Hi everyone! I had a fun week. Here are some highlights:

Trying New Recipes

Usually we take a yearly vacation in January or February. We were hoping to go to the Caribbean this year, but in the end we decided not to, in light of travel restrictions that seem to be popping up. We didn't want to be quarantined for half or all of our vacation time! Plus a flight with a toddler is bad enough. Flight + toddler + mask would be a disaster. Anyway. With most of the winter free this year, I've had some extra time on my hands.

This week I decided to try some recipes from a cookbook I bought several years ago and haven't used. If I can't go to an island, I can still eat like I'm on one, right?

The first recipe I made was West Indian Roast Pork. Basically, it was a pork roast (in my case, a pork loin) with a bunch of spices rubbed in, and then a rum sauce poured over top. We liked it.

​The second recipe I tried was a banana cake:

The cake was a little bit dense, but the flavor was good. If I make it again, I will put thicker banana slices on top, to balance out the dense bottom half.

Yesterday we had coconut rice, baked tilapia, plantains and green beans. It wasn't from the cookbook, but I felt like it was sufficiently tropical. 

I spent a little more time cooking this week, but it was fun to experiment with new flavors. The recipes I chose weren't so exotic that I had to buy a lot of special ingredients. The plantain was $0.62, but I had everything else in our freezer or pantry. I would love to see what other island recipes I can make with regular inexpensive pantry staples.


Wave App

The other thing I did this week was get some of our bookkeeping in order. Recently we switched from Quickbooks to the Wave app, recommended by a friend. Quickbooks worked for several years, but we went from updating the books once a week, to once a month, to once a quarter, to twice a year... you get the idea. Hubs likes Quickbooks, but it was too complicated for me. 

Long story short, Wave seems to be a much better choice. Rather than entering all transactions manually, you can take a picture of your receipt and it will pull some of the data (store, date, total spent) and start a transaction for you. This is a good jump start on your data entry, plus the program keeps the photo of your receipt forever, which helps eliminate paper clutter. You still have to assign a category and fill in the method of payment (cash, credit, debit, etc.), but I don't mind that.

So, in addition to trying some new recipes, I also updated our financial books. And that feels GREAT! We're not at a point where we need to have a strict budget, but tracking our spending makes me feel like a more responsible human being with a put-together life. LOL! I'm hoping to keep things updated without too much help from Hubs this year.

That's about all for now. Have a great weekend,

-Bethany

Today I thought I'd share my experience storing and cooking a Fairytale pumpkin. I bought it at Walmart in October, because I liked the way it looked. After Thanksgiving, I put all of my decorative pumpkins/squash in the garage in cold storage.

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Rabbit trail: I experimented a lot with cold storage in 2020. It was part of my "there are no canning lids available" food preservation strategy. Let me say this: cold storage is amazing. It is so much easier than canning, freezing, or drying. Things I put in cold storage this year were: tomatoes, pears, apples, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, spaghetti squash, butternut squash.

The tomatoes, pears and carrots didn't do as well as the others. Tomatoes, of course, aren't really designed for cold storage. But, by picking green tomatoes and bringing them indoors to ripen before the first frost, I was able to extend my fresh tomato harvest another month or two. About two-thirds of the tomatoes rotted or molded in cold storage, but it still left some for us to eat. The pears, similarly, lasted about a month before they started to brown. The carrots weren't from my garden, but just a bag that I bought from the store. I didn't bother putting them in sand, but just left them out in the garage. They turned slimy and rotted a bit after a few weeks (at the time, it wasn't all that cold in the garage... I'm sure they'd do better now that it's about 45 degrees F out there).

The apples (also from the store) have wrinkled a bit, but they are still mold- and rot-free, and taste good. I wrapped each apple in paper before putting it in a dish pan for storage. After 3+ months of storage, I think that's pretty good! I bought the winter squash and apples about the same time, and the squash also have few signs of damage. I noticed the other day that the squashes packed closer together have some small mold spots. The squash with good airflow, not touching each other, are in excellent condition.

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Anyway, back to the Fairytale pumpkin! I put the pumpkin into cold storage at the end of November, with the other decorative pumpkins; I had one large one from a neighbor, and one small one that we'd received as a freebie from somewhere.

The two other pumpkins were so molded and rotted after three months that I had to throw them on the compost pile. The Fairytale pumpkin only had a 1-2" mold spot, so I simply cut it off before cooking the pumpkin. You can see the inside of the pumpkin below:

I cooked the pumpkin pieces in the Instant Pot. The resulting pulp was a little bit watery, so I strained it from 3+ quarts down to two quarts, using a cheesecloth. It tasted almost as good as butternut squash, which is my favorite!

I also saved all of the seeds. I will use some to grow new plants for my garden next year (and I'll save some for 2022, as well). I will use what seeds are left to grow microgreens.

Speaking of microgreens, that was the topic of my latest Rumble video. You can click on the picture below to watch it:

I love winter squash! Not only is it tasty, but it's a perfect candidate for cold storage. And, in the dead of winter when fresh veggies are scarce on the homestead, those seeds can be turned into microgreens for a splash of color and nutrition.

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Lastly, I wanted to switch gears entirely and share a video I watched last week. It's an interview by Alisa Childers (formerly part of the band ZOEgirl), talking with John Cooper, from the Christian rock band Skillet. John put into words what I (and many others) have been thinking over the past few years. I watched the interview a couple of times, because I couldn't believe how similar his ideas and feelings were to mine.

Don't let his tattoos scare you. Watch the video! As liberal media has taken over the internet, I've felt very alone, marginalized, and even targeted by liberal "haters". I will probably get a hater comment on this very post. Whenever you share certain truths, certain statistics, certain facts... you get called a racist, insensitive, naïve... basically, like your experience, not to mention straight up facts, don't matter. If people know you are a Christian, it's worse. They say you're "confusing your religion with your politics" or "being a Christian nationalist" (FYI, that is the new bad thing to be). 

We are told to separate our conservative political leanings from our faith, but I've consistently found this difficult (if not impossible) to do in the last several years. Not because of Trump, but because of troubling trends in my church, my friend group. There are things happening that should not be happening.

Facts matter! Truth matters! And John Cooper says so in this interview.

I've listened to a fair amount Alisa and John on their individual channels this week. Alisa's focus is Christian apologetics, and she leans more on writings from the "church fathers" and different theologians in addition to the Bible. John's podcast, which is more political than apologetic, exposes the same problems in the church, but I feel like he leans heavily on Scripture and brings solutions to the table, more so than Alisa does. You should check out his channel as well as this and some of Alisa's other interviews. They are very eye-opening.

Anyway, that's what I have for you! I hope you are all staying cozy and finding new and fun ways to make the most of your time.

-Bethany

Hi everyone! It's been quiet around our home, which is something I love. Here is an assortment of thrift for weekend inspiration.

Using Up Eggs

I have about six dozen eggs in the fridge that need to be used up, as I know more eggs will be coming in the spring! Right now our chickens are laying about six eggs per day. If I go a few days without using up any eggs, they start to pile up in our refrigerator.

I cooked a bunch of boiled eggs in the Instant Pot. I've discovered that our daughter LOVES boiled eggs, just like I used to when I was a little girl. I used some of those boiled eggs to make deviled eggs. When our jarred mayonnaise runs out, I will be making some mayo from scratch, and probably doing French toast this weekend.

French toast is a great way to use up both eggs AND stale bread. The last episode of my Rumble show, "Meals From the Bunker", featured an easy French toast casserole that I've made in the past.

Coupons

I cut out some manufacturer coupons for products that I will or may use. I also cut out some fast food coupons just in case we find ourselves eating out in the net few weeks.

That is all I have time for today. I've decided to write on the blog regularly again, so expect me to be back here at least once a month. In the meantime, you can check out my new Rumble channel.

Stay frugal!
-Bethany