The Belt Tightens

In our attempts to give our children the education they desperately needed, and whereas their previous schools failed to give them the education every child deserves, we went into great debt paying tutors so that our children would be taught the very basics of math and reading. (Yes, just 1 1/2 years ago, our very bright 9 yr old did not have a clue how to read and our 6th grader could barely grasp certain Kindergarten math concepts!) Besides the money we poured into their basic education, we also suffered from the self-inflicted plague of living beyond our means, or "get what I want now" syndrome. In a few words, we were in deep doo doo.

We decided to end that financial suicide trend and stopped using credit cards all together when we moved to start our new life in the country. We adopted the "Don't buy stuff you cannot afford" concept that seems such a foreign concept to so many Americans. I LOVE this SNL skit.

Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford

My husband and I eventually began sitting down together every two weeks to plan our budgets. Checking with each other frequently during each two week period to update our spending records and giving each other moral support has kept us on track. We are doing well, even though the cost of living waaay out here in the country is costing us quite a bit. We feel the benefits (like an outstanding school we could not find elsewhere!) are well worth the costs and sacrifices we make.

Well, all the planets must have aligned just right because all our big bills are due this pay period. We cut down or cut out everything that we possibly could including no haircut for me again (going on 6 months now) and slashing our food budget down by more than half of what we normally need to feed our family. On paper, we don't have enough money to get through the next two weeks. *sigh*

So, for these next two weeks, I'm going to be sharing what I'll do to keep our household running and our family of 6 well fed. It'll be a challenge. I only have $150 to spend on food. It does not help that our refrigerator/freezer went on the fritz two weeks ago and I had to throw out almost every bit of food stored in it. I managed to save a little bit in our small deep freeze but we had to start over on basics like ketchup, soy sauce, and and such.

The good news....we have a lot of ways to put food on our table so stay tuned for what I've got up my sleeve.

What am I doing today? I've baked 4 loaves of bread using the recipe in my previous post. Ha! It only took an hour!

I'm also baking yummy chocolate chip cookies, for a treat to put in the boys' sack lunches, as I blog. I keep basic baking supplies in my pantry such as salt, sugars, baking powder, baking soda, and vanilla. I buy white flour, sugar, and honey in bulk at our local warehouse store, Costco, and bulk whole wheat flour at Walmart.

Here's the cookie recipe I used with slight modifications to the directions:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Colleen Iermini

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup margarine

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

2/3 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 extra large eggs

3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Combine without sifting, flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. Cream margarine with sugars until light. Beat in vanilla and eggs until smooth. Mix in dry ingredients into creamed mixture, a little at a time. Add chocolate chips and stir to mix well.

Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls onto parchment lined baking sheets. Bake at 325 degrees for 12 - 15 minutes. Remove parchment along with hot cookies by sliding parchment onto cooling rack. Once cooled enough to touch, remove cookies from parchment to cool completely. Makes 4 dozen.

My notes: When baking chocolate chip cookies the the ingredients, and the preparation of them, are essential.

• Buy the best vanilla you can afford. It's going to last a long time anyway so don't skimp. It has to be real vanilla.
• Creaming the butter with the sugars is an important step. The butter must be room temperature or it will not cream properly. Keep mixing until is the sugars have dissolved into the butter so that it looks creamy and light - not granular or dense.
• Eggs must be room temperature, too!
• When incorporating the dry ingredients, or flour mixture, into the creamed mixture, mix only until the dry ingredients are just absorbed. Over mixing will result in a tough cookies.
• Gently fold in chocolate chips, nuts, etc. so as to not toughen the dough
• Quality of chocolate is important but the best chocolate will not make up for a poorly executed mixing of other ingredients.

These rules are the same for EVERY chocolate cookie recipe you will ever make. Oh, btw, I use a small ice cream scoop to measure out my cookie dough. Not only is it no muss, no fuss but, each cookie is neat and uniform in size.