more house changes

New changes!

ground floor

1. I removed the side porch and deck, which allowed me to remove the door on the west side of the house.  Then I was able to make a semi-closed office area.  I’m thinking I will have a short bookshelf behind the couch, with a see-through bookcase on top of that, so the office is separate but not totally closed off.

2. I removed the bar w/chairs and used the extra space to make the entryway a little bigger.  It was kind of tight.  There is still a small ledge where the bar was to have a place to put food or something.

3. I made the front porch bigger.

4. I removed the shower in the bathroom and replaced it with a pantry.  Without a shower, the bathroom won’t need much ventilation, so I removed the window too.  Now the north wall has no windows at all and can be completely underground.

5. With that in mind, I moved the kitchen door over a bit so there wouldn’t be such an abrupt retaining wall from the north side being underground.  Now the ground can slope a little more gently before it stops with a retaining wall right before the door.  I had to sacrifice a window above the sink for this (because now that wall is underground) so I put a cupboard there instead.  I’d like the door to have a window in it so the kitchen gets a little light.

6. I put in a little woodshed next to the garage, so it would be convenient to carry wood through the kitchen door to the masonry stove.

7. I added a kitchen garden between the driveway and house, and a larger garden in the front of the house.  Both of these areas will get lots of sunlight, so I don’t want too many trees here.

8. I put trees on the west side to help cool the house off during summer evenings.

9. I switched around the futon and the fold-out cutting table in the sewing/guest room because it seemed to work better that way.

upper floor

1. Because I took out the deck, I was able to make the closet on the west side really big!  It’s got three sets of small double doors.

2. I took out the bedroom closets and put in wardrobes instead.  Not sure if I will keep it that way or not.

We are making applesauce today because I accidentally bought a bag of very bruised apples a while ago.  We ate the ok ones (actually they were really spectacular apples except for the bruises) but there were several left that were really bad.

We’re going shopping to buy toilet paper today, but I just wanted to brag that Samuel and I have not bought anything (except gas and bills) for the past few weeks.  It helps that we get free milk and eggs and stuff.  There are plenty of things that we want or even need to buy, but we simply cannot, and so we don’t.  Samuel still doesn’t have a job and so we have no money coming in.  We can only spend money on the things we absolutely need right now.  I’m not whining, just saying what our life is like right now.  It is surprisingly not that hard and we have become quite inventive.  Yesterday we made dinner out of ground deer, the last tiny amount of homemade spaghetti sauce that nobody wanted, sour cream, and milk, mixed with macaroni noodles.  It was really good.  Today we’re making applesauce out of those apples.  I’ve never made applesauce before, and in the past probably would have thrown these apples out or made some kind of dessert with them.  We get free cereal, milk, eggs, and juice, so we always have good breakfast food.  We’ve got tons of flour, sugar, rice, beans, potatoes, onions, and some pasta, and we’ve been making our own noodles too (SO GOOD!).  The only thing I miss is fresh fruits and veggies, but WIC supposedly will start giving me those in August thanks to a change in the program.  And we’ve gotten some yummy things from my family’s garden.   We also get peanut butter from WIC.  I will be very happy when we have the money to buy some more things, but we’re definitely very well-off right now as it is.   I plan to try and be more inventive in the future, even when I don’t have to be.  It is very fulfilling.

Ridiculously easy ways to go without

ETA update from last post: I have an appointment with the birth center next week!  I am so excited!  I will write a post all about it soon.  Maybe after my appointment.

I was doing some chores today and realized blogging about it might be interesting or useful to some people.

How to not have a clothes dryer

We haven’t been using the coin-op dryer lately, because we don’t have any money.  It’s $1.50 per load and doesn’t even dry things completely.  Some things I’ve learned that make me feel a little more self-righteous -instead of just poor- about not using the dryer include the fact that clothes last longer when they’re air-dried.  Dryers use heat, tumble clothes around,  shrink clothes, and set stains permanently.  All that lint they acquire is the result of clothes slowly being worn thin.  If you own your own dryer, keep in mind that it’s probably the highest electricity-sucker in your house.  It takes a lot to make that much heat and move that much weight around.

So here’s what we do instead:

One load of laundry hung on our shower rod. Ridiculously easy to do. You're going to hang them up anyway. These dry overnight, so make sure no one needs to take a shower before they're dry.

This is the rest of the same load. You can buy these drying racks for a few dollars. It's not really that good for most clothes because it's so small, but socks, small towels, etc. hang really well on it.

Some more tips:

-This only works for one load at a time, unless you have multiple shower rods or other places you can hang stuff.  Therefore, we only do one load of laundry on any given day.  It keeps things from piling up and prevents “Laundry Day” where you spend all day washing clothes.

-If you have tons of clothes, this might not work.  Also, if you put clothes in the hamper when they’re not really dirty yet, this might not work.  There will simply be too many clothes to hang up.  Our example is one load, probably one weeks’ worth of clothes for two people, not including the whites, which we will do another day.

-Ways to dry other things:

-sheets: just put them straight back onto the mattress to dry, and don’t cover them up.  In my experience cotton sheets will take about 5 hours to dry this way.  So make sure you don’t do it right before bedtime.

-towels: hang them on the towel racks.  This will not work if you use a new towel every time you shower, and you shower very often.  Think about it: you’re drying off your freshly cleaned body. The towel isn’t going to get that dirty.  So reuse it and make your life easier.

-of course, the easiest way to dry laundry is to have a nice outdoor clothesline!  A porch or deck railing will also work in a pinch.

How to not have a microwave

Our microwave died a month before we moved, and, almost three months later, we haven’t bought one yet because we have no money.  We recently decided not to buy one at all, ever, because we’ve learned how to live without one and it’s ridiculously easy.  Here are the problems we came across and how we fixed them:

-heating up most leftovers: put them on a plate and heat them up in the toaster oven (This presupposes you have one.  You could use a regular oven, but that might be overkill.  Many things you can heat up on the stove)

-heating up leftover rice: put it in a pot and sprinkle some water over it.  Cover and heat on the stove until it’s steamy.  Seriously, this makes leftover rice almost like new!

-heating up leftover pasta: boil some water and put the pasta in for one minute or so.  Be careful, it gets mushy really fast.  This works best if you mix it in with fresh pasta.  But even by itself it’s fine.

-melting butter, chocolate, etc.: Put it in a baggie and immerse in hot water for several minutes.  Or, melt in a saucepan on the stove.

-defrosting meat: Put it in a baggie and immerse in hot water.  Or, if you’re really on top of things, defrost it in the fridge the day or two before you need it.  I never remember to do that, though.  Unless it’s a whole turkey or roast.  Those are kind of hard to miss.

-making popcorn: Get a popcorn popper.  It’s so worth it, trust me.  Or, you can do it on the stovetop.

-heating up frozen dinners: Sorry, I don’t think this one’s going to work.

Corned Venison Realized!

If you remember, a while ago I posted about planning to make corned venison.  Well, we just finished eating it for dinner tonight!  Here’s what I did:

I made a brine using water and several cups of salt.  You know there is enough salt when you can put a raw egg in the brine and it floats easily.  Along with the salt, we put it some spices and herbs for fun (Samuel helped me).  Then we boiled it, and then cooled it.  Then we simply put the raw, thawed venison roast into a large tupperware box,  submerged the roast in brine, and put it in the fridge and forgot about it.  You have to make sure it is completely submerged in brine or the meat will go bad.

Weeks later -today- we got the roast out.  It smelled like corned beef!  We rinsed it off and boiled it until it was done.  Then we ate it with boiled cabbage (boiled in the water the roast was boiled in- very yummy) mashed potatos and Irish soda bread.  This was our St. Patrick’s Day feast, of course.

Anyway, the corned venison tasted just like corned beef.  It was a little drier but not much.  It was easy to chew and eat like it should be (one reason I don’t like some meats is that they are so hard to chew).

There’s just enough leftovers for corned venison and cabbage sandwiches with the soda bread.  mmmm….

Venison!

I made venison pot roast for Christmas. It turned out AWESOME. First I stabbed holes in it and stuffed garlic slices into the holes. Then I salt & peppered it and seared it in olive oil on all sides. Then I put it in a roasting pan with seared onions, potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms, and water, olive oil and rosemary and roasted it at 250 for about five hours. It was yummy and tender!
We have one more deer roast in our freezer. Next I’m going to try…

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡CORNED VENISON!!!!!!!!!!

That is, venison soaked in brine for several days and then simmered in a pot. I watched a video about how to make corned beef, which I love, and then wondered if I could do it with venison. I’ve found several recipes that say yes, you can, and it tastes amazing.  Brining is also very easy: it just takes a long time to work.   I’m going to try it! I’M SO EXCITED!!!!!!

In related news, I gotThe Little House Cookbook for Christmas and it is soo amazing.  It’s partially a cookbook of the meals made in the Little House books, and partially a description of what life was like back then and how and why they made the food they did.  I love reading it.

I also got many other wonderful gifts that are filling me with happiness but I think I will blog about them separately, later.

Here are the movie quotes from my quiz that no one could guess:

7. So, go get him, for Pete’s sake! -from Amelie
8. That gag’s got whiskers on it! -from The Hudsucker Proxy
16. Is wrong address! -from Roman Holiday

chicken broth and rocking chair

Today I made chicken broth and froze it into small portions, so I can use one or two portions whenever I make soup or somthing that calls for chicken broth.  This is how I did it:

Fill a stock pot half full with water
Boil a chicken carcass (I had saved the cornish game hen carcasses in the freezer since Thanksgiving, so it’s not actually chicken broth) an onion, a carrot and a ton of salt for an hour or so
Take out the carcass and pick off the meat.
Put the bones back in the pot and boil for another hour
Drain the broth with a colander into a bowl
Pour the broth into whatever container you want and freeze

I saved a bunch so we could eat chicken soup today.  The rest I froze in a muffin tin.  I still have three more carcasses to get through.  The broth is really strong so I’ll probably only use one or two at a time.  I love cooking with broth; it makes almost anything taste yummier.

Here’s the muffin-shaped pieces:

AND

Today we went to DI and we found a few things we need.  Then we were just wandering and I saw a real rocking chair -not a glider- for only $10.  I kind of wanted to buy it since I want a rocking chair and they can be very expensive.  But it was short and small and not very comfortable.  Then as Samuel was buying our stuff I went to the antiques/collectibles area and saw another rocking chair!  It was the nice big kind, in really good condition, for only $35!  So we bought it!

Technically I’m trying not to buy big things since we’ll be moving next summer.  But we’re taking hardly any of our furniture, so I thought the rocking chair would be ok.  Sadly, we don’t really have room to use it now. One of the coolest parts about this chair is that it had another price sticker underneath the $35 one, for $75!  Woohoo! I am so excited about this chair!  It’s perfect.  It’s kind of distressed-looking but isn’t rough or splintered or anything.  It looks very pretty and old-fashioned in person.  I think I might sand it and spray varnish it though.  I will ask my father-in-law for advice.
To make it perfect I just need to get a fluffy sheepskin pelt for a cushin/back drape.  MMM.  My dream chair.

Thanksgiving pies

I got a large ceramic pie dish for my birthday, and this is the first time we used it.  We made apple pie for the big dish, and pumpkin pie for the normal one.  Check out how HUGE the apple pie is!

Many thank to Samuel who spent about 2 hours peeling the many, many apples.  We made the mistake of buying small apples, which meant more peeling.  Plus Samuel is sick   as well as I.  Hopefully we will both be well tomorrow.

Next I will make the stuffing so it will be ready to be stuffed into the birds tomorrow.

Last night we watched the new BBC Sense and Sensibility tv show/movie.  Some thoughts: Willoughby is unforgivably skeezy throughout the whole film; Brandon is a more developed character than the Alan Rickman version and way cool -though I love the Alan Rickman version too; Edward is the only truly good-looking one; the Miss Dashwoods were all wonderful; Sir John is hilarious; I want to make Elinor’s striped dress.

loaf-maker

Samuel and I made bread today. I got a wheat grinder for my birthday (the hand-crank kind) and we bought some wheat. Today we ground some and made this yummy bread. It took less than ten minutes to grind three cups of flour. My arms got a workout. It wasn’t very difficult to grind, but the repetitiveness got to my arm muscles after a while. I made round loaves because I only have one loaf pan! I wanted to make rolls but I couldn’t find my muffin tin (???) I looked all over my kitchen and it’s nowhere!

The bread turned out very yummy It was half and half wheat and white flour, but I think I’ll use more wheat next time.

Here is my latest hair pic:

The flash kind of washed things out.

This was a really good hair day. Shiny and wavy and soft!

I think it’s halfway between my waist and my hip bones. WOOT!

Word of Wisdom

For my own reference, and yours, possibly, I am compiling a list of the commandments in the Word of Wisdom. I am doing this because someone in one of my classes mentioned that it is possible to obey the Law of Tithing and the Word of Wisdom perfectly. I have noticed in the past, however, that people (me too) do not really know what all it says. I am going to put my own bare-minimum/literal interpretation of it next to each quote, whether or not that is what our church actually believes today.

p.s. If you read my blog and are not Mormon, I apologize, this will not make much sense. If you want to read the entire scripture that I am referring to, go here. The Word of Wisdom is one of several commandments from God that we have to obey in order to participate in temple worship (which means, you can’t go into a dedicated LDS temple unless you obey it, among other commandments). I’m not going to explain this more because I’m writing this post for other purposes. If you want to know more, you can ask me in a comment or something.

1. “inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father, only in assembling yourselves together to offer up your sacraments before him. And, behold, this should be wine, yea, pure wine of the grape of the vine, of your own make. And, again, strong drinks are not for the belly, but for the washing of your bodies”. (it is not good to drink alcoholic drinks, and God doesn’t like it. wine is ok when used for the Sacrament, but do not use wine that other people make. alcohol is meant to be used as a cleanser.)

2. “tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill” (tobacco is bad in every way except as a topical medicinal herb and for sick cattle, and only then if you actually know what you’re doing)

3. “hot drinks are not for the body or belly” (hot drinks are not to be consumed or used)

4. “all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man— Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.” (God gave use the plants and fruits on earth for us to use in their season, wisely and with gratefulness).

5. “Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly; And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.” (God has given us permission to gratefully use animals for food and other things, but we must use them sparingly. it is very good if we only use them in winter or famine)

6. “All grain is ordained for the use of man and of beasts, to be the staff of life, not only for man but for the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and all wild animals that run or creep on the earth; And these hath God made for the use of man only in times of famine and excess of hunger.” (God has given us and animals permission to use grain as the main part of our diets. the animals are only to be used as the main part of man’s diet when we have no grain because of famine)

7. “All grain is good for the food of man; as also the fruit of the vine; that which yieldeth fruit, whether in the ground or above the ground—” (grains, fruits, and roots are good food for us)

The main gist, to me, is that we should not consume alcohol or tobacco, that we should not drink hot drinks (which later prophets have revealed to be tea and coffee, but not hot chocolate. Maybe this means no caffiene, but the Church has not said either way. It seems to be a personal choice at this point). We should eat fruits and vegetables and roots and herbs when they are in season, and we should eat grain as the main part of our diet. Meat is to be used sparingly, and it is pleasing to God if we eat it in larger amounts only in winter or other times when we don’t have enough grain. We should always be thankful to God for our food.

I am pretty sure that this is nearly impossible to follow perfectly, like the Law of Tithing. People usually think of this commandment as: “don’t drink alcohol…check. don’t drink tea or coffee…..check. don’t do tobacco….check. Ok, 100% A+!” I don’t want this post to turn into a rant about Mormons who eat way too much meat, so I will just say that I personally am going to try and follow this commandment a little more seriously.