Berries, berries, berries!

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep as Robert Frost said, but they are also filled with berries.  Black raspberries (black caps) and raspberries edge the woods in abundance and thanks to the rainy spring, they are fantastic!  They are big and juicy and sweet--just the way berries should be.

My neighbor and his friends love their monster trucks, so there are trails running through his woods.  At the edge of these trails are the biggest berries I've seen in years.  They get the moisture from the woods, but there is just enough dappled sun to allow them to grow and flourish.  I was able to pick enough to put some away in the freezer for future use. Several pounds of berries are in the freezer now and I could probably go pick that many more in the next few days.

Smoothies will definitely be on the menu this month!  A cup of berries, a cup of spinach, 1/2 cup of yogurt, and a tablespoon of flax seed meal.  It's a great start to a summer day, and I can freeze any that I don't drink as freezer pops.  Nothing wasted that can't be used.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked my mother how she raised us without having to go on assistance.  We were a family of nine...seven young growing children.  Mom's advice is to have a big garden and preserve as much as you can for winter, bake your own bread, and eat a lot of hotdish (casseroles to many of you) and soup to stretch the meat.  We also raised our own meat, but SNAP doesn't allow for purchase of live animals, so let's not even consider that part of her advice.

So, what am I doing right so far?  Garden...check!  Stretching the meat in hotdish and soups...check!  Baking my own bread...as of yesterday...check!  I have a bread machine, so for me it is just a matter of measuring in the right ingredients, turning on the machine, and ignoring it until the timer goes off.  I made an oatmeal bread and a 50% whole wheat bread with Italian herbs.  The oatmeal bread makes fantastic toast, and the Italian herb bread will make great croutons for salad if I don't eat the whole thing.  The bread machine recipes call for bread flour, but all-purpose flour works just fine.  It just doesn't have as much protein in it.

I've made almost everything from scratch so far.  The food tastes better and is more nutritious, but the time spent on prepping and cooking is amazing.  My Saturdays have become a day where I make the week's meals so they are ready during the week.  Instead of buying frozen meals at 2-3 dollars apiece, I'm making my own for half that and freezing them for weekly meals.  It's a lot of work, but it is the only way to make the meals stretch far enough to last.

I'm glad I've done this for more than the initial week.  A week is easier to do than a whole month or two or more.  When this is an actual lifestyle someone is forced into because of poverty, it isn't fun--it is work.