Sometimes farming doesn't go exactly as planned. Ugh.

For instance, Lilly, our dairy heifer, is the ideal age for breeding. Unfortunately, she got in with the bull about... Nine months ago.

Fortunately, my sister and brother have been working with Lilly, getting her used to human attention.

Lilly and baby

We only hope that this early calving won't result in stunting Lilly's growth.

On the bright side, it's a heifer calf (and looks like she could be the identical twin of Maya's calf), and so far, Lilly is being a very good mother.

DQ, our jersey heifer loving on the new calf

P.S. my sister got it in her head to name Maya's calf Kombucha Tea (no idea why). So In Keeping with the "tea Theme" she's campaigning to name the new calf "Chai Spice". It's not going over very well with Gabriel.
 

Over the last several month, reading has kind of taken a back seat in my life. I'm sure you moms can relate. 

I'm making a grand effort though, to bring it back. Lately, every time I sit down to nurse Garrett, I try to make sure I have a book within reach. Sometimes I only get a paragraph or two read in one session - or maybe only a sentance - but I'm making progress, little by little. 

Here's my reading list, such as it is (I'm a slow reader) for this month:

The Power of a Praying Wife (Stormie Omartian) Of all the books I recieved as engagment and wedding presents, this has been my favorite. It's the one I keep coming back to.The 30 chapters detail 30 different areas to pray for in your husband's life and how important it is that you pray, not just in passing, but earnestly for your husband. I highly reccomend it to every wife.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin . Am I the only homeschool graduate who never read it? (should I admit that I never read it?) Very interesting book. I'm loving the insight into the culture of the seventeen hundreds. What an industrious man! So much to be admired! By the way, the kindle edition of this book is free.

Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management Gabriel's had this one sitting on the bookshelf for a long time and I decided, you know, it's about time I get around to reading it. Here's the description from amazon.com:

This classic of the back-to-the-land movement is packed with solid, timeless information. Written by a renowned horticulturist, it has taught generations how to make their land self-sufficient, with explanations of organic farming techniques and reliable advice on other topics, including irrigation, livestock, crops, greenhouses, fertilizers, much more.

So that's it, three books. Well, I have fifteen days left to get it done, so I better get to it!

Those of you who are new to gluten-free cooking probably have had to pick your jaw up off the floor a time or two when you saw how much money is going into every cookie, or slice of bread. I know I did. 

Eventually, the incredulous jaw dropping turns into a weary sigh as you add over-priced items to your cart. But what other option is there? 

A few weeks ago I stated that grinding your own grain was one of the biggest - if not the biggest - way to save money on gluten-free food. 

Here are two more ways to drastically reduce that cost:

• Use guar gum. I know, I know, xanthan gum almost every recipe calls for xanthan gum, but I get the same results with both fo them, and guar gum   is about one third the price of xanthan. You can do a straight 1:1 swap. You'll never know the difference. Well... your pocket book will. 

I also harp on leaving the gum out of your flour mix entirely. Why add your most expensive ingredient (gum) if you don't have to? So many recipes don't really need gum. I accidentally left the gum out of a batch of biscuits a few days ago and couldn't tell the difference (I do not recommend trying that with cut-out biscuits!).  Admittedly though, when I make pancakes or waffles, I tend to make a batch and a half of the recipe, and use the amount of eggs for a double recipe to make up the difference.

• Don't get fancy. Rice and cornstarch are cheap, so use them. I do keep some millet or sorghum on hand for the occasional splurge, but for the most part, we use a flour mix composed entirely of rice and cornstarch. 

I know it's tempting to get caught up in wanting variety either for health reasons, or just for the fun of it - and if you've got a generous budget, then by all means go for it! But it's not really necessary, and your pocket book will thank you.

What are your tips for cutting the cost of gluten-free food?  I'd love it if you'd leave a comment letting me know!

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I've noticed that salad dressings have kind of fallen into disgrace - at least the kind I like. I've heard that we should start topping our lettuce with oil and vinegar (bleh!) because ranch dressing just ain't healthy. Well, I'm here to tell you that it can be.

This is my family's absolute favorite salad dressing recipe. We eat it on everything.

Since we make our own mayonnaise with healthy oil, and our own yogurt and buttermilk, I think it'd be hard to find someting wrong with it.

I'm not saying its low calorie though

I use yogurt in this recipe. In fact, I sub yogurt for buttermilk in most recipes because I don't have the time, inclination, or counter/refrigerator space to brew yet another item (buttermilk), and I find that yogurt is easier to keep.

I find that yogurt works just as well, but that's just my personal opinion. You purists, I'm sure, will want your buttermilk ranch dressing to be just that.

Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup of buttermilk or yogurt
1 small clove crushed garlic (or 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder)
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon chopped parsley

Mix well, and store an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

Linked with: A Southerm Fairytale, Skip To My Lou, MIYMM, Tip Me Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Hearth And Soul, Blessed With Grace, Tuesdays At The Table, WFMW, Crystal And Co., Real Food Wednesday, Frugally sustainable, Full Plate Thursday, GNOWFGLINS, Thrifty Thursday, Frugal Friday, Weekend Potluck, Sorta Crunchy, Favorite Things Friday, Feed Your soul, Sugar Me Up, Show And Tell, Sweet As Sugar Cookies, Food Adventure Friday

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I walked by a black snake today while pushing Garrett home in his stroller. That's pretty significant, and I think it ought to win me a few brownie points with the hubby.

See, we have a conflict of opinion, a real incompatibility in our marriage.

It's simple. I think all snakes deserve to die, while he prefers merely to relocate the non-poisonous ones if they're too close to the house.

Same goes for spiders.

When we got married, I had no idea this would Be an issue until we had this conversation:

Me: Gabriel, would you kill that spider on the ceiling please?

Gabriel: What? No! It's just an innocent little jumping spider.

Me: It's in the house, therefore it deserves to die.

Gabriel: I'll take it outside, but why would you want to kill it?

Me: Because it's a spider.

Gabriel: I'll take it out.

Me: For real? You won't kill it? I had no idea I married a bug hugger. I suppose you wouldn't kill a snake either.

Gabriel: Poisonous snakes...

Me: Silently terrified that I'd actually not only encountered someone who didn't feel the need to eradicate all serpent and arachnid life, but that I'd married him! 

But today, I saw a snake on the side of the road, and I didn't kill it. I merely paused, pondered the lack of weapons  both on my person and In the stroller basket, and moved on.

Yes, I'm sure Gabriel will be proud of me, and happy to know that one of his snake friends is still alive and slithering...

...For now.

Next time I'll be armed and ready though. I guarantee it.

P.S. I almost added a picture of all the weapons I'm going to carry from now on... but I didn't want to scare anybody.

I really hate using paper towels.

Every time I pull one off the roll I feel like I'm watching money go down the drain.

Actually, that feeling comes pretty much every time I use a disposable item. Feels like I might as well just throw money in the trash. In fact, I still have most of the package of paper plates we bought to use on our honeymoon because I've been "saving them for when I really need them".

So anyway, my mother-in-law introduced me to Microfiber Cleaning Cloths  a while back. They're pretty neat! I do most of my cleaning with them now.

For things like cleaning shiny stainless steel, and the stove hood, microfiber cloths work many times better than paper towels, and of course, everybody knows their usefulness for cleaning screens.

What makes them so effective is that you can rinse them and then squeeze almost all of the water out leaving you with a just barely damp cloth that polishes like nothin' you ever saw.

For dusting, I use a dry microfiber cloths.

The one thing I haven't been able to do is clean windows with microfiber. I always end up with a bunch of streaks.

For that reason, and for a few other gross jobs that inevitably pop up every once in a while, I still keep paper towels around. But if you, like me, like to find frugal and sustainable ways to keep your household running, I definitely recommend trying microfiber cleaning cloths.

I made a promise to myself a few weeks ago when we were having internet connection trouble that I was going to start getting all my blog posts scheduled ahead of time in the inevitable event that it happened again.

And yet, here I am on Monday morning, writing out this recipe.

Why? because I was all set to write up how easy and fool proof making your own healthy mayonnaise was when, for the first time ever, my mayonnaise, that I was all set to photograph to show you the process failed. And it failed hard.

This of course was after the computer crash that ate the pictures from my last batch (that batch turned out beautifully btw.)

So why did it fail? That easy. I dumped all the ingredients together rather than slowly adding the oil to the egg. I've seen other people do it successfully, but rest assured, I will never do it again. What happened was the egg was overwhelmed by the oil, and it wasn't able to emulsify.

So obviously, the trick to successful mayonnaise (for me anyway) is so add the oil to the egg in a slow, steady stream while blending at high speed. This can be done in a blender, food processor, or with a stick blender.

My favorite by far is the stick blender, that way I can just blend it in the container I plan to keep it in, and stick my blender in that with very little mess. My least favorite is the blender. It seems harder to get that last bit of oil mixed in with the blender. Maybe I should just stop short when I use the blender.

A note on oils: you can use olive oil, but it can be strong tasting so make sure you use extra light. My personal favorite is coconut oil both because it's very healthy, and tastes good. The only drawback with coconut oil is that if you refrigerate it, it gets hard, and the separates as it warms.

Easy Mayonnaise

1 egg
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 T. vinegar or lemon juice
1 cup oil

Combine first three ingredients. Here's all my stuff ready to go:

Whir with blending apparatus (food processor, blender, stick blender, etc.).

Begin adding oil in small stream while blending. Mixture will become opaque and thicken as oil is blended in.

Presto! That's all there is to it!

Enjoy!

Linked with: A Southerm Fairytale, Skip To My Lou, MIYMM, Tip Me Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Hearth And Soul, Blessed With Grace, Tuesdays At The Table, WFMW, Crystal And Co., Real Food Wednesday, Frugally sustainable, Full Plate Thursday, GNOWFGLINS, Thrifty Thursday, Frugal Friday, Weekend Potluck, Sorta Crunchy, Favorite Things Friday, Feed Your soul, Sugar Me Up, Show And Tell, Sweet As Sugar Cookies, Food Adventure Friday

This is one of those things that I'm sure will come back to haunt me. I can see it now, 15 years or so down the road when my son somehow stumbles across this article where I divulge some rather personal information about his early life.

But that's okay. I'm gonna do it anyway. 

See, Garrett's been having a bit of a rough transition to solid foods. To put it simply, he really likes anything that will stop him up or give him diaper rash, like tomato sauce and meat, but isn't such a fan of more laxative foods. 

You parents can imagine exactly what this has done to his bowel movements I'm sure. 

On a side note, isn't it funny how having children completely changes one's perspective on bodily functions? perhaps funny isn't the the best word here.... but I digress. 

 Garrett's had constipation issues off and on for several weeks now. I've begun to despair abut what I should feed the poor child. I thought I was being careful. 

One morning I found some of mom's home-canned applesauce and started feeding him that. It's nothing even remotely like the stuff in the stores. This applesauce is out of this world good. Fortunately, Garrett thinks so too. , 

But even feeding him applesauce two or three times a day hasn't been helping things. He sits on the floor and turns red. And for all that effort, all he got was a teeny, tiny little lump of... well, you know.

After a couple days of that, I finally remembered a friend telling me that her son had constipation problems as well and that  probiotics and a warm bath always seemed to do the trick. 

Well, I didn't have any probiotics on hand to give him unless sipping out of daddy's glass of kombucha tea counts, but I could sure give him a bath! 

Usually, I give Garrett more of a shower instead of actually soaking him in a bathtub so when I first put him in the water, he kind of freaked out, but within a few minutes he was sitting there playing with some bath toys and a spoon (he has a thing for spoons).

Ten minutes later, he started crying and... Whaddayknow, it worked! Apparently it was still painful (thus the crying), but it worked! 

I hope it wasn't a coincidence, and I hope I don't have occasion to try it again, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I will. 

Update: Since I wrote this two weeks ago, we've been very careful about balancing diet and all problems seem to have cleared up.

If you asked me the best way to save money on gluten-free food preparation, I'd tell you to grind your own grain.

Don't believe me? Next time you're in the grocery store, compare the price of a pound of rice, and a pound of rice flour. It's astonishing.

When I first began baking gluten-free, I was a bit intimidated by the thought of making my own flour mix, so I experimented with a few pre-packaged mixes. It didn't take long for that expense to get old. We still love some of those mixes, especially Pamela's , but it wasn't long before I learned that making one's own gluten-free flour mix just isn't that big of a deal.

From there it was a very small step to grinding my own grain. Especially since my generous Mother-in-law gave us her extra K-TEC Kitchen Mill.

I'm not sure how old it was when we got it, but we've had it for 2 1/2 years and it's still going strong.

So just how much can you save by grinding your own grain?

•  We use about five pounds of flour per week. Four of those pounds are rice flour (except for the occasional splurge on something like millet, but that's not very often, so I'm going with the cost of rice for now).

• Last time I checked the price of rice at local stores, the cheapest thing I found was $.69/lb. Pre-packages rice flour runs at about $3.00/lb (or more!). That's a savings of $9.26 every week!

• The K-TEC Kitchen Mill is $179.95 through amazon.com so at $9.26 saved per week, it would take about 20 weeks to pay for itself. Not bad!

By my calculation, our little grain mill has paid for itself more than six times over so far. That's $1,080 over the last 2 1/2 years that we wouldn't have if we'd been paying for pre-ground grains!  

As for purchasing a used mill, as one of my readers pointed out, gluten residue is very difficult to completely clean out of grinders. So if you have severe allergies, be very careful about buying a mill used. I do not recommend it. 

Linked with: A Southerm Fairytale, Skip To My Lou, MIYMM, Tip Me Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Hearth And Soul, Blessed With Grace, Tuesdays At The Table, WFMW, Crystal And Co., Real Food Wednesday, Frugally sustainable, Full Plate Thursday, GNOWFGLINS, Thrifty Thursday, Frugal Friday, Weekend Potluck, Sorta Crunchy, Favorite Things Friday, Feed Your soul, Sugar Me Up, Show And Tell, Sweet As Sugar Cookies, Food Adventure Friday

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After going gluten-free, it didn't take long to figure out that I didn't like corn tortillas much. They're too dry. You can't roll them up into burritos. The best  you can do is layer them in a casserole. 

I've never forked over the cash for pre-packaged gluten-free flour tortillas, so I can't speak to those, but I can tell you that homemade ones have some serious flaws. I gave up on making those a long time ago.

Fortunately, homemade corn tortillas aren't difficult to make at all. And when they're fresh, they roll up just as well as a flour tortilla. And all it takes is two or three ingredients. For me, the little bit of effort is worth the better taste, health (no preservatives), and inexpensiveness of making my own tortillas.

I usually use Benita Corn Masa mix from Aldi because it's the least expensive that I've found. Maseca  is also available at most stores and is very good.

 Being the cheapskate I am, I don't have a tortilla press. I find that a cutting board works just dandy. 

As you can see, I like to press them between zip-top baggies. If your dough is the correct consistency, the tortillas peel of nicely, and you can use the bags over and over. No wasting wax paper or plastic wrap. 

The next step of course, is frying the tortilla. All that takes is a very hot skillet. 

In no time at all, you have a nice big stack of yummy tortillas! My husband tells me that these are very similar to the fresh tortillas he's had in Mexico.

Corn Tortillas

1 cup Corn Masa
1 cup water (approx.)
pinch of salt (optional)

Mix dough well. Seperate into walnut sized balls and press. Cook in very hot skillet for about a minute on each side until the tortilla is flecked with brown. 

Enjoy!

Linked with: A Southerm Fairytale, Skip To My Lou, MIYMM, Tip Me Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Hearth And Soul, Blessed With Grace, Tuesdays At The Table, WFMW, Crystal And Co., Real Food Wednesday, Frugally sustainable, Full Plate Thursday, GNOWFGLINS, Thrifty Thursday, Frugal Friday, Weekend Potluck, Sorta Crunchy, Favorite Things Friday, Feed Your soul, Sugar Me Up, Show And Tell, Sweet As Sugar Cookies, Food Adventure Friday