Creative Homemaker

Here's an update on my sister's "live off you food storage" experiment. Enjoy, how are you all doing? We have been very blessed, although I do not shop for groceries out of my budget, we are on WIC for milk, eggs, cheese and some cereal, plus I go to our foodbank once a week. I got 4 bushels of apples last week, I just finished putting them all up. I got 13 more quarts of applesauce and about 15 or so pints of apple butter, and then froze 3 qts of it, because I ran out of jars. We'll eat those up first. I'm trying not to have too much in my freezer in case the power goes out again for a week. Here's Sis's update: Hi All, Maybe this is Provident Living Practice. Here’s my confessions. A couple of people asked if I were going to buy gas, or Christmas. I thought I’d better define my parameters for this experiment. All I’m really trying to do is not go grocery or household shopping. We have a couple of roasts, about 20 lbs of hamburger, 5 pounds of saus...

After I saw that the sugary lava flow was not moving any further, I trudged up the stairs to where Hubby was studying. I slunk over to the bed and, with head hanging down, I told him I had destroyed the kitchen. He hugged and assured me that it would be all right, we went down stairs to survey the damage. I was met again with the terrible sight. Hubs said not to despair, and went to get the spackle knife-paint scraper thing from the garage. He started chipping away at the objects on the counter and I set the pot to soak in the sink. I lifted the spoon and thought it looked like sticky tar. (It would probably be useful for protecting the roof if we ever needed a little patching.) I was able to get the drips off the floor without any damage except for a small bubble in the linoleum which you can only feel if you are scrubbing the floor down on your hands and knees; as if I ever have time to do that, I’ll never feel it! I was pretty impressed at that, I thought for sure the sugar-lava wou...

A couple of weeks ago, I posted that I had finished all of my canning. Well, the bug hit me again as I strolled through the grocery store. APPLES!! I hadn’t done any apples! No applesauce, apple butter, apple pie filling, apple rings, spiced apples, NOTHING! I scooted Sweet Boy over in the cart and loaded in a full bushel box of apples. (Now he had a seat instead of the “ouchie-wire” cart.) Back at home I scoured through all my files for the delicious caramelized-sugar apple butter recipe that Gram and I made back when I lived in the mid-west. I couldn’t find it anywhere, looked all over the Internet too; I only found recipes that had real caramels added. I couldn’t can that, caramels have milk in them, so although the flavor may have been right, the recipe certainly wasn’t. I gave up my search and called Mom. She remembered it, but although didn’t have the recipe; she said that I should just be able to “caramelize” the sugar in a regular recipe and add it to create the caramel flavor....

My sister "Silver" and her family have decided to try an experiment—living on their food storage only, from now until Christmas. She has been very industrious to “put up” and can lots of things this summer and fall. She made this decision when she was looking at all her neat rows of canned goods. (I must admit that I sit in the garage on our swing which we brought in for the winter and admire my shelves too.) I think this is a fantastic idea! Of course that is one of the reasons why we store for the future, to use in the event of an emergency. So if we have not planned ahead and purchased everything that we need in that event, how do we know if we have been wise in our preparation? King Solomon said, in Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little...

I was reading Proverbs chapter 31 the other day and was thinking, oh yeah, if I had servant girls, I could get all that done in one day too. Because the proverbs 31 woman had maidservants and I didn’t, I named my appliances so that I could feel like I had “servant girls” working for me too. I have Drucilla the dryer, Christine the crock-pot, Minnie, the microwave, Denise the dishwasher, (sorry my Dear Friend!) Olivia Oven, Brenda blender, and poor old Wanda the washing machine. My original Wanda, (17 years old) died last year, and was replaced amazingly enough by a lady of the same name. She is not new working for me, but had a one-year warranty, as she has had some operations in the past to fix this or that. She worked fine for me up until about 3 months ago when during her spin cycle there came a terrible screeching noise. I ran and shut her off and waited. I had a full load of laundry in the tub, sopping wet. How was I to get it all spun out if I didn’t just run it? S...

Babies are funny! I love the way their little minds work. BooBoo (18 months) does the cutest things and you can almost see the wheels churning inside his little head. Lately he has been stuffing things down the front of his shirt, like he was trying to save them for later. He walks around looking like he has elephantitis, clanking and rattling as he moves. Every once in a while, something will fall clear through his jammies or his sweats and he’ll act all surprised. It cracks me up, like he didn’t know it was there? The school kids just walked in the door, gotta go do the “Mom” thing now.