Busy Hands Homestead

Sunday:  SNAP Challenge Day 5  Sylvan and I made Oatmeal Muffins. It is a recipe from another of my standby cookbooks. It is a cookbook that I grew up with. My mom had a copy of an earlier edition, and my Oma gave me the one I have. It is the More With Less Cookbook. To total cost for 12 muffins (we ate 8) was $1.78 . The cost of the coffee share $1.52 . Total cost of $3.27. Breakfast was late again. Very Late. Adam resumed working on the bus and I finished moving around plants, cleaned the kitchen, and started the weekly task of baking bread. My new favorite bread recipe is the Basic Bread from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jenifer Reese. It involves scooping a bunch of ingredients in a bowl, giving it a stir and dumping it into a loaf pan for a few hours to rise. To cost per loaf, is $0.60 . I also started the process of making Pork Liver Pat é . I first experimented with pat é, when I purchased a few whole chic...

I haven't ventured outside or changed clothes since I got up Saturday morning. Yesterday I went through the annual ritual of cleaning and rearranging the house to accommodate all of the house plants moving back into our living space. By the time I looked at the clock is was 5:30 and I figure I might as well spend the rest of the day in pajamas. The whole point of these posts and participating in the #SNAPchallenge is to raise money for Double SNAP Dollars, which doubles the purchasing power of SNAP benefits spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.  So please, if you have the resources and value expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables, take a moment to DONATE HERE!   My family has lots of practice cooking on a limited budget, because SNAP used to be our food budget.  These posts might make it seem too easy, but it wasn't.  I am calculating the Double SNAP Program into my daily expenditures, which helps a lot! I also have the benefit of being raised in a fa...

I gave myself permission to delay posting about day 2. Day 2 was the day of the Northside vs. Westside Softball Challenge with I helped organize. There are still a few banners in the car that need to delivered back to the game's sponsors, but other than that, it is over.  It is a fundraising event for the North-Missoula Community Development Corporation , and I still need to tally up the final expenditures and earnings, but overall it was a success. The Westside won 18 – 9. Back to the #SNAPcallenge and food related issues. Breakfast was oatmeal. Oatmeal is a perfect breakfast choice for my family of picky breakfast eaters because it is easily customizable. Adam and I eat it as a savory dish topped with onion, cheese, eggs and greens, while the children opt for brown sugar and cinnamon. Oatmeal (4 x .043 = $0.172) Cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32) Eggs (0.21x 3 = $0.75) Swiss Chard (CSA) Brown Sugar (4 tablespoons = $0.096) Coffee (cost of my coffee ...

We got up a little earlier than usual. Today was ONE LESS CAR DAY in Missoula and rode my bike down to the end of the street to walk back through the neighborhood and scoop up kids along the way.  I wore cloth shoes and it rained, but the rain has finally cleared the wildfire smoke from the air, and everyone was in good spirits.  Breakfast was quick. 4 tortillas (0.15 x 4 = $0.60) 5 eggs (0.25 x 5 = $1.25) 2 ounces of cheddar cheese (0.16 x 2 = $0.32) Coffee (cost of my coffee share per day $1.52) Cherry Tomatoes (FREE – no really – I have been saving these seeds for 5 years now.  These were tomatoes that volunteered in my yard when we moved to our house and I have replanted them every year since.  I grow them for the cost of water, except I have a flat rate water bill that doesn’t change based on use…  so we will just call them FREE!) Total Breakfast Cost: $3.69 for a family of 4 Wet shoes and all, I walked to the Clay Studio to get a...

So, we bought a school bus. I'm hoping its not the worst decision we have ever made. Adam has slowly, much too slowly been morphing it into, what hopefully will be a living space.   And I have been trying to pack up our house, sew a million curtains, and keep life normal.  We have successfully (what is success anymore??) been navigation the line somewhere between a mess and a disaster. Some days I drop both of the kids off at the bus stop, other days I drop off one at the bus stop while the other would rather hold my hand the whole way, since I walk past the school on my way to work anyway. We always arrive just at the front just as the buses pull up to the back. I spend more than I ever imagined staring at a computer screen, navigating an entirely new and foreign world of a federally funded affordable housing project. Damn, that shit is complicated. Late August, I received an email about participating in the Community Food and Agricu...