Could be now, but definitely for future use.

 So not waxing political.  I'm just wanting to give some tips and tricks to folks who are currently on food stamps and facing no food stamps for November.  This information, while initially for current EBT recipients, is also useful for anyone facing a financial emergency that takes grocery money out of their bank account.  I've been there.  I've been on food stamps.  When my daughter was a baby I was on food stamps for a few months after the company I worked for closed and moved to North Carolina.  I took a job at McDonalds to get off of them. I will say this.  Be careful who you let control your food, housing, and healthcare. These are things that are essential for living.  It's best to be in control of them yourself.  

Okay.  All that being said; there are times when there's no choice but to get help from Uncle Sam.  This post is to help strengthen you and your family during that time as well as those in a bind financially.  I've been there too!  More than once!  

**When it comes to scratch cooking, I have many recipes on this page, as well as "How to's".  

Regardless of food stamp "money" or your own money, these tips will help you get through any financial crisis. First lets get you through this one.  

1.  Food Banks/Pantries- I know it's not ideal, but look at food banks in your area.  There are also churches that have food pantries.  Many of these offer canned or shelf stable products to people in need.  This is because they can be donated and stored until they are given to those in need of them.  In the food pantry where I served, we always tried to think of staples with the boxes: canned vegetables, canned meats, peanut butter, oil, salt, flour, sugar, etc.  With those items many different meals can be created.  

2.  Scrounged money-  Your family has to eat, so if you have a few dollars, great.  If you don't, some things will have to go by the wayside so groceries can be brought in.  Streaming services that are about to come out; cancel them.  Any unnecessary expenses need to be put on hold: gym membership, hair dresser, nail salon, date nights out, etc.  Your family eating takes priority.  When funds are available again, these services can be reinstated.  You may actually get a better price when you come back!

3.  What do you have on Hand? - Take an inventory of what you have in your pantry, freezer, and fridge.  Think of what you need to buy to make a meal out of what's already there.  

3.  Shop wisely -  You aren't going to have a wind fall of cash despite what you do, so you'll need to be smart with how you spend.  Basics are what you're looking for.  Staple items.  Coke, snacks, "Fun foods" are out.  It doesn't mean you can't have them.  It just means you'll have to make them!  You can do it!  Switch lunch meat for a whole chicken or turkey. Walmart has these on sale right now for .97 lb..  That's cheaper than a whole chicken.  These can be cooked and used just like lunch meat.  You will get many meals from a whole chicken and especially a whole turkey.  Don't forget the bones!  Once you've used the meat on the chicken or turkey, those bones can be slow cooked a couple of days in a croc pot and make broth!  That broth is highly nutritional.  You have kids; they need milk.  Under 2 it should be full strength whole milk, but over two you have the option of stretching 1 gallon of whole milk into 2 gallons of milk.  Mix whole milk half and half with water.  Voila!  2 gallons of milk!  It will be the taste and consistency of 2%.  Flour, salt, sugar, potatoes, onions, carrots, tea bags, etc..  Yes I said Tea bags.  We're in the south Honey!  We drink tea here.  Ya know what?  You can make sweet tea, and still have less sugar than drinking a coke.  Well maybe, some of you southerners like really sweet tea.  I'm a half cup sugar to a gallon of tea type girl.  I know.  I swear I was born and raised in Ga!  However my family came from Pennsylvania laying railroad, so maybe that's it.   So you are looking to fill in gaps with what you have at home.  If you have a question about anything you need to learn to do, You Tube is a cornucopia of info.  Mary's Nest is a great resource.  Nice lady.  

4.  Stretch what you have and buy-  You may think "I have one can of corn.  That's not enough for 6 people".  Well it is if you take that corn and make soup or corn chowder.  Dice onions and peppers in it.  Add it to corn bread.  This is just an example.  The idea is to make what you have go further.  In 1976 when I was a kid.  Inflation was bad.  My parents had 5 kids to feed, and groceries went up over night.  To stretch ground beef, my mom added chopped onion and bread crumbs( from left over bread).  To this day it's my favorite way to eat ground beef.  Our daughter, her husband and our grandson lived with us for about 8 months years ago.  We had 6 adults and a toddler here to feed.  Not a lot of money to spare.  I made a chicken pot pie, actually two 9x11 casserole dishes, with two chicken breasts.  I doubled the carrots, onions, potatoes and celery.  Everyone ate what they wanted and no hungry bellies.  I had no left overs, but everyone was fed.  I did the same thing with frying chicken breast.  I took two large chicken breasts.  Pounded them flat, cut them into strips and double breaded them.  Everyone was full.  Left over meatloaf becomes the meat for chili or spaghetti.  Left over egg/milk mix from french toast becomes muffins for another day.  Leftover mashed potatoes, rice, and oatmeal can be added to muffin batter to stretch the number of muffins.  Stretch what you have!!

 So those last tips are some of the options to get you through now.  The following are so you don't have to have it this hard again

1.  Build a pantry. .  Set aside a place or, if there isn't a set place, use every nook and cranny you can come up with to put food that you are going to begin to set aside.  Like I said in the beginning.  This may not be helpful out of the gate, but it will in the future.  There will always be financial crisis.  Doesn't matter how much you make.  There will always be problems with EBT.  I mean we are talking about the government.  How efficient do you think they are?  

2.  Buy staples!  -  The best thing you can do financially and health wise is to begin to cook all you can( and it's a lot that can be made) from scratch.  Getting away from highly processed food will leave you with massive amounts of food stamp dollars at the end of the month.  What do you buy with those?  More staples; meats, produce, etc.  You can freeze a lot of things, and if you have jars and a big stock pot you can water bath can a lot. Learn to ferment.  The idea here is by purchasing staples and putting it in your area designated to be the pantry or food storage.  You will never have to worry about something happening like this again.  You will have food laid by, and it's like money in the bank.  You will shrug when another government shut down or financial crisis hits, because you will know that regardless of it all, your family will still eat.

3.  Shop sales-  The next few months are the best, in my opinion, for buying staples.  Using food stamp or grocery money to focus on staple items on sale is the best combination to stretch dollars.  Many people don't realize coupons can be combined with food stamps, just as if using cash.  

You may have to be on food stamps for a time, but that doesn't mean food stamps needs to control you.   The same goes for any financial crisis.  You can breath easier knowing you can eat from the pantry, saving the money you would have spent on food for whatever financial need arises.  It's also money in the bank.  

Something practical, and a recipe!

 Good morning!  Rainy day here, and damp cold!  Brrr.  DH and I are both sitting down to a sausage and cheese breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee.  Yum!

So sausage is expensive you say?  Well it doesn't have to be.  In fact, using this recipe one can get not only a great flavorful sausage inexpensively, but also get a good whollap of protein to boot.  Way more than store bought sausage.  How?  Well no fillers in this sausage.  It uses a pound of ground meat; cooks choice : ground pork, turkey, chicken, or beef.  The beef will make it pricier.  FYI.  Todays' sausage was made with 85/15 ground turkey.  I've used ground pork before.  In fact if you have a grocery store with an independent butcher( Ingles for example).  Watch for whole boneless pork loin to go on sale for $1.99-$2.49 lb.  Get them to slice the center into chops, but grind the ends.  You can also just get them to grind the whole thing, and then freeze it into 1 pound packages.  Ground pork is also a great substitution for ground beef if pinching pennies.  

Without further ado:

Indiana Farm Sausage

1 pound ground meat

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp chili powder

1/3- 1/5 tsp marjoram

1/5 tsp thyme

1/3-1/5 basil

1 tsp salt

1 rounded tsp sage

1 rounded tsp parsley

1 tsp onion powder

Mix all together in a mixing bowl.  You can make it ahead the night before to let the flavors mix, but today I simply made it up and cooked it immediately.  You cook it just like any other sausage:  brown it in a pan.  I've used this recipe to make sausage biscuits, breakfast sandwiches, pizza, sausage gravy, and sausage cheese balls.  

I can get ground turkey for $1.99 at Aldi, and watch for the pork loin to go on sale.  The cheapest I've seen sausage on sale is $3.99.  This ends up being half that.  Well worth the effort!

My second practical tidbit today is our bread.  It's sourdough.  I used to think I lacked the sourdough gene.  It seemed like every time I tried to make a starter, it would die.  I was... a starter killer.  Then my sweet niece, Lydia, gave me a starter from her stash.  Her starter had been kept alive for about 2 hundred years!  NO PRESSURE! So I fed it religiously.  I was so afraid I'd kill it.  I kept it going for a while.  Then I made the mistake of listening to someone on the internet that said you could freeze starter.  Yea.  You can't.  Once again I killed it!  So I decided to try once again to make my own.  I felt I'd learned a lot from caring for my niece starter; especially not to freeze it.  So I gave it a try, and made my own!  It is much easier than people think, but it does require attention.  

So here are the rules for starter' mainly making and caring for your own.

1.  You can buy distilled water, but who needs yet another thing to buy.  Fill a jar with water and let it sit out, lightly capped or covered, over night.  That will let any chlorine dissipate.  I keep a jar filled on my counter, next to my starter.  

2.  Don't worry about flour and water ratios.  Just take a good scoop of flour; say a cup if you need a measurement, and add water to it until it's the consistency of pancake patter.

3.  You will need to discard starter and add more flour and water at least daily in the beginning.  I don't go by a set time when doing this.  I check it periodically during the day and when it's not bubbling very much I'll pour off some starter then add more water and flour.  When the starter is strong enough, it won't have to happen as often.  It will become more a routine where you're using the starter and feeding it for next time.  I fed this starter this morning around 7 am.  It's 9:30 and it's bubbling away.  

4.  DON'T THROW YOUR DISCARD AWAY!  The easiest thing to do is pour it into a heated cast iron pan or pizza pan.  Sprinkle salt on it and bake for a quick easy pizza crust.  I'll make these up and freeze them for easy meals.  There are other things to do with your discard.  I'll cover those later.  When your discard is strong enough, you can use it to make bread like I did today!

5.  If you don't have time to deal with the starter or don't have anything to bake anytime soon, you can refrigerate it.  You'll want to feed it after about a week.  Maybe sooner if your starter is still new.  When you do take it out to use,  feed it, and let it sit on the counter and get to room temp before you use it.

                                                          

6.  DON"T use stainless steel!  Not even for stirring.  I have a rubber spatula that I use, but wooden spoons are fine as well.  My starter began it's life in a 2 quart mason jar, but now lives in a crock that stays on my counter.  The lid to the crock is broken, so my starter has to have plastic wrap to cover it.  I want to use it though because it's the pattern of my dishes.  I decided on the crock because I can scoop the starter out easier and the lid to the mason jar kept getting crusty with dried starter.  I like this better.

                                                       

7.  DON'T FREEZE!  I don't care what the internet says.

I will say having sourdough is a plus.  Not only do I not have to buy yeast to make our baked goods, but true sourdough breaks down the gluten making it easier to digest.  It also is a fermented product, so is good for the gut.  Plus the pizza crust and the cracker recipe have become a go to for me. 

Sourdough crackers

1 cup flour

1 cup sourdough starter (discard)

1 tsp salt

3 TBS fat( butter, lard, avocado oil, etc.; cooks choice)

Mix flour, salt, and oil/fat together.  Add starter and mix well.  Let sit, covered, for 30 minutes.  Take a third of the dough at a time, and roll out thin ( 1/4 inch)on either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.  I cut mine with a pizza cutter, but you can use a knife.  Lightly sprinkle with salt.  Place parchment or mat on cookie sheet.  Bake 12 minutes at 350 until the edges brown.  These will taste like saltines, but are much lighter.  

Relax. I'm no AI.

 😁 I heard yesterday that a growing number of internet articles are now AI.  That includes many names that are well known in media.  Even they have jumped on the AI band wagon to help with their writing.  Well you can rest assured that isn't me!  😉.  Can you tell?  

Full disclosure;  I recently started asking Chatgpt some questions.  I see the attraction.  Chatgpt helped me decide what colors to paint my living room and dining room.  It helped me in repairing a vinyl dolls eyes.  Which is great, since I'm teaching myself to restore vintage and antique dolls.  It helped me fix our sliding glass door.  You get my drift.  The one thing I haven't used it for is my writing.  Good or bad grammar; it's all mine.  Not giving that up.  I don't care if it might make it sound better.  It isn't me.  So know when you come here all the thoughts, information, antics, mistakes, etc. are all my own.  I will be your contact with reality!

Okay, so now, back to reality:

I finally got around to taking the 12 roosters to the processor.  One of those twelve got a last minute stay of execution because the processors wife needed a rooster.  She choose from the lighter of the 12.  So he now has 10 ladies of his own.  I'm happy he got to get a reprieve.  I'd reprieve all of them if it wasn't for the fact that I had 15 roosters crowing at 5 a.m. every morning.  My neighbors can only take so much.  The two roosters we kept were the low man on the totem pole so never put on enough weight.  In fact he almost starved.  I had to remove him from the roosters and feed him alone in order for him to come back.  The second, miraculously was the one who laid his head on my shoulder a couple of weeks ago.  He'd been lost in the crowd of identical roosters until I picked him up to load him in the truck.  When I went to carry him to the truck, he once again laid his head on my chest.  Of all of the roosters, he's the only one that did that.  I've named him Swanson, and I think I'll name the second one Sanders.

We learned a lesson with these guys.  These were meat birds and we should have been feeding them a high protein 24% feed at the point of hatching.  We didn't.  We fed them chick feed according to the directions on the chick feed bag.  Had we done that one thing they would have been ready for processing weeks ago.  Instead we had to wait longer, and therefore pay more in feed over time to get them to a decent weight.  We did change feed a few weeks ago, but we've still lost time and money.  Now we know.  In fact we're switching to the high protein feed for everyone, layers included moving forward.  This will help the layers during molting, and can increase egg production.  We hope!  

My house looks like a tornado struck because of the painting process.  I'm hopeful I can get it all together soon.  I have to say Chat did a great job with his paint recommendations.  I choose from the options he offered, but he gave me some good option.  I'm loving the colors so far.  I will post the finished pics later. 

Thought I'd include a few of my past projects.  These were done before I met Chat.  The top two are circa 1940's total composition dolls.  The last one with the long hair is a 1955 EeGee Susan Stroller doll.

 

I failed.

 Yep!  I went over my grocery budget, and it was intentional.  I already know where I made my mistake; bad planning on my part.  

You see, we have chickens.  Well, actually we have a lot of chickens.  Back in May we decided to buy specifically meat birds with the intention of starting a sustainable meat bird flock.  The idea was that we would buy 24 birds.  Of those 24 birds, half would be hens, and half roosters.  We'd keep one rooster to keep the flock going, and the rest would be processed.  We chose a heritage breed call "Jersey Giants".  Males can be up to 13 lbs. at adulthood and females 10 lbs.  

Two things have thrown a wrench in this plan: we didn't know to give them a high protein meat feed starting at birth, and we didn't realize DH would get an opportunity to tour with a wrestling group.   So when we had planned to process the birds, they weren't at a decent weight.  That meant a longer wait, and more expense for chicken feed.  We have since changed their feed to the high protein, which is a little more expensive than what we were feeding them.  That's when we found out they should have been given this feed from the time they hatched.  So because these guys are needing a more expensive feed, and they're still here, means I went over my budget.  In addition, because of DH schedule, we've found a processor to take care of these guys when the time comes (needs to be soon.  Imagine how much fun it is to hear 14 roosters crowing at 5am.).  So even more added expense.  So now we know.  This lesson cost us some dollars, but now we know.  We're still following our plan as far as raising meat birds, but now we know where we went wrong and can tweak things moving forward.  

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up one of the roosters to see if he had put on weight.  The stupid thing laid his head on my chest like he was cuddling me.  I'm like DRAT!  Okay.  You get to be the one that stays with the hens cause now I can't process you.  Well that worked for a couple of days until he got out of the enclosure for the hens to be with his brothers.  I did tell you he wasn't that bright.  Now I can't tell them apart.  They all look the same.  I looked up the breed and apparently this cuddling behavior is common among this breed.  That's terrible!  They should be ornery so I have no problem letting them go.  If they cuddle me every time I'll never be able to process them.  Sigh.  

In other news, one of the reasons I've been quiet on here the last few weeks is I have yet again another project.  I'm now painting our living room and dining room.  I don't think I shared my kitchen, pics, I did that a month or so ago.  

That red phone will be in use soon, as soon as I can figure out what VOI system I want to use.  I miss being able to work and talk on the phone at the same time.  You can't hold a cell phone on your shoulder. 

 This picture frame is my favorite piece in my kitchen.  On the bottom is the actual WW2 food ration book, with unused stamps inside, that belonged to  my great grandmother.  It has her name, Ollie, on it as well as her address.  I looked up the address in Atlanta and her house still stands.  Anyway, I framed the ration card along with some pictures of her and my dad when he was a boy

My garden is done for the season except for some peppers and a few valiant tomatoes.  Once we have a first freeze I'll get out there to put it officially to bed for the year.  I've decided my garden will slumber through next season as well to give it and me a rest.  With DH touring, I don't want to get into an "over my head" situation like I did this year.  

So that's my update.  I'm off to start painting again!  Thanks for reading!  Have a blessed day!