As someone aspiring to be a professional writer, the gaps can be embarrassing. But I’ve had to learn to get over that and recognize that life gets overwhelming and priorities shift sometimes.

The CrashLady Summer

I think this gap began with what I’ve coined The CrashLady Summer™. I re-read Sink Reflections by The FlyLady this past summer; I always turn to this book when I need to get out of a life-management funk, and this year was as dysfunctional as any other. Overwhelmed by the details of modern life, I decided to slow down and just clean my sink. And that I did. Every day. For two months. I got up, dressed all the way down to my house shoes, and made sure the kitchen was spotless before I moved on to anything else for the day.

After two months I had a nervous breakdown. Like, catatonic-laid-out-in-the-driveway nervous breakdown. (I’ve heard that when you become unregulated, laying on the floor is good medicine, so it was honestly a good faith effort at re-calibrating.) I “crashed out” as the kids say nowadays.

And why? The house was cleaner than ever! Shouldn’t the reduction in external chaos calm my inner chaos?

Turns out, no. Because there was not a moment leftover for me to sort through my inner life. I’ve learned that whatever is going on in the world around me doesn’t necessarily affect my mental health. It’s my mental health that determines the state of the world around me. Without ample time to think, imagine, and process all the organic material that arises in my mind, I can’t function. Bottom line: I need time to create.

So how did crashing pan out?

I spent the rest of the year taking more than my fair share of time to create. Up to this very last day of the year I have been surrounded by chaos, but excited by possibility.

Late Summer

My ascent into creative heights began almost immediately after my depressive slump. It started with my decision to use up as much of my acrylic yarn and poly fill as possible by making all the kids in the neighborhood amigurumi stuffed animals for Christmas. I started this project in August and met my December deadline by the skin of my teeth.

Autumn

In the midst of my crochet marathon, I made a batch of elderberry syrup from the elderberries I had harvested and dried earlier this summer. I have pounds of elderberries in the pantry that I purchased before our own berry canes matured, so I am usually able to get an initial batch from our backyard and produce subsequent batches for the rest of winter from our stockpile.

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Later in the year I participated in a gift exchange with the women at church and made another batch for the recipient of my gift when she noted that she loved handmade local items. But, she also wrote that she loved baking, so…

…I also whipped out some leftover muslin cotton I had from some previous sewing projects and made her an apron.

When I finished all that blasted crocheting, I never wanted to make another stuffed animal again, but I was not ready to quit and I picked up this granny square vest I made probably two years ago to finally weave in the dozens of loose ends that had made me throw it aside when I had originally finished it (hello, large gap in a project).

The Holidays

As the weather got colder and I had more excuses for staying indoors to work on more projects, a dear friend sent me an unexpected and wonderful gift just in time—a gift card to Wool & the Gang, where I could pick out a project along with all the merino wool necessary to knit myself a sweater. And I’ve been busy with that for weeks now! I picked this beautiful terra cotta color (18 balls, to be exact) and chose this slightly more challenging bubble knit pattern:

I was motivated by my several handmade accomplishments, so I decided to venture into creative territory I remain severely under-experienced in and, frankly, tend to be averse to. I baked a gluten-free snickerdoodle cake for a friend whose birthday is on Christmas day. I realized halfway through the process (which took me all day) that I had no way of transporting it to our Christmas potluck as I am not a baker and do not bother with keeping superfluous baking supplies on hand.

So, I called on a trusty neighbor to borrow her… I believe I called it a cake transporter…

That reminded me of a great story I got to tell the potluck bunch when I showed up with a scruffy looking cake that apparently was scrumptious enough (I don’t know, I was so fed up with the thing I didn’t taste it) so as to fool all tasters into thinking I was familiar with cake and/or gluten-free baking. And it went like this:

Only to find out at a much later time that she was a:

.

.

.

.

PROFESSIONAL PASTRY CHEF.

The End.

A Return to Homemade Gifts

But that wasn’t the end because she has ever since been the sweetest neighbor I can always count on, especially in the event that I need a “cake transporter” or any other baking assistance.

And after a season of embracing a slower handmade method of connecting with others, she gifted me a loaf of homemade sourdough and a wooden Connect Four game that she made herself.

The conclusion I came to after several months of just making things (and receiving several homemade/handmade gifts for Christmas this year) is that I really want return to this slow pace of producing more than I’m consuming. It’s challenging to find other people sometimes that appreciate this way of living. Or maybe it’s just that we don’t talk to each other enough to realize there are plenty of us that feel this way.

I guess what I’m saying is this: in 2026, don’t be afraid to take your pitiful cookies to a neighbor to introduce yourself, or bake an ugly cake for a friend who’s had a tough years, or sew an apron out of scraps for a lady in your church (even if she can’t use it right now cause she’s like 8 months pregnant), or crochet lopsided stuffed animals for the kids in your neighborhood just cause it looks lame on the shelf next to their Nintendo Switch. And don’t be embarrassed when there are long periods of time between your creative endeavors or attempts to better the world around you. Just pick up where you left off and keep going.

These are the little ways we turn society around and get back to that slower handmade life we are all craving. Set the example, however messy, however ugly, however unappreciated (looking at you, kid who shook the fire out of the alligator that took me weeks to craft).

You’ll find people who feel the same along the way.

Happy New Year!

I started to ponder the fact, every time I said it, that I could not trace the precipitous repetition of this phrase back to a moment I consciously decided to undertake “the habit of fortitude.” Perhaps it was the moment I downloaded a relatively expensive app and started trying to rebuild a morning routine from scratch.

In any case, I look back on April and think, yes, I did work on personal fortitude. And I use that term in the most feeble sense possible. Some people endure pain and sickness with fortitude. Some people show great mental fortitude under stressful situations or occupations like law enforcement or men in combat. Me—I’m just working on actually getting the chicken carcass into the crockpot and making broth out of it instead of getting too overwhelmed, leaving it on the counter and throwing it out the next day. I’m working on putting the laundry away once I’ve folded it. I’m working on baking something to serve my Bible study guests twice a month.

Half-Way

Mr. H calls me “half-way.” “Half-way strikes again,” he says when he finds crumbs still on the counter after I said I wiped them down, or when I leave the dry goods on the counter after putting away the cold groceries, or when he finds a dank load of laundry in the washer three days later. He has learned to laugh it off and finish the job or watch me fly into an apologetic fluster as I finish it myself. But this is the kind of 21st century fortitude I’m work through.

It’s pathetic, but I’ll come to my own defense here. The other day I caught myself pondering out loud: “How am I supposed to teach the school, plan and shop for groceries, clean the house, write the posts, cook every meal essentially from scratch, bake all our bread, wash the clothes, play with the kids, tend the garden, volunteer at church, keep up with my friends…”

None of this is unique to me, but I do find it overwhelming to the point that I cannot finish most things in one go. It feels pointless to finish things when they will need to be repeated within, if not within less than, one day.

So, as I said, somewhere in this fog of incomplete tasks, the notion of fortitude emerged. I guess because I realized I was going to need it if I was going to be making all our food from scratch. You can’t quit half way on a loaf of bread. Technically, you can but it causes mental strife cause you know you’re a spineless goose and then gastrointestinal strife cause you have nothing to eat and you end up taking your half-way fanny out for Chick-Fil-A again.

It also helps build domestic fortitude learning that L-cysteine is a common ingredient in commercial breads, and if it’s not made from ground up duck feathers or hog hair, it’s made from human hair.1 Don’t shoot the messenger.

It’s okay to just start

So, did I succeed in building this habit? I rarely succeed in building habits. I can go strong on something for weeks and then quit one day. I recently did that with exercise. It was the smallest commitment of five minutes of movement first thing each morning. I did it without fail for three weeks in a row. Then I packed up and left for a short trip out of town and never did it again.

Committing myself to tasks with fortitude was no different. But I have found myself making little choices each day. Even if it’s just one thing that I stare down and say, “I can do that.” It still doesn’t mean I’ll finish, but isn’t getting started the hardest part? Yesterday it was taking five minutes to prune a few elderberry canes that have been infected with spindle worms. I didn’t finish, but I have always found it adequate to live by the FlyLady’s motto: “Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family.” If it weren’t for that mindset, I’d never start.

End of April Inventory

Here are some exertions I made in this spirit in the last couple of weeks:

The April Garden

The tiny spring harvests started coming in, the first being a handful of cilantro for a yogurt sauce. Followed by a few pea pods every day that I’ve been shelling and collecting in a freezer bag.

I noticed a couple of days ago that the elderberries are starting to come in—at least on the canes that haven’t been hollowed out by the spindle worms.

The April Kitchen

I made a salad for the first time in ages. This one was for a friend’s meal train, but I knew it was going to be outstanding so I bought extra of everything to make us one, too. I even made homemade balsamic vinaigrette! My oldest tried it and could not stop raving about how much he loved it.

My youngest is turning three in a couple of days, but we celebrated a little early. I really did not want to buy a pre-made cake from the store this time, but the early celebration caught me by surprise. I wasn’t prepared to do anything complex, so I threw together a chocolate cake at home and just melted a few chocolate chunks on top and served with a few more sprinkled on top.

And this was not an accomplishment, but it is something I like. I jokingly call our fridge “recession chic.” The other day Mr. H commented on how empty it was, saying, “We have no food!” I corrected him saying, “It’s great.” He asked for clarification on that and I explained, “It’s empty because we have eaten everything in it and there are no leftovers that have been forgotten or gone bad.”

I love being able to see everything we have, keep a few bulk ingredients (lately I’ve been really into putting pecans on everything) and seeing how many ways I can put those few things together. (Note: The fruit and vegetable drawers are not included here, so we do have a little more than what appears here.)

Other April End of the Month Accomplishments:

• Another few quarts of home fermented yogurt

• Two loaves of white bread from scratch

Today, I fell asleep three separate times and ran the dishwasher. That was all I could bring myself to do. So, today, my exercise in fortitude was just finishing this journal entry.

Tomorrow will bring a different wave of mental stimulations and who knows which way that will turn the tides of productivity. I’m ready to surf or sink, whichever comes next. But it will probably be somewhere… half way.

We were running short of snacks and breakfast last weekend and I was determined not to make a trip to the store right before leaving. Luckily, we had just enough neglected bananas, so I made a loaf of chocolate chip banana bread.

Snack: check!

I had already made a quart of yogurt before realizing the pantry was running dry. That covered breakfast—almost. We ran out of granola. So, last Saturday morning I cut some corners on a recipe (which I did not have all the ingredients for) and made something boring but edible. The boys said it was the best granola they had ever had (far from it), so I’m starting to believe that everything homemade really does taste better. It must just be an inherent quality that kids can taste the difference between hard work and UPF.

Just kidding, I made that up.

At any rate, baking from scratch got us through a bottom-of-the-barrel weekend.

Little Parties, Little Gifts

While away, my sister threw me a tea party and invited some of my closest friends to celebrate my birthday. A charcuterie spread, a cake, the works! With tea, snacks and good company, it was positively hobbit-like, only with more flowers than I imagine hobbits prefer.

We went shopping at our favorite antique mall where I found a lyocell maxi dress and a real braided leather belt. Does lyocell qualify as a natural fiber? I’m still trying to figure that out. It’s made from natural materials, but then the process it takes to make the fabric makes me think not. I’ve been working on naturalizing my wardrobe piece by piece. At any rate, I decided as a thrifted piece it qualified and Mom bought them both for me as little birthday gifts!

You can’t stick it all at once

I was also able to stop in on my friend, Denisha, who also surprised me with a birthday gift! (I told you I have great friends.) She makes cozy gift baskets. I’m featuring one of them here because, what I love about them, is that she sources from local vendors and small businesses! And just like the thrifted basket and plant clippings I was gifted last week, these small delights qualify as things that make my life more slow and handmade. I love that.

When she handed it to me, telling me about her local sourcing, she said, “It’s my way of sticking it to the man,” and with the other hand she placed an Amazon package I had just handed her off her porch down on the counter. “I say that as I’m holding this Amazon package.” I shrugged and responded, “Well, you can’t stick it all at once,” which I think nicely sums up what this journal is all about.

I didn’t think to snap a picture of the basket she made for me before opening it to wear the socks included. But below is a picture of a similar basket available in her Etsy shop!

Home Again

I came home to an empty fridge and an Easter dinner to plan. I decided to keep it simple—mostly because I am literally required to prepare simpler meals at this point with all the baking involved. But that’s okay. Somehow food comes alive again when you are heavily invested in it.

So, I made a simmer sauce, threw in some stew beef from the freezer and we had pulled beef sandwiches. The ketchup I used in the sauce and the corn served on the side were both homegrown from my parents’ garden.

And if you try this Mennonite hamburger bun recipe, which comes together in only about an hour, you may never feel the need to buy them again. (Depends on whether bread making is one of your “stick it to the man” undertakings at this point or not. You can see that making my own mineral water with a twist of lime is not on my “stick it to the man” list yet.) My gosh, they were sweet and delicious and there were no leftovers.

Homesteading with the Zimmermans Mennonite hamburger bun recipe

And knowing we needed a little treat at the end (because we don’t do candy, egg dying, Easter baskets, etc.), we ended a week of spring festivities with a batch of from-scratch chocolate chunk cookies, which my husband says were the best he had ever had. And that one, I believe.

Weekly Inventory

• 1 loaf of chocolate chip banana bread from scratch

• 1 sheet pan of granola

• 1 quart of plain yogurt

• Approximately 20 tomato plants transplanted

• From-scratch hamburger buns

• 2 batches of balsamic simmer sauce (1 for the freezer)

• A baker’s dozen chocolate chunk cookies

• A basketful of locally-sourced goodies

• A thrifted maxi dress & leather belt

Seriously, do we have any idea what we are actually eating anymore? Is there ANY way to know?

I planned a bunch of hearty meals, but I wasn’t even thinking about the from-scratch bread requirements this menu involved. When I finished planning I discovered the wheat-y common denominator and overconfidently did not revise my plans.

And that was one day before I realized the undercutting of my domestic potential was inbound.

Homemaking with Hormones

Like many millennial women, I’m learning an awful lot about hormones and the menstrual cycle that I didn’t know before. And it would have been REALLY useful to know every time I was feeling like a sluggish failure or having a break down in years past. This I declare with absolute fury.

But, letting bygones be bygones, I’ve finally learned how to work with my body and give it what it needs instead of trying to beat it into the 24/7 consistently productive mold I’ve tried to force it into my whole life. (And I try to plan around the expected fluctuations instead of reacting to them.)

Along the way, I acquired this fancy little chart that tells me what productivity posture I should be taking with each phase of the menstrual cycle, how I’m probably going to be feeling during that phase, what I should be eating and how I should be exercising to support it, and the sort of tasks that are best undertaken at the time.

Well, this week I was exhausted. I told more than one person I could have fallen asleep on an ironing board.

I don’t want to share the whole chart, because it’s not my resource to share (legitimately, I did not obtain this chart from a public source), but I’ll just zoom in on the part that’s relevant.

Lo and behold! It’s no wonder I was dragging. By now (and because I use the Natural Cycles app) I know where I’m at in any given cycle—at least I’m supposed to, but apparently I paid no mind as I was meal planning based on having lots of energy the week prior.

Listen, if it is one thing I’ve learned this week, it’s plan your homemaking around your hormones. I had homemade tortillas, pizza dough, a cake with homemade whipped cream, AND hamburger buns on my list. As a newbie kneader. And that’s before I even get to making the actual meals associated with those things.

One look at that chart, putting two and two together, I said “Ohhhh okay.” And here you can see me yielding to what I needed this week more than homemade hamburger buns:

I didn’t totally give up—we did have pizza dough and a cake—but I mostly spent the week sleeping in or taking naps when I needed them instead of trying to push for things I knew I couldn’t reasonably achieve—at least not with a smile on my face.

I rearranged the meal plan. We had easier things to eat like bacon and eggs (twice) or one-pot dishes, or instant pot things. And, of course, the charcuterie.

And I also managed a quart of home fermented yogurt this week, which was sort of on the back burner. I tried a couple of weeks ago and it failed—but that was on me for doing it wrong. The failed yogurt did yield some excellent buttermilk pancakes. This time I did it right thanks to Celebrating Appalachia. (I put mine in the instant pot to ferment overnight, though, instead of in a cooler with hot water.)

All of this was planned on top of cleaning the house to host our local Bible study (which I am very happy to do, but should also not try to do during the same week as multiple baking endeavors AND peak unsolicited fatigue LOLLL—pick a lane Huntresssss), multiple extracurricular activity attendances, AND taking our boys on a surprise Minecraft movie outing.

And, to my surprise, I did muster the willpower to make homemade tortillas for the first time after all. But only because Mr. H bravely swooped in on Friday and gave me the day off—no homeschooling, no cleaning, no parenting. Just time to think and write alone at a coffee shop. So, I ended up having the energy to venture into unfamiliar territory when I returned.

Turns out tortillas are about the easiest thing you can make with flour, and way worth the effort—so much better than store bought. But I learned that next time I will cook them all at once on the Blackstone instead of cooking 16 of them one at a time in a pan. Not even because it was little cumbersome, but because we had the air purifier choking on fumes for a good half hour. You know how a well-greased skillet smokes something fierce when you don’t cover the whole bottom with food.

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Finally, it was my birthday this week. And I got to share my flat, ugly (but delicious) gingerbread cake and whipped cream with our Bible study.

One of our friends brought me this thrifted harvesting basket with cuttings of her… plant…. I don’t actually know the name of this plant. But I love it!! And the fact that she brought me a thrifted basket and cuttings from her own plant means she somehow knows exactly the sort of homemaking journey I’m on without ever having read a word of this journal.

I have really good friends. I really do.

The Weekly Inventory:

• 4 pizza dough lumps from scratch (2 for the freezer)

• 1 quart of home fermented yogurt

• A gingerbread cake from scratch with homemade whipped cream

• 16 flour tortillas

Moral of the story is: I actually did accomplish almost everything I set out to do this week—cause I rested when my body said rest.

Remember: homemaking with hormones means naps (when needed) are your friend. Embrace it.

-Huntress At Home

That’s because the dishwasher is still full of clean dishes from the night before.

I really despise washing dishes. I’ve said for years: “Give me a garden hose and tell me to water every square inch of the yard by hand and I’d do that over dishes.” I’m baffled that every person manages to use three bowls and utensils each every morning.

I’ve tried paring the dishes down to just one place setting per person so we would be forced to either wash them immediately after use or reduce the amount of dishes used. Well, that didn’t work. I just ended up with a dishwasher only halfway full by the end of the day, which made me feel like I couldn’t run it. It has to be full or it’s a waste!

So now I just embrace the dish pile. Mr. H volunteers to wash a lot and I’m thrilled about that. Leaving them on the counter overnight if there’s writing to be done or beauty sleep to be had is a character flaw I’m working through.

But it’s not just disdain for the chore that keeps the dish pile high. It’s interruption. Sometimes I bargain with myself to just wash/load 3 dishes every time I walk by the sink to get it done. But that’s sort of like pouring water into a bucket with a hole.

But the other option is to plow through the whole stack and, if you’re a stay-at-home mother to small children, you know as well as I do there is no task that can be completed start to finish without interruption during business hours (which run from approximately 6:30-9:30; sorry, I am not up for dishes after a 15-hour shift).

So I must devise clever schemes to dissuade the Lilliputians from making requests for extended periods of time (i.e. 15 minutes).

Kneading Breaks

One method I infrequently pull from my bag of tricks is a new batch of play dough. (Which takes more time and dishes even as I’m trying to create an inverse relationship between time spent and the number of dishes?!) But, oh, they love it and it gets the job done. I only make my own play dough now cause I have bags of old flour that need using and it just seems silly to buy it.

This time I got a really wild hair and decided I won’t just make one lazy Himalayan salt colored lump, noooo, I will make a rainbow of colors! (I also have a giant bag of old salt that needs using.)

So, even while needing a break to get something else around the house done, I kneaded to breaking instead because I was not prepared for the amount of kneading that would need to be done to successfully merge food coloring with a stiff dough. But half way through I had already invested so much into it, I went ahead and finished making all the colors.

I am happy that I did it. I just hope they will wait a few weeks before they start mixing the colors together.

If that wasn’t enough, a couple days later I thought well, hey, let me make some bread! And that took almost as much kneading as the play dough. Another labor-intensive project that seems to keep the kids fed and happy. Nothing fancy, just a couple loaves of white bread.

I tried sourdough a few years ago, but never could get the hang of it. Plus it’s like taking care of a pet and that gave me anxiety. I want to start making all our bread products from scratch cause store bought bread products are some of the worst trash you can consume. And even store bought flour is bunk (so I’m learning only recently—and this coming from someone who only buys top quality organic King Arthur flour). Intentions are to buy a grain mill in upcoming months and milling it fresh.

If you aren’t hip to this info yet, here’s a great place to start: Only Real Bread.

A Cursed Fig Tree

I’ve gotten a spring garden up and running. I’ve neglected to take pictures of it yet, but it’s currently full of trivial little side dressings to a main dish—I’m wondering if we will even get to eat any of it before the bugs start kicking in—but it’s something. So far we have:

• Bok choy (thanks to Dad’s farm)

• Arugula

• Cilantro

• Broccoli (again, thanks to Dad’s farm!)

• Walla walla onions

The most productive thing in our yard is a creeping thicket of elderberry canes. Which are absolutely beautiful when they bloom. (The neighbors mistook them for unruly weeds last year, albeit, beautiful weeds.) And they produce enough berries to make at least a pint of elderberry syrup, which I am proud to say is a medicinal staple I have managed to keep stocked for many years now.

Meanwhile, this fig tree that I’ve been growing for about seven years has not fared so well:

No, I did not get trigger happy with the pruning shears. In fact, it was the first year I commissioned Mr. H to actually properly prune it. Probably the reason it has never produced or seemed to grow more than half an inch is a lack of pruning.

He watered, he researched and pruned with care, we were inspired to think perhaps it would be the first year we would see signs of production. It was a labor of faith as there was almost nothing left of it when he was finished.

Woe, that the proverbial judge of twigs should come along and take an ax to the root of the tree. I came through the gate to check on my little fig and found one of my boys standing over it with the clippers: “I didn’t know you were growing it.” *SHRUG.*

And, like Jacob stunned at his marital misadventure, I groaned that I must endure another seven years of servitude to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Easy come, easy go, I guess.

The Weekly Inventory

A new addition: At the conclusion of each weekly home journal, I want to include a complete list of the foods (or other items) I made from scratch or improved upon during the course of the week, harvests, and other various homemade accomplishments.

A few years ago my closest friend and I were discussing how we just wanted to throw off the convenience and consumer mindset and fill our homes with everything hand and homemade (or thrifted and repurposed), whether that’s clothes, food, needful things around the house, gifts, etc. A weekly inventory helps me see that I’m making strides toward that goal (because I forget as quickly as these items are consumed that I really am doing things around here).

This week’s inventory:

• Homemade play dough in a rainbow of colors

• 2 loaves of white bread (no more buying bread if I can help it!)

• From-scratch meatballs (50 made, 25 frozen for later)

• From-scratch pancakes (an improvement over frozen store-bought)

• A whole, organic roasted chicken (an improvement over buying a cheap in-store rotisserie)

• 3 quarts of chicken broth made from the carcass and frozen

As I was wearing myself out kneading bread to an overture of screaming kids, I saw one of my neighbors drive by out the window. Always in the kitchen with a view of the road, I see all the neighbors running back and forth all day long. Starting with the school bus lights at 6:15am and coming to a close when the car pulls in from work.

I’m the only person in our neighborhood who lives with kids underfoot 24/7 with almost no breaks. And it’s exhausting. I watch other parents send their kids off to school each day and think of the time they have to work in peace while I work hard to come up with ways to entertain mine so I can write a few paragraphs without interruption.

But you know, kneading that bread and having those passing thoughts, I wouldn’t switch places. I’m not rushed in any way. I’m not pressed for time. I may be kneading play dough and bread to keep my kids busy so I can squeeze in a few minutes to complete a written thought or beat back the tide of dishes (which wouldn’t be there if we weren’t all home all day every day), but the point is: I can. I have time to make the best food for my family from scratch while busier beholden peers must rely on fast and processed food to keep up with schedules. I have time to make play dough instead of trashing old ingredients and buying more plastic and chemicals like petroleum.

I have no deadlines, no external pressures or accountability, no reason to hurry or peel out of the neighborhood early in the morning. I get to start my morning slowly, making pancakes instead of packing lunches. I get to drink tea and walk through the garden while the kids jump on the trampoline or bring me a lady bug. I don’t have to wait til Saturday or an hour at dusk to host such precious moments. Even if the time I have is loud and busy, I get to make play dough cause I have loads of time.

And I suppose—I know—that’s worth losing a fig tree and developing a little temporary carpal tunnel syndrome.

My goal was to just live a healthier, simpler, more resourceful, from-scratch life. Less processed food, more homemade medicine, less convenience, more fortitude, less consumerism, more creating.

But when you are shifting from an almost totally consumer-centered mindset and you’re juggling three kids and a set of food preferences you’ve all developed; when you’ve surfed on convenience for a decade, lived on fast fashion your whole life and generally just never enjoyed keeping house, well it’s not something you can just jump into with both feet.

And that is why I started keeping a homemaker’s journal. To keep track of the changes I was making, to log my progress, and stay motivated as I shaved the convenient consumerist edges off our lives.

But at some point, I fell out of practice. And maybe that’s because I was accountable to no one. Maybe it’s because my homemaking efforts slowed down tremendously for a couple of years and I got really discouraged. But I want to bring it back. This time, I’ve decided to write about it.

Really, I don’t care if this is something other people read or are interested in. I just know I love to keep a journal and this is a lot faster than a journal. Putting pictures in a paper journal is far too much work. And a journal can’t foster the exchange of ideas and conversation. And there’s something about writing about your goals and progress publicly that pressures you (in a healthy way) to keep going. There’s also something about having a log of what you’ve done before that, upon visiting the archives, reminds you how far you’ve come and how it wasn’t that difficult now that you think about it.

Thus, it is my resolution to weekly log the goings-on of my home. Call it a homemaker’s history, if you like. I just want my life to more and more resemble a quiet walk back to the inconvenient joys we all read about as little girls in Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women. We all loved it. And then we forgot.

Remember with me.

The Char-beauti-rie

Look, when my husband (we’ll call him Mr. H) and I first got married, I never repeated the same recipe twice. I cooked with all the adventure of an explorer in the Amazon. But then having kids the list of acceptable ingredients grows smaller and smaller. Cause you just want them to eat, right? It hasn’t been that long since moms have started keying into the wisdom of whole food, solid diets right from the start is best. So, I started my first son on what we all typically thought we were supposed to start infants on: purees, transitioning into kids menus and convenience foods. Not exclusively, but you wake up one day and you realize your kid won’t eat much beyond grilled cheese sandwiches, breaded nuggets and grapes.

Well, I know the kids of yester-decades weren’t near as picky or disadvantaged as we have been in the last 50ish years (thanks ultra-processed foods [UPFs]), but one thing I strictly recall next to stews and excellent boiled potatoes was a lot of simple foods being served.

Just take that grilled cheese sandwich apart, upgrade the nuggets to something not ground into a paste and breaded and you’ve got yourself a charcuterie.

Every time I serve this ALL my kids eat with joy—whatever the combination! And it’s a great way to use up leftovers and scraps or when I only have one apple left but three kids who want it. They still won’t eat the stews and boiled potatoes (no matter how excellent), but I don’t care. This deconstruction is the way to eat in my opinion. And the stress and preparation are almost non-existent.

So what is the progress here? Shoot, I only had to throw those green beans in some oil, warm up that roast beef in some butter, and slice a few things. Progress is there is at least one night a week I don’t have to plan a meal for. Yes, I’m serving it once a week, give or take. Just pick up some in-season fruit and vegetables and everyone is happy.

Ultra-Processed People

This is one meal a week I’m winning against UPFs. Last year I started this book:

And I put it down for some reason. (Probably cause I have ~dozen other books going at the same time.) But I picked it back up again after Mr. H and I did a detox in February. Figured it would keep me motivated to stick with whole foods and consume less dairy and less wheat—not cause I’m allergic to them inherently, but just because they are trash after modern processing. I stopped eating them and other junk food and the DAY I added them back to my diet (in small amounts, mind you) I felt like I was dragging weights around the next day.

And the book is good. It’s all about how the food is made, why, and what it’s doing to your body.

Here’s the book!

Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken

Heart and Soul-left-my-body

Speaking of processed, we have been in the habit of buying part of a cow from a wonderful family farm in South Carolina for a few years now. Order time came a little early this year and I have been cooking beef 2 pounds at a time every day trying to make it to the bottom of the freezer. Until I found myself faced with the 5 pound heart and I said to myself, “Well, we gotta eat this.”

Now, I know it’s nutrient dense, and, gosh darn it, I tried. I polled people asking for advice on how to prepare this thing, I consulted google and pumped myself up about what a super food heart is. But the smell of the thing raw just clung like dead on roadkill. And I got snatched when that smell STILL clung when I got two bites into the thing after it had cooked all day. I haven’t spit anything into the trash can in years, but I took an L on this one.

When I sent this picture to family, my sister sent back a close up photo of one piece of the meat (oh, you know which piece) and said, “Based on this piece alone, NOPE.” And yeah, I admit defeat. My walk back to simpler times will not include cooking hearts. I still have a liver to cook, but I can’t image that to be worse that this odorous vascular experience.

Why we spend more on food than a mortgage

So anyways, back to UPFs. I spend a whole lot of money on food. I come from a long line of frugal spenders and that just has never been me. Why buy the pizza sauce that costs $2.69 instead of the one that costs $1.49? Pizza sauce is pizza sauce. No!

I feel like I constantly have to justify my food spending even though no one is asking me to. Not even Mr. H. He gasps when he sees the grocery receipt, but he never complains or tries to dissuade me. Also, don’t come at me for buying pizza sauce when it’s not that hard to make. Remember we aren’t doing this thing all at once.

But anyways, I snapped a picture of the organic pizza sauce next to the generic pizza sauce and sent it to my mom to justify me to myself more than to her. Note the actual foods and spices and olive oil in the former and the conspicuous lack of ingredients in the latter—presumably replaced by a mysterious singular ingredient—“spices;” what Trojan horse could we truck through that broad gate. Sub soybean oil. And garlic flavor cause actual garlic is too expensive for peasant-priced pizza sauce.

So I return from my excursion and below is what $280 got me. For about 5 days. Is it all organic? Almost. Is it free from UPFs? Almost. I am a strict label reader, but there’s some stuff I just can’t justify paying for yet. We gotta cut corners somewhere. Like organic cheese. Family of five? Get real. And tortilla chips—must be On The Border—are my vice.

Finally, if you haven’t tried spaghetti rice. Let me assist you:

Spaghetti, but without the post-pasta sleepies

Just trust me.

-Huntress At Home