So last night was a BAD night. So today was a day off of school for us. I slept in, since I did not get hardly any sleep that night. We had a late breakfast, and for most of the mid morning I did nothing :-) Hey, it happens! Ok, I did something, we were watching the homesteading DVD's. Awesome stuff!!! Afterwards the girls were getting antsy so they went outside. I decided to make it an outside work day for them. They really appreciated that.....not! But it was neat to see that Isabella was inspired by the homesteading videos to use up some of our chicken wire fencing to make tomato cages for our growing tomato plants. She did it all on her own!
By late afternoon I started to come to. And looking around was not too impressed with the state of the inside of the house. However that will have to wait as I do not have the energy to do it myself or to 'encourage' the girls to. So I worked on other things that really needed to be done....food prep. Lots of food prep. Having a rotating menu really helps with planning ahead. And this month I have a lot of home baked wheat products and other things that need to be made up ahead of time to make the rest of the month go smoother. I really do not like having to make tortillas a couple of times a week, then bread two days a week, then cereal, then......I would much rather get it done in bulk and freeze the extras. That way come dinner time our prep time is cut in half at least! So sitting on my counters right now are:
a dehydrator full of cut up apples to be put into our granola bars
three pots of different beans soaking until we can cook them tomorrow
one pot of almonds soaking to be dehydrated tomorrow or the next day
20 cups of oats soaking to be dehydrated tomorrow for our granola bars
4 quarts of milk that will be buttermilk by tomorrow
a glass bowl with sweetened black tea waiting to cool enough to put our kombucha mushroom in it to ferment
my crockpot filled with beef bones that should become beef broth by tomorrow or the next day
I also double ground a bunch of wheat in preparation for making tortillas and pita bread tonight. The tortillas I have to make for dinner. Not sure if I will get to the pita bread. Both take a while to make as you can only make one at a time with the tortillas and about three at a time for the pita bread. Hopefully I will have enough ground flour to start soaking tomorrow to make the cereal I made a couple of weeks ago. This time I want to make two batches. One with a gingerbread flavor and the other a pumpkin spice flavor. Ooohh I can't wait. The original recipe reminded the girls of gingerbread as it is. I think with a wee bit of molasses and a couple more spices it will the the real thing. With the pumpkin one I think I will try to decrease some of the liquids and put in a half can of pumpkin, and some spices.
Before the weekend I need to make up the ravioli. This way while Isabella and I are having our mother/daughter time the crew at home will have plenty of food to eat and make their meal times go much more smoothly. At least that is the plan!
Tomorrow or Friday I should have my fresh batches of probiotics to start up. I am getting milk and water kefir and a greek yogurt starter. My kombucha lived through it's neglect :-) I'm really excited to get them as I feel that between the vitamins I am taking and the probiotics are what has helped me to feel much better. I was reading/and watching about making the super green drink from the homesteading videos. We bought some to try. The person I am getting the cultures from knows a lot about herbs and is going to tell me (after she looks through the list of herbs) if it will be safe for me during pregnancy. It is supposed to save money on supplements. Although right now I am a little worried about switching over due to my iron levels. Although they are coming up, I want to make sure they stay up.
I was also able to order the homeopathic cell salts. It's a homeopathic minerals. At this point I'm willing to try everything to get myself back on track. As I've mentioned before I've had a lot of concern how I will be able to handle labor and recovery due to a lack of health this past year.
I'm also excited to try out Molly's Herbal Wormer for our goats. We had some concern this past week about them looking ill. I dewormed them....again just a couple of months since the last time. It ends up that it was probably more due to them getting into the dog food than worms. But, the problem is that for a whole week we can not consume their milk. And seeing as how they will probably dry up by the end of this month, we are really missing out! I think if they don't dry up on their own (they are already making less milk compared to a few weeks ago) I will dry them up at the end of the month. That way it will give them a couple of months before we mate them.
And lastly we ordered some gamma seals. I'm really excited about that! I just put the open bags of grains into the new pails I got (from Walmart). And I needed to pry off a few lids to see the levels of grain in the other bins. I can't wait for when all I will need to do is screw off a lid!
Jeremiah talked with the 'meat man' the other day. He has about 40 or 45 pounds worth of meat to sell right now. He slaughters his cows twice a year, in Oct. and March (or May, I can't recall). There is no way to come up with the money for next months slaughter, so we will have to wait till the spring to get our half cow. But at least we will get to try out his meat (organic, grass fed) this coming week. I think we will be getting 40 pounds of ground beef and three roasts. I'm excited to try it out.
Phew, that was much more writing than I anticipated! I plan on taking it easy until I have to take the older girls to soccer. Then when I get home I will have to start making tortillas. We were supposed to have the pizza burritos this afternoon, but with such a late breakfast I moved that meal to our dinner slot.
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