Bad Economy = Bake Your Own Bread

The economy took a dump on our family big time. We moved a few months before all the exploding of the financial sector, and unfortunately, (as I've bitched about before) I couldn't find a job to save my life.

But being unemployed for 11 months has its upsides. For one, I've got all this time on my hands... Work sucks, man. You work all day, you get some cash sure, but then you never do anything because you have to work! So I began to do some of the things I've held in the back of my brain, telling myself I should be doing but never did because I never had the time.

I was also spurred in this direction out of necessity. No work = no money. Groceries are expensive, especially the way the USA forces us to shop. Gotta spend $6.00 on one box of food that lasts for one meal and doesn't even begin to fill Lucky's hollow leg. LAME. So I decided to take my food into my own hands, something I should have done a LONG time ago.

No more spending $5 on a loaf of natural and organic bread. No more buying in containers. I shop the produce section and get the majority of my food FRESH. THen, I cook. I cook enough for us for dinner, and leftovers for Lucky for lunch.

A big change was baking my own bread. Spending $4 on a bag of whole wheat flour makes way more sense than $5 for a loaf of bread. I've been baking a molasses wheat Brown Bread and it is DELICIOUS. I love it.

And yogurt! I made yogurt! Its so easy! Who knew? I acquired a yogurt maker from a friend and tried it out. Previously I had attempted yogurt in a thermos, but I didn't know what I was doing. So I borrowed a copy of "Country Wisdom & Know How" and looked up yogurt. Simple straight forward recipes that make everything form yogurt to raising chickens look easy! Apparently the trick is sterile tools and just enough bacteria. I've made it twice now, and its great!

Of course I made it soy yogurt, so I was a little unsure of how it would come out. I added a bit of agar agar to thicken it in case the bacterias didn't. Good call on my part. The yogurt is not thick like sour cream or store-bought yogurt, more like tzatiki or greek yogurt: thin and tangy!

Last night I made daal and onions, with chapatti bread and this yogurt was an ideal garnish! YUM!!!

Now, I've been reading through the book and we want to try our hands at cheesemaking. YES. We will make our own cheese!

Things I would Buy if I had 12K Dollars...

Student Loans, schmudent loans... I want this.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, with Fireproof Binding. Only $11,444.17. Think I can get it for 5,737 payments of only $19.95?

First edition. Limited issue, number 193 of 200 copies specially bound in "Johns-Manville Quinterra, an asbestos material with exceptional resistance to pyrolysis" (limitation pages). Signed by the author. A very good copy indeed which shows a little wear to the spine ends and slight dustiness to the spine and outside edge of the front board. A generally clean and well preserved example. The author’s famous novel of censorship and book burning, which takes the form of a futuristic science fiction novel but explores the effects of mass media in the 1950s on literature. It instantly became a cult book and went on to be regarded as a classic of dystopian as well as science fiction. The title famously refers to the temperature at which paper will spontaneously combust, so as a novelty 200 copies of the first edition were issued in a fire retardant binding, and signed by the author. This hardy binding, however, has not generally weathered well, being white and prone to soiling. Clean copies are now scarce.

I would like to have...

1.) A few more jobs with flexible schedules, but high hourly rates.

2.) Another room on my apartment. I REALLY need some designated work space! Its a bitch setting up a project on the kitchen table and then having to clean it up every night, or conversely, scrub up the kitchen table and sweep the crumbs up every time I want to spread out some work. gah! Next apartment 2 BEDROOM.

3.) An organizational system for the closet in the front room. Its getting to be a nightmare in there! Its deep, and there's a crappy Ikea shelf in the back but there's three rubbermaid tubs in front of it rendering it almost useless.

4.) One of those diffusing screens for taking better pictures of prints and things I make. Its so difficult to take photos with good lighting ...

5.) A better system of record-stereo-receiver stackage. The stereo is taking up a LOT of floor space, and it looks so untidy over there. The cat is always knocking things or falling into the gap behind it, which unplugs the speakers or some other annoyance.

and I'm sure there's more. These are the things that have been rattling around in the back of my head lately, inflating all the other more immediate stresses. Soon as I have steady income I'll be able to get to work on these.