My Sabbath sewing project, a tree skirt, has been so much fun. It’s been great to have a project that I’m not at all driven to finish, a project that’s OK to set down for a couple weeks (or longer) and not worry about. I’ve also had a lot of fun piecing these blocks. I’ve never done blocks like this before and they certainly aren’t perfect but I’ve had fun making them!
trees and wonky stars
Now, I’m making log cabin blocks for the back!
Recently, Ellie has become aware of the world of hair adornments. Whenever she sees me putting a clip or a ponytail holder in my hair, she wants one too. Sadly, she just doesn’t have enough hair to do much with and I don’t have the patience to deal with (and keep track of) teeny-tiny baby hair clips.
Luckily, I do have one kind of clip that will stay in her hair for long enough to appease her adornment interest. One of these days she’ll have lots of hair! (Until then, I’m enjoying the ease of no hair brushing, no hair cuts, and no hair in her eyes.)
This post is part of my series, “Kickin’ It Old Skool: Why and How We Are Old-Fashioned” or KIOS for short. If you’re new to the series, please read my disclaimer before continuing on. I’m keeping a table of contents to this series here so you can see what I’ve already written about and what more there is to come.
Enough about specific foods! I’ve been thinking about a couple other issues related to eating so I’ll be writing about those this week and next. This week, I have some thoughts about what we would do if we had to cut back on the amount of money we spend on food.
First, let me say that I’m probably not the best person to write on this topic because we don’t track our food spending all that carefully. We do live on one teacher’s salary in a fairly high-cost of living area and so we try to be careful in the amount of money we spend. We are fairly frugal in other areas though (such as no cable, inexpensive cell phone plans, fairly cheap insurance, very little entertainment expenses) and so that means we are able (and happy) to spend a higher percentage of our income on food than we might otherwise. That being said, I don’t think we spend all that much on food compared to most people in a similar income bracket.
Currently, here’s what we do to try to save money on food:
If, for whatever reason, I needed to cut back on the amount of money we spent on food, here are some thoughts on what I’d do.
All of this would be hard and I know it would take some getting used to. Our meals would become perhaps less exciting than they are now (or at least we would have to change our definition of “exciting”). Now that I’ve typed in those ideas, I think I should start working towards some of these things anyway, even though I don’t have to!
Granted, all of these ideas are predicated on the idea that I would still able to be a stay-at-home mom and spend the time on making/procuring food. If I had to be working full-time, then I know life would get a lot harder and we would have to make different, far more difficult choices.
I am exceedingly grateful that so far we haven’t had to make any of these difficult decisions regarding how we eat. I also want to be a wise and faithful caretaker of what we have been given. In that vein, one of my goals for this coming year is to actually track how much we spend on food to quantify our attempts to eat frugally and responsibly. I want to have a good idea of how much we spend on food and where we can make better choices.
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I haven’t read this e-book, Real Food on a Real Budget but I have read the author’s blog for several years and learned a ton from her. If this is something you’re really interested in pursuing, it’s probably a great resource.
The same blog has a couple posts about feeding a family of five on a budget of $250/month (and part 2, with ideas to improve the budget). Lots of great ideas!
Some really frank thoughts: Confessions of a Food Stamp Foodie (from a friend of ours)
Today, I heard some suspicious noises coming from the bathroom so I went to investigate. There, I saw Ellie holding the little bowl from her potty over the bathtub. Her pants were pulled back up and I saw little drops of pee on the toilet seat.
I’ve been trying to teach her the following routine when she needs to use the potty. Particularly, I’m trying to teach her to do this routine in the same order every time (to prevent, among other things, streaking in the house.)
That’s a lot to remember, right? Well, she’d had gotten all the way to #6 on her own, in the correct order, and was probably well on her way to completing through #8. #9 she can’t do on her own because we have a really tall sink so even with a stool, she can’t reach the faucet to turn on the water.
Wow, oh wow, I was so proud of her. But wow, oh wow, she feels almost unbearably grown up and self sufficient now. Does she even need me for anything? 🙂
This post is part of my series, “Kickin’ It Old Skool: Why and How We Are Old-Fashioned” or KIOS for short. If you’re new to the series, please read my disclaimer before continuing on. I’m keeping a table of contents to this series here so you can see what I’ve already written about and what more there is to come.
It’s time to start winding down this “Eating” series! I had no idea it would take me this long to catalog all the food that we eat. So here’s a quick overview of the some of the extraneous foods that we use to make all our other food taste good. I’m sure I’m forgetting other food items in our kitchen but I think this will be good enough!
Condiments:
Mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup: We don’t eat ketchup any more because of the crazy ingredient list. I made my own once; it was easy and delicious but I’ve never managed to remember to make it in time again. We buy full-fat mayo from the grocery store but I know that’s one particular item I need to start making myself. We also buy mustard from the grocery store; its ingredient list is remarkably innnocent. It’s also super easy to make so that’s on my list as well.
Salad dressing: We never buy it – have you looked at a list of ingredients on a bottle of dressing? Pretty scary. Usually we just drizzle on some really good olive oil, then some vinegar (either balsamic or red wine), and then salt and pepper. Easy and delicious.
Hot sauce: Nik likes to use hot sauce so we usually buy Tapatio or Cholula, both of which have pretty OK ingredient lists.
Soy sauce/fish sauce: We buy both of these from our local Asian store. I know I can do better than the brands that we buy but I haven’t figured that out yet.
Spices/dried herbs/salt:
Spices/dried herbs: I buy almost all of my spices and dried herbs in bulk from our local health food store. It’s infinitely cheaper to buy them that way than in the tiny bottles from the grocery store. I know it would be even cheaper to buy them in bulk on-line but I prefer to buy smaller amounts so they stay fresh. [Random side note: I am forever converted to grating my own nutmeg rather than buying ground nutmeg. It’s infinitely better!]
Salt: We buy sea salt, both fine and coarse, paying particular attention to the ingredient list (yes, even salt has one!) to make sure that it just says “salt” and does not have any additional additives, such as non-caking agents.
Vinegar:
Balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar: We buy these from the grocery store. I know we could get artisanal balsamic vinegar that would taste much better but that’s also pretty expensive so we haven’t gone that route.
Apple cider vinegar: I buy raw organic ACV from our health food store. ACV has an amazing amount of beneficial properties to it, and I know I should be using it more.
Rice vinegar: We buy this from our local Asian store.
White vinegar: I buy this in 5-liter bottles from Costco. I use it mostly for making pickles and cleaning but rarely for cooking. (Just make sure it’s distilled from grain and not oil when you buy it.)
Oils:
We stick with traditional oils and avoid the non-traditional ones. We only use two kinds of oil on a regular basis, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil. We do not use vegetable oil (i.e. corn, canola, peanut, etc) out of health concerns, preferring to use oil that does not have to be chemically processed in order to be extracted.
Olive oil: We buy extra virgin olive oil from Prima Foods (the local Greek store). We consider Greek origin oil to be superior (naturally) but clearly there are lots of good olive oils out there. You do have to be careful to buy actual good olive oil though. Most supermarket EVOO is not true extra virgin olive oil and is usually low quality. This is another situation in which we are willing to pay more money to get the superior product.
Coconut Oil: We bought five gallons of coconut oil in January 2011 and it’s almost gone! I use it for baking, cooking, frying, and skin care.
Sesame oil: I do keep toasted sesame oil on hand for making certain Asian dishes.
Lard: We get lard from a local farmer who we trust and I use this occasionally for cooking and frying.
Sweeteners:
Maple syrup: We buy maple syrup from a farmer in western Pennsylvania. We buy Grade B, preferring the assertive flavor (more bang for our buck!).
Honey: We buy raw honey from a local bee keeper, at the farmers’ market, usually in the 5-pound bottle.
Sugar: We use organic evaporated cane juice as a replacement for white sugar. I buy organic brown sugar from Trader’s Joes.
Nuts:
I buy almost all of our nuts from Costco. I haven’t done much research into the world of nuts in terms of organic vs. not-organic. But nuts are really expensive and Costco is the best deal for us right now. I keep pecans, walnuts, and pine nuts on hand. For snacking, we buy peanuts and cashews from Trader Joe’s. They have a 50% less salt option, which we really like. We do buy organic natural peanut butter, having read that conventional peanuts are pretty heavily loaded with pesticides and fungicides.
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A really interesting post on good fats vs. bad fats with lots of links to more resources.
10 “real food” salad dressing recipes if you want something fancier than oil and vinegar.
Buying coconut oil in bulk is the only way to make it even close to affordable. We bought ours from Tropical Traditions and I need to start haunting that website again to find a great sale like we got last time.
The book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil is a great read and particularly eye-opening.
A delicious homemade ketchup recipe.
Last week, I let Ellie help me lick out cake batter left over from her birthday cake. This was her first time experiencing such a delight and it didn’t take her long to dive in!
We should all have such fun every so often, don’t you think? 🙂
and Ellie is on it! Yay!
(If you don’t like reading about pee and poop, you should stop reading right here.)
A week ago Monday, we took the plunge and took off Ellie’s diapers and put them away forever. We rolled up the rug in our playroom, gated off our living room, and closed the bedroom door. This left only hard surfaces for her to play on (and have accidents on). We told her that from now on, she was going to wear panties just like Mama and that she was going to learn how to pee on the potty.
And then, we just watched, fretted, wiped up accidents, talked about putting our pee in the potty and not on the floor, did laundry every night, despaired, and cleaned up more accidents.
Ellie had pooping in the potty 100% figured out from the very beginning. She never had an accident with poop. So that was encouraging.
Pee, well, that took a little bit longer. Gradually, I started to see her get a look on her face and run for the potty but not quite make it. Then she started holding it for longer. On Saturday, she went from 8:00 to 2:00 without peeing! Slowly, she began to have more successes than accidents.
For naps, I put down a water-proof pad on our bed. She’s actually woken up dry from every nap so that has amazingly not been a problem. She’s still wearing diapers at night and we have no immediate plans to change that. In the morning, she has actually been waking up dry about half the time so my guess is that it might not take a really long time before she’s ready to leave night-time diapers behind also. We’re not worried about that though.
Sunday, we didn’t have a single accident and we haven’t had one since (other than one unfortunate incident on Wednesday, which was my fault, not Ellie’s). So I think we can officially say that Ellie has learned how to use the potty and we can put diapers behind us.
Hooray! Three cheers for Ellie!
It has really been a fascinating experience to watch Ellie learn about how her body works and how to gain control over her own body.
We deliberately chose not to use any sort of external reward scheme (such as candy or prizes) to try to get her to use the potty, trusting that the excitement of being independent would be enough. We also didn’t want to have to figure out a way to wean her off the rewards. For Ellie, I think this was the right decision. She was not about to be coerced or forced to sit on that potty. For the first few days, I set an alarm for every 20 minutes to remind myself to ask her if she needed to sit on the potty and that really didn’t help. She basically never said yes. She just had to figure it out on her own. She really didn’t like her legs getting wet and would often cry when it happened. I think this really motivated her to figure out what was happening and how to stop it.
Now, she thinks sitting on the potty is so much fun that she’ll go and pee a few drops and then congratulate herself!
We’re calling this experience “potty learning” and not “potty training” because all that Nik and I really did was take away her diapers and encourage her (plus clean up accidents). Ellie did the hard work of listening to her body and learning how to pay attention to the cues her body was giving her.
And hallelujah, we aren’t changing or washing diapers anymore!
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I realize that the topic of potty training (particularly how to do it and at what age) is a contentious one in parenting circles. So please know that I’m not saying that every parent needs to potty train/learn this way. My KIOS disclaimer applies here too.
We loosely followed the method that John Rosemond recommends although we broke his rules a bit. I found this potty-learning article particularly helpful. I especially liked her list of readiness signs. We found that in the last month, Ellie started to exhibit almost all of them. The motivation to not have two babies in diapers also certainly helped us get moving!
Our biggest challenge in this is that Ellie doesn’t yet talk enough to be able to say, “I need to pee” or “I need to poop,” or something equivalent. Basically, she just starts saying, “Ellie, Ellie” and runs to the bathroom. This works great at home but when we’re out and about, I do have to be really diligent about keeping track of when she’s peed and asking her if she needs to go. She does give us some non-verbal clues but I think it will get much easier once she’s talking a bit more.
Ellie’s doll may still be bald but she is finished!
I also managed to make a pair of overalls and a shirt in time for her birthday. (The pattern for these comes with the doll.) They were so easy that I want to make a whole wardrobe!
Within probably just a minute of opening her doll,
Ellie’s was saying, “Off!” and so her doll’s clothes came off.
She has taking them off mastered. Putting them back on is a bit harder. (Usually I have to help her do it.)
“On!”
This is how I found her doll on the first official night as Ellie’s doll, after Ellie was asleep.
Naked and abandoned by the vacuum cleaner. Such is the life of every doll right?
One thing I was a bit disappointed about with the pattern is the way the arms stick straight out. It looks a bit unnatural. I have observed Ellie playing with her doll a lot though, by using those arms to hold her up. So maybe there is some wisdom in the design.
Totally blurry but you get the idea – jumping and holding on at the same time!
Making the ball of wool for the head truly was the most tedious part of this whole making process! Now that I’ve made one doll, I definitely want to make more! And, even though the pattern told me to buy 24 ounces of wool stuffing, I only used 6-7 ounces. So I have enough to make many more dolls!
Now I just need to learn how to dye wool yarn so I can turn the cream-colored yarn that I bought into the right color for the doll’s hair. (Pale yellow 100% wool yarn is hard to find.)
In the meantime, Ellie has decided that she has a baby and not a doll. The other day, I said something about her “doll” and Ellie said, “No, baby.” I stand corrected!
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Previous posts about the doll: The wool ball, the head, and the body.
We had a wonderful time on Saturday with Nik’s family as we celebrated not just Ellie’s birthday but also the three other birthdays (Nik’s, Nikki’s, and mine) that we have in late September/early October.
We had lots of fun racing and swinging
and eating crabs.
The main event was, of course, blowing out our candles and eating cake. I made my favorite carrot cake*: a big square cake for all of us and a little round one for Ellie.
on Granny’s china!
Then we blew out our candles:
And then we dug in! Ellie didn’t want to stop even for a picture!
We also had fun opening our presents. Cousin Alex was very kind to help Ellie open all of her presents.
Finished it!
All in all, it was a great day – for Ellie and for all of us!
*That carrot cake recipe post was my 3rd blog post, ever. 🙂
Salmon and Souvlaki 