Oct
2024

How To Freeze Dry Herbs

categories: freeze drying, YouTube
how to freeze dry herbs

Herbs in cooking are like icing on a cake: it makes your food just that much better. The flavor of freeze-dried herbs is strong, flavorful, and superior to any air-dried herb. The bold flavor and fresh color brighten any dish you bring to the table. Freeze dried herbs are the closest option to having fresh herbs growing in your garden or on your windowsill.

Tools for Freeze Drying Herbs

(more…)

Oct
2023

How To Freeze Dry Pears

categories: food, freeze drying, YouTube

Whether you have pears trees, buy in bulk , or find a great price locally, freeze drying pears is a great way to preserve the harvest. Today I’m sharing not only how to freeze dry pears, but also my freeze drying routine/schedule, and how eat freeze dried pears. Freeze Dried foods has a longer shelf life than canned or fermented foods – lasting up to 30 years, so it is a great way to preserve food seasonally, financially speaking, and for the highest nutritional value.

(more…)

Aug
2023

Sourdough Pizza: Quick and Easy Discard Recipe

categories: food, recipes

This sourdough pizza discard recipe is an un-recipe; more like a method and you just take it and run with it! Honestly, if this is on the menu, I purposely feed my sourdough to accommodate growing children ’round here. This pizza was born out of a no-food-in-the-fridge what can I make, kinda lunch. It was a huge hit, so it’s become an easy, quick staple lunch; just like my snack tray lunches.

I like to use my cast iron pan and homemade tallow or lard when making sourdough pizza because I personally like to pop it into the oven after I add the toppings. This sourdough pizza has a soft texture and the tallow (or lard) will give the outside a little crunch. The oven is optional, but you will want a pan with a lid to make sure the cheese melts before serving.

(more…)

Jul
2023

How To Freeze Dry Apples and Our 3 Favorite Varieties

categories: food, freeze drying, YouTube
how to freeze dry apples

We eat apples all year, but there is nothing like a fresh apple picked from the tree! If you are looking for a way to buy in bulk and process apples this year (and you have a freeze dryer) freeze drying apples is a wonderful way to preserve apples when they taste the freshest.

I have been buying freeze dried snack for years as an alternative to processed baby snacks, but since investing in a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer now the whole family can enjoy a variety of freeze dried snacks! We did a family experiment freeze drying a different variety of apple on each of the freeze dryer trays during our first run to see what our favorite varieties were. I’ll share below how each of the apples rated!

I will also share links to the tools I use and how to keep them fresh in the pantry.

(more…)

Jun
2023

My Top 8 Must Have Summer Products from Beautycounter

categories: beauty, health
beautycounter summer products

Summer is here, which means lots of sun, low-key makeup, and easy skincare routines. I’m sharing my top must have summer products today including verified, non toxic sunscreen, makeup products for those date nights, and my favorite product to help you skin glow. If you are new to Beautycounter you can also get 20% off your first order with the coupon code CLEANFORALL20.

Essential For Aging Gracefully

I went on the hunt for products that were both non toxic and could help my dry, dull, aging skin. It was quite literally 1 night of using Beautycounter products that I quickly became a consultant. I didn’t want others to sacrifice their health for the sake of beauty. I hadn’t heard of Beautycounter before my own search and I became an advocate to share the importance of choosing safe products, especially when we using personal care products on a daily basis. Not only safer products, but products that actually helped my skin glow, and look beautiful again, as I enjoy aging gracefully.

beautycounter summer products
(more…)

May
2023

Azure Standard Bulk Buying: 6 Month Review

categories: food, homemaking
bulk buying with azure standard

The rising food costs and trying to move back into an “ingredient-based” pantry I have been paying more attention on where to get the best prices. Not only have I found grocery items, but some of my household items are available and less expensive through Azure Standard. On top of the prices, buying in bulk (a larger quantity or in multiples of 3) has help build my pantry storage up little by little without overspending.

Azure Standard has been around for decades, but the company has grown a lot in the last couple of years when people really started to look into bulk buying, me included!. They are a co-op based out of Oregon, but have routes throughout the United States they drive every month; this makes bulk buying Non-GMO and organic products more widely available to everyone.

Changing things like shopping once or twice a month versus weekly shopping trip helps too. Paying more attention to which the biggest area (meat, produce, dairy, etc) has been a big help when trying to manage food inflation also! Bulk buying has never made more sense than it does in these times and Azure Standard makes the process easy.

(more…)

Feb
2023

How to Make Lard from Our Bulk Hog Purchase

categories: Fill Your Freezer February, food, homemaking

Buying meat in bulk from a butcher is more cost effective as long as you have the freezer space to do so. This last time I bulk ordered meat I requested to have some of the extra fat packaged up. The butcher adds some fat to the ground pork, but otherwise it would either go to waste or they would use if to make and resell lard in their shop own shop.

We have bought meat in bulk for YEARS, but until recently we had never known to request the fat to make our own lard (and tallow– from beef)!

(more…)

Jan
2023

Home Manager Binder: Keeping Track of What We Eat and Use

categories: homemaking, YouTube

During the pandemic I was able to mostly keep on our pantry and household needs, but I was never able to really get a rotating stock our pantry and linen closet. Add in the fact we had baby number six in the spring last year and I just continued to buy what we need, when we needed it. Therefore, my big homemaking goal of 2023 is to keep an inventory of what we use and consume so we can work on stocking the pantry and linen closet (toiletries). Enter: The Home Manager Binder.

Not only do I want to get a good rotation system down I needed a way to track how much we need for a 3 months/6 months/12 month supply for our large family. This will also help me when items go on sale, especially for those items we rotate through quickly.

(more…)

Dec
2022

Why We Do a Christmas Gift Exchange with Our Children: 5 Lessons We Are Teaching

categories: Holidays, kids

The floor is covered in wrapping paper, under the tree is already bare, and the children were happily engaged with all their new gifts… for approximately 25 minutes. As parents we felt frustrated after the time, thought, and money into buying, wrapping, and stating up way to late for the children to not fully enjoy the lesson Christmas could teach them. 

A few years ago on a whim we decided to put Christmas in the hands of our children. 

We decided to do a gift exchange with our children, and it has changed the atmosphere of what “the season of giving” means through in a real, tangible way. What started on a whim a few years ago has turned into a tradition our family (children especially!) look forward to. 

If prompted our children could still recall who they given gifts to and what they bought each other over the year the last few years! 

We don’t do this in addition to a bunch of gifts from mom and dad; we do this instead of buy each of our children a bunch of stuff. We buy a “family gift” as our gift to our children- one that everyone can enjoy.

As a mother of six now, I have to say our children look forward to guessing who they will get, hoping who will get them, and (sometimes) bummed when they get the same person, again.

gift exchange with children
(more…)
Accessibility by WAH