Breader luck next time….

Okay, I attempted two batches of bread, the first rose two inches, the second about four inches. I looked it up on the internet and found out that if you don’t knead the bread enough, it won’t develop the appropriate carbon dioxide bubbles to adhere to the yeast. Therefore, the yeast will be dispersed into the air as opposed to getting trapped in the bubbles within the bread created by the carbon dioxide. Therefore, I will beat the bread for about ten minutes tomorrow and see what occurs. I also got a price quote online from progressive which states it is 60 dollars a month cheaper than geico. I am going to call on Monday to see if this is correct. If so, We will be switching to progressive. I dislike their social policy and their charitable structure, but we really have to cut back. This is a good area to cut expenses.
Poor Kate had to eat my bread today for lunch. She tried but ended up eating the ham and cheese from the sandwich and tossing the rest. If you think about things as they were long ago, the family really relied on the mother to be able to cook, clean, bake and sew. Our modern society looks down on these things and stay at home moms as archaic right now. However, I feel like in the current climate, with people making less, buying less and using less. Some of these skills will come back into fashion. Maybe there will be a return to home and family. I hope so.
Blogging from thriftland,
chris

week two, battle of the bread

Okay, so I bought energy efficient bulbs and baked some bread. I don't think the yeast activated as I hoped. I made dough gobs. (basically fried bread), and bean soup. It tasted good. However, when I tried to bake the second loaf and it didn't work. It only rose about three inches. Not enough to make a sandwich. I will try again tonight. I replaced twelve of our bulbs with energy efficient ones. I have stopped driving the van and filled up our car last night. I priced canned goods and stuff at walmart today. Great value is truly a great value...ba dum dump....sorry. lol.
68 cents per can on veggies. flour sugar and rice are all cheaper. I found a 40 pound bag of pedigree for $20.40. I am still working on our food budget. I am trying right now to get it down to three hundred. That way when my student loans come due in july I can have some money set aside to keep buying groceries in the three hundred dollar area. otherwise I will have less. I January of next year we can canel sbp and get an extra 124 dollars a month. We will also get a cost of living adjustment and our va waiver will go down. I just have to hold on for about six months. In total it will give us about 300 dollars extra. When you are this tight, that is a massive amount. well, hope all is well with you guys. talk at you next week.
chris
p.s. While I agree we don't need to be bashing our leaders, I think we as americans cannot allow our government to freely spend our and our childrens futures on not only frivolous things, but immoral things as well. It's one thing to spend money on shovel ready construction projects to put people to work, quite another to send hard earned tax dollars to mexico to fund the murder of the unborn. JMO.
God bless.

weekly frugal action update

Okay, just a quick stop by to say what it is I am doing today. Today I am buying energy efficient light bulbs and trying to find ways to cut down on water consumption before summer. If my husband is unable to go back to work for a long period of time, I am thinking of shelving our van and just using the car. That would save us 19 dollars a month. For some reason our electric bill was higher last month, so I am going to see what we can turn off or unplug at night to save some money. I can save money on gas by planning all my trips. I am going to see if I can’t change the oil in both vehicles myself. That would save us some money. I will look into car care seminars. They have them sometimes on post. So, I am going to look that stuff up today. Later tonight I am going to make some bread with my youngest. I think that I would like to buy more food from angel tree, I am just afraid some would go rotten, like the carrots. I Might just look up whether or not you can freeze eggs and carrots. If you can, then I can buy more. I am also going to look up where to buy food grade buckets around here. If I am going to save money I am going to have to cook more. So, here’s the list.
1.) Buy energy efficient light bulbs
2.) Plan our trips for the next two weeks for maximum efficiency
3.) Buy in bulk
4.) Check out the price of oil by the case.
5.) Make bread
6.) Internet research at the library on baking, soups, what you can freeze and the price of oil and oil filters and maybe general car maintenance.
It took me a while to realize how many prepackaged foods and services we take for granted. If you think about all the noodles, bread and pre made sauces you buy, you could probably really save a lot by buying whole food and processing it yourself. The sheer amount of paper towels I use could be cut in half. I really want to keep homeschooling and so don’t want to have to go to work, but if I have to, I would only want to work part time. While I am at the library, I would also like to look for word processing manuals so I can learn how to use word and excel better. Well, will sign off for now.
chris

angel food ministries

Well, on February 28th, I should be picking up my first supply of angel food food. If that makes sense. (by the way I am typing from the library). I will see how far it goes with my family, and make adjustments to my ordering accordingly. I noticed that the dollar movie theatre has movies for only 75 cents on tuesdays. That is cheaper than watching them at home from hollywood video. (bring your own snacks of course). Then right next door to the dollar theatre is this really nice used clothing store called plato's closet. It has high end clothing for sale (meaning things like tommy HIlfiger jeans for ten dollars and what not. I have a fifteen year old, so these things are important to her. I managed to get a deferment on my student loans, this frees up our food budget a bit and gives tim more time to get back on his feet. I have been watching our government spend money like it's going out of style. I am not sure people even realize that we are going to have to pay this all back. I was listening to John Hagee the other day and he was talking about how much we are spending. He said "If you opened a business at the birth of Christ, and lost 1 million dollars A DAY from then until today, you would have to continue losing 1 million dollars a day for another seven hundred years to spend or lose a trillion dollars. Our government is currently 12 trillion dollars in debt. That is scary. I fear inflation is on the way, inflation that could make it incredibly difficult for people to buy food or live. America needs to be on its knees praying for our politicians, and many of our people, to repent and begin the long hard process of paying what we owe.
We need to be praying for our president and congressional leaders to bite the bullet and make some very real, very hard decisions...or life will make it for them.
Till next Tuesday,
chris

at the library

howdy ya'll, here I am at the library. We cut off our internet and home phone. I will be here aproximately twice a week. We have managed to get our bills down to a minimum. My hubby should be going to work in the next week or two, so we will try to maintain some of this. After this little exercise We have decided to start banging away at the rest of our debt, things like car payments, student loan debt and home mortgage. Debt free is the way to be. will update the details later.
Will ;be in here next tuesday. Talk to you all later.
chris

funny how life goes

well, before it was optional, now it's necessary. We really have to cut back. My hubby could be out of work for a month or two. So, we will be ditching the phones first. The cell phones that is. Then we will be cutting off the internet and having just basic phone service. If we want to call long distance, we'll buy a phone card. I can get free wi fi at the library on post. I will blog from there on fridays as well as do all my serfing for the week and check my email. I ordered from angel food ministries for february, I will pick up february 28th. So really, the food is for March. I was thinking about making some of these things temporary, but..I could sav e alot by keeping at this level. We shall see. write more tommmorrow while I still have the internet.
chris