The goal for this week: start making our own bread

Awhile ago we made the switch to buying bread only from a locally owned bakery downtown. While it was wonderful to be supporting a local business (and we will continue to buy our bread from there whenever we need it), it is fairly expensive and making our own bread is an easy way to become more self-sufficient.

This all started last week when my parents came for Easter weekend. My were coming as well, so we started talking about childhood favourite recipies that my mom could make (or bring with her for me to make). One of our favourite things for my mom to make when we were kids we called “monkey buns”. Not sure where the name comes from, as that’s not the name on the recipe and they’re just regular dinner rolls, but we loved them for some reason. She brought the recipe and I made it for dinner- my son loved them and my husband has asked for them twice since then.

Not only that, but it reminded me how easy it was to make dinner rolls instead of buying them. I used our bread maker to make the dough (which I know isn’t completely self-sufficient, but it’s a step in the right direction), and was very happy with the result.

The fleeting thought of making bread for our family intensified when I found this amazing blog with a ton of breadmachine recipies on it on pinterest. Seeing all these delicious breads that I would never be able to buy in a store.

I am so excited about getting to wake up to the smell of fresh-baked bread in the morning again. I have very fond memories of my childhood where lazy sunday afternoons were spent eating one of the sweet breads that my mom made for us, or waking up to the smell of fresh raisin bread in the morning.

If I’m able to get into the swing of making bread for us regularly, I’m going to order a slicing guide like this, because wonky slices of bread were one of my pet-peeves about the home made bread.

Visualizing a plentitude economy

http://vimeo.com/26573848

This is an absolutely amazing video about the ways our economy could change in a way that encourages homesteading, self-sufficiency, a shorter work week and a better economy. I would love to see this kind of society move into Canada and the United States.

Our goals for 2012

Yesterday I went over our goals for 2011 and how we did. Today I’m going to tell you all about our goals for this year and how we’re going to go about accomplishing them. We have a lot of lofty goals for ourselves this year and since starting this blog it will be easier to reflect on them.

Here we go:

1. Finish the house to the point where we can move in. I can’t tell you how excited I am for this to happen.
2. Build a composting bin and start composting.
3. Get the yard cleaned up and firewood cut up to last us through the winter. We had a gigantic wind storm last summer that knocked over quite a few of our large trees. It was sad (and much more emotional than we thought it would be), but they’ll make good fire wood.
4. Start growing some herbs and a few veggies in containers. I ordered some tomato, peppers, basil, and rosemary to grow on the deck. Unfortunately we don’t have time to set up the raised beds this year, but we’ll move on to that in 2013.
5. Our property has a huge amount of delicious wild blueberries. Last year I took kiddo to pick some but we were a little late to get to them, and the little guy ate most of them. At the end of the day I had enough to put on my cereal one morning, but this year I’d like to make a bit of jam or a few pies for the freezer.

Five goals doesn’t seem like many but they’re big enough goals that they should keep us busy… and like I said before: self-sufficiency is a gradual process.

What our simple living goals were for 2011

I believe that self-sufficiency is a very gradual process for most people. We have always had it in the back of our minds that we wanted to be as self-sustaining as possible, but it wasn’t until 2011 that we really started to set out goals for ourselves to live more simply.

1. The first thing we did was cancel our satellite tv subscription. I mean really, who needs it? I still watch some shows on Boxee but having no subscription really eliminates the “turning tv on to see what’s on” thing.
2. The biggest thing that we did was start to build our house. It will be heated primarily with a wood stove and is designed to be as energy efficient as possible, though it’s not off the grid. It is located on a large parcel of land on which we can grow our own food.
3. We wanted to introduce our son to gardening which I did just last week. Stay tuned for an update on that later this week.
4. Start replacing some household items (as they needed to be replaced, we didn’t throw anything out needlessly) with durable plastic free items such as cast iron.
5. I intended to nurse my son until he was 2, but unfortunately had to stop when he was about 16 months. None the less I was proud of not putting him on formula or forcing him to stop before he was ready.
6. I wanted to start cooking more healthy meals and snacks for my family. No more buying pre-packined products like cookies or pizzas. I do sometimes default back to these convenience foods when I’m running low on time, but it’s far less frequent than before.

All in all I only really failed to accomplish one of these goals, which I’m pretty proud of. We have many more goals for 2012, you’ll hear about them tomorrow!