Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market – My New Favorite Grocery Store and Pics of This Week’s Food

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First let me say that sometimes, but not always, when I take pictures on my phone, they upload upside-down to my computer. I edit them to turn them right-side-up, and they appear as such here on my blog. But if you are a subscriber, you will see that they still appear upside-down in the newsletter. This is because I am a professional and always do things professionally.

Some of you are seeing this first picture right-side-up. Others of you are like, “Why are the peppers and avocados spilling out all over the grocery store? Who is going to clean that up? Why did Laura do that? This is not okay.”

groceries 3183

That right-side-up-upside-down picture was taken on Friday when I was introduced to what may now be my favorite grocery store. A brand new Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market just opened up in Lincoln. Since Elias and I had doctor appointments there last week, we stopped in. I decided that this store is a cross between Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, with prices that beat both places. I filled my cart in a way that made the cashier question my sanity (what’s new?) and I left super pumped up.

“Elias!! Wasn’t that so much fun! That is my new favorite store! Didn’t you just love that!?!?!?”

He was like, “It was a store.”

Ok fine. Not everyone geeks out when grocery shopping. But 88¢ for huge and beautiful red peppers, people!!! Chicken for $1.57 a pound! Strawberries for $1.50!

The beauty of this is that while I don’t go to Lincoln very often, I can price-match this store’s produce prices weekly at my local Walmart. I am going to save so much money!

Elias and I hit Aldi while we were in Lincoln, then went to Fresh Thyme, then ran into Walmart when we got back into town. We are well stocked up now. Here’s the breakdown, but as you can see…

Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market was the most fun.

  • Aldi – a case of organic salsa, 4 packages of brown sugar, 1 cantaloupe, and 8 cans of knock-off rotel
  • Fresh Thyme – tons of butter, lots of chicken breasts and thighs, a beef roast, full-fat yogurt (a great treat I can’t find locally), 12 pounds of strawberries, 2 bunches of asparagus, 5 huge red peppers, 4 packages of organic prepped hashbrowns (because they were a great price and will be a fun treat), and 6 kiwi (for a dollar!)
  • Walmart – 5 bottles of 100% apple juice (because I could Price-match them for 98¢ and like to have juice on hand for company/treats), 2 huge blocks of cheese, half-and-half, and 3 buckets of ice cream (not pictured) for our homeschool basketball banquet dinner.

groceries 318

Saturday I was actually home for the entire day – something that hasn’t happened in quite a while! I baked bread and got caught up on some work, made a menu plan, and had my kids help me grate one of those huge hunks of cheese in our food processor. Not that you were asking, but my two favorite ways to use my food processor are:

  • Grate Cheese (It took about 10 minutes from start to clean-up to grate a 5-pound block.)
  • Make Peanut Butter (I also make it this way sometimes to make it more spreadable.)

grated cheese

My kids do not miss grating cheese by hand.

This week we’ll be eating:

With all of this, we will be eating lots of strawberries and other fruit. I have plenty of different veggies and greens on hand. It’s shaping up to be a very tasty week!

Do you have a Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market close-by? I think they are fairly new, and I’m not sure where they build their stores. What is your favorite grocery store?

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Weddings, Guns, and Green Fingernails

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gratituesday[2]

Nothing much usually goes on around here, so I always have a hard time knowing what to talk about. Life is so boring. (She says, as she looks at her to-do list and passes out.)

We’ve been running and running and running since the Youth Rally in January. Life is full, life is fun, hard stuff happens, and I am forever behind. While I’ve known this for a while, I am absolutely convinced now that loving relationships are more important than keeping a perfect house or staying ahead of laundry. This is my sweet and precious way of saying, “wow my house is a mess.” Slowly but surely, we’ll get caught up. (You know, since life slowed down and we have nothing to do.)

I thought I’d share some of the fun events of the past couple weeks, and guess what? Thirty or so thousands of years after most everyone else on the planet, I am finally on Instagram! Please come follow me and you’ll be rewarded with something amazing like one photo from my life every month or two.

So what’s been going on in my life? Well, for the past few weeks, our family has been working hard preparing for an annual church event – Leadership Training for Christ. Our boys have been studying for a Bible Bowl, working on some individual projects like photography, speech, and sculpture, and getting together with groups to prep for choirs and dramas. Below you’ll see Malachi (in blue) painting a car for the “Terror 2000” – part of the roller coaster the 3-5 graders are using for their drama.

malachi ltc

All the kids loved how it turned out, though one of the boys came in later and suggested, “It’s okay, but I think it would be better if we painted on a skull.” Yeah. I’ll get right on that.

Two weekends ago our family traveled to Kansas where our middle two boys competed in the NDII Homeschool Basketball Tournament. We spent three days cheering for our kids and having a blast with friends. I went all out and painted my fingers and toes green in support of our team. I felt a little sheepish about it as I pulled out my fingers to show one of the other moms at the first game. She smiled and pulled out her fingers WHICH WERE THE SAME COLOR! #momsofboys #gogreenorgohome

tourney weekend2

My dad and his wife met us at the tournament – such a blessing to have their love and support! Then my brother’s family surprised our boys and came to watch their final game. It was fun to see the boys’ faces when their cousins walked in!

tourney weekend1

tourney weekend3

The very next week, we had not one but two weddings that we were highly involved in. I had our schedule carefully mapped out so we wouldn’t miss anything and we were blessed that both couples worked around our schedule so we could make it work. The craziness began on Thursday with a bachelorette party, then a rehearsal, then a bridal shower.

So the bachelorette party. Who goes to a shooting range to celebrate her upcoming wedding? Only my friend Jen. She loves all things sports and guns. Good friends that we are, we went shooting with her.

What do you think? Do I look almost ready to shoot a gun?

wedding weekend4

There. Is that better?

wedding weekend2

wedding weekend3

I had fun for about 20 minutes, then I announced, “Ok. I totally need to go bake something now.” I don’t know why everyone laughed. I was absolutely serious.

The weekend went fabulously while we celebrated with our whole hearts the marriages of our friends. I have very few pictures so far of either wedding, but what I do have…

We took this picture of Jen to send to her almost hubby just before their ceremony started. Really, Jen we just feeling warm and opening a window to get some air. But it looked like she was scared and making a run for it, so out came the camera. ;)

wedding weekend1
After three full days of running and celebrating, as all events were drawing to a close, I asked a friend to get a picture of my true love and me. I love this picture so much I can’t stop staring at it.

 my heart

This man is my best teammate and serving with him is my greatest blessing and joy in this life.

Thanks for allowing me to share a snippet of my life the past few weeks. I’ve been trying to rest the past few days while catching up on everything I’m behind on. As always, my boys have been rock stars helping me out and in general, putting up with me when I can’t finish my sentences as a result of too many days with too little sleep.

Dare I mention that soccer season began about five minutes after basketball season ended? My life is blessed, full, and God is ever showing me His strength through my weaknesses.

Care to share what you’ve been up to this month? I’d love to hear!

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P.S. Sunday after the Saturday wedding, I still had great curls in my hair (and a lot of hairspray). I spent 30 seconds to pull it up in a Flexi-Clip and it looked great! What would I do without my Flexi-Clips?? Which leads me to…

This weekend Lilla Rose is offering 30% Off Select Styles and 10% Off Everything Else!

Lilla Rose Easter Sale
Sale starts Friday, March 18 at 7am PST, and ends Sunday, March 20 at 11:59 pm PST. Get the info here!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Make Your Own “Jiffy” Cornbread Mix (the Healthier Way)

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You get to learn to make cornbread mix! Your day is now complete.

Homemade Cornbread Mix

It’s borderline ridiculous how little time I have to spend on meal prep now. #life with teenagers #workingfromhome Or maybe it’s how little time I want to spend on meal prep. This, from a girl who loves to cook.

The thing is – I love food and I love feeding people. But I also love efficiency and simplicity. I’ve learned to make a hearty main dish, then throw out the simplest fruit and veggie side dishes possible. It’s all nourishing and filling and it takes very little work. I love this so much.

So when it comes to “bread as a side dish,” I very rarely have time or spend time or choose to make it a priority. After all, there are many more nourishing side dishes to choose from (tossed salad anyone?).

Sometimes though, we all just need a good cornbread muffin. Like with chili or soup or well, with chili or soup. To me, that’s when cornbread muffins are the best. I haven’t made cornbread in over a year – not because it’s hard to make – but because it’s just one more thing to do and I don’t have time for one more thing. (I’m almost pitiful. Almost.)

Last week, two things happened:

  1. I ran across this recipe for homemade Jiffy mix.
  2. We shared a meal with some friends in which delicious soup and cornbread was served.

I decided that if I had cornbread mix on hand, it would save me a few minutes of meal prep and simplify my life. Instead of talking myself out of mixing up a batch of cornbread because of the extreme difficulty of getting out and measuring flour and baking powder (the struggle is real) I could just dump the pre-measured ingredients into a bowl and stir in the liquids.

I adapted the recipe (included whole grains and cut out some sugar), multiplied the recipe to make it more efficient, stirred ingredients into a big bowl, and had six jars of muffin mix in less than 10 minutes.

Cornbread Mix

Funny how this simple task of making a mix ahead of time is so helpful. It doesn’t take much, you know?

Cornbread Mix in Jars

Will you save money making this cornbread mix yourself? I don’t know. How much is a box of Jiffy these days? They used to be 33¢ but I haven’t looked at them in several years. I didn’t do the math on this mix (because if I don’t have time to make cornbread I probably don’t have time to break down the cost of cornmeal). But I’m almost sure it only takes a few cents to make this – and I used 100% whole grain flour and organic cornmeal.

Homemade Cornbread MixYum

Homemade "Jiffy" Cornbread Mix (the Healthier Way)
 
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Author:
Serves: 6 mixes
Ingredients
  • 4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 3 cups cornmeal
  • ¼ cup sucanat or sugar
  • ¼ cup baking powder
  • 1 Tablespoon sea salt
Instructions
  1. Mix ingredients well in a large bowl.
  2. Scoop about 1⅓ cups of mix into six pint-sized jars.
  3. Store in the freezer until ready to use.
  4. To make cornbread: Empty contents of jar into a bowl. Add 1 egg, ½ cup milk, and 2 Tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil. Spread batter into an 8x8 inch baking pan or scoop into 6-7 prepared muffin cups. Bake in a 400° oven for 15-20 minutes.

Homemade Cornbread Mix in Jars

Easy as that, you have cornbread.

Are you like me? Do you find that mixing up bread to go with a meal is just a little too much effort (pitiful)? What do you like to serve with cornbread?

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Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club – Free Memberships for All!

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tablecloth

Frugal Homemakers Unite! (That sounded less cheesy in my head.)

I’ve been a (work outside the home, stay at home mom, or work from home) homemaker for over 21 years. While I recognize the value of investing in quality food and quality products, I also appreciate saving money in any area I can. How else could I afford to buy pants long enough for my ever-growing teenage sons?

tourney food1

The good news:

It is absolutely possible to feed a family well and manage a home well without over-spending. It is also possible to do this without spending hours in the kitchen, hours at the store, and hours online.

I come across many good deals because of the connections I have made with a wonderful online community throughout the past eight years. I pick and choose carefully the deals I choose to share here on my blog because there’s only so much time and space and I prefer to focus more on recipes and encouragement here (not that a good deal on coconut oil isn’t pretty encouraging!).

I’ll continue to share great deals here on my blog as I feel they will be a blessing to you. But now we’ve got something bigger and better to offer: the Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club.

What is it?

When you join Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club, you’ll be privileged to hear about all the great deals I come across but don’t have space to share here on my blog. I’ll compile the best of the best of money saving tips, ideas, and resources – and I’ll send them to you so that you can take advantage of and enjoy them as needed.

Savings Club Free Membership

Savings Club members will enjoy these perks:

  • Infrequent emails that pack a punch. I’m not going to load down your inbox. Neither you nor I have time for that! You can expect to see an email from the Savings Club a couple times each week – sometimes less, sometimes more. It’ll all depend on what great savings tips I come across and how many family activities I’m running off to during the week.
  • Information about great offers on nourishing groceries, non-toxic household and self-care products, and other resources. If I love it and use it and it saves us all money, I’ll let you know about it!
  • Money saving tips. Do you know how many ways I’ve learned to cut costs and save money during the past two decades? (I mean, I don’t have an exact number of ways. That was sort of rhetorical. It’s a lot though.) I don’t plan to stop learning more ways to save, so I’ll share what I know and share what I continue to learn. (Just last year I learned to make Gatorade!)
  • Freebies. You’d be surprised at the amount of free stuff I hear about but have to ignore because I just don’t have space in my blog schedule to share. I want to be able to tell you about these opportunities!

Speaking of Freebies and Deals

Let’s get your membership rolling with some freebies right from the start.

First of all, your membership for the Savings Club is now and forever will be free. Second, I created a free eBooklet for all members, which includes my Top 10 Money Saving Recipes. Plus, within that book, you’ll find a fun surprise coupon (or not so surprise, since I told you about it just now) so you can get another eBook from my shop for just a buck!

Top 10 Money Saving Recipes

I’ve got some great deals and goodies to share with you during the next couple of weeks, so join the club and be in the know!

Click through this link to sign up if the form isn’t showing up for you.

I’m super excited to share that signing up for this freebie will connect you to our new Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club. It’s free, of course. You can unsubscribe at any time, your info will never be shared or sold, and being on this list means that you’ll be the first to know any great deals or freebies that will bless your homemaking efforts!

 

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High Five Recipes: Easy Butterscotch Bars

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People can’t get enough of these butterscotch bars. They’re made with whole wheat flour but no one knows. They’re made with only five ingredients that you probably have on hand – so easy!

butterscotch_bars

I originally posted this recipe in 2010, but decided to post it again for you today. Why? Because butterscotch bars. And also because I have only been home 3 of the past 11 days so I’m behinder than ever. While I play catch up and work on new projects (wait till you see!), I wanted to bless you a recipe so you could bless others.

High Five Recipes 2

You’ll be glad to know that this is a High Five Recipe! (High quality recipes + five ingredients or less = High Five Recipe)

This is not a Low Sugar Recipe, however. So make them to share with others, and saver them slowly (as opposed to gobbling down half the pan before you realize what happened).

 

Easy Butterscotch BarsYum

4.3 from 7 reviews
High Five Recipes: Easy Butterscotch Bars
 
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Author:
Ingredients
  • 1 cup melted butter
  • 1¾ cups sucanat or brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1½ cups whole wheat flour
Instructions
  1. Stir melted butter and sucanat together.
  2. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well.
  3. Stir in flour and mix until well combined.
  4. Pour batter into a 9x13 inch baking pan.
  5. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes.

These bars are gooey, rich, and need I remind you to make them to share with friends?

Now that I’ve been making these butterscotch bars for so many years, I get frequent requests for them.

  • “Laura, would it be too much for me to ask you to make a batch of your butterscotch bars for me for my birthday? Like very year for the rest of my life?”
  • “Laura, my friends and I were talking about your butterscotch bars and now we want some. I told them I’d ask…can you make us a batch?”
  • “How much arm twisting would it take for you to make another pan of your butterscotch bars?”

These requests make my day, and since the bars are so easy to make, I almost always say yes! If you haven’t tried these bars yet, do it. They’re crazy easy, but beware: people will beg you to make more. You’ll have more friends than you ever had before and everyone will love you for providing the butterscotch bars. It’s hard, but you can handle it.

Easy Butterscotch Bars - Five Ingredients!

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The Secret to Fluffy and Delicious Whole Wheat Baked Goods

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Dear Gluten Free Friends: This post is very whole wheaty and not at all helpful to your gluten free life. I’ve got your back though because as you know, many of the recipes here on my site are naturally gluten free. After all, while I do love freshly ground whole wheat flour, I also love variety and breadless recipes. So just for you: 100+ Gluten Free Recipes. Click on over and have at it. Love ya much!

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See the difference in grains?
We took this picture while traveling through Kansas a few years ago. 

As a newly-wed I remember visiting someone’s house where they served homemade rolls made exclusively with whole wheat flour. I tried to like the rolls, but I was used to white rolls made with all-purpose flour, and these rolls just weren’t the same. I decided that I simply didn’t like whole wheat flour, and really, I didn’t like anything considered to be a “health food.” (I thought eating healthy meant I had to eat rice cakes and bean sprouts for every meal.) I continued on my merry way where I ate very few fruits and veggies, drank about a liter of Pepsi every day, and made oodles of delicious cookies and cakes with white flour.

Many years (and way too many gallons of Pepsi) later, one of my friends started selling her homemade bread at our local Farmer’s Market. She had some leftover one night, so she sent a loaf home with me. We ate it for breakfast the next day, and we loved it down to the last crumb. I complimented her up and down next time I saw her, asking what kind it was. “It’s just my regular whole wheat bread recipe.” What?! That bread was whole wheat? Like, whole wheat and white flour mixed, right?! “Nope. 100% whole grain. I grind it myself.”

That is the moment I learned about the different varieties of wheat and the deliciousness of grinding grain into flour. (I never actually knew people did that. Grind your own flour? Seriously?!) I was intrigued. I researched. I asked questions. I saved up for a Nutrimill, stocked up on hard white wheat, and the rest is history.

white_wheat_flour

Red Wheat, White Wheat, Hard Wheat, Soft Wheat

Oh how many wheat you meet. Look at me. I’m Dr. Seuss. 

There is a big difference between red wheat and white wheat. Both produce whole wheat flour -but they bake up differently, creating different textures and flavors. I’ve covered this in detail in several other posts, which I’ll point you to now:

hard wheat soft wheat

It’s hard to see the difference in the picture.
Hard is more pointy. Soft is more round. There. Does that help?

The Secret to Fluffy and Delicious Whole Grain Baked Goods

Let’s talk about how you can make the most amazing whole grain cookies, cakes, muffins, pancakes, waffles, and pastries.

When I first started grinding flour to make all of our baked goods healthier and tastier, I used hard white wheat for everything. It did this because:

  • Hard white wheat flour works for any recipe, whether it is a yeast bread or a non-yeast product. (Soft wheat only works for non-yeast products.)
  • Grinding just one kind of flour made life easier.

Finally, after the recommendation from many of you, I gave soft white wheat a try. This is the variety of wheat that, when ground, produces whole grain pastry flour. I used it first for pancakes, then I used it for muffins, then I decided that I had waited way too long to try this. Pastry flour makes a huge difference in the density of baked goods!

Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (ground from soft white grain) is almost like using white all-purpose flour. It is light and fluffy and baked goods I make with it turn out really delicious.

muffins

Simple as that, freshly ground Soft White Wheat is the secret to turning out amazing baked goods.

Remember though, if you’re making a yeast bread, you still have to use Hard White (or red) Wheat. I now love both hard and soft white varieties and keep them both on hand at all times for all our baking needs.

no-knead bread 3

If you’re afraid of baking yeast bread, or simply want to make life much easier –
you have to try this easy Stir-and-Pour Bread. Because of this recipe, I will never knead bread again.
(This bread requires hard wheat, not soft, because it is a yeast bread.)

So let’s review:

  1. Use hard wheat for yeast breads.
  2. Use soft wheat for everything else.
  3. Or use hard wheat for everything – but I’m telling you, soft wheat (which produces whole wheat pastry flour) is wonderful to work with!

The SECRET to Fluffy and Delicious Whole Wheat Baked Goods! You have to read this! #bakedgoods #wholewheat

Some of our favorite recipes which use Whole Grain Pastry Flour:

Most don’t even realize they are eating whole grains when they eat any of these goodies! For that matter, the recipes that are low in sugar don’t seem to phase people either. Who knew eating healthier could taste so good?!

Let me hear from you!

  • Do you grind your own flour?
  • What is your flour preference?
  • Have you tried soft wheat (pastry flour) or do you stick with hard wheat for every recipe?

Looking for a great Grain Mill?

I have and highly recommend a Nutrimill!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Strawberry Cream Muffin Recipe (And My Best Muffin-Making Tip)

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strawberry_muffins_2

You might remember when I posted this recipe three years ago. Now that it is strawberry season again and I am a tiny bit strawberry focused (or sure, we can call it obsessed if you prefer) – I decided to re-post this for you now.

This Strawberry Cream Muffin is so delicious, you’ll feel like you’re eating dessert for breakfast or snack. Take note that the sour cream in these muffins makes all the difference in how moist and delicious these are. Can you use milk or coconut milk (to make them dairy free) instead? Yes. But they will likely turn out just a little bit dry. Just eat them fresh out of the oven and you’re golden.

Strawberry Cream MuffinsYum

Strawberry Cream Muffins
 
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Author:
Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 1¾ cups whole wheat flour (I prefer freshly ground soft white wheat in these)
  • ½ cup sucanat or brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • ⅓ cup coconut oil or butter, melted
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 cup chopped fresh or frozen strawberries
Instructions
  1. Stir together flour, sucanat, baking powder, and salt.
  2. Add oil, egg, and sour cream, mixing well.
  3. Fold in strawberries.
  4. Scoop batter into 12 well greased or paper-lined muffin cups.
  5. Bake in a 375° oven for 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Strawberry Cream Muffin Recipe

Now my best tip of all: Mix up the batter and freeze it to make your muffin baking/dish washing life easier! Then all you have to do is grab your frozen muffin batter cups out of the freezer, put them into muffin cups the night before you want to bake the muffins, then stumble into the kitchen in the morning and put them into the oven!

The Easiest Way to Make Muffins

I’m loving these Silicone Muffin Cups, by the way. I’ve been using them for a few months now and they make freezing muffin batter so easy! Plus I love that I’m saving money on paper liners. Read more details about this simple time and money saving process here.

Have you tried freezing muffin batter? How about silicone cups? Can’t wait to hear how you like the Strawberry Cream Muffins!

P.S. We have not one but two weddings we are heavily involved in this weekend! Starting yesterday, we have been/are running from party to shower to rehearsal to set up to other rehearsal to wedding to getting hair fixed to wedding. If you didn’t follow all of that, don’t worry. I have it all scheduled down the the minute on my calendar. All that to say, you have no idea how happy I was when I found some frozen muffin batter cups in my freezer on Wednesday. I tossed them at my kids to make for their breakfast Saturday. Perfect!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

The Great Way We’re Drying our Clothes Now

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Did I ever tell you about the time I went for about a year and a half without a working dryer? Our boys were little, money was tight, and our dryer went out. Replacing it seemed like a bad idea at the time since buying groceries was also necessary. A dryer? Neh. I could do without.

And so I did. For over a year. In the spring, summer, and fall I used a clothesline. In the winter though? Oh boy. I had a tiny wooden clothes rack that my mom had used in college. That held a few things, but otherwise I hung or draped clothes and towels and little boy socks all over the house on any surface I could find. It worked. We survived. In the big scheme of things, it wasn’t a terrible hardship.

Eventually we bought a used dryer that is still working for us. (We always buy used appliances, by the way. We’ve learned that people are often trading in their “old” model for whatever is the latest and greatest. “Used” doesn’t always mean “dead.” Usually it just means “costs less.” We’re all over it.) We do at least two loads of laundry each day, so I’m very thankful for a working dryer now!

But for all the clothes we prefer not to put into the dryer, I’m excited to now have the Homestead Drying Rack that Homestead Store sent us a few weeks ago to review. This guy puts my tiny little drying rack to shame. Check it out:

drying rack2

What I like most about this rack is how the rods are so efficiently spaced away from one another. It makes for much easier draping and drying, offering many places to hang our clothing. It’s big, but it grows up instead of out so it doesn’t take up any more space on the floor than my smaller one did. (They also carry an even bigger one, the Homesteader Drying Rack, which looks marvelous!)

Now that the boys are older, they have quite a few items of clothing they prefer not go into the dryer. We’re going to be getting years of use out of this gem, I can tell!

drying rack

Can’t put the nice basketball uniforms in the dryer, of course! 

Homestead Store offers several different sizes of drying racks, and originally I selected the small Tabletop Drying Rack thinking of saving space. I’m so thankful they came back with the suggestion that I try their bigger and most popular Pioneer Drying Rack instead! That is the way to go for a family as big as mine. We put it in our school room (hence the U.S. map on the wall), which works well for us now that the boys are older and only use the school room as a hub for all our books and software (and guitars and video equipment and microphones and…).

One thing to note: Putting this drying rack together was a two-man job. Matt and Elias (our 14-year old) worked together on this project that took just a little longer than we anticipated. It was worth it though. The rack is super sturdy. I have no doubt it will stand up to years of use.

A Homestead Drying Rack Discount!

Homestead Store is offering us all a 10% discount on all drying racks! Use the code homemaker10 for the discount. This offer is good through March 31, 2016. Be sure to check out their Facebook Page while you’re at it. They share some really fun info there!

Special thanks to Homestead Store for being a site sponsor this month and for providing our family with this wonderful drying rack

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Low Sugar Chocolate Cheesecake Parfaits

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chocolate cheesecake parfait

There is a really weird thing about my dad.

No, no – hear me out. I don’t mean weird like weird. Actually though, if you think about it we all have our own variety of weirdness, do we not? Oh, we do. We are who we are and we think that anyone who isn’t like us is weird. News flash: We are all weird. Weirdo.

So about my dad. He’s super picky about all things fruits and vegetables. He only likes canned green beans, canned peaches in corn syrup, and iceberg lettuce. When he comes to visit and I offer beautiful trays of fresh fruit and steaming bowls of vegetables and he’s like, “What is this broccoli stuff? Hmm, peaches with fuzz. You mean people actually eat asparagus?”

And when it comes to strawberries? I can’t even believe I’m related to him because he will not touch a strawberry. He says it’s the seeds. Oh but he is missing out on one of the finest pleasures of this life on earth.

None of this in and of itself is weird. The weird part is that somehow in a conversation about what we do and not not like, when the subject of beets came up, my dad said, “Beets? Oh, I like beets.”

What?!? He won’t eat a fresh strawberry, a peach off a tree, or about fifty other fruit and vegetable options – but he’ll eat a beet? So weird.

I don’t even like beets. I think they taste like dirt. (Not that I’ve actually eaten dirt.) I’ve tried but I just can’t like them. See, and this makes me weird to those of you who do like beets. I told you we are all weird.

Since my dad won’t eat strawberries, I will continue to eat his share and my share plus all the other strawberries I can get my hands on. They are my favorite.

Our family recently combined two of our favorite recipe ideas: Low Sugar Strawberry Cheesecake Parfaits with Chocolate Whipped Cream. The result is a delicious Chocolate Cheesecake Parfait. Of course, I used strawberries with the chocolate cheesecake to make these. But you could use blueberries, bananas, and whatever other fruit you might like.

Low Sugar Chocolate Cheesecake Strawberry ParfaitsYum

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Low Sugar Chocolate Cheesecake Strawberry Parfaits
 
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Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
  • 2½ cups heavy whipping cream
  • 8 ounces softened cream cheese
  • 3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 Tablespoon real maple syrup
  • Liquid stevia to taste (I use about 20 drops) (Use a few Tablespoons of sugar if you prefer.)
  • 1 -2 pounds fresh, sliced strawberries
Instructions
  1. Place all ingredients (minus the strawberries) into a blender.
  2. Whip until smooth and creamy.
  3. Spoon mixture into bowls or cups – layering them with sliced strawberries.

Low Sugar Chocolate Cheesecake Parfait

If you have a tried and true you will like beets if you eat them this way recipe, please do let me know. Otherwise, I’ll stick with the other dozens of fruit and vegetable options I do like and I’ll eat strawberries like there’s no tomorrow. Never forget that you’re weird and I’m weird and everyone is weird.

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Twelve More Pounds of Strawberries and a Whole Lotta Green Food

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It wasn’t very long ago that our family didn’t go through many fruits and veggies in a week. Even during the first few years of our real food journey when I was learning more about nutrition, I never made fruits and veggies a big part of our meals.

healthyeatingjourney

Slowly but surely, we’ve added more variety of produce to our diet. Gradually, we’ve noticed our bodies crave more and more fresh food. It’s pretty fun actually! (Don’t be thinking we’re all that though because we also still like chips. Meh.)

I love strawberries

I’ve probably already been pretty clear about how excited our family is that it’s strawberry season again! We recently went through 16 pounds of them in less than a week because they were in our house for the first time in months and we could not stop. As we ate the last few berries from that stash, we all started freaking out about being back down to zero strawberries again. (I exaggerate. No one was actually freaking out. Not even me. I was perfectly calm. Who even cares about strawberries?)

The next day, I went to the store with a plan to price-match a good deal on strawberries. While there, I found that the store had two-pound containers at a better deal than the one-pound price-match. I only put 6 containers in my cart because I’m nice and wanted to leave some berries for the other customers. Twelve pounds of strawberries ought to hold us for a few days, I think.

groceries3716

I’ve officially decided this is my favorite time of year to buy food. Oodles of goodness is starting to become available again at good prices. Not only did I get a cart full of strawberries, I also got pears, avocados, asparagus, mixed greens, cantaloupe, and spinach. You’ll see in the picture that I also got cream and cottage cheese. The cream is for the berries and the cottage cheese is going to taste marvelous with the fresh pineapple I got last week.

The post without a point

I would appear that I’m just rambling here, showing you all my berries and other fresh produce. What am I actually trying to say?

  1. Buy fresh produce!
  2. Eat fresh produce!
  3. Have fun trying new fresh produce items.
  4. Challenge yourself to enjoy more fresh produce than you might typically eat each day.
  5. I love strawberries.

If you aren’t eating many fruits and vegetables, you aren’t fueling your body with enough nourishment. Period. I care about this so much that if you came to my house, I would actually share my strawberries with you. Now that is a true friend.

Don’t just nod and smile and walk away. It’s time to commit. Leave a comment here telling us about some of your favorite fruits and vegetables, and let us know what you’re going to buy at the store next time you go. Increase the fruits and veggies, friends! Let’s do this!

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