Buy vs. Make

[Edson]

This is a tie-in discussion for this article.

What do you make from scratch? What did you think would be hard but turned out to be easy? What did you try and give up on? What are you thinking about trying? Let us know!

[Edson]

We often (but not always) make our own yogurt, using this method from Pat Meadows. We're making some bread, but not all of it. We're trying to find a recipe that we want to use on a regular basis. We tried English muffins, which were so-so, and saltine crackers, which were not great. We're gradually increasing our canning of jams and tomato products. It does take a bit of organization to get started on this stuff, but after a while you can do some of it without much thought, time, or effort. Our intention is for it to just become a natural part of our routines, like getting dressed or doing laundry or cutting grass.

[Janet Jinkner]

We've been working on this for a while, so I'm gonna say we make a high proportion of what we use. I make almost all our bread. I make cheese. DH has made my cheese forms and cheese press. We garden and can a lot of the produce. We have dairy goats, so we have our own milk, and that's what the cheese is made from. We have chickens, and we get so many eggs that we have to sell most of them. I got a couple of sheep last year and a couple of angora goats about a month ago. Now I'm learning how to spin yarn. DH knits a mean pair of socks. I'm making soap now. We cook almost all our own meals at home. We're just spoiled and know that nothing we eat in a restaurant can compare with what we make at home. We make so much of what we use that I can't (and don't) even think about it.

Edson, let me share my bread non-recipe with you. I start out with leftover hot breakfast cereal, usually oatmeal or 10-grain. I add 2 cups or thereabouts of milk. When the goats are dry, that goes to water or juice or canned pumpkin or some other interesting taste. I add a spoon of sugar or honey to the mix and heat until it just starts to feel warm. I add about 2 tsp of yeast and let it set until it starts rising well.

In another bowl, I put 2 1/2 cups (or thereabouts) of whole wheat flour. I add a cup or so of unbleached white flour. I measure a bit of salt in the palm of my hand and add that and mix it all together.

I have a real nice kitchen mixer that has bread hooks. This sounds like cheating, but it's not really. I get bursitis pretty bad sometimes, so I started using the mixer. It gives the bread SUCH a nice texture.

OK. You have the flour mixture in the mixing bowl ready to go. When the milk/yeast mixture has worked a little while (probably about 15 minutes) add it to the flour mixture and mix. Add unbleached flour a little bit at a time until the texture is right. You can tell if it's right by poking it with your finger. When the dough does not stick to your finger, it's ready.

Cover the dough with a flour cloth dish towel and put it in a warm, but not hot, place. This can be the oven that has been pre-heated to about 170* then turned off. Let the dough rise until about double in size. Punch it down. Form it into loaves and put the loaves in greased bread pans. (If you want to, you can also play with the dough. Today I made one loaf of bread and one cinnamon roll loaf.) Again allow to rise. When about double in size, place in an oven preheated to 350*. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes.

The only real trick is ~2 cups of liquid, ~1 tsp of salt, ~2 tsp of yeast. Everything else is flexible. Use your imagination. Go wild. If you don't like it, then don't use those ingredients again. Don't be afraid to try using things like canned pumpkin, applesause, juice, soft cheese (today's bread also had freshly made ricotta cheese in it) as the liquid in your bread.

[Cindy Henson]

My husband, son and I are building our own house, a red cedar log home approximately 1500 sq ft... while we live in our "practice cabin" which is a timber frame 450 sq ft...we have been working on the big house 5 1/2 years on weekends. It was much more time consuming than we thought it would be, but we have not given up!

We have solar power in our barn and hope to take the lessons we learned there to apply to the house.

Kudos to Janet and family!

[FarmerAmber]

We preserve most of our vegetables (shooting for all this year) by canning, freezing, dehydrating, etc. I make all our jellies and pickles. Both are way easy to do. I was a little intimidated by the pressure canner (for veggies) before I started using one, but now its old hat.

We cook at home most of the time (DH should open a restaurant - we are so spoiled!). I can knit, spin, and crochet but don't often have the time. We are working on learning to build things. We own 37 acres several hours away (future homestead we hope) and we put up a pole barn there this Spring with mostly just DH and I. We're going to try and put a small greenhouse in at our current residence this year also. We are seriously looking at raising rabbits for meat starting this year, but haven't decided if we can stomach killing them yet. The dairy animals have been put on hold due to us being out of town at least 1 weekend a month with no good way to take animals with us. Chickens may come along next year.

We love finding new things we can do for ourselves - it is so empowering! Not to mention frugal...