Little House on the Prairie Archives

April goals (and a book club giveaway!)

March 30, 2014 by Jana 7 Comments

I’m starting something new. I’ve seen it on other blogs and even tried it once before on a previous site. For some reason, it’s never stuck, but you know what? It’s worth a shot again.

What the heck am I talking about? I’m talking about sharing my monthly goals.

While I’m usually not one to put that kind of information out there, I think that it’s a good way to keep myself and my project on track. I have a tendency to self-sabotage when things are going well and I want to break that cycle. I’m hoping that by sharing my goals with you guys, it’ll keep me focused and also, because I did share my goals, I don’t want to seem like a huge slacker and I’ll actually be productive.

So here we go. For the month of April, I plan to:

Make homemade butter. This was the first pin I put in my pioneer project Pinterest board. I don’t know that it’s necessarily cheaper than buying store made butter but it’s one of the hallmarks of pioneer living. It’s time.
Crochet one dish cloth. After trying and practicing on a crochet hook and the knitting loom, I think crocheting is the way to go right now. It’ll be nice to put something homemade in my kitchen, too (you know, that’s not edible). I also have a goal to make it look nice, not like something my dog made.
Work on my business. Many pioneers were entrepreneurial, and that’s actually something I had going for me before I started this project. I own and operate a blogger mentoring program and this month, I need to finish the site redesign and update the menu of services.
Start our garden. This is more of my husband’s project than mine because he loves gardening. I do not. However, I need to be more involved and this means actually having an opinion on what we grow, how big the garden should be, and assisting in planting. It’s unpleasant but I’ll do it. Pioneers had to do shit they didn’t like all the time.
Participate in the Watch Your Wallet Challenge. I adore the concept of this challenge, hosted by Steph at Life According to Steph and Marla at Luck Fupus, particularly as you get to make your own rules. My rules for the challenge are: no stupid tax (late fees, library fines, etc), only make frivolous purchases using gift cards, stick to my grocery budget, use coupons more often, refrain from buying more craft supplies, and keep up with our 52 week savings challenge.

There are a few more goals on my list but there’s no need to share them. But what I can share is this nifty button I made for anyone who’s joining the Little House bookclub (it starts tomorrow!) and, below the button, is a giveaway for a complete set of the Little House books! That’s right, one lucky reader will get a chance to win all 9 books! Thanks to Steph, Jenniemarie, and Athena for assisting with the giveaway. Good luck!

P.S. Please excuse the horrible formatting of what you’re about to see. WP is being an asshole or I’m doing something wrong and can’t get it to do what I want. But I think you get the point.

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Pioneer Kitchen Diaries: Tomato Vegetable Soup

February 7, 2014 by Jana 5 Comments

To me, one of the basic tenets of pioneer living is making do with what you have. After all, in those days, if you ran out of meat or potatoes, you couldn’t just hop on your horse and swiftly ride into town to get more. The nearest town was usually several miles away and shooting and eating your horse was not at all an option because there goes your transportation to said far away town.

That would make everything even more difficult.

This was especially true in the winter. In the book The Long Winter, the Ingalls family is basically trapped in their house due to weather and, even if they could get outside, there wouldn’t be anything to buy because trains couldn’t get into town (at this point, they had a house in town) to deliver supplies. So they had to use what they had if they wanted to eat.

I’ve experienced something similar lately.

I don’t know what the weather is like in your part of the world, but here on the East Coast, it’s horrible. Snow, ice, freezing rain, wind chills making it feel below zero…it’s the opposite of pleasant. It makes you not want to leave the house. And, if you live in my neighborhood that’s sort of in the middle of nowhere and that neighborhood is the land that snow plows forgot, you kind of get stuck. Especially if you don’t have an SUV or 4 wheel drive car.

You know, the modern equivalent of a horse.

So even if you wanted to go somewhere, you couldn’t. And after a few days, cabin fever sets in and food starts to run low. But getting to the supermarket isn’t easy (and they’re probably out of bread and milk anyway) so, like the pioneers, you have to make due with what you have.

That’s where my tomato vegetable soup comes in. I normally have a recipe for tomato soup and a separate one for vegetable soup but I was out of broth and decided to combine the two for something a little different. That also might have come from a place of boredom but we’ll just pretend it came from a place of experimentation.

To make the soup, I looked in my pantry and freezer where I found a can of crushed tomatoes, a bag of mixed frozen vegetables, a can of diced tomatoes, some garlic, vegetable oil, and salt. And water but that came from the faucet. I also had some crushed red pepper on hand for a little kick ( water and red pepper not pictured).

Then I sort of sautéed the vegetables and garlic in some vegetable oil.

After a few minutes, I dumped in a can of undrained, unseasoned tomatoes

I mixed that up, and added in a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes and 2 1/2 cups water along with roughly 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

When it was all done and cooked, I ladled it into a large bowl and topped it off with Cheez Its (because I am gourmet and classy like that)

This made enough for roughly 4-6 lunches, depending on how much you eat at a time. My husband added some leftover brown rice and didn’t complain (at least not to my face).

The soup left me feeling full and resourceful. Just like a pioneer on the cold winter prairie.

Townhouse Pioneer What’s Left in the House Tomato Vegetable Soup

Makes approximately 4-6 servings

Ingredients

28 oz can crushed tomatoes
16 oz bag frozen mixed vegetables
14 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 1/2 cups water
Minced garlic, roughly 1 tbsp
Crushed red pepper, salt, pepper (to taste)
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Directions

Heat vegetable oil in pan
Add in garlic and mixed vegetables. Sautée for a few minutes, until vegetables start to thaw and soften.
Add in undrained tomatoes.
Stir in crushed tomatoes and water.
Heat through. While soup is heating, add in optional spices (note: add at least a bit of salt. Trust me on this one).

Serve with crackers, cheese, sandwiches, or whatever else you feel like.

Pioneer living with a weekly schedule

February 4, 2014 by Jana 6 Comments

Little House on the Prairie. Great books, greater TV show (particularly when I was sick and home from school as a kid. Between that, The Price is Right, and Press Your Luck, I was set). And despite the obvious romanticizing of parts of her childhood, Laura Ingalls Wilder does a great job describing what life was like as a pioneer in the mid to late 1800s.

I know what she's thinking. It's "what the hell was I supposed to do next?" I know this look well. — I know what she’s thinking. It’s “what the hell was I supposed to do next?” I know this look well.

We’ll talk about that throughout this project. For today, though, we’re going to focus on having a weekly chore schedule. In Little House in the Big Woods, Laura describes her mother’s (Ma) schedule as this:

Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.

The concept of this schedule is wonderful. It’s thorough, specific, and covers all the areas of housekeeping that a person would need to attend to throughout the week (including building in time for rest. Alleviates guilt that way, and makes room for whatever faith you observe). And for someone like me who loathes housework and often has a difficult time forcing myself to do it, it’s a great way to break up the chores into manageable pieces. It makes the task of attending to chores less daunting since, you know, I’m not having to cram them all into one day.

The schedule is also flexible enough that it can be altered to accommodate each individual’s life. For instance, I can assure you I’m not churning butter on Thursday or any day (although I will be spending one afternoon making butter in my stand up mixer). As for ironing, if something that needs to be ironed makes its way into my house, I’m going on a rampage to find out who did it. And mending? That’ll happen whenever a button falls off of something. I’m not saving it up for one day.

But maybe instead of spending a whole day mending, I’ll spend the day sewing cloth napkins or some other sewing project. Instead of churning butter, I’ll designate a day for grocery shopping, menu planning, and assorted other errands. There’s no need to stick to Ma’s schedule as written; I’m not Ma and neither are you. There’s nothing wrong with taking her framework and making it your own!

I’ll get the schedule party started. I think, for now, my schedule will look like this:

Laundry on Monday,
Clean on Tuesday,
Dust and vacuum on Wednesday,
Catch up on missed chores on Thursday,
Errands on Friday,
Food prep on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday.

It’s worth noting that in this, I need to make time for work, taking my child to her activities, going to the gym, and volunteering at my child’s school. I realize this is way busier than a normal pioneer lady’s schedule but I’m a modern pioneer. My life comes with different demands than that of 150 years ago. Which is fine. This experiment isn’t necessarily about replicating exactly what they did back then. It’s about incorporating parts of their way of life into mine.

Also, I’m not entirely sure how this is a step towards self-sufficiency. I do think it’s a step towards organization which leads to buying less so maybe there’s something self-sufficiency related tucked in there. Regardless, it’s still using a pioneer living model (even if it’s probably fictitious) and therefore applicable.

Right?

Do you have a household chores schedule? Will you create one? What does it look like?

April goals (and a book club giveaway!)

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