Recipe: Yummy Pot Roast

Yesterday I did my monthly grocery shopping. Vitamin Cottage/health food store for gluten-free things for me and VHTS, Wal-Mart for 60+ cans of fruit (for VHTS) and a few other things, and then King Soopers/Kroger for other. Found two orange-sticker discounted pot roasts and brought them home along with other orange-sticker products (broccoli, milk, yogurt, bread). We don't eat "fresh" beef very often so it was a bit of a treat.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Use a little olive oil to grease bottom of baking pan. Place the pot roasts side by side in pan. Washed three baking potatoes and placed on top of roasts. Sliced onion and placed on top of roasts. Garlic and onion powder sprinkled on top. Very important: cover with aluminum foil (so it won't dry out). Place in oven and reduce temp to 300 degrees F. Bake for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

Everything was tender. The juice from the roasts create a beautiful au jus (juice) which, together with the foil cover, prevented them from drying out. If I'd had the energy, I would have then made gravy from the juice but we just spooned it as is over our plates.

Melt-in-your-mouth.

I usually make pot roasts in the crockpot because it makes them so tender. For some reason, I did it in the baking pan and oven yesterday. Enough for leftovers for tonight.

Inventory Check - Soap

How much soap do you have? Body/bath, hand, dish, laundry, house, etc.... take a look through your home and your stored supplies. Do you have enough if can't buy more for a year? Do you know what you would do if you ran out?

What about if you didn't have running water or electricity to use that soap? Have you figured out an alternative to getting clean? (We're storing baby wipes.) What about cleaning your dishes and clothes - do you have alternative methods for cleaning those? And your house....We recently came across a dishwasher that doesn't use electricity and is mounted to your faucet.... but we couldn't use that if we didn't have well water and enough force to get the water up and through.

For cleaning clothes, we bought a wonder-washer - it's just a small barrell that has a handle to turn it. It doesn't take a lot of clothes at a time, but certainly works very well.

Most things can be cleaned well with vinegar and baking soda. And once you run out of baking soda, vinegar does well by itself. Plant an apple tree now, and as soon as you have apples, experiment with making your own apple cider vinegar. Good for cooking and cleaning.

We have also bought soapwort seeds to sow at our next place. We've discovered it can make shampoo and body soap and even help clean the home and clothes.

Have you come up with alternatives to various soaps?

Recipe: Frumenty (Cracked-Wheat Porridge)

Here's a recipe to use some of those wheat berries you have stored!

Made with cracked wheat, frumenty is a porridge boiled in milk. It's been made since at least the Medieval times, but some people think it's been made since prehistoric days. It is obviously a delicious, hearty breakfast.

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat berries, cracked
4 cups water
1 cup milk (rehydrated powdered works)
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon raisins
1 tablespoon dried apricots or peaches

Directions:
Add the water to a large pot and bring to boil. Add the cracked wheat. Simmer until the wheat is cooked and soft enough to eat. Store in a covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, add milk and honey. Warm the porridge in a medium-sized pot for a few minutes, stirring, and add dried fruit. Serve warm.

Copyright (c) 2009 New View Group, LLC

Low Cost Home Building

As you may know, we're looking for land to buy in an unincorporated area so we can do what we want without restrictions: raise chickens, bees and other farm animals, practice target shooting, have privacy, etc. We're not necessarily looking for land with a house, because we want to build our own. Not that we have money. Just the opposite.

So we've researched. Here's our plan:

1. Create a budget. Done.
2. Find a way to bring in more money. Uh, working on.
3. Make plan. Done.
4. Find the land. Must have alternate water source or grandfathered well. Within 30 minutes from Mom-In-Law and Hubby's job and town. Off country road and off beaten path. Still looking.
5. Place house on market (after making minor cosmetic repairs). Note: We just found out we can't place the house on the market until the first of June 2009 - bummer.
6. Sell everything we have that we can do without.
7. Buy couple of cheap sheds and move our boxes with the rest of our "stuff" into them.
8. Find inexpensive trailer to live in or pitch our tents. This is for while we build our home.
9. Sell home. Please God Please God Please God.
10. Start "building" our home (not necessarily in this order - we could start building before this home gets sold).

The following are links to building cheap homes:

• Build a cob house: http://www.meaningofdreams.org/Dream_House/dreamhouse_build_your_own.htm
• http://www.make-my-own-house.com/
• Build a huge cheap home with shipping containers - wonder if they withstand bullets?: http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_1180.shtml
• I once visited a tire home (for some reason called an earthship home but has nothing to do with aliens) - http://www.bluerockstation.com/earthshiphome.html
• Straw Bale: http://www.balewatch.com/ or http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/11/10/how-to-build-your-own-straw-bale-home/
• http://www.jetsongreen.com/2008/08/yale-grad-stude.html
• http://tinyhouseblog.com/
• http://www.byohouse.com.au/forum4/viewtopic.php?t=233&sid=7a3446424efdc6411bb2fc27eedb6af4
• http://nontraditionalhousing.tribe.net/thread/dcd514b2-9652-4634-a3cf-cbe3a21026ef

I think that's enough links!

Now... we can't publicize what we're going to do EXACTLY because this is our chance to become very private, but we'll give you several ideas about building a good retreat/survival home:

Requirements/General Plan:

1. Inexpensive.
2. Can do most of the work ourselves or with friends' help.
3. Environmentally friendly (straw-bale, old tires, old bottles/cans, container, etc.)
4. Can't easily be seen from sky (may need to plant fast-growing trees on the north, north-east and north-west sides)
5. Easy to defend from all sides
6. Lots of hidden storage
7. Mostly underground (reduce heating/cooling costs, easy to defense, etc.) - doesn't have to be directly underneath ground-level home.
8. Separate ventilation system for underground.
9. Deceptive first floor (giving no indication of having majority of house underground)
10. Lots of south-facing windows on ground-level for indoor "greenhouse" - yum - year-round tomatoes, peppers, herbs, blueberries, bananas, carrots, greens, strawberries, etc.
11. This may sound weird, but part of ground level should have (a) garage for concealed transportation and unloading, (b) barn with thick walls and separate ventilation system but to enable taking care of animals without leaving the house to wade through 6-foot snow drifts.
12. Underground bathrooms have composting toilets and minimal shower flow.
13. Underground will have a secondary/alternative kitchen-type area.
14. Ground level is mostly one big room (except the separate garage and barn), plus a bathroom, kitchen, and 2 side rooms set up like bedrooms. That "big" room will "house" the dining area, living room, library, music room, schoolroom, game room, et al.
15. Ground level has a good wood cookstove. Floor layout will enable that one cookstove to heat the entire floor.
16. Hook up to local utility for water and sewer. Prefer to dig well and use septic tank and gray-water leach field.
17. Purchase and hook up solar panels and/or wind turbines
18. Live off the grid, in a green manner, with strong self-sufficiency, and easily defensible.

This is what we're looking at. Hope we can do this fairly cheaply. Sure we can't get a mortgage for exactly what we're planning.

Recipe: Soy Milk Yogurt Cheese

Now that you've made soy milk and soy milk yogurt, it's time to make soy milk yogurt cheese. Geez, that's a mouthful!

Ingredients:
soy milk yogurt, freshly-made

Directions:
Over a large bowl, fit a colander. Place two layers of cheesecloth in the colander/strainer. Pour in the freshly-made yogurt. Tie up the ends of the cheesecloth to make a bag. Hang the bag over your pot for a few hours. It will stop dripping eventually, which will mean it's ready to be a spreadable cheese. Take it out and place into a coverable bowl. Mix in spices, herbs, and etc. (We like ground rosemary, onion powder and garlic powder.)

This will give you a smooth cheese that's similar to cream cheese. Use as cottage cheese, or in dips, cheesecakes, and salad dressings.

Copyright (c) 2009 New View Group, LLC

Winter Prep for Automobiles

This might be a little late for some people, but here's more information about preparing your car with survival essentials for Winter:

• Metal coffee can, 2-3 pound size. Punch 3 holes in the top of can, at an equal distance apart. This is to enable you to carry the can while filled with your supplies.
• 60-inch+ length of twine/heavy string. Cut it into 3 equal pieces, to use to suspend can.
• 3 large safety pins. Tie the string to safety pins and pin to car roof interior to suspend can over candle. This won't work with all cars. Give it a try. If it won't work, come up with an alternate.
• 1 candle, about 2" in diameter. You'll place the candle on the lid under hanging can for melting snow for water to drink.
• 1 sharp pocket knife or sharp scissors.
• 3 pieces of bright (red, orange or yellow) cloth that is 2" wide x 36" long. You'll use this to tie to your antenna or door handle - to help people spot you in distress.
• Food! Dry soup, packets of hot cocoa mix, tea bags, granola bars, small package of peanuts, hard candy, cup and plastic spoon. (No chocolate as it tends to dehydrate.)
• Warm wool socks, warm mittens (gloves don't keep you as warm).
• strike-anywhere matches or lighters.
• 1 emergency reflective blanket or 2 large green or black plastic leaf bags (to reflect body heat).
• 1 small flashlight, kept separate from fresh unused batteries.
• one dollar in quarters for telephone calls.

When you've prepared your can, grab a warm hat and place it over the kit. Keep in your car, or in the trunk. If you have a bigger can, you'll have more room for first aid supplies, pain relievers, small radio, etc.

Other things you might want to keep in your trunk:

• Large plastic garbage bags - 3-4 - for warmth, moisture protection, or sanitation.
• Small package of baby wipes (also for sanitation)
• Pencil and paper
• Plastic whistle, compass, mirror
• Kitty Litter/sand (for traction and weight)
• Gallon of water (insulate with blanket as it probably will freeze)

If you think it might be a problem getting to it, be sure to keep the kit in the body of your car instead of the trunk.

Inventory Check - Label Maker

You may have read this posting's title, and said "huh?"

Label makers are good to help you organize. Label your bins of stored food. Your buckets with expiration dates. On your plant markers each year. Files, trays, bins, etc. Your imagination is your only limit.

It helps to organize, and makes everything look nice and tidy.

So... stock up on a couple of label makers, ink and label tape. And start using them now. You'll probably get hooked too.