Day 12: Canning Chicken, Homemade Bread

My son had already gone through 10 pints of chicken since the last time I put up chicken, so I brought his jars home and canned up another 10 pints. I'm canning another 10 pints tomorrow. I learned a long time ago that I'm not one of those mega canner people who are able to can can can can for 48 hours straight, I have to do it in spurts.

We ran out of store bought bread two days ago: DD19 has been doing tortillas because I didn't get far enough to do homemade bread then. Two loaves of homemade bread yesterday. I'm going to try using my Pampered Chef stoneware round bread crocks next time. There are two of them at my son's, and two here with us, so once I get the recipe and timing nailed down, I'll post it here. I need to heavily dose them with vegetable shortening until they season up, and I was out of that this time around.

Sun Oven group buy is happening! Exciting times! When the Excalibur dehydrator broke, DD19 asked if we will be able to dehydrate in the sun oven. Yes is the answer (since I'm buying the DPAP, see Day 11 post) but ironically she was asking when it happened to be pouring rain. I wish I had the money to buy two sun ovens, that way I could "cook" in one while the other was dehydrating. Oh well. One is better than zero.

DS20 was making homemade ramen the other day, and the "recipe" (is there a recipe for homemade ramen?) called for sprouts. He was like, "Mom, where can I get sprouts?" I said, "well, the natural foods store (come on, we live in Texas. It's not like a 'regular' store carries them) OR you could have your mother bring her sprouter and seeds down. I have two sprouters." He laughed and said "of course you do." I've never actually used them, but I do happen to know where they are ironically enough.

Other than bread, we haven't run out of anything, even dish soap and milk. I was really surprised, especially the milk, so it just shows me how much is wasted or used carelessly. I'm glad I'm blogging because I look back over these two weeks and can't figure out why it didn't feel any different than normal, especially since I tend to head into a grocery store daily. Somewhere along the line I missed a day of blogging too. Today is actually day 13 and the end of the challenge, but we're going to continue it through Sunday (which will be "Day 13's" post.

Oh and I found my stash of dish soap. And my heirloom hull-less oats, edamame seeds, adzuki bean seeds, spinach seeds. I think I'm going to have to put up my greenhouse. I am kind of freaking out about having a garden because we have snakes here in Texas~!!! Not okay with me, I can barely handle bugs in my garden. During the reorganizing I also found another box of bug traps! HALLELUJAH! I put them out immediately. There were several days when I almost broke the ban and went to the store to buy some.

Life Lesson for Day 12: Gather what you can, modify your behavior to stretch your supplies, and trust that it will all work out.

Vaya con Dios.