Ch. 1: In which Huntress takes heart & buys bougie pizza sauce

Saturday, March 29, 2025

A few years ago, I started a notebook that I called my “Homemaker’s Journal.” And every day I wrote down the homemaking/steading/schooling projects I was working on and noted my progress in each area; I would write down the things I made from scratch, skills I was building, of course my to do list, and future prospects. Noted supplies I needed to gather.

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