Positive Reinforment

One method to keep me/us plugging along on my fugal lifestyle is to have frequent positive reinforcement. Sometimes it's as simple as writing on the lid of a can. Or box or bag.
This is a good method to also encourage family members to lend their hand @ pantry shopping. While my middle daughter would rather do the dishes for me so I have time to clip coupons or make a barter good, my last baby enjoys the actual shopping. It's nice to have that second person to cart watch or crawl around on the supermarket floor checking expiration dates.
Canned Tuna fish was a bonus buck buy (also on sale) @ CVS months ago.

Working on more long term food shortage goals past the normal 3 years that home canned food can be stored. In that category my main concern is meat. Hence the 38 cans of Tuna accumulated in the cellar.
Hope to catch a great deal on SPAM before my coupons expire. Who would have thought that something like canned potted meat would become soo expensive.

Woods was making me lunch, something soft that I could manage since I recently had dental surgery for the 2nd time.
I'm stalked by a dead beat Tooth Fairy.


~~ pelenaka ~~

VLCA

This is one of my all time favorite books written in by Bolton Hall.

Assisted by R.F. Powell

Superintendent of the Vacant Lot Cultivation in Philadelphia

Published by Grosset & Dunlap - New York

Copyright 1907 March

By the Macmillan Company

Chapter IV 

Vacant City Lot Cultivation

Lessons for the the intensive cultivator - of poor land.

The effect upon physical, mental, moral health - illustrated.

A farm educator - in voluntary co-operation. Appreciation by railroads.

In Europe. In school gardens. Wonderful production. Your opportunity.

In this book, necessarily, we have to take much upon the reports of others checking them only by our own judgement and experience. The following account of what has been done and is being done on plots of about a quarter acre to each family, however can be easily re-verified by anyone who will go or write to Philadelphia, or examine the New York experiment. Both show what can be done even by unskilled labor, with hardly any capital, on small plots of ground where the soil is poor, but which is well situated.

The directors say: "The Philadelphia Vacant Lot Cultivation Association was organized in 1897, when relief agencies were vainly striving to provide adequate assistance for the host of unemployed. The cultivation of vacant city lots had already been tried successfully in other cities. The first year we provided gardens, seeds, tools, and instruction only, for about 100 families on twenty-seven acres of ground. At a total cost to contributors of about $1,800, our gardeners produced $6,000, worth of crops.

"During ten years more than four thousand four hundred families have been assisted, many old people who could no longer keep up the rapid pace of our industrial life, cripples whose physical condition held them back in the race for work, persons who on account of sickness or other misfortunes have been thrown out through sharp competition in modern business, and unfortunate beings who, though clear in mind and strong in muscle, on account of business conditions, have been forced to take the ranks of the unemployed - these have all had the opportunity to enjoy all of the fruits from natures great storehouse which an application of their own labor and skill might secure them.

I would like to extend my apologies to the Dervaes Family of Pasadena, California.

In my mind I firmly believed that Vacant Lot Cultivation was interchangeable with the term urban homesteading, and the term was in use in the late 1890's.

I see now that I was wrong.

That despite a common concept of a homesteading lifestyle in a city,

your copyrighted term shares nothing of the hardships that earlier gardeners faced in both lack of hospitable climate, knowledge, appropriate tools, or ownership of ground to say nothing of the lack of basic capital. These people were cultivators of all that is revered in gardening all that is good.

In short you sir are not worthy to lick the Vacant Lot Cultivation Association's hoes. 

~~ pelenaka ~~

who walks the talk without holding paper

Romantic Pantry Shopping

If your anything like my husband Woodsrunner & I then you will think that this is a very romantic way to spend a Valentines Saturday running the streets of Rochester. K, maybe not so much romantic but enjoyable. We were sans children, had no real timetable and no one expected us at an appointed hour so we were on Hawaiian time so to speak.
Our federal tax check had come so not only did we have gas money ($3.38 per gal.) and had spending money. Did I mention that there was no teenagers in the back seat ?  

First stop was @ the Genesee Valley Regional Market out in Henrietta, New York a burb of Rochester. It's warehouses with loading docks. No frills bulk & specialty shopping at it's best. You have to know your price points if an item can be a better deal @ a retail store on sale with coupons, but we were here for items to stock our primarily scratch cooking pantry. Items that are hard to find @ Tops or Wegmans. More long term storage staples.
First store that we visited was Nibblack Foods a primarily dry goods store that stocks an unbelieveable amount of spices & extracts along with flours. The store itself is about 500 or 600 sq. ft. with shopping isles made up of heavy duty green metal shelving ten feet high. On this Saturday afternoon the store was staffed by two very helpful & knowledgeable women. We spent over an hour shopping  ... well I actually shopped, Woods stood drooling in the hot sauce section followed by canoodling with the woman who was handing out sauce samples. He's a Dutchman with a hispanic tongue.



Baking Powder Double Acting 1lbs./$3.25 - slightly cheaper than @ Aldis.

Farina 1.75 lbs./$2.50 (bought 2) - a.k.a. Cream of Wheat. Eating a small bowel reminds me of mi Abuela.

Flax Seed Meal 1 lbs./$3.50 (bought 2) besides sprinkling over hot cereal (omega 3 heart health) it is also a binding agent in my whole wheat bread recipe.

Gluten Flour Wheat Vital 1 lbs./$4.7 - helps bread rise. 

Lecithin Liquid 32 oz./$10.50 - used as a binding agent in place of a fresh egg in bread recipes, health benefits.

Orange Extract Pure 2 fl.oz. $3.25 - baking.

Powdered Buttermilk 1 lbs./$6.75- although u can always make a version of buttermilk by adding lemon juice or vinegar to milk then let stand until it curdles, I really want to be less dependent on fresh milk.

Powdered Eggs 8 oz./$4 - this is for when fresh eggs are unavailable.

Powdered Malt 1 lbs./$2.75 - this was an impulse buy simply because the label read, "helps bread rise better". Now to figure out how much to use.

Tapioca Starch - 1 lbs./$2.96 - thickening agent for pie fillings.

TVP Soy Unflavored 12 oz./$3.50 - again this was sorta an impulse buy. I have been thinking about adding this to our diet for over a year now.

Quinoa Grains 1 lbs./$4.0 - again a bit of an impulse buy in that I hadn't researched price but had decided to add this to our diet. High in protein.

Vanilla Beans Whole 2 beans/$4.75 - for homemade vanilla extract. Also plan on putting white sugar in the plastic bag that the beans were packaged in to make vanilla scented sugar.

Total $65.96

We also went across the lot to Lori's Natural Foods Center an organic grocery store. Another place on our "been meaning to visit" list. Bought 49 cents worth of organic lentils for an upcoming new recipe, a couple pounds of raw buckwheat groats for grinding (buckwheat pancakes !) & Colloidal Silver (working on alternative health care). Oh bottle of H2O my blood sugar was up extremely parched.
Total $18.22

Next we headed in to Palmer's Market, meat, poultry, & seafood. Apprently we were on a time table as the bulk food section of their biz closes @ 1600. Was hoping to score whole fat powdered milk. If it was economical enough then everyday use if not as an emergency back up when there is no fresh milk for drinking.
Bought 5 log rolls of 80% lean ground beef & 5 log rolls of pork sausage which were a buck a piece.
Haven't tried the sausage yet but the ground beef was good. Should have bought more.
Total $29.85

~~ pelenaka ~~

Stove Top Oven

One of the many ways that I had planned on increasing the return on our wood stove investment was to use a stove top oven ($30 on gift card) for baking. Easier said than done apparently. My first few attempts were on the cold side with the oven only reaching the 250 degrees when the stove was @ a full fire.
Woods, believes that the poor quality of the wood we have been burning is to blame.
Neither here nor there as I still need to bake.
And we all know that not using the free heat to bake with was driving me crazy Lucy, crazy.
Red silicone baking mats ($15) paper & butterfly clipped in place increased the oven's heat retention.
And yes it took me a good day to figure out what I could use to hold the mats in place.
Stove top oven holds one pie, one 8" cake pan, or two regular loaf pans. It also holds my cast iron muffin pan - 6 small muffins.

Blueberry pie (grew & canned the filling), took over an hour and half to bake. Not as browned on the top crust as I would have liked but the filling was bubbling out so I pulled it. Not as pretty as I would have liked. Only two hearts are perfect.

Whole house smells like pie.



Stove top oven with an added oven thermometer as the door gauge is about 100 degrees too low. I really only use inside thermometer (borrowed from ice box) when I first place a pan in. After that we gauge the baking time by the given bake time then by the scent.
Not an exact science but then wood stove cooking & baking isn't.

Practice practice practice.


~~ pelenaka ~~

Brass Monkey Cold

Today was the second day of warmer temperatures here on the urban homestead - it was 33 degrees and drab today. Tonight the real cold comes back to torment us.  

NP I'll take it sure beats our all time record setting low of -9 last week.

Snapped this pic of our freak'n Winter wonderland  while I was listening to my Christmas gift from Woodsrunner. It's an eton brand solar/hand cranked/battery powered radio/flash light/cell phone charger. Also will charge ipods. Great to get a quick weather update from NOAA.

Lite weight and very compact. Good since my car is a bicycle with baskets.

All that's left of our wood pile is 2 to 2 1/3 cords of wood. The 1/3 being hard Maple which gives more heat than what we have been calling Bass wood. Don't ask me what Bass wood is. It's a term that husband uses. All I know is that it is wood best burned in early Autumn or late Spring or during warm January days such as today when I'm wearing thermal underwear under my thick sweatpants.
It was free so that has to count for something. And we were by no means freezing.
When it was bitterly sub zero cold we also burned Oak pallets along with the Maple. Still it was diffacult to keep the house any warmer than 56 even with the stove blazing at those low temps. No wonder that this ballon framed built house orginally had 3 coal stoves.
So far to date the furnace has only been on for about 40 hours this heating season. The majority of that was durning those below zero nights to keep the cellar warm enough so the water pipes didn't freeze. As of now our natural gas bill has been $92 but that's without a proper meter read.
Electric bill was impressive in that we only used a bit over $12 worth of current for last month. However we paid out over $34 in service charges, taxes, tariffs, line charges, blah blah blah ...
Having the furnace running for those few nights reminded me that I so much prefer wood heat to forced air. It's true what they say, the flame warms you to the bones.

~~ pelenaka ~~

Pharmacist sells flour

and eggs.
And olive oil.

Good score over the last month @ my neighborhood CVS drugstore - 5 pound bags of all purpose Gold Medal Flour for a $1 each. Bought 24 bags = 120 lbs. Called my bbgf, she scored 30 bags. This was a manager's special a.k.a. unadvertised clean out the back room deal.
Each bag is sitting cold in the freezer until I have O2 absorbers & Mylar bags to prep them for long term storage. I won't be using this flour until my other 8 bags (holiday baking sales) are depleted.
Unfortunately I didn't have any corresponding coupons nor could I find any online but it was a sweet deal never the less.
Eggs were an advertised special cheaper than Aldi.
Filippo Berio Olive Oil Extra Virgin was $8.49 for 16.9 fl. oz. I had two $1 off coupons & a 25% off purchase CVS store coupon. Olive Oil worked out to be $5.62 each or 33 cents per once. Can never have enough olive oil.

I also picked up two knee adjustable braces that were on a bogo 50% off sale. Had a couple of $3 off coupons so the price worked out to $8.24 each. Having spare braces is priceless when we have daughters who play sports. Not to mention Woodsrunner & myself.
I have always kept an extensive medical kit with emergency supplies that covered lacerations & gi issues but have recently in the past few years worked on extending our kit to include other health concerns such as sprains.
Our health insurance doctor office co pays have gone up from $35 to $50. ER visits were $300, now $500 (mortgage payment & a half). So it isn't just a matter of not being able to go to an ER because of a disaster it more of being able to afford that trip to the ER.
Speaking of medical supplies - last Summer I picked up a pair of barely used adjustable metal crutches @ Aunt Sally's (Salvation Army) for $1.99.

Here's a link to the free download in PDF of the book Where There is No Doctor


~~ pelenaka ~~