This week’s dinner menu and mini series Eating alone: Introduction and the logistics of food snobbery

Most nights I eat alone since the hubs works evenings and usually eats there. I’ve been wanting to go into detail for sometime about how I do this and what I eat on a daily basis. So I have decided to put together a hitchhiker’s guide to eating alone. No seriously this is a how to on eating alone, all – by – yourself.

Eating alone: Introduction and the logistics of food snobbery

I am a real food-a-holic and semi-health food snob. This has lead me to making 97% our food from scratch. We don’t buy prepackaged anything, not even crackers or cookies. Though we do buy pre-made pasta that, frozen spinach, and juice to take up that little 3%.

This has a lot to do with the fact that our grocery budget is very very tiny and by tiny I mean 40 bucks tops most weeks besides our bi-monthly stock up budget with which we buy 22 lbs of flour, dry goods like nuts, dried fruit, onions, potatoes, and beans, we also grab a few other baking necessities, as well as toilet paper, kitty litter, and cat food.
How do we do it? Planning really and we do a fair bit of prep work, it pays off in the end, I promise and I’ll get to that.

It is absolutely possible to cook good, tasty, fast, quality food for one/two, on a tiny budget, and have very little food waste.

The best way to achieve this of course is to know what yields what when cooking and having the right containers and materials for packing/storing your food as well as taking the time to put it away and label it properly and it can all be done on a Saturday afternoon.

Be sure to check back tomorrow as I discuss these topics and share some tips and tricks of the trade in Eating alone: Part One – that’s too much effing food on your plate.

Have a lovely Monday and go get something accomplished!

Lovely and savory corn chowder

Everybody needs a warm cozy meal now and again, especially when it’s freezing rain and snowing outside. I’ll let you in on how I made it.

You will need:

• One diced russet potato. If you like them skinned go ahead it’s up to you.
• One medium yellow onion chopped or diced. Again let preference lead you.
• Three cups of frozen or fresh corn.
• Three cups 2% milk.
• One cup broth or water, with a litt extra for thinning later.
• Two tbsps veggie, olive oil, or butter. Personally I love butter.
• Two tbsps flour. I use whole hard wheat, use your preference.
• Salt and pepper

In a boiler or preferred soup pot sauté your onions on medium high heat with the oil/butter until they start to become glossy and clear.Turn down the heat, so’s not to burn the milk, whisk in your milk and two tbsps of flour. Whisk till they are well incorporated. Then add in your corn and potatoes. Add in one cup of broth/water and save the other cup incase you need more liquid. Turn the heat back up slightly till chowder begins a soft simmer, don’t turn too high as you don’t want to burn the milk. Cover and simmer, checking back often to give it a stir and to make sure the milk isn’t burning or over boiling. You may need to skim the top occasionally. Once it is a nice thick consistency and potatoes are done, use a hand blender or separate a bit of the chowder and purée it with your blender or food processor till you reach desired consistency, whether you like creamy or whole kernels, add that back into the main pot.   I like my mixto be half and half. At the very end I usually add in a little bit of the extra broth to thin it out a bit. Salt and pepper to taste.

Keeps and reheats well. Freezes fantastically.

Another option is to add in chopped bacon, carrots, and celery while sautéing the onions. Really what ever you have available can and should go in this cozy chowder. Add in ham chunks, left over turkey, or chicken if you are a meat eater like my hubs. Also adding in a spoonful of brown sugar adds a lovely little sweet kick that pairs with the savory well. Don’t forget a lovely piece of homemade bread as this chowder is excellent for dipping.

Also if you are new to the blog check out first my entry on why I created this blog.    <<I will have a hand made life>>

A photo a day challenge.

To help me become an awesome blogger I am starting the 365 Photo a day Challenge through 365project. Which challenges you to take at least one photograph a day and post it. What a great way to get things started, to get into good habits, and to share.

Pictured at the top are two gorgeously tasty loaves of bread I made today. They are made from 100% whole hard wheat, with golden raisin, medjool dates, and dried figs and lovely sunflowers seeds on top.

I am on a real fruit kick with my breads lately and James and I are eating it like crazy people. I added some chinese five spice, cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg to the dough and reduced the sugar to only the 1 tbsp of brown sugar I fed the yeast, plus a half tbsp more into the mix. That’s for the two loaves of course which I mixed at the same time in my handy-dandy Kitchen Aid Stand mixer. I don’t know how I lived without it. I do a lot of baking, but I also use it for a ton of other things when I am being lazy.

Here are some of the ways I use my stand mixer beside traditional baking:

• I use it to whisk eggs and milk for Sunday morning omelets with my whisk attachment. I then slowly add in the chopped veggies so it’s no mess.
• I use the batter attachment to break up toasted bread into bread crumbs (I cut them into cubes first.) This also works with gram crackers to make pie crusts!
• When I want to make hot chocolate from scratch I heat up my chocolate bars in my double boiler and add it to the warmed milk into the bowl of my mixer. I use the whisk attachment to really mix everything. After it’s had a good whisk, I give it a bit more heat and it’s done.
• I use the batter attachment to shred up chicken breast to make chicken salad or casseroles for James and other meat eaters. You could probably do the same for pork, but James is only a bacon kind of guy and can live without the rest of the pig.

And voilà! My photo for the day.

Also if you are new to the blog check out first my entry on why I created this blog.    <<I will have a hand made life>>

The first week of 2012

This week is a pretty quiet week. Usually with holiday left overs and over shopping J and I don’t do any shopping till the second week of January. We also have a pretty good pantry and don’t partake in regular grocery store shopping.

Flour is the one ingredient that I always run out of over the holidays, well just in general really. If I have flour and I am bored and want a snack, I am most likely going to bake something. Having my father and older brother here for Christmas meant we really went through some flour and didn’t make many trips out to the store to restock.I made 2 farm loaves before they arrived, as well I made biscuits one morning, J made like 4 dozen cookies one night (which we ate over the course of the week,) I made two loaves of beer-bread a little later in the week and after they left I made pitas which are J’s favorite. All in all that’s really not that much flour for us as we like to make things in bulk and freeze it, we just don’t usually eat everything…in one week. In actuality it’s around +20 cups of flour. Can you imagine consuming that much in seven days? Four people, that’s 5 cups of flour each or two whole farm loaves per person. I do usually make two loaves of bread and about 16 pitas in one week and that’s just under 10 cups of flour, but the only thing we go through it the bread. J is a sandwich man. +20 cups of flour is mad!

Needless to say I am going to posting some about bread. I want to do a tutorial for both farm loaves and pitas, I also want to do hand stir and using my kitchen aid mixer (only because I love it too much,) but we’ll see if both of them happen. It’s a lot of work getting used to stopping and photographing something,especially when you have to wash the sticky flour goop from your fingers every time. But hey what else do I have to do.

What I got into today:

Every other Tuesday I do a whole house cleaning. Which to me is really easy and is done in about 3 hours as I live in a very tiny apartment. I love doing it this way because it’s like I employ a cleaning service. I have a regimen that I stick to and I do it all in the same order every time. It’s relaxing and invigorating at the same time and it means I only have to do a few small things to keep things going over the next week. I love it.

As for dinner:

I am making dhal tonight. Dhal is a staple dish in our house, both J and know how to make it and we make it often. It’s simple and packed with protein, plus we just love Indian curries. I think I will share my recipe with you next week, it’s definitely something worth sharing as I always make it when we have guests.

I am off to read some of my hand me down magazines. J’s Aunt and some of her friends give me all their old periodicals because I am “crafty” and like to read.

Ta ta for now

I will have a handmade life.

In the past two years I have seen my husband and I get closer and closer to the life we want. This has nothing to do with finding a better job, buying a house or car. This is about a handmade revolution.

This blog is an affirmation that I am going to stick to my goals. This year, 2012 I am making a pledge to only buy everything handmade, environmentally friendly, local, as well as search out all I can second hand and used.  Everything else…I will attempt to make. Everything from food to folly.

• I will however allow myself to buy new things were necessary such as toilet paper, contraceptives, band-aids, and Hubby’s thyroid meds.
• I will allow myself to buy new things if they improve not only my self sustainability, but are also environmentally friendly like reusable containers for my fridge and storage containers in my kitchen and only if I have exhausted all options of making these myself or of getting these second hand and I will avoid plastics as much as possible and reduce my waste.
• For gifts and special items that I cannot find locally or make myself I will allow myself to shop on etsy.
• Also If I already own it I am going to use it.
• I will reuse and repurpose as many of our belongings and paper waste as possible.
• All of my cleaning supplies will be homemade and environmentally friendly (I use a ton of vinegar and baking soda already for everything.)

As for food, my husband and I already buy 80% of our produce local/organic and about 50% of our diary and meat. I will increase both of these figures to 100% as well as try to provide up to 40% of my own food through hard labor such as home and community gardening,  and food salvaging and saving techniques over the coming year.

My basic skill set to start off with is:

• novice food saver
• novice/intermediate gardener
• experienced cook
• novice sweets baker
• experienced bread baker
• intermediate machine sewer
• excellent hand sewer and embroiderer
• intermediate knitter/crocheter
• master thrift store and yard-sale shopper
• master bargin hunter

My one goal is to live a happier, healthier, and more sustainable life and enjoy my urban homestead.

I will chart it for me and share it with you here for the next 365 Days.