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Stretching the Food Dollar
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Russia’s wheat crop did poorly this past year and they aren’t exporting; using what they have for their own people=increase in wheat prices. America had a good crop, but has to offset affects of Russia not exporting=higher wheat prices. We’re burning corn for fuel(its nasty hybrid stuff anyway, but that’s what they feed the animals). Coffee, sugar, corn and wheat are the first things to get it, so these are going up first and any items that have wheat, corn, sugar or coffee in them; which is about 75%$ of the store.
The Fed is printing money out of thin air an d monetizing(sp?) our debt=historically proven to not be a good idea; so inflation is happening. George Soros is betting against the value of the dollar and he’s already done that to England in the past contributing to thier monetary decline years ago.
We’ve been working towards self-sufficiency for a few years and due to our health, our income has been low, so I’ve had to learn quite a bit. I sensed G-d moving me a long time ago. I can, dry, ferment, freeze for preservation. Just don’t have the root cellar; trying to clear out the coldest room in the house for my butternut squash. We grow a 3-4 season garden and have chickens for eggs and meat and fun. Looking at what grains we can grow next year with minimal labor for us and our chickens and other wayts to feed the chickens without buying food-like growing worms and crickets during the Winter. Still learning…My hubby and son have someone who will take them hunting-my hubby went through a hunting safewty course all ready, so perhaps some of your husbands may enter into that world to provide for the family.
I have a the Nutrimill and the Family Grain Mill, which is both electric and hand crank. With the FGM, you get the hand crank along with your order. It comes in a wide variety of attachments; like a flaker to make oatmeal flakes, rye and soft wheat flakes. That way you can buy the groats in bulk and flake them yourself; they are healthier tha way anyway as they are not exposed to the high processing of commercial oats. I’ll post the best price/deal website tomorrow. You can do so much with it and if you run the hard wheat through twice, it’s fine enough. I crack corn for grits.
I have a lot more to say, but Hanukkah starts in about an hour, so latke making is calling me, but I highly recommend finding a natural foods co-op to belong to (I can recommend a few to look if they serve your area; it will be less than Whole Foods $) and search out your local farms for meat and dairy (again I have a source to use to find these wonderful farmers), preferably those that grow their own corn if they feed corn to their chickens, as it’s the corn prices your paying from commercial meats. Grass-fed animals will not have that corn price affect them and they are better for you anyway. Other companies can’t afford to swallow the costs anymore and their cost of business has been and will rise and they must pass it on-they can’t continue to eat it.
OK, I”ll check back in later,
Rachel
Thanks so much Rachel – I am very aware of the monetizing of debt and the antics of Mr Sorros – being English I know too well what he has done. I see the writing on the wall for much higher prices next year and I too am trying to be ahead of the curve. I know a lot about inflation because my mother was German and she suffered in the Weimar Republic situation, where wheelbarrows of money were needed to buy bread, if you could even find it. So prudence, a reliance on God and our own good stewardship is vital in these times. I remember reading a while back about the rationing in England after the war, and how creative and thrifty people had to be, I remember my own mother being extremely frugal and careful with everything, food, clothing etc. I think in many ways it was a hard time, in fact I know it was, because I saw it, but it was also a healthy time – I don’t remember obesity being a problem back then, and I don’t remember all the waste back then either. We made do, and used what we had and we were rich in the things that mattered – family and love – we were not centered on materialism. We are trying to center our family on those older values – we always have, but now it seems even more important to be consistent and to show the girls that there is a lot we can do to save money and live a value driven life. I look forward to the co-op suggestions and other things you do to live a life of good stewardship. You made some very valuable and valid points and I look forward to hearing what else you can suggest. Linda
All I know is that for a couple of years now, almost every time I go to the store I leave wanting to cry…. and now I’m wanting to cry even before I go to the store.
I have the Nutrimill and it is terrific! I also buy my grain in bulk with a co-op. I currently have 6 five gallon buckets in a closet. I keep Hard White, Hard Red and Soft White on hand and each have 1 “dispensing” bucket for each that has a gamma seal. I’ll admit, that I use a breadmaker to make the bread as I’ve never gotten good at making it by hand. Though, I did make 2 loaves of Oatmeal Molasses Bread by hand for Thanksgiving that were out of this world delicious. I seriously need to make more of our bread again. Since baby 4, I’ve been lax, but he’s 1 now, so time to get back to it.
Hope – for the pizza dough – do you follow the directions as given and then just freeze? I’m wondering if I can make the dough in the bread machine, any thoughts? Looks yummy!
Thanks,
Christie
It is hard isn’t it? That is why I wanted to start this thread – there are so many smart and different women on this forum, that I thought some good ideas could come out and help all of us and also maybe encourage us when things look tough. I feel blessed that my girls are older now and able to understand tightening the belt without complaint, I really feel for those of you with younger children as that is harder. But we are strong and smart and we are already making sacrifices by staying home with our children to give them the best possible start – so we can get through the tougher times too. God will provide, it is not going to be easy I don’t think – but with us pooling ideas we can really help each other. I never really have been a person who liked to shop, but now I like it even less – I am shocked at how things are changing and how fast the prices have shot up. I just know that we are all well equipped to cope with this, and with each others ideas.
Christie, I know nothing of wheat, what is the difference between them? When I started making bread, I could not believe how much nicer it is, and cheaper than those artisan loaves you can buy – and the pizza dough homemade is so much more wholesome and tasty. It is well worth the effort, and I am going to make that effort. Even my husband loved the pizza and he is hard to convince.
Christie, I do pretty much make as stated. I’m not familiar with a bread machine, so I don’t know exactly how they work but I’m assuming you could put all the ingredients in, let it mix and knead, and then take them out and form balls. I freeze them right after making the balls and haven’t had any troubles. So far, it’s the best thin crust recipe I’ve found. I’m still looking for a perfect thick crust recipe. ;0)
Linda – Here is a good website for all things bread. This is the company that introduced me to grinding my wheat and making bread. I bought my mill and bread machine from them and I order wheat from them w/ a co-op.
This page explains the types of wheat – http://info.breadbeckers.com/few-words-about-wheat/ . Their red book of recipes is what I use most often. The whole wheat tortilla, olive oil dipping sauce, basic bread and others are terrific as are many of the cookie recipes. Some of the recipes are free on this page – http://www.breadbeckers.com/store/pc/Recipes-FREE-c184.htm
Hope – thanks for the response. I’ll give it a go and post my results using the bread machine for kneading, etc.
Blessings,
Christie
Christie – About pizza dough in a bread maker; YES absolutely! I do it all the time. I actually never bake bread in the breadmaker that i have – it never came out very well and I hate that little paddle-shaped hole in the bottom – but since I don’t have a heavy duty stand mixer it has become my dough-mixing machine for any kind of yeast dough that requires kneading (since I don’t have the time or patience to do all of that by hand – I do all our baking from scratch because where we live overseas ‘store bread’ is either unavailable or not that good when we can get it.) So I use it for regular loaves of bread, rolls, pizza dough, bagels, etc. The main things to keep in mind when using the dough setting on your bread machine to mix other kinds of doughs are: 1. you may need to adjust the recipe based on how much flour your machine can effectively mix at a time. I find that mine doesn’t do well with more than about 5 cups of flour, so if it is recipe to make a large batch I sometimes have to adjust it down. You can’t really do the large batch and put it in the freezer, but it’s so easy to mix in the machine that it’s not that much work to just make the dough as needed (at least I don’t think it is). 2. Just add the ingredients in the order that your breadmaker specifies – for mine you put the yeast on the bottom, then the dry ingredients, and the wet ones on top. I’ve had great success making all kinds of standard yeast -dough recipes by simply using the bread machine to mix, and then removing from the machine to shape and bake. I suppose that you could do the same thing with a heavy duty stand mixer, but I’ve never had one (and this bread maker was something I “inherited” for free that my sweet mechanic husband fixed up for me), and so this is what works for me.
This has been a great thread! Because we live overseas in a fairly remote, third world location I sort of have to do a lot of the scratch cooking sort of stuff by default. Thankfully we have an abundant variety of inexpensive local produce available to us, which really helps to offset the high cost of processed and imported items (which are much higher even than in the States once you ship them here and now with the de-valuing of the dollar the exchange rate is not so much in our favor as it used to be, making the already high prices even higher.) I would love to see a frugal, scratch-cooking focused recipe blog get going…it would be helpful to me too, even though our living situation is quite a bit different than most of yours.
And Linda – I loved how you stated that – trying to give your girls a “value driven life” – focusing on love and family and not so much on “stuff” and materialism. It is encouraging to know that there really are like-minded people out there!
Jen
Christie thanks for the link I shall check that out in the morning – I need information like that – I know about bags of flour and that is it lol. So I appreciate the information very much. Jen, I am sure there are a lot of us like minded people out there and a lot of people wanting to strech our shrinking dollars and raise children who have solid values and beliefs, I hope there are millions and millions of us, because then the future will be better for our blessings. I think perhaps we must then try to do the blog thing for scratch and frugal cooking – I have not blogged but am happy to help if someone points me in the right direction. You are blessed to have the produce, but I can imagine how hard it must be with other stuff when the exchange rate is so bad. Whe we lived in Germany and the dollar plunged we struggled in our community of military folk – so it is hard. Blessings – Linda
Well I’m certainly late in getting in on this thread but it’s a great one! Some great ideas. I think most everyone I know is in the same boat.
I’ve made all my bread goods for years now…bread, rolls, tortillas, muffins, cakes, cookies, waffles, etc. from freshly milled grains. My mill is the old Whisper Mill. I think it’s a Wonder Mill now. I also have the Country Grain Mill which I’ve not used but have it in case we don’t have power. I get my grains from Bread Beckers. They have a co-op near us and we’ve been down there to stock up a couple of times. I love their quality and their passion.
We milk two Jersey cows so I don’t worry about dairy. We drink about a gallon a day, have to-die-for cream and can make ice cream anytime. My freezer is packed with wonderful raw milk butter.
We have chickens as well. We have meat taken care of. My biggest challenge is produce. We have an orchard that was here when we bought the farm but it was never taken care of so does not produce much yet and it was SO HOT this summer so our garden didn’t do well either. So I usually resort to the freezer section at the grocery.A site that I use often is gnowfglins.com. She has e-courses on how to cook real foods. Absolutely wonderful! She does charge for it but it is loaded with recipes, videos (she shows you how to do everything,) and a forum for discussion. I don’t do everything there but it’s been extremely helpful.
My husband and oldest son are also very down on left-overs. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to eat them. I call them snobs and put them out anyway. Every mother’s lecture on, DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY STARVING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WOULD LOVE TO HAVE THIS??? works as well.
I want to get more into dehydrating and canning. I’ve done little of both and making my own of common “mixes” would help so much as well. This site has some of those recipes although I haven’t taken the time to do them yet.
http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/recipes.htm
I think God is waking many women up to be Proverbs 31 women today. We’re called to “look well to the ways of our household and not eat the bread of idleness.” We’re to have strengh and dignity and smile at the future. I’m thankful God is putting women in my path who have this zeal for providing for their families.
God bless you all…
Robin, thanks for jumping in on this and for the links. Jersey cows produce the most delicious cream and milk in the world, lucky you….we used to drink it a lot in the UK where it is quite common. I love gnowfglins.com and have picked up a lot of info from her. Familyhomestead I will check out today. I am an avid gardener, and had a great vege patch in England but I am struggling with it here, because you have such a lot of interesting (yuk) bugs and the climate is so different. I have great success with flowers, but not the veg – I keep trying though. I don’t like pesticides so that makes keeping the bugs down a problem. I buy frozen veg, and keep cans in the pantry, but would love more success in growing some. I use heirloom seed, so it is frustrating when it does not work out. I do worry about power outages when ourfreezer is full – we have a generator,but then you have to juggle the things you want to use. You are right – we are waking up – it is time to get back to those old ways which held the generations before in good stead and at the minimum make sure we can do all the basics to keep our families healthy and clothed through hard times. I am teaching the girls darning skills at the moment so that they have the skills to repair socks. sweaters etc – my mother taught me many years ago and I am not a believer in throwing away good clothes because they have a hole in them! So for us all to share and learn from each other is wonderful and a blessing.
For gardening I love the book Square Foot Gardening. We had amazing success using his system. It doesn’t necessarily cover how to deal with bugs and such though.
I am officially freaking out about moving back to the US now. Yikes, we are very much in our little bubble here. What costs too much on base we buy at the British store or the market. Plus my youngest 4 are on WIC so we don’t have to buy milk, beans, bread, cheese, eggs, cereal, juice or about half our fruits and veg. The meat on base comes from Germany and is really good priced. The pork is the best way to go. I did notice the flour going up a while back, as that is imported from the US. Pre-packaged goods are so over priced as most all of them come from the US. We don’t buy really any of that though. Pasta is really the only thing and that is better priced from the British store. We get free oatmeal on WIC but usually use it for the prepacked cereal as the Brisish oats are WAY better than the American Quaker type stuff. Possibly they don’t process it as was talked about in a previous post.
Our grocery budget could still be trimmed a lot I am sure. I really need to plan out more meals than just dinner. I find coupons not very helpful as another stated they are usually for pre-packed stuff. Hubby came home and said that someone told him the person in front of them at the store saved $100 with coupons. I think that was a hint to save more and I told him that the coupons are mostly for junk. With 7 of us the small freezer is full just for 1 week of food. i can’t do a lot of making ahead. My kids won’t eat frozen veg unless it is in a meal. Frozen peas are the only one they will eat on the side, so I have to buy fresh if I want them to eat it. We do eat meatless 1 time a week and “plain” another. I find when I make a lot of pasta dishes that we save more money. Plus the kids love pasta.
I will try the pizza dough recipe and could use a good tortilla recipe as well as a cracker recipe. I have a really good granola recipe and a oatmeal bar recipe.
For the pizza dough recipe-I do not buy any bleached flour. Could I just use a regular wheat flour instead of the bleached wheat flour?
I struggle the most with lunch really. (when there are no leftovers) Only 1 child likes peanut butter and the babies can’t really eat it yet as it is too sticky. I also can’t convince hubby to take his lunch to work. He really does not like leftovers.
I am getting a lot of ideas from here and am putting a mill on my gift list next year!!
I have to laugh because I had such confidence in gardening here, after all I had excellent success in the UK and thought it would translate here – my first crop of tomatoes here were covered in Hornworms, I had such a shock when I saw the first big one with his head buried in the fruit! Grossed me out completely. Square foot gardening is a great book, and I have no trouble setting it up and planting, it is just these darn bugs here – too many and half the time I don’t know the good from the bad. In England I knew what was what and we don’t have as many. Then of course here I have clay soil, there I had rich loam…but persevere I shall and I just got a book on natural pest solutions, so hopefully that will help for next year. It is a whole new learning curve for me, but as I love to garden it is not a hardship – just frustrating at times.
We have chickens as well. We have meat taken care of. My biggest challenge is produce. We have an orchard that was here when we bought the farm but it was never taken care of so does not produce much yet and it was SO HOT this summer so our garden didn’t do well either. So I usually resort to the freezer section at the grocery.
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