Looking Back on No Buy February
February is gone. I flipped my calendar to March yesterday morning and I was happy to see a photo of Siberian Squill looking back at me. By the end of the month they should be blooming in my garden. It’s time to think back on our No Buy February Challenge and take stock of how we did, and think about what we want to implement the rest of the year.
I did fairly well in the challenge. I bought box of grapefruit from a small organic farm in TX. I had forgotten to buy them in January, and I knew if I didn’t buy them in February I wouldn’t get any grapefruit. Some organic mushrooms at the health food store and the farmer’s market also made it into my shopping bsket. Since they’re healthy and help boost your immune system, I didn’t forgo buying them in February. I didn’t want to end up sick just because I didn’t want to spend a few dollars on mushrooms. How could I resist these beautiful mushrooms anyways?
We worked on eating up food from the freezer, like the last of the chili I made a few months ago and the last of the turkey and dumplings from Thanksgiving. Potatoes were a staple this month as I still have pounds and pounds of them in the basement pantry and they’re starting to sprout.. Our favorite meal of the month was venison steak smothered in a mushroom wine sauce over rice (that’s where those mushrooms went). I made this several times as we have a ton of venison steaks since Mr Chiots was able to get three deer this year. One area I really focused on this month was making simpler meals. Since I only used items I had in my pantry, I made a lot of soups and stews full of a variety of vegetables. This is definitely something I can try to focus more on throughout the year.
In the not buying food category I did pretty well. I did however end up buying a few things I didn’t need in other areas. I purchased a cookbook, mostly to get our total order up to get free shipping. I was going to buy the cookbook anyways, so it wasn’t an impulse purchase. I didn’t keep track penny for penny of things I didn’t purchase, but I’m guessing I saved around $100.
That amount will cover half a year of schooling for a child in Colombia. I’ll be donating the money to the Colombian Christian Mission scholarship program, which just happens to be what I do for my day job. The photo above is me at the school in Colombia talking to some of the students when I visited a few years ago (and yes I speak Spanish since I grew up in Colombia). Part of my day job is connecting students with sponsors and doing fundraising for the school. I’ll be thinking a little more throughout the year on how I can save money each month by eating simpler meals.
How did No Buy February go for you? Will you be implementing any changes for the rest of the year?
And I just remembered I forgot to choose a winner for the Chiot’s Run Calendar contest. The winner is:
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Real Food is the Foundation of Life
Nothing on this planet can grow, live, thrive, or flourish without real food. When we eat real, wholesome, healthy, and natural food, like chicken and vegetable stew, we support every single one of our biological systems at a deep, cellular level and bolster the body’s innate abilities to heal itself and resist disease and degeneration. This holds true for people, plants and animals.
Andi Brown – The Whole Pet Diet
I’ve been reading a few books about cooking for your pet, the one above being my favorite so far. I’ve been wanting to transition our pets to a Real Food diet, so I thought the challenge would be the perfect time to do it.
Lucy already gets homemade food on occasion and she LOVES it. She gets all the venison from the previous year after hunting season fills the freezer with a fresh batch. All the deer offals make it into her bowl as well, she’s particularly fond of these, as are the cats. We also give her raw meaty bones sourced from local pastured beef farm. Lucy is also a big fan of homemade dried squash leather treats and bacon which I make for her.
Even though we feed our pets good quality pet food, it will be interesting to see how the pets do when eating Real Food. I’m sure they’ll be much healthier just like we are when we eat real food instead of processed. We’re also in the process of transitioning Lucy from a synthetic thyroid pill to an herbal one and she seems to be doing much better on it. I think the Real Food diet will really help her with this problem and help her age with fewer problems.
Have you ever made food for your pets?
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Friday Favorite: A Little Unusual
I’m a very eclectic person, I have hobbies and interests that span a wide area. Most people know that I love to garden, cook, sew and all kinds of things like that. But I also have a few things that you might find unusal that I enjoy. For one I love Jay-Z music, I know not what you’d expect from me. Another one of the things I love is playing a computer game called Diablo 2 with Mr Chiots.
We used to play the original Diablo when it came out years ago. We were super excited when Diablo II came out and we’ve been playing it over and over again while patiently waiting for 11 YEARS now for Diablo III to come out. We’re not sure if it ever will. You may find it funny that in the game I’m always a Barbarian.
I was badly in need of a new mouse pad, so Mr Chiots got me this awesome Diablo III Barbarian mousepad. What kind of character was on my previous mousepad? Hello Kitty of course, another one of my loves.
What’s a hobby or interest do you have that people might be surprised about?
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The Face Behind the Name
People always ask me “What is Chiot’s?” Then I tell them the story of how we went to the local pound to get a dog a few months after we bought this house. We spotted this tiny brown lab mix puppy. We picked her above any of the other puppies because in the pound filled with barking dogs, her mom simply stood in her kennel with her puppies and looked at us, almost begging us to take one of her babies. All the other dogs were barking, jumping up on the kennel fences, and running around their kennels. We knew if this tiny puppy had part of her mom’s personality, she’d be a great dog. We paid $8 for her dog tag, put her in a box, and she rode home on my lap. She spent that night and the next few fighting off Parvo, while we prepared ourselves to lose our first dog only a few days.
Miraculously she pulled through and grew quickly into a rambunctious 70 pound dog that tore around the garden at full speed. We started calling her “Chiots” because her puppy food had that on it, chiots is French for puppy (we pronounce it Chee-oats). Hence the name “Chiot’s Run”.
She’s also lovingly referred to also as: the brown chiots, brownie, the brown one, miss brownie brownstone, the stinky chiots, the luce, limpy (from her injury), flandy and a few others.
Lucy grew into the most wonderful dog. She’s kind and tenderhearted, obedient, and would never hurt a flea. She allows the cats to be dominant in the house, and she even give Miss Mama and Little Softie a wide berth in the garden. She’s gentle as can be, even with our first niece who was a wee baby when when Lucy was a puppy. She has always been good, has never eaten any shoes, torn up anything besides a kleenex, and only had one or two accidents while being potty trained. She once did “prune” one of my clematis vines right before it bloomed. That’s not to say she didn’t give us grief when she was in her puppy stage and full of energy. There is still a brick burring in one part of the garden where she used to LOVE to dig (FIY burying a brick really does work, at least it did with Lucy)
Lucy is going to be turning 9 here in the next few weeks, it’s hard to believe we’ve had her for so long. She’s been living here in this house with us for almost the entire time we’ve lived here. Our nieces and nephew LOVE her as does everyone that ever meets her.
It’s becoming evident that she’s moving into the senior stage in her life. She’s happy to spend her days sunning herself on the front lawn and sleeping by our sides in the office while we work. She no longer has the boundless energy that she used to, and her injury makes it more difficult for her to get around as she gets older.
Did you know where Chiot’s Run came from before this post? Did you ever wonder what a Chiots was?
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Whole Grain Olive Oil Crackers
As part of our No Buy February Challenge, I’m going to be posting Make Your Own how-to’s on Wednesdays. Learning to make things yourself from scratch is a great way to save money.
I’ve been making my own crackers and flatbreads for quite a while. Healthy crackers can be very expensive, and it’s very difficult to find them without all kinds of hard to pronounce ingredients that you probably don’t want to eat. For our Super Bowl party I made whole grain olive oil crackers, they’re kind of like wheat thins, only much better. I used freshly ground wheat flour and super tasty olive oil from Chaffin Family Orchards.
I used the recipe from Chocolate & Zucchini, making mine with sourdough starter, but you can make them without. I also make mine with freshly ground 100% whole wheat flour.
WHOLE WHEAT OLIVE OIL CRACKERS
2 1/2 cups whole grain flour
(I used 2 cups flour and 100 grams of sourdough, slightly less than 1/2 cup)
5 Tablespoons of coarsely ground wheat or other flour (cornmeal, millet, etc)
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup water
Preheat the oven to 400°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. If you have a baking stone put that in the oven and you can slide the crackers on that to bake them, if you don’t have a stone you can bake them on a cookie sheet.
Place the flours and salt in bowl, add the olive oil and stir it in with a fork until mixture resembles find crumbs (it’s like making pastry). Add the water and sourdough mix is making the sourdough version and mix it in. When the water is absorbed, turn the dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead gently to form a ball. Add a few drops of water if the dough feels too dry to gather into a ball, but you don’t want the dough to be sticky in the least or it will stick to the pastry roller.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces equal size, and cover with a towel. Take a piece of dough and flatten it into an oval with hands, dust lightly with flour. Set a pasta roller on the widest setting, and slip the disk of dough in the roller to thin it out. Fold the dough in half so the two short sides meet, and put the dough through at the thickest setting again, repeat a few times until dough feels soft. Since I made mine with 100% whole grain flour it cracked a bit on the edges, but it still worked well. If you don’t have a pasta roller, you can use a rolling pin.
Switch the pasta roller to the next smaller setting and feed the dough through. Repeat reducing the setting on your pasta rollers, making the dough thinner each time. Stop when you reach the #5 setting. Your dough should look like a long oval. Place it on one of the prepared baking sheets, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Continue this process for each piece of dough.
Slide crackers on parchment onto the baking stone, or put baking sheet in the oven and bake for 7-12 minutes, turning once to ensure even browning. If you’re using whole grain flour you might need to bake them for 15 minutes so they’re dry enough when you pull them out of the oven. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.
If you find you didn’t bake them long enough i.e. they’re soft after cooling, simply put them back in the oven on 300 for a few minutes to dry them out more. Store crackers in a container and enjoy, you’ll have these eaten up LONG before they go stale believe me!
If you have a large family, or consume a lot of crackers I’d highly recommend making a few batches of these at once. You can change the flavor by subbing in different kinds of flours and different kinds of oils or fat. They’re perfect paired with cheese, and equally delicious with dips. I bet if you made them with half corn meal they could taste a lot like tortilla chips. I have a few other recipes I like to make for store-bought cracker alternatives, see links below for some of my faves.
Do you ever make crackers at home?
Sesame Semolina Flatbread from Wild Yeast
Crisp Rosemary Flatbread from Smitten Kitchen
Parmesan Cheese Crackers from Smitten Kitchen
Soaked Spelt and Yogurt Crackers from Nourished Kitchen
