Suncat

Oh I would so do that.. ummm actually out of necessity.. my dd at 14.5 yrs did that. (I was in the hospital 2hrs away on bed rest with my last pregnancy). She did good. Maybe I should at least be taking my son (he wants to drive anyway) and having him deciding what to get (even if off the list of what we need).

And perhaps it's mostly an illusion..Because of inflation while we may be bringing home 32.5% more (on average) than in 2000, our buying power is actually down -5.7% Which means that we HAVE to be bringing in at least 40% more than in 2000 to stay at the same buying power we had.

And besides that. When one person is home it's much easier to be frugal than when both work. When we talk with people about income we explain ours this way.. DH brings in the money, and my job is to make it stretch as far as I can. When you don't have someone who can concentrate on the stretching and being at home to do the things that make that work.. time to yard sale for needed items or to hunt for the best deals, to run to the store at least every week to get only those things currently on sale and to keep enough stocked up that you never have to buy stuff not on sale.. and it's really hard to do all of that on top of another job. That's why you almost always see when young families are trying to decide if the mom should stay home that they're told to consider the COSTS of both working to include it in the budget to see if having both working brings them out ahead or not. (hint: often not)

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/commentaries/Real-Incomes-Four-Years-After-the-Great-Recession.php

Add it to the forum calender?

Now that is funny.. I have centurylink too.. but every few hours I would connect and could see the page.. but no one else had posted that there was a problem.. and I'd think.. ok must be fixed.. but it'd be down again the next time I came through. (I have several sites that as I take breaks during the day I just go through the list so even when I thought it was down I'd click on it without thinking as part of the routine).

Oh and I was mostly amused by the problem.. I saw that it said the domain name wasn't paid for and thought to myself.. hmmm sounds like something I'd do.. I'm sure they'll fix it asap.

Nachos

you'd need to know when the blood sugar tests are done.. like if it's 2hrs after he eats, you may not see it going up because it falls so fast. I'd start with looking up reactive hypoglycemia.

Sassenach, I know just where you're talking about to go see the Elk. We went to Humboldt State.

We have elk in the area but they don't come to town so I don't see them much. The deer on the other hand live in town and are a real nuisance.. Pretty.. but a nuisance.

Ooo Pretty!

I always like how the deep colored jams look. How does it taste? Does the orange give the blueberry a bit of tang? I tend to find blueberry too sweet by itself.

Doesn't broth have a high salt content? or is the rice diluting that?

When you want fresh green onions.. if you buy a bunch and chop up the green part.. put the white/roots into a glass of water and you can regrow the long green leaves at least once and get twice the green onion for your cost.

You can dehydrate the actual meat and it's safe.. why would using broth to cook the rice be problematic? well I guess you'd need to be sure it was dehydrated sufficiently but that's always true.

Oh that's a good article.. just keep wading through the medicalese and there's lots that a layperson can understand. Most of the jargon is about why things work, and while that can be good to know the basics of treatment with the things they're outlining is pretty straightforward.

making colloidal silver isn't hard.. from what I understand you can't make it too strong.. generally the homemade stuff is less strong than what you'd buy.. the homemade generators just aren't strong enough to make it too strong.. You can also eat with real silver silverware

Pork Chopes, fried green tomatoes, mashed potatoes and maybe an apple crisp or pie or something with apples.

We've had a washrag go down a toilet too.. and yeah.. the only way to get it out was to call a plumber. Though the apple down the toilet was more "fun". You see it was just small enough to start down the toilet.. and just big enough to get stuck.. and too round and slick to get out. We finally pulled the toilet, set it in the tub and used a hose (run in through the window) to wash it out backwards.

Going to check out the recipes...

this is what I was talking about http://www.amazon.com/Larrupin-Swedish-Style-Mustard-Sauce/dp/B008MZ0TYW

My understanding is that fruit regardless of the sugar can be waterbath canned.. the lemon juice added to jams and jellies is for the pectin to gel the mixture, not for canning.

My main question here would be how much the cooking of canning the jam would change the jam.

Also, have you tried pomonapectin.com for pectin? Because of the type of pectin the recipes are much more varied than in the grocery store pectin.

Potato soup base with added carrots, onions and polish sausage. And some sort of homemade bread thing.

We use brown rice. I've got all the kids more or less liking the flavor and I don't do long term storage just rotating through. And we don't have really hot weather here so it stores better. I do rinse the rice just to get all the dust off and help keep it from being more sticky than it should be.

Pretty sure your body will use what it needs from the mix so I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Well kids usually get more colds than adults because adults have the immunities from when they were kids. Plus kids are in school. I have never been sick so often as when I worked with young children in preschool and public school. There's always things that the kids get and the adults don't because they got it as kids. Also, transfer is greater with kids than adults because adults are more able to understand and follow things like hand washing and not touching your eyes etc. Plus if it's not hitting adults hard, they won't be going to the doctor.. they'll just call it another cold and stay home (hopefully) a few days and be done with it. And even if this is something "new" it may be similar enough to something adults would have had years ago that they're not getting it now.

We had bbq pork yesterday. So today a glance in my fridge showed me that we have some beans to use and I know there's some leftover rice too.. so it's burritos for dinner.. and maybe I'll cook up some peppers and onions to dress up them up a bit. (I love sauteed veggies on a bean burrito)

Well we have a good appliance repairman in the area so we find that our money is better spent on used appliances and a bit of repair work than buying new.. when used can cost you as little as $50 for a washer or dryer.. and then if there's problems you spend another $100-200 on repair.. way better than a new appliance that is built to last 5 yrs (for a 3-4 person family so you can figure that at just over a year for my family).

Washer and dryer I wouldn't care about the color at all.. but most are white so we do end up with matching whites. My stove and my fridge were bought new. Both white. I couldn't stand the way stainless looks when you have people who touch it constantly all day long. (I know some people that don't mind wiping it down every time they're in the kitchen to keep it pretty though). But the fridge while running great.. all the pieces parts (shelves and drawers etc) are breaking and those are pricey. might be getting close to the cost of a new fridge by the time we do all the replacing.

My dream is to figure out how to fit TWO stoves into the house (need to make part of the garage part of the kitchen).. I've priced it out and two inexpensive white stoves gives me 8 burners, 2 ovens and 2 storage drawers for way less (especially if you get used) than any of the 6 burners out there.. since most aren't 6 burners but 5 squished into the space of 4 (which hardly helps me with my large pots) or they're 4 burners plus a griddle and still only one oven and priced like they're solid gold.

We buy a mustard sauce I haven't been able to duplicate yet.. but dill in the mustard (and it's sweet) is very good.

Sure, but I grew up with a pantry system so I cook from it, other than running out of our favorites there's no doubt I can cook with it.. when I shop I buy sale items and fresh/perishable items and I do use what's stored.

That's why I'm always of two minds about it, I guess, I don't have a pressing need to clear out or learn to use stuff. My stocked up stuff stays rotated and we use everything I have stocked. And as far as using stuff in the depths of the cupboards or freezers.. I pull that stuff out when I defrost the freezer and make plans to use it asap and when there's a canned food drive and grab anything we haven't used (since obviously we're ignoring it) and donate that stuff (and it's usually been given to us which is why it's there being ignored) And so the actual need to do it is on a par with the risk.. and so I waffle.