Our frugal to more frugal life keeps me quite occupied.
Some of you have been following me for a long time and some of you are new to my blog. For those that are new, my husband Charles and I love history and for many years we have been doing studies of the 1940s and the 1930s. We also study much further back but we have taken our 40's and 30's and we try to live like the year that we are studying.
When we studied 1943 we lived a year as similar as we could to 1943, we did the food rations as they did during that time and we put away the items in our house that would have not been in a house during that time. We have done this with many different years.
I like to start researching in the beginning of 1900 or even further back to understand what they adults during the 1930s and 1940s had already gone through as far as wars, recessions, pandemics and such as that. By the time they got to the 1930s they had already gone through many challenges.
This year we are studying the early 1930s and concentrating on 1932. It has been months now of working out budgets and doing household chores the old way. I have found out a slow study is much more practical to be able to truly help us get our homes and budgets in better condition to withstand possible difficult times.
In real life, Charles is about to retire. We are living in unsettled times and it is a bit scary for many people. Retiring now is very concerning so I have been very intense with our budget.
Menu planning has become quite a constant occupation lately. The food budget is difficult because each month I enter the price of a certain food, the next month that price has changed.
Last week I boiled a whole chicken so I could make broth while using that chicken for meals for the week.
We were very hungry that day, it was our only meal of the day due to being very busy. So we ate more of the chicken than we should have but that was a good thing because it made us think about how to do this better, as far as being thrifty goes.
I forgot to take a broth photo or weighing out the meat from the chicken, this photo was from another time but last week I got three quarts from the boiled chicken this week not four.
We then deboned the chicken and picked out all of the bones and put the meat into a bowl and then divided the chicken by weighing it into serving sizes and froze the servings for meals. After eating part for one meal, we had two five ounce, one 4.3, ounce, and one 3.4 ounce bags of chicken left to put in the freezer from that chicken.
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I did not want to show this photo because I did not clean the browned cheese off the sides. But this is real life here in our house and actually this was a very tasty chicken and rice casserole with broccoli, onion and cheese. This was made with the fresh chicken broth, and one small "can" of chicken from the pantry because I rotate canned goods from our stocked pantry. I have found that when I have fresh homemade chicken broth the canned meat tastes very good. More about that later.
The side dish was a fresh pear from the pear tree with homemade mayo and a bit of cheese.
I made a chicken pot pie from the boiled chicken, it was very good. Charles said he wanted it on the menu every week. I sautéed some chopped carrots, added some chopped onion to that and sautéed, tossed in some English peas and the chicken and heated it through. I made a Roux, and then added the chicken, pea, carrot onion mixture to the roux. I poured the roux and mixture into the bottom crust and topped it with more pastry crust.
The Roux is very easy to make. Melt two tablespoons butter, add two tablespoons, plus one teaspoon all purpose flour, a pinch of salt and one cup of milk or broth or a mixture of both. I used the broth.
The pastry dough for the crust is easy to make.
4 tablespoons butter ( I shred mine when it is cold) or it can be cubed and worked into 120 grams of all purpose flour with a pinch of salt added. Two tablespoons cold water. Do not overwork the mixture, just enough to pull it together and roll it out. I did not have enough dough to line the loaf pan so I lined the bottom and up the sides just a bit. It does not matter really because it scoops out and adds a bit of the crust to the mixture when served.
* Note I did bake the bottom dough for just a little until it started to brown before I added the hot ingredients that I had cooked on top of the stove.
I baked it in the oven at 350 degrees for about half hour or until the crust is browned and you can tell it is bubbly. The mixture is already cooked anyway when you pour it into the baking dish.
Another chicken dish we had this week was Chicken and dumplings with some leftover carrots and sautéed zucchini.
We made too many dumplings so we had more dumplings with broth and green beans and bits of chicken.
When we have any left over broth we freeze the broth.
There were many things I could have made from a simple chicken salad, or a salad with chicken. Could have made barbecue chicken, or chicken Quesadillas.
We did not cook any of the ground beef we purchased the first week so it is still in the freezer.
We had macaroni and cheese and a side veggie one day.
The main thing is to have a purpose for every bit of what I got off of the boiled chicken for meals. If I had a larger family I would have boiled two whole chickens in a large stock pot. When I boil a chicken and make broth, for one whole chicken, I add two carrots, two stalks celery, one whole onion quartered, 12 peppercorns and under a tablespoon salt. If I add four quarts of water I add one tablespoon salt if three quarts of water I add two teaspoons. This time I forgot the salt but it was good that way and we just salted when I cooked with it.
This week we had a big spend. $123.81. Last week we spent $78.95. So from Aug 1, through Aug 16, we have spent $202.76, and $15.20 of that is taxes. Without taxes that food would have cost $187.56.
All of our meals are from home, we do not eat out unless we have a emergency situation. We have a $40.00 per month eating out fund in our budget but we have not used it and that is good because that means we have not had an emergency. But this does mean that we do have this money should we need to use it.
We bake or make our own snacks if we want a snack. We broke the snack habit a good while ago because snacks are expensive. If we do get hungry we normally have something baked to eat or something in the pantry we can eat.
We purchased from two stores, Walmart and Publix. Publix is generally more expensive but they have buy on get one specials and sometimes some of their items are less than Walmart. We also go to Publix to find items we cannot get at another store.
We do not have an Aldi but one is coming to our town. We do have some smaller grocery stores that have good prices but those also add 10% or a special charge at check out so we have to do the math.
That A2 half and half, we buy that because it has no extra ingredients and it is easier to digest. We water down half and half to make milk or use the half with certain recipes. We do not drink milk but we use milk in cooking. We use buttermilk in certain recipes such as buttermilk biscuits. Charles has an old southern tradition of drinking buttermilk. He likes to drink a small glass of butter milk when he eats popcorn. I drink a small tea cup of buttermilk for digestion if I feel I need it. Milk will go bad on us before we can use it up so we buy cream and or half and half because it keeps longer and we water down according to what we are cooking.
This week we bought a Boston butt and Charles cooked that on the outdoor cooker for many hours and then we pulled it apart, weighed the servings and put the cooked meat into the freezer.
Just like the first chicken meal, we ate a meal before we froze the rest.
We have learned, for us at our age, we need to eat meat, but we do not need a large amount. So we weighed out five ounces for the two of us together. So after removing much of the fat, we put six, five ounce packs of Boston butt in the freezer. For the two of us that will take us a long way.
We have learned that our meals do not require a lot of meat. The first day last week that we ate chicken for the first meal off the chicken, Charles said he ate too much chicken because he felt overfull.
As we go through life the food that we can or cannot eat changes and we just adjust. Our information today is so messed up that people no longer know how to eat or what to eat.
Just use your best judgement of what suits you by how you feel after you eat a meal. Of course go by what your doctor is saying if you have dietary needs but do not go by what others are doing but how your body is doing and what you can afford.
When I was a child and young adult, food was not the issue that it is today. People cooked meals and sat down and ate them without all of this worry. In general people seemed more slim and fit.
Something seems wrong with our food today, I do not know what it is but something has changed. Too many people are sick, overweight and tired even when they try to eat healthy.
Charles likes to cook because he likes to create meals and they are almost always delicious but they do not fit into our new budget. He usually does not normally bake but he is giving it at try.
Last week he made oatmeal cookies, this week Chocolate Chip Cookies are in the tin. We get to eat one cookie a day unless it is a special day then we will get another possibly later. What makes a special day? Anything we can think of. Neither of us are diabetic but we still try to not over do on desserts unless we have company or a special occasion such as a birthday.
The thing about most of our desserts is that we use whole ingredients and little sugar. I always reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe, you might be surprised at how little sugar it truly needs to still be considered a sweet.
I must say that I am very fortunate because Charles can help turn a frugal mundane meal into something much tastier by adding his special "adjustments", he is a big help in the kitchen.
From what we bought this week and still some left from last week, we will not need to buy groceries this coming week. This week I added some more canned mandarins to the pantry. I add to the pantry a little each week. Over the years I built up the pantry and to keep it stocked at a certain amount we have to rotate and replace. So say I want twelve cans of mandarins to stay in the pantry, if I remove one can I add to the shopping list a can of mandarins. This way I do not deplete the stock. This way I will stay capped off at the level I want. When I used the canned chicken, I will need to replace that can next shopping day.
So our grocery expenses are our expenses, not that we are pulling from our pantry making them less because we have to buy them to replace them. The mandarins I decided to add more to what I normally keep because we seem to enjoy them more at this time.
With home canned items I cannot do the same because I cannot go buy a can from the store but that can be factored in the budget by slowly adding a amount here and there to the grocery fund to use for when we do purchase for canning if that makes sense.
I am calling our budget a no surprise budget because I do not want any surprises if I can help it when we go on living on retirement income.
This week I patched a hole in one of my tablecloths. I keep some quilting fabric pieces on hand for mending such things.
There were several holes in this tablecloth that I purchased at a thrift store many years ago for very little. It had holes in it when I bought it and a few stains. I just picked out some fabric with similar colors and sewed some patches.
There were four holes and a few more want a be holes.
I tried my best to get a picture of this giant spiderweb this week but you can barely make it out here above. It was beautiful in early morning. The spider was working so briskly when I walked out there, she was going around and around this large circle. Each summer we get these large spiders that make these mesmerizing webs. It is not good when they put them between walkways and we are not looking where we are going. I have only done that once!
The forum (up in the menu section of this blog) is doing so well with so many of you participating in the discussions. Everyone is being kind and respectful and adding so much wonderful and helpful information. It seems to be turning into something more of a place to help each other find answers, and a place to add very needed practical knowledge which is the best. Thank you all that are participating. The forum is a place to find others with similar interest of living a simple and frugal life.
The forum is free, you can read without signing up but to comment you need to sign up, this just helps to keep the forum safe from spammers.
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We are in a study of the 1930s and each of us are doing it our own way and some are not doing the study, such as living like the 1930s but have interest of how to live like the 1930s to help us to get better control of our home and finances. Some also, just love this era :)
If any of you have any thoughts of what more you would like to know about the early 1930s to make your life more simple, then bring it up in the forum and let's talk about it. Getting a budget has been a very time consuming part of the study for our home. It is frustrating that we have so many more expenses than they had during this time.
Our main goal is to learn how our generations before us managed to get through these difficult times and to get ourselves in a better position so that we too could make it through this kind of difficult time.
Just some suggestive topics to start the discussion this week is are you starting to see some improvement to your household expenses since starting the study?
Are you making changes to do things in your home that do not add to expensive electric bills?
Are you getting a better control on your clothing situation? Any wardrobe ideas? Many people during the 1930s sewed their own clothing.
Also we need aprons to be similar to the 1930s, aprons were and are very important to help our clothing last longer. Pockets are helpful.
You do not have to be in the study to participate with the discussion. Also off topic conversations are also welcome, especially if you have questions or something you would like to tell about. Most of your replies will come from the forum people, I read all of the comments and answer when needed or when I can.
And thank you to those that watch out for the forum, and please email me right away if you do every notice something not right going on in the forum.
I hope to see you soon, Grandma Donna
