in with a pastry cutter or two knives (like for biscuits).  Add the water slowly while stirring.  Only add enough to make a soft, not sticky dough.  But remember, whole wheat flour takes up liquids rather slowly.  Be patient and gentle.

Turn the dough out onto a clean, floured counter top.  Knead gently a few times just till it holds together well.  Cut dough into 12 pieces and round ‘em up into balls, gently.  Cover with a cloth and let ‘em rest for 10 minutes or so.

Turn on the burner under the skillet to medium so it can pre-heat while the dough balls rest.

Roll the tortillas out to about 6 – 8  inches or so.  Cook in dry skillet over medium heat for a couple of minutes on each side.  You’ll know when to turn ‘em because they’ll start looking like tortillas, you know, those dark spots.

When you remove them from the skillet just put ‘em on a plate with a towel over ‘em.  They stay warm a good while.

Good grief are these delicious.  And it really isn’t much work, and it’s certainly not complicated.  

Go on, make some to go with your dinner tonight.

Tried a new bread recipe today.  I’ll spare ya the recipe.  Suffice it to say too much yeast is a bad thing.  

So, we had holes in the bread and some seriously cute, yet hungry kids.  pb & honey for the squirts and toasty cheese for the rest of us.  

Very yummy, yet structurally challenged bread.  Super delicious and filling sandwiches.

The recipe for the sandwiches is at Homemade and Wholesome.

We made tortillas today.  I haven’t made tortillas since I was a little kid.  Actually we made tortillas twice today.  The first time we used the forbidden white flour.  Then I sat around and thought about it and then Google and I had a little talk about whole wheat tortillas.  I found three trillion, no, that might be an exageration, a billion recipes for whole wheat tortillas.  So I realized this must be possible, homemade whole wheat tortillas.  

So we made us some more tortillas.  Can I just say I thought it would be harder than it was, and I thought it would take lots longer than it did.  Or maybe I am just so much more fit now that I don’t feel fatigued as easily.  Probably some of both.

But the important thing to realize is these homemade tortillas have an ingredient list that is only five items long.  Have you read the ingredient list on store bought tortillas?  Shame on them.

Here is my favorite picture of the days tortillas making efforts.  (And I had lots to choose from.  When I give Dusty the photography assignment he takes his job seriously.  He took 89 pics of Tex and me makin’ tortillas.  Well, ok, some were of Trixie-the-Wonder-Dog and the inside of Rowdy’s mouth while he ate a tortilla, but mostly it was us.)

The reason I love this photo is because of all the irregularities in these tortillas.  Ya know?  Homemade stuff has a look to it.  I am really starting to appreciate the homemade (non cookie cutter) look.  The really cool bit is that my children are starting to recognize the value of homemade items.  Maybe it’s because they are a little older, but I think it’s because I talk about it a lot.  We discuss the harmful ingredients in most factory produced “foods” and they are getting to taste the evidence that homemade is best.

The recipe for the tortillas is on my recipe blog, Homemade and Wholesome.

Shopping for my new guitar.  Woohoo!  Thanks, Tex!

Watering the garden.  Love that sage.  Yummmmmmmmmm!

Solar ovens are cooking away.  My backyard smells delicious!

It’s campin’ out weather every night this week!

Target practice.  I have no idea why he’s sitting down.

But it works.

Ah, sourdough starter.  This stuff smells great!

Instead of throwing out the “extra” portion of starter I thought I’d try making some loaves and guess what, they have risen.  I’m preheating the oven as we … er… speak.  These are 100% whole wheat sourdough loaves from whole wheat starter.  

Boy, does sourdough ever take a long time to accomplish, flour all over the place, all that hand kneading.  Haven’t done that in years.  

The first time I ever made bread by hand I ’bout wore myself out just from ten minutes of kneading.  I was a wimp, and I thought I was fit.  Folks, that was almost 20 years ago.

I’m proud to say that, today, I could have kneaded that dough for an hour.  It just wasn’t a thing.  Guess I’m not as outta shape as I thought.  All this “Pioneer” training must be doin’ me some good!  Ma Ingalls, watch out!

Oh, the oven just beeped to let me know it’s ready to bake my sourdough loaves.  See ya later!