Preparing

While hanging my sheets on the clothesline, several things came to mind.  The peace and quiet out there some how triggers my thoughts into over drive.

I'm already starting to save the waxed liners from boxed cereal.  Those are washed and dried, and cut into squares to line between zucchini pancakes that are frozen.  The arrival of planting season makes me think of all that zucchini we grow, and what I need to be doing with it to save us money on food and cook healthy.

Each year we have learned what we can do better than the last, and prepare for canning, freezing, growing, and saving seeds.  Each year we prepare better than the last, gain knowledge, and eat healthier.

Even though we spent about 4 hours shoveling snow, I was able to get in 2 loads of laundry, make homemade chili, and write a rough draft for a book review. I will share the book review later today or in the next few days, depending on my chores.  I need to write in several journals, updating the amount of wood we used this year, what to prepare for next year and so forth.

Our homemade chili was blessed by a quart bag of frozen garden tomatoes, hormone free ground beef, a few frozen garden cayenne peppers (the only hot pepper I had in the freezer), and lots of the kidney and black beans I cooked up the day before.  I need to make notes in my garden journal to grow more onions and green peppers also.  We tend to cook with those more than last year.  And potatoes also.

Today, the crock pot is filled with onions, sweet potatoes, broth, garlic, spices, and a pork loin roast.  Yum.  The after school and lunch packing snacks will probably be banana bread, strawberry and blueberry muffins and maybe homemade bread.