Draft 2021

I ran across a rant of sorts yesterday from a couple of young mothers seemingly at their wits' end with their children. Their five-year- olds are driving them crazy, misbehaving, refusing to clean their rooms. Shouldn't five-year- olds be more responsible? Shouldn't they listen to their mothers and just obey, for goodness sake? I mean, should children of this age force their mothers to raise their voices, threaten, and demand obedience? After all, they're five years old. Now that they can "think for themselves," it's time to at least expect decent behavior. Isn't it? Well, isn't it? Now, I'm a seasoned mother of four, so I've seen 5 years old four times already. And I have years of mothering experience and lots of frustration under my belt, and I'd like to tell these young mothers that I certainly empathize. Being a full-time, stay-at-home mommy is hard, often frustrating work. But I'd like to ask them to step back and imagine the

When we moved into our house 3 1/2 years ago, we couldn't afford to buy built in cupboards for the remodeled kitchen. I had always wanted an unfitted kitchen, so we found free-standing furniture pieces and made an old-fashioned kitchen. Well, fast forward three years and the novelty of the free-standing kitchen had worn off. While I loved the look of the furniture pieces, it was time to create a more functional kitchen. I was able to keep some of my old furniture pieces, so the kitchen still has a somewhat unfitted look to it, but I love having so much counter space! Unfortunately, so do the cats. They've discovered the joy of counter tops and now can climb to the top of the fridge, the tops of the cupboards, and, as you see here, into my antique shelves. Oh well, what's a little more fur?

Ain't they purty? I'm ridiculously proud of these beans. Last summer, for the heck of it, we decided to grow some beans. I ordered a couple packages of heirloom beans and a couple packages of black beans. And grow they did. It was just about as easy as tossing them out the window and watching them take off, a la Jack. The only challenges they faced were a certain St. Bernard, who like to reach into the garden and steal them, and the occasional rogue chicken. I first jar was shelled last fall and was brim-full. I honestly can't say I've noticed a flavor difference between home-grown and store bought, but that may be because I almost always cook my dried beans from scratch. Sunday, after a little siesta, I came downstairs to find Michael and the girls shelling the rest of the beans. Apparently, it takes intense concentration. Probably because you have to dodge all the flying beans. Sarah and Melissa Melissa and Michael The un-shelled. We'll definitely grow more beans

Hmm, found this on my windowsill Sunday morning...

There we are, the whole gang, at the Des Moines Botanical Center in December. For most people, it seems, the new year started on January 1. But for me, the new year always seems to start when it's time to say goodbye. Zachary just left today to head back to Iowa State where classes start tomorrow. Stephen has one more week before his classes start. He graduates from college this spring. Sarah will be home this semester while we try to conquer her migraine pain, but the time for her goodbyes is fast approaching. She'll be 17 in April, with college right around the corner. And though Melissa will just turn 13 in March, I know how fast six years can speedy by. There were a couple of times this holiday break that I purposely stopped to form an image in my mind of the whole family together, laughing, joking, loving each other. I know we'll have many, many, more times together, but life is just around the corner, with marriages, travel, work. Who knows how long before the

The first week of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge is going great-guns! We've had some great meals this week from roast turkey and mashed potatoes, to turkey noodle soup, from homemade pizza to falafel. The pantry challenge just happens to coincide with a challenge I've given myself to make all our own breads this month. Whew! That uses a lot of yeast and flour, but fortunately I started the month with a pantry well-stocked with nearly 60 pounds of white flour and 20 pounds of whole wheat. I bought the white flour last fall when it was on sale for 99 cents/5 lb. bag. The bags of whole wheat flour were full-price - it never seems to go one sale! I bought 10 jars of yeast early last fall when a small store was reducing it's inventory - I believe they were less than $2 a jar. I still have two or three jars left, which should see me through the month. Above you see but one tray of a double-batch of pitas I made, half of which went directly into the freezer for a later

When we moved to our house nearly 3 1/2 years ago, it needed lots of work. We invested nearly $50,000 in remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms. After we moved in. I will never, ever, ever, do that again! But despite having the Contractor from Hell we ended up with a much-improved (as in livable!) house. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to remodel the fireplace then, too, so we spent a darn cold first winter in our old 1904 house. If I remember correctly, the girls and I spent most of every day upstairs, which the radiators seemed to keep almost too warm at times. But downstairs? Yikes. Just the cold waves moving in from the walls and huge windows were enough to send us scurrying for covers. We've toughened up since then, however, and are able to keep our thermostat set at 65 degrees during the day and 55 at night. I'm not sure, however, that we could have borne this without the repair to our fireplace late last fall. This is what it looked like the first year and a half w

I grew up hearing my mom tell about life with her grandma and grandpa. This was the 1930s when frugality was not simply a lifestyle choice. She remembers watching her grandpa make laundry detergent and her grandma making cottage cheese. Even after her own mother paid to have electricity wired to their house, my great-grandparents sat in the dark at night so as not to spend the money on lighting. My mom told of using the outhouse at her grandma and grandpa's; it was just a fact of life. People really did save the old Sears & Roebuck catalogs for toilet paper, but, according to my mom, the best t.p.-of-old came from summer peaches. Let me explain. Summer peaches came by the box, individually wrapped in tissue paper. My mom remembers her grandparents carefully smoothing out each of those wrappers for later use in the outhouse. My dad used to tell stories involving outhouses, too, though I'm not sure when the farmhouse in which he grew up got indoor plumbing. He told of Hallowe

So today was the first day of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge and my own challenge to make all our bread from scratch for the month of January. Today's menu, all from what we already had on hand, included mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted turkey, brown rice casserole, green bean casserole, asparagus Parmesan , cranberry-orange bread, three grain bread, and pumpkin bars. There's been a lonely bag of cranberries resting in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator since Thanksgiving. Every time I'd see them in there, daring me to make something of them or throw them away, I'd think, "I really need to make cranberry-orange bread." But I never seemed to get around to it. Until today, that is. Food waste, be damned! We now have three loaves of cranberry-orange bread ready for dinner tonight, breakfast, and for the freezer. I love this recipe, since it uses half whole wheat flour, yet the bread still moist and delicious. I boiled up a bunch of brown rice this

A glimpse at part of my basement storage Here it is, January 1, 2010, and it seems all the blogosphere is setting goals for the new year. I don't usually proclaim my goals to the world, but there's an interesting challenge I decided to try this month, the Eat from the Pantry Challenge from Life as Mom and Money Saving Mom . The idea is to try to eat from your stockpile as much as possible this month, but the parameters of the challenge are individual. Now, since I started couponing in August, I've built up quite a stockpile, but I've always had that tendency. When you can and freeze in the summer, you naturally end up with quite a stash of food to see you through the winter. I have home-frozen corn and green beans, tomato sauces, pesto, strawberries and blueberries. I have home-canned tomatoes, salsa, dill pickles and dilly-green beans, two bushels of potatoes (grown at a friend's house), sweet potatoes and beets. Since I've started paying attention to sales