Wood stoves - Cook Stoves - what a beautiful dilemma

It's been a bit of a process but we've finally made up our minds what to do about the wood stove - cook stove dilemma we've (I've) been struggling with. I have written before about my absolute love of all things old and beautiful but I would NOT want an old stove because burn technology and heat shields  have come a long way in the past 25 years and I am concerned about safety above all.  

Our search had several criteria. 

1. It had to look good.  
2. It needed to be efficient.  
3. I would like to cook on it. 
4. The price needs to be taken into consideration.  

It may sound shallow but that was in order of importance!

We spent part of the past weekend  learning about wood stoves by visiting different wood stove dealers.  We asked lots of questions and were able to see - in person - some of the stoves I had researched on-line. The real dilemma in making the choice lay in what we want the stove for in the first place.  Our first priority is an alternative way to heat the house - the second is cooking.  I had to keep reminding myself of that goal.

My all time favourite is the Heartland Wood Cook stove - and who wouldn't love it???  It's even more beautiful in real life!  This is the stove I drooled over - almost literally...  The problem: It was pricey - about $7000.00 and It has a small firebox which means it needs to be restocked regularly and although many people use it to heat their homes I was looking for something that I could fill up and leave longer than the 7-8 hours max it is rated.  Chopping wood is not on my list of - I-can't-wait-to-do-this-some-more so if I gotta do the work then I want all the bang  for the buck I can get for my sweat equity. 

I've researched the most efficient wood stoves on the market in the past few weeks and came up with the Blaze King. It's Canadian-made wood stove with a catalytic system built right in to create less emissions and therefore less creosote.  In some cases it allows for a 40 hour burn! Wow - that's impressive.  I watched all the videos on Blaze King I could find.  Great technology.  The problem: it is the ugliest stove you have ever seen and it didn't improve AT ALL in person.  It's a big square ugly box and no matter how I squinted I could never imagine it in my dining room and therefore who cares what it costs :)  If it was out of sight - i.e.  a basement or a garage - it would be my first choice.



One of the others I wanted to see was the Esse cook stove.  This stove made in the UK has great reviews for heating a home and cooking.  It looks nice too.  I liked it but the price tag of $7000.00 was more than my budget could bear.

So - we needed to look for something else.  We stopped in a place called Friendly Fires in Peterborough and walked into WOODSTOVE-COOKSTOVE-GAS-STOVE-BBQ HEAVEN!  We found really nice people who really knew what they were talking about.  We got the most answers to our questions of all our stops and they took their time to explain everything without making us feel we were taking too long (or we were dumb - which of course we were!)

All through this process I had my conversation with Michelle Mather in the back of my mind.  Last year she pointed out that having a cookstove as your main cooking appliance meant you would have to fire up the beast in the middle of the summer in order to cook - oh yeah. Her suggestion was to get a good quality woodstove - and she and her husband Cam recommended the Pacific Energy Brand (and later get a gas cookstove that looked like the cookstove of my dreams. oooh!)  

After looking at many other brands we settled on one made by Pacific Energy - the Alderlea. 

Built around Pacific Energy’s legendary Super Series steel firebox, the Alderlea T5 combines the very best features of both cast iron and steel stoves. Elegant, historic cast iron styling that adds to the decor of any room, radiant and convective heat, huge glass for a full view of your fire, a concealed cook top for peace of mind during power outages all in a proven easy- lighting, clean, long-burning heater with 30 years of wood stove technology behind it.

Matt - they guy we talked to at Friendly Fires mentioned hat one of the other men who worked there had guided the purchase of wood stoves for his whole family and wouldn't let them buy anything BUT an Alderlea because as a repair man he KNEW that these were the least likely to break down, the easiest to fix if they did and the most efficient.  Apparently people who own one never want anything else - even 20 years later they are coming back for the same stove.  Well - that was the kind of recommendation we were looking for. It's also pretty, it has a swing out cook top and the price of $2500.00 was more within the budget range.  

Our stove chimney will go straight up through the ceiling of the dining room, through the corner of second floor family room and out the sloped roof - the install cost was quoted at around $3000.00.  Spending that kind of money I think it's worth our while to purchase a really good stove rather than put an old stove in and hoping for the best.  I feel very confident the Alderlea will last for many years and safely do the job with style.

Soon we will have one more step done in the plan to be more self sufficient!


  

Morning Tea

I am a blessed woman to have a husband that has always worked at home.  One of the special joys that it brings is time for starting our day together with a cup of tea.  We usually discuss what we need to do that day, spend some time reading a short devotional and praying for our kids and whatever other needs are pressing that day.


A few years ago we were seeing a alternative health practitioner who suggested that DH drink at least 8 different teas a day for his health - my eyes bugged out as I thought - ARE YOU NUTS??? Who has time to drink 8 cups of tea a day.  I LIKE tea and I don't drink that much plus the idea of having to remember the multiple kinds and I was about ready to give up until one day I had an idea.  I'm sure this isn't new to some of you but it was to me! I put all the tea bags in one tea pot and we were done in 1 large cup of tea.  I had been buying organic boxes of tea bags at the health food store - at 8 bags a day it was getting ridiculously expensive.  I knew some of them where things I could grow at home eventually but I had too much on my plate to figure it all out at the time. I'm giving myself until these herbs run out to figure out growing my own!


So I went on line and ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs.  I went a little nuts and it still was cheaper by far than all those organic boxes of tea I used to buy.  They had great customer service and had my package here in record time considering it had to cross the border.

I used the labels from the bags the herbs came in to decorate the jars.

I bought:

1lb Parsley Leaf organic

1lb Ginger Root organic

1lb Milk Thistle Seed organic

1lb Dandelion Root organic

1lb Turmeric Root powder organic

1lb Echinacea Purpurea Herb organic

1lb Raspberry Leaf organic

1lb Rosemary Leaf organic

1lb Peppermint Leaf organic

1lb Elder Berries organic

1lb Eyebright organic

1lb Alfalfa sprouting seed organic

1lb Broccoli sprouting seed organic

1lb Lavender Flowers organic

1lb Mullein Leaf organic

1lb Oatstraw organic

1lb Rosehips organic

Ahh by the way- 1 pound of mullein leaves is a LOT of mullein!  This whole buying by the pound and not by eye-balling the bag gets me every time!   some of the things I bought are for other purposes than tea but I'll let you know about that later.

I mixed 1 cup of each of the herbs I wanted and put it all in one jar - ready for making tea with just one scoop.  Everything is good so far.

Brewing this tea was another thing.  I tried filtering it through cheese cloth - it worked but was very messy.  I thought about sewing individual re-usable tea bags but dismissed the idea as too labour intensive.   I tried my whole collection of tea balls - some of which are really cute but it always left a little pile a debris in the bottom of my cup.  Fussy huh?

One day while out for a date with DH I came across a RED Bodum.  Hey - I wonder if THAT would work?  Well it does and splendidly!  If you've never seen one before you put the tea leaves in the bottom and pour boiling water over them.  Then you place the top on with the plunger up.  After it steeps for awhile press the plunger to the bottom and pour the tea.

Now I can pour my lovely herbal tea out of my RED Bodum into my huge RED mug and I am a happy girl every morning drinking tea with DH.

 These are the little habits that make each day special.  We both drink ours with stevia for a sweetener and he ruins his by putting milk in it.

Home-made Liquid Hand Soap

Home-made Liquid Hand Soap is simple to make, comes in your favorite scent and will save you money. However,  I  started out with another goal in mind that was actually the most important one for our family: dirty farm hands that never smelled clean.  I like to be frugal where I can but if a product doesn't do the job it's not worth the money.  I had been buying the massive jugs of cheap liquid hand soap because I had priced them out by weight and found them to be the best value for my money.  Soap is soap right?  Apparently not.  Since I don't have a sense of smell I didn't KNOW it wasn't working very well until my son mentioned that he would wash his hands and then use hand sanitizer to get rid of the lingering-odours.

I think hand sanitizer has it's place in this world but using it everyday was overdoing it in my mind.  so - what to do?  Well one day my son used the laundry sink to wash his hands - probably because the bathroom was busy and he used the bar of Linda soap I had on the counter for rubbing on stained clothes.  He was quite happy to find his hands smelled CLEAN - no sanitizer required.  We brought the Linda soap into the bathroom thinking we had found the answer but it created another problem - yellow gunk all over the counter top from the wet bar of soap.  If it was the only problem I had in life I'm sure I could live with it - ha - but then I had an idea!

...Make my OWN liquid soap.  A quick search around the internet and I had dozens of choices for how-to and so I mixed and matched until I came up with this one.  I used my laundry-making-pot and grater to grate 1/2 a bar of Linda Laundry Soap - found in the grocery stores isle for less than $1.50 a bar.  I added 2 1/2 quart sized canning jars of water to the pot (about 8 cups) and set it to simmering until the soap bits were all melted.  Then I added 2 tablespoons of liquid glycerin found in the band-aid section of a drug store (it's apparently used for the relief of chapped skin...)

Let the whole pot cool down and use an immersion blender or hand mixer to mix and get rid of any chunks.  When cool - but not before because it forms a skin as it cools - pour into a used soap pump container.  

Cost breakdown: 

* Linda soap 1/2 a bar - .50 - .75 cents

* Glycerin 250ml bottle is $5.99 - 2 tablespoons per recipe (8 total per bottle) .75 cents a recipe.

So for $1.50 max I have three jars of hand soap and very clean hands.

The great thing is this works with any bar soap so if you have a favorite bar soap - you can use it instead of Linda soap.  Since every soap is made of differing amounts of fat - you did know there was fat in soap right? - the recipe may need more or less water but this can be adjusted after the melting and cooling stage.  

It took about 20 minutes total to make this while I was cleaning up the kitchen - worth it?  I think so.

EAT-TO-THE-BOTTOM-OF-THE-FREEZER challenge

Ahh January - my least favorite month of the year.  Generally speaking I don't feel the need to escape anywhere - I just simply don't want to go outside any more than absolutely neccesary - like not even to the grocery store. The out-of-doors is cold and snowy and icy and I would rather be warm, drinking tea and reading a good gardening/farming/how to raise better chickens book. It's has therefore become my annual EAT-TO-THE-BOTTOM-OF-THE-FREEZER-MONTH.

This is also my reality check whilst I am reading seed catalogues.  Every year I fall in love with all the pretty pictures - things like kaleidoscope swiss chard are just so enticing but what does one actually DO with swiss chard.  It's one of those things that end up at the bottom of the freezer in little plastic baggies that in their frozen state could easily be mistaken  for rhubarb - I can assure you it does not taste like rhubarb no matter how much sugar you add!

I used to have a chest freezer for my main freezer. We put it on cement blocks when we moved here because of it's location in a basement - better safe than sorry if the basement ever flooded because there's no moving a full freezer in a hurry.  The extra height made it next to impossible to deal with the contents on the bottom even for a tall person like myself - after the first foot or so - food just disappeared into the black pit never-to-be-seen-again.

My least favorite month is also usually a lean one for our family - it seems our business invoices get buried on someone's desk around Christmas time and they don't get un-buried (and therefore paid) until February.  This has led to some of the most creative meals I have ever put together being presented for our dining pleasure in the cold month of January.  It's a good thing stews, chili and soups are comfort foods designed for this time of the year. They are tailor-made for hiding items like swiss chard- we don't really EAT swiss chard I just spend my time using every trick I know figuring out how to get rid of it!

Every EAT-TO-THE-BOTTOM-OF-THE-FREEZER-MONTH  challenge is different.  Some years we did it out of sheer financial necessity and others out of a desire to save money for something else but the rules were mostly the same - no shopping at the grocery store except for fresh fruit and veggies.  It's become a habit - a good one I think.  I remember nearing the end of one of our challenges and finding several bars of good chocolate - no doubt put away for a special recipe at Christmas and forgotten - after a month without easy access to store bought treats we all agreed it was heavenly!

We recently bought a more energy efficient upright freezer - oh what a glorious improvement on both fronts!  It saves us money on electricity and you can actually see what's in it - imagine that!  But the EAT-TO-THE-BOTTOM-OF-THE-FREEZER challenge will remain for old-times sake and because I've grown to love the challenge of it.

Now back to my cup of tea and my Veseys seed catalogue.  Oohhh look... wouldn't you know it - they now have one called Rhubarb Organic Swiss Chard...and aren't those Bulls Blood Organic Beets beautiful!!

Food storage: Eating what you store - oatmeal

So - how are you doing getting around to eating all that food in your food storage??  You have started right? Anything in your food storage that you haven't really added to your main menu? Some things are easy to incorporate and others we needed a little help getting into the habit of using regularly.  Since storing boxes of cereal is bulky and expensive I knew we needed to start eating hot cereal more regularly.  I like oatmeal but other things seem easier when I'm tired and not quite awake.

One of my goals in life is to make the mundane thinks in life run on auto pilot so I cooked up this way of having my cereal and eating it too.  One of the grains I store lots of is oats - my favorite kind is the steel cut variety and it has a great storage life (12-15 years if stored properly).  There are several other options for oats all of them good and healthy but the instant ones are the least nutritious.  Steel cut oats take a little longer to cook so I had to find a way to make it simple and automatic.  Enter the humble crock pot.  I have a smaller sized crock pot that works really well for this - it holds about 6 cups in total.  The larger crockpots work better if you double the recipe or add extra water. When teamed with a timer I am all set.

This is a simple recipe that can be changed a million ways to suit your tastes. The idea is that you put it together as soon as you clean out the crockpot from the day before. The grains soak throughout the day and the timer turns it on so it's ready to eat the next morning. 

Makes 2-4 servings

1 cup steel cut oats (you can use part quinoa, millet or anything else you like)

Opt. chai seeds, almonds, flax seed, etc.

1 tbsp. of lemon juice

1 tbsp. wheat or kamut flour

4 cups lukewarm water

Rinse the oats under cold running water for a few seconds.  Place everything in the clean crock pot.  The soaking time in the room temperature water along with the acid (lemon juice) and the flour helps to make the oats and seeds more digestible by starting the sprouting process which means you'll get more nutrition out of your food.  The flour may seem like a strange addition but it contains an enzyme that neutralizes the coating on the grains that prevents them from spoiling and that kickstarts the sprouting into gear.

  

Use a timer to turn the crockpot on at 2am and off at 8am.(or change the times to suit your breakfast habits) Cook on LOW. It's ready to eat after approx. 6 hours but it won't hurt it to sit longer. If you forget to turn it on or the timer gets messed up and doesn't turn after a power outage you can cook it on HIGH for about an hour and a half or until its as done as you like it.

Top each bowl with any of the following:

Flax seed oil, Udo's oil, butter

walnuts, raw cashews, coconut

Dehydrated or fresh apples, blueberries, strawberries etc.

Cinnamon, ginger

Raw honey, agave syrup, stevia to taste

Add anything else that you are supposed to eat every day and forget to eat like wheat germ, bran etc.

A healthy breakfast that gets you started on the road to STORING WHAT YOU EAT AND EATING WHAT YOU STORE.

A Price book

We have a large number of teenagers and young adults that stay with us for periods of time.  Teenagers eat a lot.  Like hollow legs and empty pits they are always looking for something to fill them up.  So having a large pantry means that I know I can handle kids and company without having to wonder if I can afford to feed them or whether all I have to give them is my last can of lima beans - which they are more than welcome to - lima-beans-aren't-my-favourite!  That's the polite way of expressing your dislike of any food in this house - you're not allowed to say I hate it!


A common statistic tells us that the average person has three days of food in the house.  I can't quite imagine it.  I don't like shopping so much that I would want to go every three days and I KNOW me - without a list and a plan I would spend waaaaay too much money...and yet the reason I hear the most often why people don't have food storage is that they can't afford it.  Money can be an issue when you're trying to stock up but like any issue in life it all comes down to priorities and choices.  We decided this was a priority.  Like health insurance or life insurance - food insurance makes sense to me.


I've written before about my belief in a large pantry and why I have one - teenagers and company being only one of the reasons (how about temporary job loss, the ability to bring a family in need a meal on the spot, or the security of knowing that as prices rise you have grocery insurance)  http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com/2011/09/stocking-large-pantry-food-storage.html but now I want to share the method I use to build my food storage pantry that's really simple and saves me money. 


I figured out that we are creatures of habit and I suspect most of us are the same.  We eat the same meals over and over with a few exceptions.  This is GREAT news for food storage because it makes it less complicated to figure out what you need to stock up on.


I'll use Spaghetti and meatballs in this example.  First I break down the whole meal into ingredients.


So for one meal I would need:
2 cans of pasta sauce
1 package of pasta
1 tsp. of Italian spices
1/4 cup of parmesan cheese
1 box meatballs (frozen or home canned for this example)


So to make this meal 6 times I would need a case of 12 pasta sauce, 6 packages of pasta, a few Tbsp of Italian seasoning and maybe a whole container of parmesan if someone gets a little shake-happy with the container.


Average regular prices for
pasta sauce - $1.99 for the canned stuff
pasta - over $2.00 a package
Italian spices - negligable
1 container of parmesan $8.00
6 boxes or other of frozen meatballs - anywhere from $6-10 depending on brand which is why it's a great idea to make your own but that's another post.

If you chose 6 more meals like the one above you would soon have more than a months' worth of dinners in your pantry! 


So we know the regular prices but what we need to know is what the best sales prices are.  This is where the PRICE BOOK comes in. It is simply a way of tracking the lowest price on a specific item and also keeping track of when it went on sale and which store had it on sale.


All stores have seasonal sales - canned pumpkin is more often on sale in the fall when pumpkins are plentiful and Thanksgiving and Christmas create a demand. Stores also have rotating sales - for example cheese goes on sale every 6 weeks around here. The regular price could be anywhere from $7-9 dollars for a 500gr. brick of Black Diamond cheddar however it regularly goes on sale for $4.44  and sometimes there's a really great deal at $3.97. I buy enough for my family to last till the next sale and I always eat "on sale" cheese. The price book tells me what is a good price, what is a great price and approx. how long I will have to wait till the next sale.

So let's say we eat a brick of cheese a week and the sale cycle is 6 weeks long.  I would need 6 bricks of cheese.  At the regular price of $7.00 a brick I would pay a total of $42.00.  At the sale price of $4.44 I would pay $26.64.  When it's on a sale for $3.97 - only $23.82.  That would save me at least $20.00 on cheese alone.  Of course not eating so much cheese would help too!!


The same idea works for canned or boxed or frozen food we used in the spaghetti and meatballs example above.  I know I can save at least 40% on the spaghetti and meatballs meal by using my price book, buying when items are on sale and not paying full price.


Getting started requires a little extra thought and rearranging of your grocery spending.   I suggest you add another $20.00 to your food budget if you can and then use the savings to build up a larger amount that will be on hand to make purchases by the case.  It will take some time but eventually you will be eating most food items that have been bought on sale! The Price Book will also help you to not be easily deceived by advertised specials.  Just because the item is on the end-cap with a big red sticker doesn't mean it's a great deal.


Here's what to do:
• Start by saving all of grocery store receipts.  Keep them all in one place and after several weeks you'll be able to see what you buy regularly.
• Purchase a small three-ring notebook or binder. Something that fits in your purse or your pocket is the right size or perhaps a section of a daytimer if you carry one.
• Use you most repeated meals to make your initial list for your price book. No sense knowing the price of canned pumpkin if you never eat it or the cost of a box of salt that you buy once every two years..
• Start a page for each major category. Keep it simple at the beginning - you can add more pages later. Canned Food, Boxed Food, Fresh Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Dairy Products, and Snacks.
• Create columns for listing your comparison information. You not only want to compare price but also keep track of which store offers that price. It should look like this.

Store Name	Brand/Size	Unit Price	Sale price	Date of Sale
No Frills	Black Diamond 500gr.	.88/100gr.	$4.44	October 6-12
Superstore	Black Diamond 500gr.	.79/100gr.	$3.97	Nov. 18-24

• Most grocery stores have the unit price displayed on the scanner code below the item on the shelf - save your brain and make use of them!
• Bring your Price Book with you when you go shopping.
• When you see something on sale that you eat regularly buy extra.  A few cans or a few cases depending on your budget and how much you want to store.
• Continue to save your grocery receipts and use them to update your Price Book.  I've noticed the cost of food rising more because of what I've written in my price book than anything else!
• All stores have loss leaders and special sales so there really isn't one store that can be the cheapest all the time.  Don't let their marketing convince you that you need to stay loyal to that particular store - I am loyal to the particular price.


Combine the Price Book idea with some Menu planning and you have a winning combination..

Homemade Laundry Soap

Saving money is most times easier than making it and I have found a way to save LOTS of money.  In our home we seem to have mountains of laundry to be done but my honest first thought when I heard about making my own soap was - all I need is one-more-thing-to-do...was the extra work going to be worth it? 

I decided to give it a try for several reasons.  The first was my ongoing struggle with allergies.  I seem to be allergic to the strangest things and at times have a wallop of an attack.  Life with allergies is no fun so over the years I have looked at nearly everything I come into contact with to see if there was some way I could mitigate the allergic response.   The second reason is financial - we seemed to be constantly buying or running out of laundry soap.  Even though the cheapest brands weren't always satisfactory they seemed to give me less of an allergic response than the big name brands perhaps because there was less scent.  Homemade laundry soap has very little scent to it except clean. The third reason is storage which I will explain in a moment.

Making your own laundry soap might seem like something super-homesteading-large-family-enviromental-frugal people do.  Well - perhaps - but it's so simple it doesn't matter what your reasons are - this stuff is fantastic and inexpensive and doesn't make me itch or sneeze (except when grating the soap!) and it super-simple-easy to make and it can be used in a HD washing machine because of the minimual amount of suds AND it does a GREAT job of cleaning your clothes.

Here's what to do:
In a large pot on the stove combine:

about 8 cups of water

1 bar of Linda laundry soap grated

1 cup Borax

1 cup washing soda

All these items are easily found in most grocery store laundry aisles - you've probably just not been looking for them.

I use a pot that is exclusively used for making laundry soap - use an old one or buy on at a thrift store.  some people say this is not necessary if you clean the pot out really well after you make it - you decide.  I also use a dollar store grater for grating the Linda soap - it's hard to clean afterwards so don't use it for food!

Over low heat and stirring often mix the contents until they are completely dissolved for about 20 minutes. Leaving it on the stove longer won't hurt it - but any shorter and you may not have it completely dissolved.

Add this mixture to a 5 gallon pail and fill the pail till about 2/3 full with hot water.  That doesn't sound very exact and that is because it doesn't seem to need to be.  Stir using a whisk, immersion blender or a hand mixer - whatever you have.  It should turn into a gel by the next day when it cools completely or it may look a bit watery like cottage cheese but either way it cleans your clothes very well.  You can re-blend it if it bothers you.  That's all there is to it! 

Use about 1/16 cup - a heaping tablespoon for the more visual among us - I have a small plastic scoop beside the bucket. If the clothes are particularly greasy or dirty use a little more.

The cost is approx. .05c a load by my last calculations. A pail like that lasts us at least three months (that of course depends on how many loads your family does each month) 

How does it save money???

Linda soap bar: $1.49 a bar
2kg. Borax: less than $5.00 (8.5 recipes)
3 kg. Washing soda: less than $5.00 for 13 recipes

But think about this... if you bought:
13 bars of soap $20.00
2 boxes Borax $10.00
1 box Washing soda $5.00
For a total of less than $35.00 you could make the recipe 13 times which would be enough for more than 3 years (39 months to be exact!)
That's less than $1.00 a month..

Can you see why I love this stuff!  We've been using homemade laundry soap for 5 or 6 years and I wouldn't switch back for any reason.  Frugal.  Practical.  Simple.