Staying Home, Part 3 - Food 101

Aiden learning to make a healthy version of Chocolate Cake

If you haven't read Part 1 or 2 of this series you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

In this post I am going to focus on cooking and eating at home. I love to cook and create tasty meals for my family. I am blessed to have had a Mum who let us help her in the kitchen from a young age. She was not much of a cook when she first got married and was still learning while raising us. She had a tight budget and few of the luxuries of today, but she managed not only to feed us good healthy meals, she also managed to raise 3 children to be really good cooks themselves.

Sadly I meet a lot of people who cannot say the same thing. Too many women I talk to about the home will confess that they can barely put a meal together, never mind make healthy nutritious food from scratch. Feeding their families is a chore they would rather avoid, so avoid they do. Instead of simple but delicious food cooked at home they resort to take out, frozen convenience foods and the most expensive of them all, eating out. Many of these same women also confess to a longing to be homemakers, but cannot afford to give up paid employment. It is to these women (who are sadly too many in number) that I dedicate this particular post.

If you can find a way to control the spending on food life on a single income becomes a lot more possible. Glean what information is useful to you and your circumstances and let the rest be. Below are some of the things that have made living on a single income while still enjoying good food possible for our family.

Set a budget

This may seem simple, and in many ways it is. You might be surprised at how much money you will save just by setting a budget for food/groceries and then sticking to it. We currently have a monthly budget, but there were times it was fortnightly, as that is how often my darling husband gets paid. Once the budget is spent then no more trips to the store until the next allotment comes around. Now that we have children to consider we make extra effort to not run out of budget for the essentials like milk or eggs.

Eating Out

Make eating out and take out food a special treat. Try not to allow for weekly trips to restaurants as it will encourage too much overspending. There are ways to have easy to prepare meals if you are at work all day without having to go out to eat. In our 8 Week Menu Plan we have one night designated for eating out or take out food. We are in the process of expending to 10 or even 12 weeks, but we will still only have one night for this treat.


Become a copy cat

Learn how to make your favorite restaurant meals at home. I have found Allrecipes.com a great resource for new recipes. Then there is always a Google search for the recipe of a particular dish. The Internet is full of people ready to share recipes they have made or found that taste just like that dish you always have to have at your favorite restaurant.

Quality

This is a big one in our home. My husband and I both enjoy really good food, and really good food starts with really good ingredients. There are many areas in our life where we are willing to cut corners, but quality of food is not one of them. We both would rather have less quantity lying around our pantry in favor of better quality. It will also help remove the temptation to eat out more if the food at home tastes really good.





Buy the best quality ingredients your budget will allow for. It really does make a difference to the taste. Growing up in Scotland meant that grass fed and finished meat was just ordinary meat. It took me a while to realize that one of the reasons beef and chicken both tasted so different to me was because they were corn fed. We are slowly switching one food item at a time to a better, healthier variety. We recently switched our beef to grass fed and finished. We can only afford to do this by purchasing half a cow at a time, as the cost per lb is significantly less when bought in bulk. My next target will be butter from grass fed sources only. I haven't even began my research yet, but I will try to find a local source before I resort to imported Irish or Danish butter.

This is a process with a lot of learning along the way. Probably the easiest way to start is by choosing organic produce. Start with those items that are most important to you. We use a lot of potatoes and onions, and these are also 2 of the worst vegetables for absorbing chemicals from the soil. As a result we made these our top priority for switching to organic. Next we focused on "The Dirty Dozen" that we use most frequently. Once Aiden started drinking regular milk we also made sure to only buy organic milk. I would like to switch to raw organic milk, but have not yet found a source.



Water

If you live in an area like ours then you probably don't drink the water that comes from the faucet in the kitchen sink. Our water quality is so bad we don't even use the ice maker in our freezer for making ice. When I first arrived in 2008 my darling husband was using bottled purified water for cooking and drinking. This quickly became prohibitively expensive when there were 2 of us. We decided to make the switch to filtered water. We did not want an expensive plumbed in filtration system, nor did we have that kind of money to spend. Neither did we like the idea of the plastic jug filters that required regular replacement filters and could only filter small amounts at a time. We knew there had to be a solution and we set ourselves a budget of $250 to find it. After a lot of searching online we found The Berkey Water Filter. It comes in various sizes. The filter elements are cleanable and the tank is stainless steel. Once of the sizes was priced at exactly $250 and came with free shipping. We have been using our Berkey for over 3 years and we have cleaned the filter elements twice in that time. It still works really well and the water tastes great. One of my favorite aspects to this particular filter system is that is leaves the essential healthy minerals in the water. After the initial cost it has cost us nothing and provides enough filtered water every day for both drinking and cooking.

Spend money to save money

It may seem counter-intuative that to save money by cooking at home it is wise to invest some money on good quality key kitchen items. I highly recommend investing in a few really good quality stainless steel pots, a cast iron skillet, a slow cooker and a few good baking dishes. These items are important to me because while I like to cook I don't particularly relish the cleaning. Having good quality pots makes clean up easier. Easier clean up means you are more likely to actually cook food at home. It is important to remember that this does not have to happen overnight. Use what you have and slowly replace with better quality as you can afford to.

Our most recent purchase was a stand mixer. I have wanted one of this particular brand for many years. When I first arrived we could not afford one. So I waited. After almost four years it is finally in my kitchen. Now as someone who likes to cook and bake it is not going to change what I make, but it certainly takes a lot of the elbow grease out of bread making for me.

That woman's touch!

Try to make your kitchen a beautiful and cheerful place. This doesn't have to cost much. Decluttering the counters and adding a favorite picture or photo collection can work wonders. Personally I made sure this was the room our CD player/radio was placed in. I enjoy singing while I cook, so having a source of music is important for my kitchen. More meals will be cooked at home IF you enjoy spending time in the kitchen.

Grocery Lists

We have found that keeping a running grocery list is really useful. We try to avoid going to the store for 1 or 2 items. To combat that temptation we keep a running list. When either of us notices that we are getting low on a particular item we add it to the list. By adding before we run out we are able to wait until a scheduled trip to the store before replenishing our supply. Our scheduled trips are staggered between the 3 stores we regularly use, with each one scheduled once a month. We also have a scheduled milk and produce store trip once a week that Rob will do on his way home from work. By having a list AND staying out of the stores we avoid the temptation to spend more money on items we don't actually need.

Make ahead

When you are cooking, make extra and freeze it for later. Rob prefers freshly cooked food and would rather take left overs the next day for lunch. However I have found that freezing side dishes works well for us. I do this with stuffed potatoes, mac'n'cheese, cooked rice, mashed potatoes, soup and stock. I'll cover instructions for these in another post dealing specifically with cooking from scratch.

Have fun

The most important part of cooking and eating at home, for me, is to have fun. If being in your kitchen and preparing meals feels like a drudgery then you won't do it. If you have fun while you work, and enjoy what you do, you'll begin to look forward to meal preparations. As I already mentioned I like to sing while I cook. I will also dance to the music if I'm in a particularly playful mood, or if Aiden needs entertaining at the same time. He finds my silly dancing quite amusing and will watch and giggle while I work.

If you have made it this far you might be feeling a big overwhelmed. I never intend for these posts to get so long, but that is usually how they turn out. I'll leave the details of how to cook from scratch for the next post. Meanwhile I hope you can start to enjoy your kitchen and make it a place where you have fun and create wonderful food for the whole family.

Bread, one of the simple pleasures of life.

This is only a kind of break in my staying home series, as home made bread is actually a big money saver for us. I've loved to bake my own bread for a long time. Once I moved Stateside it became essential to bake my own bread as I found all the commercial breads too sweet for my palate. These recipes are for 2 loaves. I usually double the recipe then split into 3 loaves as I use 2lb loaf tins. I will then slice up 2 loaves and pop them in the freezer while we enjoy the fresh one. This way at our current useage I only bake bread about once a week. However as the boys grow, and their appetites with them I know it won't be long before all the bread is eaten fresh.

I should also probably mention that this freshly baked bread will not keep like the commercial breads do. In the hot humid climate of South Florida we will start seeing mold after a few days if the bread is left at room temperature. It will also start to go stale after only a few days too. This is normal. Home made bread doesn't have all the preservatives that you will find in commercial breads. Bread is not meant to stay fresh for more than a day or two.

So here are my 2 favourite bread recipes.

Sandwich Bread

2 cups warm water
drizzle of honey
1 1/2 tablespoons dried yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup oil
5 cups flour (I like 3 cups bread flour & 2 cups wholewheat)

Dissolve the honey in the water. Add yeast & mix. Leave for 10-15 minutes (until it starts to froth)
Add the salt & oil.
Gradually work in the flour. Keep working until it forms a smooth dough. Leave to rise for about an hour.
Knock back the dough and knead for a few minutes.
Divide in 2 and place in loaf pans. Leave to rise for about 30 minutes.
Bake at 350f for 30 minutes and cool on a wire rack.


Whole Wheat Bread

drizzle of honey
1/3 cup of oil
2 1/2 cups warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons dried yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
6-7 cups whole wheat flour

Dissolve the honey in the water. Add 2 cups flour and the yeast & mix. Leave for 10-15 minutes (until it starts to froth)
Add the salt, gluten & oil.
Gradually work in the rest of the flour. Keep working until it forms a smooth dough.(about 7-10 minutes)
Divide in 2 and place in loaf pans. Leave to rise until double in size, (about an hour.)
Bake at 350f for 30 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

Once the bread has cooled, cut and enjoy.

Staying Home, Part 2 - How we live on a single income

In Part 1 I shared why we chose to live as a single income family. Now we will cover some of the practical realities of our choices.

Reduce & Reuse

We reduced in some areas and reused/re-purposed in others

Areas we reduced:

We sold one of our vehicles and became a one vehicle family. This saved us on insurance, maintenance, gas/petrol and time. The gas/petrol and time is saved because instead of my making a special trip for groceries during the day while Rob is at work he picks up groceries on the way home when he is driving by or close to the store anyway. With Rob doing grocery shopping alone we are able to stick to our list and he gets in and out quicker than when we have the children at the grocery store.

We cut down on packaging. We buy fewer prepackaged goods than we did at first and stick to produce etc that doesn’t come prepackaged. We also buy bulk quantities of some dried goods which also cuts down in packaging. This saves money and time. The packaging costs are built in to the cost of items so the less we have the less we are paying for. It also saves us time sorting through recycling too.

Eating out. This is a big saver for us. We both like to cook and we both like to eat good food. So when we want a fancy meal we make it ourselves. It is now rare for us to eat out unless we are on a trip somewhere, and even then we like to buy groceries and prepare food if we can. Even a visit to the dollar menu can quickly add up to more than the cost of a much healthier home cooked meal. If you don’t know how to cook invest in a couple of good books that will teach you step by step, or invest in a cooking class. It will save you money in the long term.

We moved closer to where Rob works. Reducing his commute by 30 minutes each way every day saves us a lot of money when fuel prices continue to rise, not to mention lower maintenance on our car as it builds less wear and tear. As an added bonus it gives Rob an hour extra every day to spend playing with his children instead of sitting in the car.

Areas we reuse/repurpose

Clothes never get thrown away in our home. If they are too worn to wear they go in the rag box. When I’m looking for fabric for a project I’ll check the rag box first. When I was pregnant with Seth I decided to make some newborn sized fitted diapers/nappies so we would not have to buy throw away diapers until he was big enough for our stash of prefolds. I used a large pile of old t-shirts to make some very cute diapers/nappies. The total cost of 24 fitted diapers in newborn size was less than $10. The only supplies I bought for this project was Velcro and elastic. I had everything else. I recently looked at the price of these items to buy premade and they ranged from $15-$25 each. Even though Seth was a big baby and quickly outgrew them I still saved the money for the 5-6 weeks of throw away diapers/nappies. We saved at least $50 even with just that little use.

We also are always looking for ways to repurpose/reuse in the kitchen. I buy dried goods in bulk and store in old jars that were once the packaging on something else. I have a row of flour and sugar jars that originally contained biscotti. In the pantry I have rice, pasta etc in old catering size mayonnaise jars. I wash out jam/jelly jars and reuse to store sauces in the freezer. If it can be cleaned out and is re-sealable then we will find a use for it. I even reuse old laundry detergent bottles to store my homemade detergent. Empty spray bottles of cleaning fluids are refilled with homemade versions to do the same job (those recipes/tips are a whole post in themselves.)

Plan a menu

Early on in my blogging life I shared an 8 week menu plan we were in the process of implementing. It has since had several revisions and we are currently looking at expanding it to 10 or 12 weeks, with only a few firm favourite meals repeated (who wants to wait 12 weeks for pizza or burgers.) Having a menu plan works for us. We like a lot of variety in our meals. We like to cook. What we don’t enjoy is having to think about what to cook. Now that we have small children it is even more important to take some of the thinking out of the process. I’m even working on a menu plan for breakfast, lunch and snacks for myself and the children. I like knowing what to take out of the freezer, what to put on the grocery list and what to do when my almost 2 year old has a hungry day and wants to eat every 30 minutes.

We’ve been using the menu plan for about 3 years. We know almost instinctively what to buy at the grocery store. I still keep a running list on the fridge that we use to do the actual grocery shopping. Rob will take it with him on the days he has to pick up groceries on the way home. Otherwise we shop for groceries once a month, which is generally how long it takes to have a list big enough to justify a special trip for groceries. This strategy has saved money in another way. We stay out of stores, so we reduce the temptation to impulse buy. When we don’t go to the store for only 2 or 3 items we are not tempted to buy another 10 items we don’t really need, costing us money we had not planned to spend (even if the item is on sale, it only saves money of we would have bought it regardless of the sale.)

Menu planning has also helped us to avoid the temptation to eat out or order take out food. On those days when I can’t get even 5 minutes in the kitchen without a meltdown from one of the children it isn’t a disaster. We both know what is ready to cook and either of us can have dinner on the table just by following our menu. I will say at this point we are not slaves to the plan. We will readily swap around meals within the same week, especially for a meltdown day. Having crockpot/slow cooker meals has also been a blessing on those days too.

I’ll have to do a post just on food, as this is a big area of spending for us, and also an area where we can really save when we need to. I’m sure it will be the same for you too.

Go Green

Some of the choices we have made that make us kinder to the environment are really areas where we save money, and being green is just a happy side effect.

When we were pregnant with our first born we had no spare money. I already knew I wanted to use cloth diapers/nappies. I knew it was kinder for the baby and their delicate skin. I also knew it did not have to cost a lot of money to get started. Rob was sold on it as I explained how we could build a stash of cloth diapers/nappies cheaply and just how much it would save us financially over 2 years. We used a gift card to buy our initial 5 dozen cotton prefolds, then we just paid for the waterproof covers and fasteners. Total outlay for us was only about $30. The actual cost if we had not had the gift card would have been about $90. We did end up using throw away diapers/nappies for  the first 6 weeks until Aiden was big enough for the prefolds. Again we used gift cards for most of that cost, but it was more than $80 for that 6 week period, almost as much as the cost for a complete cloth set up. We did add 4 pocket diapers/nappies later to use overnight, and then we bought more covers and 4 more pockets when Seth was born. The pockets cost about $20 each. Add in a few extra fasteners and for 2 boys we have spent less than $300 in cloth diapering supplies in the last 2 years. We also have enough supplies to last several more babies, as we currently only use about half of our supply since we wash 3 times a week. The more babies we have the more we will save in this area.

Homemade detergents and cleaners are another money saver that has the added benefit of being green, but since I’ve already promised another post on this topic I won’t go into details here.

We have a small car, a Nissan Versa. It fits the same number of people as most of the larger vehicles we see on the road. However it not only cost us less to buy it, it costs less to operate too. It is more fuel efficient than the larger vehicles. With the right kind of car seats we should be able to fit 3 children in the back, which is exactly the same as those fuel guzzling SUVs we see on most of our neighbours drives.

So this has turned into a much longer post than I originally intended. I’ll continue with posts on food and cleaners, and a few other things we do to make that single income count.

Staying Home, Part 1 - Why?

While Rob and I were preparing to get married we had several conversations about me working after we got married. We agreed that I would in fact stay home, even before we were blessed with children.

Yet during the first year of our marriage I did work outside the home. I worked part-time. I did not at that time work at home (our marital home) at all. Truth be told during the first year of our marriage I never stepped foot inside our home. Rob lived there, in Florida, and I continued to live with my parents, in Scotland. We were going through the immigration process and it took a full year to get my visa that would allow me to move in and live with my husband. While we were waiting I continued to work.

When I immigrated to the USA and finally got to live with my precious husband I no longer worked in paid employment outside our home. This was not always an easy a choice. Less than a month after I arrived Stateside my husband had his hours cut at work. Living on a single income became a very tight squeeze. We again visited the idea of me finding paid employment. Again we made the decision that I should stay at home.

Why was this important to us, especially when we were not yet parents? There were a few reasons for us. I'll start with the least important and then go on to the more important reasons.

Firstly Rob was given some advice from one of the friends who led him to the Lord. This friend shared from the wisdom of being married for nearly 20 years, and living on a single income while growing and raising a family with his wife. He told Rob that if we were planning on having children and for me to stay home with them it would be wiser for me to stay home from the start. That way we would not get used to having a second income, even if we chose to save all of that second income. This was one of the best pieces of advice we received when we got married. It was not always easy to live on one income, so how much harder who that have been if we had to make a bigger adjustment from 2 incomes.

The second reason for us was that we did indeed want to have children. We were older when we got married and knew that we could not take fertility for granted. We had both seen friends and family struggle with fertility issues. The reasons for this struggle were many, but one that seemed to be shared by all those we knew was that the wife not only worked outside the home, but she also had a lot of stress from both the job and trying to juggle keeping the home and other outside commitments too. We wanted to given ourselves the best possible opportunities to be able to have children, so adding a stressful outside job did not make sense, even in the midst of a very tight budget. It was also much easier for both of us to stay healthy when I am home cooking everything from scratch instead of eating mass produced convenience foods or resorting to eating out (which also makes it more difficult to stick to a budget.)

More important than either of these good reasons, was the most important reason of all. We understood that God's will was for me to stay at home. When we searched the Scriptures we could find no evidence that the Lord desires women to work outside the home. In fact we found very much the opposite. Women who were busy outside of the home were always portrayed as wicked women, rebellious and discontent. In the New Testament women are clearly instructed to be "keepers at home." Even widows of child bearing age were instructed to remarry rather than rely on welfare. Widows who are older were to be looked after by their adult children/grandchildren rather than resort to welfare. Those widows who had neither of these options were to receive welfare from the church only if they had proved themselves to be hard working at home, and not prone to laziness.

But what about the Proverbs 31 woman? I have heard that used as justification for working outside the home. Yet this woman, who is worth is above rubies, is not shown as working outside the home. Rather she looks well to the ways of her household. She uses her spare time to be industrious for sure, but the things she does are at home industries. She buys land to provide more food. She makes clothes for her family, and makes some extras that she can sell to merchants. She prepares food to feed her family. She is indeed the ultimate stay at home wife and mother. She uses all her waking hours for the benefit of her family, while being home to look after her family.

I will continue with Part 2 - How we live on a single income. I'll share some of the things we have learned to help us live within our means.

Getting Organized

After getting unpacked from our move I have started trying to get more organized. With two under two on different nap schedules I often have days where the boys tag team their naps. This leaves me with very little time when they are not needing my attention to do chores. So I have challenged myself to get smarter about chores. I really want to protect the evening and weekend hours when Rob is home to keep them chore free (or at least to only have minimal chores.)

So far I have made progress in the following areas:

Laundry

Instead of my old routine of laundry once a week I now try to do one load every day, with two loads on the three days a week I do diapers/nappies. It seems easier now to deal with a small amount of laundry as part of the daily routine now that I don't have the luxury of time to devote a whole day to the task.

Cleaning

I've made myself a monthly spreadsheet of every single cleaning task. I print it out once a month and put it on the fridge. When something gets cleaned I tick the box for that day & week. It has made it easier to keep a track of what has been done and what still needs to be done. It also gives me accountability as Rob can see at a glance how much has been done on any given day. I also set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes a couple of times a day when just Aiden is awake. I clean for those 10 minutes then do something with him as a reward for being patient for that time. This is how I get everyday things like emptying the dishwasher and sweeping the kitchen floor done. It also reminds me to give Aiden some undivided attention too.

Meals

We still use our 8 week menu plan. However we have realized that there are occasionally days where dinner isn't going to be ready on time. So now I also have extra sides (like mac'n'cheese) prepared and in the freezer for those "meltdown" days. On those days where getting into the kitchen, or putting the baby down, has been impossible I'll take out a side dish and call Rob to pick up some cooked chicken on his way home from work. That way we still get a healthy meal on time, and we don't spend as much money as we would if we just got regular take out food.

We have also made a commitment to not buy bread products this year. Just before Christmas I invested in the book "Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a day" and it has spurred me back to making bread. I hope to write a review of this book as soon as time allows, so I won't elaborate here. I'll just say since using this technique I've had no excuse not to have fresh bread whenever we need it.

Another new dimension to our food routines is having "easy to eat right now" food available for during the day. I am trying to keep to a minimum how much time I spend in the kitchen when Rob isn't home. At the same time now that Aiden can tell me when he is hungry he is asking to eat about once an hour (he is a grazer like his Daddy.) When Aiden asks for food he doesn't want to wait 5 or 10 minutes while I make something. So I am trying to keep a good stock of food already prepared ahead of time. These days our fridge is generally full with tubs of such foods. We like things like potato salad, tuna salad, cheese sticks, sliced roast beef (roasted and sliced at home,) boiled eggs, fruit and our one indulgence is animal crackers (which we call cookies here.)

Well that is about all I've got time to share for today, as Aiden is calling for his Mama.

What things have you found that help you stay more organized?

Crock Pot Yogurt

Yesterday/today I made my very first batch of crock pot yogurt.

It was so easy I can't believe I haven't tried to do this before now.



I ended up with 7 cups of yogurt and 2 cups of whey from this process. The whey we will keep and use in smoothies or soup to add extra protein.

So here are the ingredients:
1/2 gallon (64fl oz) milk (must not be ultra pasteurized)
1/2 cup plain live yogurt ( I used Greek style as its what we had in the fridge.)

Heat the milk in a crock pot, on low for 2 1/2 hours.
Turn OFF the crock pot.
Leave to stand for 3 hours.

Remove 1-2 cups of the milk, and mix thoroughly with the 1/2 cup of live yogurt.
Add the milk & yogurt mix back into the crock pot.
Wrap the whole crock pot with a large towel to insulate the warmth inside.
Leave for at least 8 hours. I left it overnight.

To remove some of the whey strain the yogurt through a coffee filter. Removing whey produces a thick consistency.



Best served cold from the fridge.

You can also just keep aside 1/2 cup of this homemade yogurt to be your yogurt starter the next time.

Some frugal ideas for around the home.

As tempted as I am to just blog about my darling little boy these days I thought i would take a break from just being a Mamma and instead go back to blogging about running a home.

In this day and age (and economy) everyone I know is looking for ways to save some money. I have a friend who is very good at extreme couponing and often has savings of over 70% on her grocery shopping. I admire her dedication, especially with five growing children to feed and living on a single income. However I also know that couponing just isn't for me. It involves too much shopping for me, and I like the predictability of a planned menu that means not having to think about what we are going to eat every single day/week. I wrote a post about our 8 week menu plan some time ago. You can read it here. We have revised it a little since then, but it is pretty much the same idea. We have a rotating menu with lots of variety, and a grocery list so we can shop every few weeks for everything we need.

Living on a single income with a baby has so far not been as expensive as most parenting articles would suggest. Firstly we decided ahead of time to use cloth diapers/nappies. We bought 5 packets of Gerber Premium Prefolds, 3 snappis and 3 econobum one size diaper covers. We used a gift card to purchase the prefolds so the total cost to us was just over $40 (with shipping etc.) We were able to have enough supplies to diaper our baby from birth to potty training for less than the cost of 2 months supply of throw away diapers/nappies.

Now that Aiden is eating some solid food I save on that cost by making my own baby food. He will eat any fruit as long as there is some mashed banana mixed in, and almost any vegetable as long as there is some sweet potato. I like using only organics for baby food, so I buy several of any item, make them up and then store in the freezer in little tubs. I'll mix up a couple of days worth at a time from the freezer stock and store in the 'fridge in little double portion glass jars. When its meal time all I need to do is put half a jar in his bowl and I'm ready to feed him.

We are also in the process of transitioning our own food to healthier organic or naturally produced food. The first meat we have chosen for this is chicken. We used to buy chicken breasts in bulk at Sam's Club. I would put each one in a ziplock bag before freezing them, that way we could just take out what we needed. We eat chicken probably three times a week most weeks, so we use a lot of chicken. Then we found whole chickens at Publix for less per pound than the chicken breast at Sam's Club. Obviously you're paying for the skin, bones etc too. As we talked about it we realised that we could save some money through this too. We use a lot of chicken broth. We were buying cans of chicken broth, again in bulk at Sam's Club. Rob also likes to have chicken wings and over the last two years we've noticed they have become rather pricey, more expensive per lb than chicken breasts. So we buy a couple of whole chickens at a time. I butcher them myself at home. The only part I throw away without using is the skin. I bag the breasts as before. I cut up the wings and bag them up for the freezer, and likewise with the drumsticks and the thighs. I then keep the carcass and bag it up for making stock. I currently have 4 chicken carcasses waiting in the freezer to be made into chicken stock, and then I'll pick the bones for the left over cooked meat to add to soups, curries etc. All we need is to go and buy some reuseable mason jars for the stock and I'll be good to go. By using every part of the chicken I'll actually be able to save money in the long term while still feeding my family hormone and antibiotic free meat. We did this with the leftover Turkey carcass at Thanksgiving and it was surprising just how much meat I was able to pick out of the boiled bones, not to mention how tasty the turkey soup was that I made with the stock I produced. We just finished using up the leftover turkey just a few weeks ago.

Finally, for this post anyway, we switched to cloth napkins instead of paper ones. We bought a couple of packs of plain white cloth table napkins so that we would always have plenty, even when some are in the wash. We chose white so that when they get stained it is easy to add a little laundry bleach to make them all white again. We also stopped buying paper kitchen towels and just use dish towels and hand towels in our kitchen. It is amazing how quickly the savings add up when we switched to reuseable products instead of disposable. One of the nice things about this is that it not only cuts the cost, but it also cuts the environmental impact too. We can be good stewards of our money and good stewards of our planet at the same time.

It's all change around here.

The last few weeks have seen a lot of changes for us.

Aiden said his first real word this week. It was "Dada." I asked him where his Dada was and he looked at Rob and said Dada. Our precious little boy is beginning to talk. It is so cute.

Aiden with his Dada

He is also changing his nap pattern yet again. Just when we think we can plan around naptime it changes. This is a change for the better though. Aiden is taking at least one of his naps as a long nap of two hours or longer. This is hopefully the start of the transition to two longer daytime naps instead of the current four nap routine. We might even be able to leave the house occasionally once we get into a two nap routine. However I am grateful that he even naps for an hour, as only six weeks ago he wouldn't nap for more than twenty minutes a few times a day.

The biggest change for us however is that we have moved. We were planning on this for a while. We have also downsized too, which suits me a whole lot better. We were previously in a large 2300sqft. single family home. It was on two floors and the high ceilings downstairs made for a lot of stairs to get up to the second floor. Keeping such a large house was fine until Aiden came along.

Then we ended up camping out in the family room. Because of my emergency c-section we moved some key pieces of nursery furniture downstairs. Most never made the return journey back to the nursery. It was much easier to just leave it all in the family room. We only went upstairs to go to bed, and so the chores up there got pretty much neglected. We rarely got to sit down at the table to eat together, as one of us was always attending to Aiden, so the dinning room also fell into disuse. Like I already wrote, we basically lived in our family room and adjoining kitchen.

It was an expensive house to not be living in most of it. And after Aiden still showing signs of remembering our spiritual trial at the end of October, we knew moving was the best thing for all of us.

We have moved to a cosy little two bedroom apartment. Its on the ground floor so we don't have any stairs to deal with any more. It has a total of 1100sqft, which is less than half of what we had before, but we still managed to fit everything we actually use, and it doesn't look over crowded. It will also force us to keep our life simple, as there is no room for storing any extra "stuff" just because we might use it one day.

Now I can keep on top of the chores, and keep our home as clean as I used to. Aiden is sleeping even better, and is all around even happier and more contented. Even Rob is more relaxed now that he doesn't have any yard work to do, but still has a patio to enjoy and grill on.

We have wonderful community facilities including a heated swimming pool and 24hr access to a gym. In our first week we have met more of our neighbours than we did in three years at our old neighbourhood. Everyone in this new neighbourhood is really friendly, and they have regular community events to help people get to know each other. I feel more at home here in just a week than I ever did in our previous place. It just shows that having a large home isn't always the best.

I know for most people the idea of downsizing seems impossible. For us it makes sense in so many different ways. It is more economical, easier to keep, friendlier, and more relaxing for all of us. Less space also means less possessions, which means less temptation to purchase things we don't really need. This in turn will save us more money. Every way we look at it our new home is one of the best decisions we have made together.

We have been so blessed to find this new home. We have been blessed to have Aiden adjust to it without any problems. We are so blessed to have such friendly neighbours. We praise the Lord of all blessings for leading us here at just the right time.

Single Income Living, a new category of post.

I have decided to start a new category of post here on my blog. As a family living on a single income in South Florida, where the cost of living is expensive, every penny counts. While neither Rob nor I thought we had an extravagant lifestyle, we are still finding ways to cut our expenses. I thought I would share some of them here on the blog.

Today I want to share my latest experiment. I made my own liquid laundry detergent. I was very surprised at just how easy it was. I got the recipe from the Duggars website (since I don't know how to directly link here is the web address - http://www.duggarfamily.com/recipes.html )and used Ivory soap, which was very easy to grate on a manual cheese grater. I made 10 gallons for about 60 cents. The one thing I did notice is that this laundry detergent does NOT froth the same way commercial detergents do, but it actually cleans BETTER. Both Rob and I are very impressed at how well it has worked, and how much money it will save us. $12 used to buy 1 gallon of detergent, but $12 in supplies will yield 20 batches of 10 gallons each.

I don't think we will ever purchase commercial laundry detergent ever again.