TheCG

Daddy long legs take care of black widows? That's good to know....

So, Amazon just announced Kindle Unlimited. They have 600,000 titles that you can pay $9.99/month for unlimited reading from. A lot of the books on my Kindle Wish List aren't in there, but there are quite a few that are. You don't have to have a Kindle to use it. I haven't decided if they're saving my budget or wrecking it with this one...but one of the books on there that I've been drooling over is $9.99...so that one right there would pay for a month.

Even when I lived by myself, I still cooked in batches the size I'd made when I was cooking for 4 of us. That way, I had lunches and dinner for later. Just, umm, make sure you label the containers of chili and spaghetti sauce. It's very disappointing to open your container for lunch at work and realize that you just have spag sauce, not the chili you were looking forward to. Not that I would know from personal experience or anything.

*blinks* So, a few changes. 1) We're going at lunch to talk to DH's parents about moving a mobile home onto their land and selling our house. 2) We checked into selling the car - we're far enough upside down that the dealership wouldn't want to deal with us, so we would have to sell it privately, get a loan for the gap, and then buy something else. I think we're not going to pursue that unless things fall through on the housing issue. Thanks for the hugs and encouragement (and I might try that with the lentils...when DH isn't looking).

Call the company it says it's from and ask them about it. They might be able to do it somehow.

I found $10 in my hubby's name!

Hi y'all! The rental market here is bonkers, as we're in the middle of oil country. However...I wouldn't want that kind of stress and we wouldn't have the money to get a trailer house. We bought our house right before the market went crazy, and they're estimating the real estate market will still go up another 8 or 9% over the next year. We're working on staying away from processed foods - I'd say I cook 75% of our food almost from scratch now, but I need to get that up to 95% or even 100%. We do eat a lot of broccoli and onions, but I need to add in more cabbage & fermented foods. Eating out for Chinese food isn't an option for me in our area, as I have to eat gluten free to begin. We've given up on eating out at a lot of places - even the good steakhouse in the area can't decide what I can and cannot eat. Outback is the main place we eat out now, and that's rarely as we can't afford to go often (and really only go when we're out of town). We're working on straightening out our eating, it just takes time, energy, and money.

Hi y'all! I'm still popping in from time to time. Right now, I have a pot of hamburger soup simmering on the stove and will be making waffles and soup for a crowd after church. Hubby insists they don't go together...but I don't care. I've been dealing with more health crap - not much energy or stamina, achy joints, crappy digestion, headaches, etc. Of course, all my test results are normal, so it must all be in my head, right? We're figuring out that diet is a big part of it, but we can't afford to cut out all the grains and sugar right now. I definitely do better when I add coconut oil into my diet, even if I am eating it straight off the spoon some days, but the type I do the best with is, of course, the most expensive stuff out there. I think I'm going to save up so that when they have 2 5-gallon buckets for $100 again, I can order them. We've got $100 budgeted each week for groceries, and it doesn't go far enough. I think we need to sell the car and get something cheaper or sell the house and move into a trailer house out next to hubby's parents on their land, but he's not going for it. He's talking about working a second job on weekends doing security. If he does that, then I'll feel guilty every time I want to spend money on something that's not strictly necessary...including groceries. I only have a few plants in, and it's the season right now where it's too hot to start anything. Around September, I figure I'll plant a bunch of greens and such and hope for the best. The only things that survived last summer were rosemary, mint, and aloe, and the aloe croaked this winter. I have $35 saved up...I wonder if there are any greens that would do well in the house? I need to go through and inventory my freezers - I know I have a chicken, some ground beef, cocktail shrimp (we'll probably thaw them out, de-tail them, and use them for stirfry), bacon grease, tomatoes (around 30 of them, frozen whole), corn (which I don't do well with, but hubby and the kids will eat), broccoli, sauteed onions & garlic, risotto rice, and chopped celery in the freezer, and a variety of greens in the fridge...I just need to figure out how to cook them all! I have plenty of coconut oil and bacon grease, so I'm not going to run out of cooking oil soon. I have flour, tomato paste, herbs, and a bunch of other stuff in the pantry. I'm still working for a place that installs surveillance systems, and we're working on getting ours put together, cobbling it from various pieces from old systems I'm permitted to bring home. Ah well. Must go stir the soup. I wish hubby didn't object so to beans - lentils would be a fabulous edition (and stretch it a bit further).

Hubby is definitely a DIY-er. Our garage door is secured with a bolt and nut through the side of the rails. If you slide the bolt towards the garage door, it blocks the wheels from going past it. If you slide the bolt away from the garage door, it opens just fine. Just as a note, all of our garage door openers are busted, so we open them all manually. It will open a few inches at the bottom, which is big enough for us to shove a folding chair through when we're cleaning out the car. One of the kids *might* be able to wriggle through, but it'll keep most people out. Coming a bit late to the conversation, but it is an additional way to (mostly) secure the door for cheap.

We saw TSO in concert last week.

Dumped in 2 more cups of wine and the potatoes about 45 minutes before dinner. Delicious! The kids ate it without complaining (even though they knew there were onions in it) and I have just enough left over for MY lunch tomorrow.

I've never worried about how to cook if the power goes out for a few days because we have multiple camp stoves, cast iron, and firewood. BTW, one of my cast iron dutch ovens is on the stove with stew meat, bouillon, mirepoix, and a bit of wine in it. About an hour before dinner, I figure I'll add potatoes and the rest of the wine. Nomnomnom.

Bwahaha! It's already playing on my laptop!

Sounds tasty!

Yes, as long as you put enough coals on top.

Yup! I have some that have rounded lids that I use mainly for frying french fries and fried mushrooms and chicken nuggets....

*dances* Thanks to my lovely MIL, I now have the type of dutch oven that you can put coals on top of as well as a cast iron griddle.

Still free Saturday morning. Thanks!

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday!

If anybody needs a decent office suite, WordPerfect is $20 on Amazon today. It can save in MS Office formats. Just an FYI.

This lady has a bunch of gardening and home books listed that are free: http://www.backyarddiva.ca/free-ebooks-today/

If you think this might be useful to you, let me know. If you think it's not useful, let me know and I'll just save my books and not worry about posting them.

The Recession Survival Guide: http://www.amazon.com/Recession-Survival-Guide-Jonah-Jones-ebook/dp/B00EY48MBC/ref=pd_sim_kstore_26

10 Easiest Veggies to Grow: http://www.amazon.com/The-10-Easiest-Vegetables-Grow-ebook/dp/B00GFHZJP8/ref=pd_sim_kstore_12