Living From Scratch

Crockpot Cookery
The crockpot is an amazing tool for a busy person.  Crockpots require little to no preparation for a home cooked, wholesome meal that will be ready by dinnertime. If your home is anything like mine, dinner hour chaotic even when you don’t have dinner to prepare.  Imagine the feeling of satisfaction you’ll have all [...]

Cooking from scratch
One of my all-time favorite kitchen activities is to cook from scratch.  My favorite meals are those that are prepared with home-grown, home-made ingredients.  Ingredients such as cream cheese, sour cream, yogurt, mayonnaise, buttermilk and more can all be made at home.  Baking mixes, graham crackers, crackers, pop-tart taste-a-likes and your favorite snacks [...]

Cooking with Cast Iron
I used to be intimidated by cooking in cast iron.  The first thing I tried cooking in it was pancakes - not a pro at pan cakes at that point (and still not!) I ended up burning every pancake and smoking us out of the house.  I decided cast iron wasn’t for [...]

Bread Recipes
Here you will find the bread recipes my family and I enjoy.
Note: all purpose flour can be used in place of bread flour, but you may not get as nice of a rise or texture.
White Bread
6-7 cups unbleached bread flour
3 Tablespoons of sugar (or Rapadura)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons of melted butter
4.5 tsp regular [...]

Batch cooking, freezer cooking, once-a-however long-cooking (once a week, once a month, etc.), whatever you call it the basic idea is the same: you cook a whole lot of food at once and freeze it until use.
The benefits are great!

Conserves electricity and heat, as you are cooking larger amounts at once (instead of cooking [...]