Busy Thursday

Wednesday night was spent at my daughter's house because of the storms.  All the news of bad tornadoes had me spooked along with a lot of other people.  I decided it best to be on the safe side and not stay home.  There is truly no safe place in my house if a tornado were to come through.

 Ladybug and I had a slumber party in the basement.  Mommie had to work the next day so she went into another room to sleep.  I started reading a book to Ladybug and within 10 minutes she was sound asleep.

When I came home Thursday morning it suddenly got very active around here.  The guy came to fix the flower box around the porch.  Yippie!  He then leveled the garden boxes in the back yard.  The boxes were lower at on end and I was afraid rain would wash out the dirt over time.   Now I can start filling up the boxes and start planting.  

I managed to do a little weeding in the garden boxes on the side of the house while he worked in the back.  Another storm came through and we quit for the day. 

My brother and SIL are cleaning out their own house so they brought back the baby crib they had borrowed from me.  Their great grand daughter is now too big for it.  I will store it at my daughter's house for whoever needs a crib next.  She has a storage shed not being used. 

While they were here we decided to go to the thrift store.  It was 25 percent off day.  I was tempted to purchase several things but in the end I bought only these for myself.   I'm proud of myself for not bringing home more stuff when I'm working so hard to get stuff out of here.   These will be used when I make charity quilts.

I did make one other purchase at the thrift store but it's not for me.  My neighbor mentioned that she would like to learn latch hooking.  She thought it would be neat to do and easy.  It would be something for her to do on lunch break at work.  I'm going to teach her how it's done and  show her the way to create her own design on the canvas.  The canvas in this kit is high school theme and I don't think she will want it in her house.  There might not be enough yarn in the bags to do the whole thing so I'll teach her how to make her own with some of the scrap yarns I plan to get rid of.

It's slowly changing around here.  My house is still ragged looking and still full of stuff.  I can do only so much at a time.  Some things cost money and some require only my time.  I work at it steadily but there's no rush.  I'm not trying to win a contest in how fast to turn around one's life.  Being rushed is what got me into this mess in the first place.  Being rushed is how the house started looking so bad.  Being rushed is how my house got filled with so much stuff. 

There was a time when I was under constant pressure to.... do more.... be perfect..... have more.... be more.... and the list goes on.  I lived by my "to do" list.  Each year, or maybe it was each month, the daily to do list got longer and longer.  After awhile the things to do became less about doing them well and more about just moving on to the next item of the list. 

There was a time when I would spend all the time needed doing a great job on a quilt, or making a rug, or fixing dinner, or sewing an outfit, or making cardboard furniture, or cleaning a room.  My life back then had some stress but the stress was manageable.  As I took on more and more to do's the stress became more of a daily feeling.  The stress became a part of me as I learned to live with it.  I kept telling myself I just needed to work faster and more efficiently. 

I kept telling myself I just needed to be more organized so I could get more done.  I figured out ways to organize so I could do more in a shorter time.  True, the new organizing did speed things up.  BUT, did I use the extra time to enjoy myself?  Heck no, I filled up the extra time with more to do's. 

Well anyway, this is getting to be a pretty winded post, my point is that.....  Life is much more important than a to do list.  I'm reminded of something my Grandma Mama said when I was a first time Mother.  She said "Cleaning and dusting can wait until tomorrow because children grow up we learn to our sorrow."   I should have listened to her advice.

Canning butter

Not long ago I had a type-talk conversation with someone about canning butter.  I told that person I used to do this. But, was it really only a childhood memory of what I thought I had done?  I remembered canning butter..... but was I really the one doing it?  Did my Grandma fix my mistakes when I wasn't looking?  I began to think my memory was.... hmm..... sort of like the memories Ladybug will have of doing things with me.  I know I helped my Grandma Mama canning butter but I couldn't remember the steps and I couldn't remember ever doing it all by myself.  This kept nagging at me.  I really wanted to know.... did I ever really can butter all by myself or not? 

I called my aunt to ask how Grandma Mama canned butter.  If anyone would remember how Grandma Mama canned butter, it would be her.  After a few minutes of family catching up conversation, I asked about canning butter and whether or not I had actually canned any all by myself.  What my aunt told me had me busting out loud at my light bulb (DUH!) moment.  My aunt said Grandma Mama made clarified butter and canned it.  Yes, I did help to make clarified butter and canned it but I never made it all by myself.  Grandma Mama would send me to fetch something at just the right moment and when I returned the most critical part of the process was already done.

My aunt explained the steps to me.  Clarified butter is a process of removing the milk solids from butter leaving only the fat.  Grandma Mama called it butter lard.  Lard of any kind will last for months without refrigeration.  If you use clarified butter regularly for cooking it rotates often.  Well, after all that wondering, I just had to do some myself.

I'm showing what I did with my butter but if you do an internet search for clarified butter (or ghee) you will find a ton of places with pictures or videos.  Clarified butter is used for cooking but would not taste very good if spread on toast.  It would be like spreading grease or lard on the toast.

Start by melting the butter in a pan over very low heat.  This is at the lowest setting I can get on my stove.  Whatever you do.... don't leave the stove while making clarified butter.  If you must leave then turn the stove off.

As soon as the butter is all melted it will start to foam.  Start gently stirring the butter to keep it from boiling over.  If the butter boils over and gets to the heat you could have a major fire on your stove.

Boil the butter for about 5 minutes while gently stirring.  It will start to separate as the milk solids start to fall to the bottom of the pot.  Keep cooking at a very gentle boil.  It will boil even on the stove's lowest setting.  I actually moved half the pot off the flame to lower the heat and it still boiled. 

Some people will tell you to skim off the foam on the top but I didn't.  I followed the steps given to me by my aunt.  She told me to let it boil for another 5 minutes after it started to separate.

Pretty soon the butter will look like this.  The milk part of butter has fallen to the bottom of the pot and the fat floats at the top.  It separates even more after the heat is turned off.

Pour this clear fat through some gauze fabric but stop pouring when you see the milk part start to go into the bowl.  If you loose a small part of the fat it's ok. You don't want even a little bit of the milk solids to be in the bowl.  You can throw the milk part away or use it in a recipe calling for lots of butter.  Hmm.... like maybe butter cookies.

Here's what the clarified butter looked like after straining it.

My aunt told me that if I wanted to can the butter for long term storage I should boil the butter fat again to remove the last remaining milk solids from it.  So I did.  Here you can see that it's starting to foam again.  This time I did skim the foam off with a spoon. 

By the time I had boiled it for another 5 minutes, while skimming, it looked very clear.  Strain through more clean gauze.

Pour it into clean canning jars.

Two pounds of butter made 1 1/2 pints of clarified butter.  This can be stored either on the counter for about 6 months or in the refrigerator for a couple of years.  As it cools it will become a soft-solid type of lard. 

If you want to store clarified butter for longer times you can water bath can it for 10 minutes.   The reason Grandma Mama canned her butter was because she had lots and lots of extra butter in the spring and a big family to feed.  We didn't have electricity either so no refrigerator.  It was canned to last until the following spring when milk would be plentiful again.  Grandma Mama canned her butter in half gallon jars.

At this time of year the cost of butter should be going down.  It's getting close to the season for butter.  Eggs too.  However, with the economy being so uncertain, and gas prices going up again, we can't be sure the price of butter will actually go down.  If you use butter for cooking really often, and happen onto a bargain, think about making clarified butter.  I plan to use mine when making biscuits that call for using lard.  Butter lard will give a really nice flavor to the biscuits. 

I'm so glad I cleared up the mystery of whether or not I was the one who made canned butter.  Now I can actually say I've done it all by myself. 

Mama made soap

Just for something different than talking about food so much; I thought today I would tell a story about my Grandmother that I called Mama. 

One of the things Grandma Mama did was make soap.  Actually, she made two kinds of soap.  One was a hard bar soap that made our skin very soft and another was a laundry soap.  Grandma Mama's laundry soap was nothing at all like the laundry soap I made myself about a year ago.  Her soap was a mushy brownish sort of stuff.  It was about the consistency of mayonnaise or pudding and didn't make bubbles at all.  It got the clothes very clean though. 

Washing was done by cooking boiling our clothes in a pot of water over an open fire, removing them to a tub of cooler water, and scrubbing on a wash board my Grandpa Papa had made.   There wasn't any electricity in our house back then.  When electricity was eventually run to the house Grandma Mama did get a wringer washing machine.  She thought it the best contraption ever made. 

Anyway, about the laundry soap Mama made.  She had a bucket sort of thing she used to make her lye.  I can't remember exactly the formula Mama used to make her soap but I do remember the way she made her lye...... sort of.    It's been a lot of years since I thought about this.

Papa had found a wedge shaped rock.  It was rough, not smooth.  Just something he found on the farm.   The rock was about 3 inches on the high side and about an inch on the low side and somewhere around two feet wide.  The rock looked sort of like this.

Into this rock Papa chiseled a groove in a somewhat round shape with another chiseled section going toward the short side of the rock wedge.  His circle was a lot rougher than my drawing.  The groove was about 1/4 inch deep.   The top of the rock looked sort of like this.

Behind the wash house was a makeshift bench table setting next to a rain barrel. The rock sat on this bench table with the edge of the rock just a bit beyond the edge of the bench.  On top of the rock sat a bottomless and topless wood bucket.  If I remember right, Mama's bucket was originally a cracker barrel cut in half and the bottom removed.   Hmm... it might have been a pickle barrel.  Anyway....

 The barrel bucket was just a  bit larger around than the groove Papa had carved into the rock.  Under the rock sat a small iron pot.   It all looked sort of like this. 

Inside the bottomless bucket Mama packed some straw about an inch or two deep.  On top of the straw she put a piece of muslin.  The muslin was just big enough to cover the bottom of the bucket and come up the sides a couple of inches.  On top of the muslin Mama put ashes from her cook stove.  She only used wood and corn cobs in the cookstove.  She filled the bucket up to about two or three inches from the top of the bucket.  I remember Mama would never use the coal ashes from the pot belly stove that heated the house.  I don't remember why though.  Maybe she didn't like the soap it made.

About once or twice a day Mama would put a couple of dippers full of water on the ashes.  The dipper held about a cup or so of water.  Hmm.... a dipper is what we used to get a drink of water from a water bucket.  You may have seen in old western type movies how people drank from a dipper?  Anyway, the water trickled down through the ashes, through the fabric and straw, into the groove, and down to the iron pot below creating a lye water.  The fabric and straw was to keep the ashes from going into the pot along with the lye water. 

Mama saved her kitchen grease by straining it through a piece of muslin.  Mama's cooking grease was lard she made herself.  After she used the lard over and over again enough times it started to get really brown looking.  When Mama thought it really was too brown to use for cooking anymore she saved it to make laundry soap.  When Mama thought the lye water was just right she would mix her old cooking lard into the lye pot.  Mama would spend a very long time sitting and stirring the lye lard mixture with a wooden spoon. 

How Mama knew just when the lye was right or how much lard to add, or how long to stir it, is a mystery to me.  The memory is lost along with other childhood memories.  Maybe it will come back to me later.... maybe not.  Mama stored her laundry soap in a pottery type bowl in the wash house.   If I remember right, after making soap Mama refilled the bucket with new straw, muslin, and ashes to start the process again.  

I hope you've enjoyed the story about my Grandma Mama. 

 

Old phone books

I can't remember if I ever posted how I use old phone books.  I'm pretty sure I did but I don't want to search the archives for it.  Anyway, it's good to go over some frugal ideas again for those who are new to reading my blogs. 

My neighbors save their old phone books for me.  I also get the new phone books from the porches of the empty houses on our block as soon as they are dropped there.  Ours are always covered in plastic but I like to get them before any dust or dirt can settle on the bags.

What do I use them for?  Lots of things.  If you've read my cardboard craft blog you know I use the pages to coat the furniture.  My grand daughter uses them for messies like playing with wall paper paste or home made finger paints or coloring pages. 

I use them to soak up grease from fried foods.  When I was a kid my grandmother used old Sears Roebuck catalogs to soak up grease.  We didn't have phone books in the days of a hand crank phone.  She saved the grease soaked pages to light a fire in the cook stove or the pot belly heat stove. 

   I use the pages for cleaning up spilled stuff from the floor or counters.  I clean mirrors and windows with them.  I polish things with them.  Hmm.... I use phone book pages like free paper towels.  Just about anything you use a paper towel for you can substitute phone book pages.   Phone book pages are actually quite clean except for the ink rubbing off sometimes.

I have another use for the phone book pages.  I write out my grocery list on them or use the pages like a note pad for jotting down things in a to do list.  Same thing my grandmother did with the Sears catalog.  Sometimes she wrote letters to far away family on the Sears pages.  She made her envelopes out of butcher paper.  Her grocery lists did not get thrown away after our trip to town.  My grandmother took the page to the outhouse to be used once more before getting thrown away.  We had a couple of extra Sears catalogs in the outhouse too. 

You might ask why use old phone books when note pads and paper towels are easily bought.  Well my thought is that Free is better than Cheap.  Even buying paper towels from a dollar store cheap can't beat the price of free.  Anything I absolutely don't think a phone book page should touch, I use a cloth towel.  Like wiping off Ladybug's hands and face.  I can't have ink streaks on a little face.  I use cloth. 

The way I figure it, each single phone book saves me about $60 to $80 because I don't buy paper towels to throw away.  Geeze, that's like wiping up a spill with paper money and throwing it away.  Have you noticed the cost of paper towels has gone up while the size of the rolls are getting smaller called down sizing?   Hmm... that's another subject. 

Every phone book I use also saves me a few dollars a year because I don't buy note pads.  Those $1 note pad purchases add up over time ya know?   I do keep a roll of paper towels here for guests or customers if needed.  I think I bought the one roll I have about 2 years ago. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting a use or two but I think you get the idea.

Remembering frugal days

I'm a naturally frugal person.  I drain the dish soap container then rinse the bottle by adding it to the next dish washing session so I don't waste anything. 

Now that I have a goal, I find that I'm remembering things I haven't done in years.  I'm amazed at all the money I spent because I was too busy quilting to be frugal OR because I felt it wasn't necessary anymore.  I mean really, I was earning money from quilting, why shouldn't I just pay for things instead of being so frugal?  I wish I knew then what I know now.

Don't get me wrong, I've always been frugal.  Just not as frugal as I could be because I didn't think I had to anymore.  For example:  I used to hang my wash on a clothes line in the back yard.  Then the trees got so big and the birds so plentiful that I started hanging the wash indoors.  Bird poop on clean clothes is not fun.  Then, I got a new dryer.  Wow!  I could put the clothes in the dryer and push a button in only a couple of seconds whereas hanging clothes on a line took several minutes.  I could get back to the quilting much faster using the dryer.  I was working so I could afford to pay the bill.

I should have realized I was working just to keep working.  Earning money to pay higher bills because I didn't have time to be frugal and work at the same time.  Ok, now that I know what happened I can change that.  I don't have nearly as many clothes to dry these days since it's only me now.   I'm gonna look for my old clothes drying rack.  It's here someplace.

Would you take the cash out of your wallet and put a match to it?  While watching the fireworks Sunday night that's what I kept thinking each time one of them would explode colors in the sky.  Someone had just lit a match to the money it cost to buy the fireworks.  Ok, I'm not an old foggie.  I realize fireworks are fun and I would buy a few.... but come on now.... three hours worth?  Not even the Thunder Over Louisville fireworks lasts three hours.  That was a lot of money going up in colored smoke.

I got my first harvest out of the small square foot garden.   It's not much but it's a start.  These got chopped and put into a pasta salad. 

My grandmother used to tell me stories about how it was during and after WW11 when there were shortages everywhere.  I was too little to remember the war.  People had victory gardens in all kinds of small spaces in the cities.  My grandparents lived on a farm so they didn't have a shortage of food.  Yet, she was very thrifty anyway. 

She would take me walking around the farm looking for wild foods.  In the early spring dandelions were our early salad greens.  The flowers were used to make dandelion wine to be used when we got winter colds.  Then later she looked for the polk salad greens.  She knew where the wild mushrooms grew and how to use a pitchfork to catch fish in the bottoms.  The bottoms were our fields at the bottom of the hills near the creek.  When spring rains caused the creek to flood, fish swam around happily in the fields.  As the floods started to go down, the fish would be caught in the rows of the field where we could catch them with a pitchfork.  We caught as many as we could and dried them to be used later.  We had to be careful to stay near the edge of the field or we would sink deep into the mud.

Grandma knew how to spot dew berries and blackberries growing wild so we could make cobbler or to can to use later.  She could point out wild lemon grass, onions, strawberries, and lots of other things that she dried for use in cooking.  Wild strawberry muffins in the winter were fantastic.  Grandma used cotton wood bark tea for digestive problems, Indian turnips for consumption, and dogwood branches as a toothbrush.  She gathered hickory nuts and walnuts.  She caught, dried, and smoked wild meat into jerky and ground her own cornmeal from her own corn.  Hmm... I think I remember it was popcorn she used, not the regular kind of corn, because she would go to the same corn grain box and get a handful to pop on winter days.

Kids today cringe at the thought of catching wild rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, turtles, or frogs to eat.  If it doesn't come in a plastic wrap it ain't food.  Hmm.... I seem to be rattling on and on today.  It's just nice to travel down memory lane once in awhile to remember the way we did things before the age of convenience.  Grandma would laugh at my meager first harvest but she would also be proud too.

No pictures.... just a story

Do you know what lifestyle inflation is? No? Well let me explain it. The lifestyle inflation concept is this...... you are living with your current paycheck. You are comfortable with the amount and all your bills are based on that amount. When you get a salary increase.... you also increase your spending by the amount of the new increase in your check. Each time you get another raise in salary you increase your spending. Thus.... lifestyle inflation.



When I was young; girls were expected to get married and have a family. Not once was I ever taught I should go to college and get myself a career. When a girl got a job it was believed her family needed the extra income and she was sent out to work to help the family. If a girl went to college it was only so she could find a professional type husband. Well, at least in my family that was the idea.



My grandparents... where I spent a lot of time when I was a child.... didn't have modern conveniences like indoor plumbing until the late 60s. They thought such things were foolishness.



When I was... oh maybe starting at about 6 years old.... I got paid to help pick crops on neighbor's farms. I was small which meant I was closer to the ground. It was easier to pay me to pick the low stuff than for a farmer to get a bad back from bending over all day. I was paid about 2 cents per container to pick fruits or vegetables which they sold to processing plants. A container was a basket. How big was a basket? I'm not sure but to a 6 year old it was hugh. I think it was maybe a bushel though.



My very first "real job" was as a cook when I was about 12. I worked for an aunt and uncle who owned the local hotel/restaurant in town. My main job was baking bread, biscuits, cakes, and pies for the meals the hotel served. I worked a full day and earned 3 dollars. I really thought I was "something" to earn that much money for doing what I did for free at home. I got to keep 2 dollars a week and the rest was given to the family. I was in high heaven to have that much money to spend on things I wanted.



I also helped clean the hotel or washed linins or washed dishes.... whatever needed to be done. The hotel had an indoor water pump and a wash room (laundry room). The water pump was operated by moving the handle up and down. You may have seen one of these pumps in western type movies. Washing was done by hand with a tub and scrub board. We heated the wash water on a coal fired stove in winter or a kettle on an outside fire in the summer.



I remember when my aunt bought a new fangled thing called a washing machine. She bought it from a traveling peddler that repaired pots and pans. The washing machine was like a barrel cut in half to make the U shaped tub. It had a paddle inside that the operator moved back and forth by moving a handle on the side. It also had rollers attached that would squeeze out the water from the clothes by turning a crank. I was soooo happy when I got to use the new washing machine instead of having raw hands. I could get the laundry done in record time.



But I'm getting away from the point of my story. Lifestyle inflation. Each time I moved up to a higher salary.... I spent it. I didn't understand about saving money for the future. I always thought I would get a husband and he would take care of me. I thought....Why did I need to save money when my husband will take care of me? I did have a hope chest though. A hope chest was just that.... a trunk or a chest that I put things into hoping I would eventually find a husband and I could use the things in my new life as a wife. I made quilts. I made linins. I bought dishes, silverware, pots, and these type things. The hope chest could also be considered a sort of dowery.



Well, as you know, I did eventually get a husband. He did indeed take care of me. He worked, I was a housewife. But, neither of us had ever been taught to keep a savings for future emergencies. When he earned more money.... we bought more and increased our lifestyle inflation. We taught our kids to be high consumers just like we were. We taught them.... by example.... to live a life of lifestyle inflation. I think many, many Americans taught their own kids this concept by example too.



Then along came credit cards. People no longer needed to wait for a raise to increase their lifestyle inflation. By simply filling out a form and signing up to be a slave to the credit card companies.... people got instant gratification. Yes, I do mean slave. When you sign away your future paychecks you are becoming a slave to someone. Your salary is no longer yours.... it's theirs. You work and they get the money.



Hmm.... another thought. Are you aware that if you buy a house with a mortgage you don't actually "own" the house? The mortgage company owns it. You are just renting it until you finish giving the mortgage company enough to pay for it.... then you own it.



If you open a business with a loan.... you don't "own" the business. You are just running the business for the loan company until the whole loan amount has been paid. At any time, the mortgage company or the loan company can take back what they are letting you use.



You might want to think about that concept for awhile the next time you think about your credit score. A credit score is your "slave potential" score. The higher the score.... the more slave worthy you are. Meaning you can get more instant gratification because credit companies know you are willing to be a slave much longer.



I think in our 2009 economic depression more people should think about less lifestyle inflation and more basic pay as you go. Meaning use cash instead of credit. If you don't have the cash..... start a savings and think of ways to increase the savings a little faster than just with a paycheck. Earn extra cash in some way to put into the savings. Does anyone remember the cookie jar savings accounts? I do. The cookies were pennies and nickles instead of actual cookies.



I'm hoping that some of the newly poor will turn to the idea of "repair man" type businesses. Does anyone remember shoe repair shops? How about appliance repair shops? We called them tinkers. Does anyone remember taking clothes to a seamstress for alterations? Or doing alterations ourselves? In my youth almost every woman owned a sewing machine and we made our own clothes.



Ok, I think I've rambled on enough for now. I have work to do that won't get done until I get in there and DO it. My groceries from yesterday's shopping need to be put away and some once a month cooking should be done today too.