Food52

Last week I had the privilege of reviewing the Food52 Cookbook. I was immediately in love. All the recipes from the book are on their website Food52. It's an amazing site. They have a section called Dinner and a Movie. The author pairs older movies with recipes from the website. I don't necessarily agree with all the choices and I might be moved to start my own dinner and a movie post once a month just because.
I recommend visiting the site and sign up for free membership so you can save the wonderful recipes you find.
I know sharing a website is a bit of a cop out but I am in the middle of experimenting with recipes and just don't have anything to share with you today. Tomorrow I will share my applesauce cake. It's a good base cake and still needs some tweeking but I think as a recipe it works. I'll have some recipes for you Monday through Wednesday next week but will be taking Thursday and Friday off. I'll resume the normal schedule November 28th and should have a bunch of new things to share.

Changing Focus (just a little bit)

This blog is a passion of mine and over the last week I took time to really decide what was best for me and the goals I have. With that, I have decided to change the focus of this blog, slightly. I have always favored low cost meals with keeping nutrition and special diets in mind. Over the last six months, my family has learned how to survive on a plan that gives us about $100 a month for groceries. We get $88 in food stamps and then pick up items now and again as we have needs or extra funds (never resulting in that much more being spent). We are a family of three - one being a 14 year old boy.
It's work to keep us well fed but I have learned a lot of tricks over the years and thought it might be a good time to really share how I make it work. So in addition to recipes and the few things I spatter here and there, I will share the techniques I use to keep our budget low.
A few disclaimers:
I have the world's largest stockpile of powdered milk. Because I make bath products and powdered milk is often given in commodities, friends have given me thier supply of powdered milk because they couldn't use it. This has come in handy lately because we no longer are buying milk.
The other thing I use is my family. I often tell my mom I shop at her house. When she moved recently she uncovered a pantry so full (okay multiple pantries) so we inherited a good deal of canned goods and we keep offering to take more off her hands. This has helped get us through some tight spots. In return, I send things to my mom and dad like baked goods, canned goods or bath products so maybe it's more of a barter system than an all out gift.
Some of the things I will be sharing in the following days/weeks: how I meal plan, how I shop, protein choices, foraging, canning, and, of course, recipes. With this, I will potentially have two posts in a day on occasion as I share a tip and a recipe.

Coming Soon!

Doing the Irish recipes for 17 posts brought a lot of things to my attention. The first was that I realized that I can post here on a more regular basis without much trouble. The weekends are a little chaotic for me but through the week shouldn't be a problem. Also, having a theme made me put other recipes on the back burner leading me to come up with some other ideas of what I would like to share.
This past weekend I volunteered with the Red Cross at a Community Preparedness Fair and got to thinking about household preparedness and sharing some of that information with others. I don't want to dedicate an entire blog to preparedness - not because I don't think it's a viable topic but because there are other great blogs about the topic and I really don't need to add another blog to my schedule.
So I decided to kind of make themed days - Monday, Wednesday, Friday I will post a recipe that I have experimented with. (I want to make it clear that most recipes I play with have come from somewhere else but since I put all my found recipes in a computer file I rarely remember where they came from. I try to credit as I can but most of the time it just won't happen and I apologize for any confusion.)
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will share something food or household related. That might be a product I found that I can't live without, a tip or technique or anything else I can think of. I will, also, share some food information. If there is a particular fruit or vegetable that you have not tried and would like information about - let me know and I will blog. I think it's important to remember that food is part of a household and part of a life. Eating well on a budget means more than beans and pasta. It's my goal to weed out all the extra expense and still eat well.