Mama Dollar and Papa Dollar.....no babies yet.

The name of the game these days with us is how to eat as healthy as possible, on a budget. I have been seriously considering going totally raw foods in our eating. Only one problem, it's freaking expensive!  Even if you commit to growing as many veggies as you can, you are limited to the same growth seasons that have  plagued farmers for thousands of years.  The benefits of eating raw when you study it are boundless. As an almost 31 year old, I  have advanced Arthritis in  my knees, an anemia issue that has plagued me since having Liberty, 35 extra pounds and a distinct desire to NOT die of cancer one day (dying is fine...lemme go some cool way though pleeeeze!).  Plus, when you begin to do  any kind of light reading on the condition of our food and how jacked up the system is here in this country...it makes you want to make some changes in your diet.

The raw fooders say that you can eat for as "little as $10 a day" on raw foods. Their opinion is that it is a really inexpensive way to live. Seriously?! Take bananas  for example: a raw fooder may have 6 in the morning for breakfast....that costs as much as an entire box of cereal and half a gallon of milk. Salads, a raw food staple, can be really inexpensive even when it is organic.  And salad is  super easy to grow and can be grown in most places, most of the year. Berries, other snacking staples for the raw diet, expensive if they are not frozen...more expensive if they are dried. Nuts, I'm not sure why the Pacific NW can grow everything but nuts....they are SO expensive here. Then if you want the really raw ones (that have not been pasteurized - seriously. I just learned they pasteurize California almonds...what the??) you should  order them from Italy....ITALY. Raw milk, $5 a gallon out here. Even zucchini is still $2 a pound at the end of JULY for crying out loud. It's not a wonder that Americans have as their main staple grains...they are cheap and government subsidized.

With food prices rising and the mere fact that our budget has not had a magical raise along with the inflated prices, we have been doing many things to get it all to stretch. While I  still try to weigh the raw food issue I'll throw out a few tips I've been using and am hoping all of my 6 readers will add to the list... =)

1)Only take $20 to the store at a time.
I know, it isn't very efficient, but if you have impulse buying issues - it works...lol.  I pull out all of our food money in cash at the beginning of the pay period. Stashing it in a very likely spot (where I am unlikely to forget it when I dash out the door with 2 kiddos in tow), I ONLY shop with $20 at a time. Yes, it is a pain in the arsnik...but that is the point. If you only have $20 on you in the store, you'll put down the Ben and Jerry's "Everything but the..." delight and remember that you came for milk, eggs, spinach and salsa...and that you wont have enough  if you get the  ice cream. =)  (I realize this is only cost effective if you live 4 miles from the store as I do...)

2) I do NOT make a meal plan for the week.
Yes, I am a non-conformist to the extreme and shun routines, but this has a practical angle to it, I promise. =)  If you have a meal plan that requires you to buy items that are not on sale, you are wasting cash. My meals for the week come from the sale rack. For example: Tortilla shells are .79 at the local discount grocery - Tacos! Skip the ground beef because that will make the dinner WAY more expensive. Stop by the bean isle instead and pick up a thing of black or pinto beans for $1. I mix beans with a little rice...throw in some Cilantro from the garden and a generous amount of Cumin and Onion and I have a dinner to feed an army if I want. =) Further down the isle are baby portebello mushrooms  for $2. I already have flour and stuff for pizza crust...dinner #2. You get the idea, it's learning  to make the most out of a little and be creative. I also use a lot of stretchers....more onions in the BBQ disguises the fact that there isn't much chicken in there, lots of potatoes in the soup, or noodles make it stretch. Big dinner rolls make my husband almost forget there's no meat on his plate...hee hee.

3) Grow it.
Most of you know I've done gardening/greenhouse stuff for years. What you probably don't know is that I have HATED veggie gardening the whole time (when my mom would ask me to pick the green beans when I was little....UGH.....made my skin crawl).  So when it comes to growing food, I'm pretty useless. To add to my dysfunction, I recently switched to growing things organically - which is on a whole different planet from where I used to grow, as well as the PNW has a VERY short and cool growing season so it's been especially challenging for me to actually get anything but a bumper crop of zucchini...lol
All this being said, I've done very well this year at growing spinach, rainbow carrots, onions, I'm trying out potatoes, Stevia and leaf lettuce. I have more cherry tom's planted than is sane....hoping to get a handful of them before Fall comes here. We MIGHT have had 2 days this summer over 80 degrees.

Other things I have done to help the budget:

Make my own laundry detergent.
 - Insanely easy and incredibly cheap! You can wash loads for less than 1 cent a load and my whites are looking super white...I love it. Wish I would've done this a long time ago!

Skip the dishwasher detergent.
- You are already rinsing things and loading them. Take a nanosecond more and make sure they are  rinsed well, set your wash to "hot" and  let it sanitize all your dishes. They come out pretty clean - try it!

Cosmetics, shampoos, deodorants, toothpastes, shower gels - buy at a discount store.
- Every town has one. It's a kind of sleezy, little dusty, discount store that gets all the busted or out of date stuff from "real" stores. A lot of these items are just fine and are up to 80% off! I just go through and load up the cart (I love it when I find all organic stuff at a fraction of the cost!)...still get change back from my $20. =) If you cook with a lot of olive oil, a lot of times they will carry it for 30 to 40% less than the grocery store...sometimes you can find diapers there too!

Cloth diapers of course - nobody likes washing out poo by hand...but you can't deny it will save you a bundle!


Any wisdom on eating raw on a budget...please share! I'd also love to hear any other tips you might have to help the ole budget stretch!

I finally got a book on raising chickens. Figured since our chickens are halfway to laying some eggs for us, we should get a good book to see if we did it right. Its a pretty good read....OK, it's mostly pictures and stays by the toilet seat for a spare moment. Seems like we are on the right track so far though. We started out with 3 Cornish hens and 12 layers. We ended up with 11 layers and 1 Cockerel (which I learned from a one of the captions on the picture is what a teenage rooster is called, after that he is officially a Cock. Just quoting what the book says people.)

We are interested in homesteading for a couple of reasons. Cost, first and most important. Saving $50 on eggs a month is a big deal for me (plus, my 2 year old has had hours of entertainment chasing the chickens...hopefully they will not hold it against us and still lay eggs.) But the other reason is for health. I started with a pretty innocent question a couple of months ago (what is hydrogenated oil?)  and it's turned into a full on research project into where  our food comes from. Watching a documentary called Food Inc (youtube has the full version if anyone is curious.) I have discovered some pretty amazing things...and some unbelievable conspiracy theories (which, ask my husband, I have not formerly been one to believe such theories...I like the Mayberry world I live in.)

Chris put on his farmer hat and butchered the 3 hens...we were 2 weeks late on butchering them. It resulted in meat that was a bit more chewy than I like, but it's still edible. Of course, our first taste of homegrown chicken would only be proper as fried chicken for Father's Day. =)  Served 'em up with mashed potatoes and steamed organic broccoli. I called Libby for dinner,

"Libby, come get some chicken. Dinner's  ready." she walks to the door to go outside to the barn...so confused...lol

Chris decided that it would be worth the $3.50 a guy in Greshem charges to butcher the hens next time. I joke that we are great at gardening stuff...but farmer Jane and John don't like killing things, just eating them...lol



You could die from that you know....

I got a great chuckle yesterday.

 My neighbor, a 76 year old (I know  her age because she yelled it at her youngest son saying, "I'm 76 years old Danny, don't you think I know about gardening?!" That son is now in jail for attacking his family with a Samurai sword....no you can't make this stuff up).

This neighbor could quite possibly be the worlds best undercover agent. Chain smoking on the front porch, she  has a fabulous view of our very interesting neighborhood. Quite often I have wondered what it would feel like to work in my own  front yard without my every move being supervised by her watchful eyes. She keeps a pretty tight lip about what she sees. I wonder what she knows that she doesn't share. The trailer living, slightly neurotic lady who lives in the RV behind her house, sporting 7 junk cars and a couple  spare RVs was leaving hate mail for another neighbor who's cat was apparently fouling up her garage. Soon after hearing there was a problem between them the other neighbor posted pictures on her mailbox of a "missing cat."....hmmmmm....one guess as to what happened to the cat.

She is a great neighbor to have around though, we know that whenever we leave town, we have no need of a house sitter to take care of things. They seem to be great people (with the exception of the Samurai toting son and the other who talks to himself  while he works). We readily swap tools, plants and gardening advice.

She made a trip across the street yesterday while the girls and I were mowing the yard. Well, I was mowing, Libby running rampant, carefully testing the boundaries and mom's patience, and Vesper was happily playing in her walker, with her feet barely skimming the ground. My neighbor (who's name I cannot remember and it's been so long I'm embarrassed to ask again...I've been hoping that a stray piece of her mail would end up in our mailbox). While we were chatting I made the comment that we had just gotten chickens, seeing as how I was spending $50 a month on eggs.

She raised her eyebrows at the comment, paused to puff, puff on her cigarette and cough a very chesty, long  cough said, "Wow, you know eggs aren't very good for you."

Sheesh....another blog?

With food and gas prices, our utility bills going up, and a full blown recession still on there is great need for the one thing essential to human survival…..a fabulous sense of humor.

As I write, my 3 month old cannot seem to stay asleep for more than 20 minutes….compounding her need for sleep today. Sometimes I wonder if a little howling from nearby isn’t necessary to help her sleep more deeply. Seeing as  how I’ve tried all else – this would be the logical last option – short of flying in a grandmother or two to rock her whilst mother runs naked through the back pasture to recover her sanity.

With so many blogs out there, many which ramble on and on about this issue or that, I wonder why I feel the need to start this one.  Even if it is never read (although I’m pretty sure my mother will read it, so we’ll have one follower at least.) it is in me to document life. I’ve done so ever since my mummy handed me my first journal at 13 years old. It was the most beautiful book I’d ever seen. Pressed herbs and flowers into the paper, opening up to beautiful, lined, blank pages.  I still get that breathless excitement when I buy a new journal (which of course must be cool looking, mom set the standard high…you cannot write cool things in an un-cool book.)

So here we are, my wonderful hubby Chris, Liberty our 2 year old (who is every bit her name) and Vesper our newest baby girl, embarking on a fabulous journey (well, we hope it is fabulous).  We know stories cannot be told forward, but must be lived first.  We want to make our lives memorable and very un-normal.  Although good stories are rarely fun to live while you are in them, we’re game for the journey.