Winter VS water

Ahh! Tis' the season! Winter, snow, sliding, walks in the wood, fire in the stove that smells great, building snowmen, outstanding Hydro bills... Winter.... Oh, and of course the "best" part: hauling water to the animals!!!

Since we don't have running water in the barn, and since the animals still need to drink (!!!) we need to carry water from the house to them. That means, on a normal cold day, 2 pails of hot water. Enough to melt the ice in the barrels. But on a freezing cold day (like the one we had last year) when it was - 1,000,000° (windchill excluded!!!) 2 wasn't enough. We (and by we, I mean Tim) had to make 3-4 trips. Really painful!

So everything starts in our bathroom where I fill up the pails with hot water...

Then, I take them down the stairs (it feels like a "reverse Kill Bill")

And then Tim takes them outside to the animals (under the supervising warch of Theo).

Tim is doing the hardest part of the job so why am I complaining you'll ask me? Because sometimes Tim isn't there and I need to do it. I have a really bad back so it is painful for me to do that. Walking with the pails on ice and snow kills me!

Finally arriving at the barn and realizing that you dropped almost half of the water when walking because you slipped or fell, and you need to go back home, take your boots off, go up the stairs again, fill the pails again, go down the stairs, AGAIN, put your boots on, go out and hope not to fall or lose water again... Priceless!

But those birds, cow, goat and pigs need to drink too and we love them so, putting aside all of my complaining, we do it as often as we need to.

Green tea body scrub

Something easy that I love to do is make body scrubs. They are easy, you probably already have everything on hands to make it and there is are so many options that you can tweak the recipe you will decide to do.

This one was made for my mother in law. I decided to do this recipe because I already had everything home to do it, no need to go to the store!

Here are the ingredients required for this scrub are:

3/4 cup of white sugar

1/2 cup of coconut oil (I used Nutiva coconut oil from Bulk Barn)

1 bag of green tea

1 tsp of Matcha green tea powder (from Bulk Barn)

Put the sugar and tea in a bowl, mix well and then add the coconut oil. Room temperature is fine, you don't need to melt it before. Using a fork, mix all the ingredients together and BAM! You're done!

It fit in a small 250ml Mason jar I had on hand. If you want to make a bigger batch you can always double or triple the recipe.

How cute is that!!! Last Christmas, I made some Vanilla Chai sugar scrubs and they were a success! 

I also noticed that since all the ingredients used are edible, you can keep a little portion of the scrub with your beauty supply and use it on your lips as a lip exfoliate... And you know what, it taste delicious!!!

So go ahead, be crazy, try new "flavours", use different types of sugar, salt, epsom salt (but don't use this one on your lips!), oils (grape seed oil, olive oil, etc.), add mint, rosemary, pepper, lemon peel or any essential oil you love. The sky is the limit!!!!

Pho. Delicious and comforting!

I decided to make a Beef Pho soupe for my Quilting Club ladies (which doesn't involve quilting in any way!!!). We're just a bunch of friends meeting once a month to eat, talk, drink wine and have a good time away from the men!!!

I found the recipe in the St Lawrence News and I linked the recipe here: https://www.ontario.ca/foodland/recipes/saigon-beef-pho

Ok, this one was calling for a beef broth that I didn't have and, to stay in line with my "using everything I have home" I used a duck broth that I made the week before and that was sitting in the freezer. Except for some veggies, I had everything on hands. So I didn't made the beef broth but starting from the duck broth, I fallowed the recipe.

It was a big success! Everyone liked it and I'm glad I did it because I always thought it was hard and long to do but it wasn't, like, at all!!!

Here's the "before adding the broth" part of the soup, I made sure the beef was going to be covered by the broth by putting it on the side and by also "tucking" it down the bowl so that it'll have enough time to "cook" by the time I serve the food to everyone. Then, once the broth was in the bowl, I added the rice vermicelli (that's why you don't see it in this picture).

One is added the broth and the rice vermicelli, I served everyone and the meat was cooked perfectly (still pretty raw on this picture but trust me, it was cooked by the time we started to eat).

I really recommend that you try this recipe if you feel like having a great "meal soup" that smells fantastic and taste delicious! Bon apetit!

A walk in the woods

We went for a walk in our wood at the back of our land yesterday. Weather was fantastic, only -3° and sunny. Here are some pictures I took. Hope you'll enjoy them as much as we enjoyed taking them :)

Here is a panoramic view of the back of our land. Skating rink in the winter, swamp in the summer (great for duck and goose hunting!!!).

Another view of the back of our land.

Justin and his "banana" which is basically a piece of ice he carried (and ate!!!) the whole time we were walking!!!

My 3 men ❤️

Theo being all intense and focus on something... Probably nothing, he was so excited to go for his 1st walk in our wood.

He also found something that smelled SO good he had to roll in it but forgot that ice + side of the hill = slippery so he slipped & fell while doing it!!!

A picture of Tim pulling Justin on our way back home.

It was a great afternoon and I wanted to share it with you! You're welcome ;)

Laundry soap

Being at home gives me the time to do more homemade stuff. It has been a while since I've done this recipe for laundry soap so I decided to make some yesterday. Super easy to make and cheap.

Here's what you need:

- 1 bar of laundry soap ($1.19/290g)

- 3 cups Baking soda ($3.97/2kg)

- 3 cups Borax ($5.58/2kg)

First of all, you need to transform your regular baking soda into washing soda. Easy peasy! Just take the amount of baking soda you need, spread it on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven at 400° for 30-35 minutes stirring occasionally. When the time is up, you'll see the texture of your baking soda will be more "soft" and more "powdery". A good hint, you will probably sneeze from just going through it with a spoon!!!

Then grate your soap in a big bowl. I use the tiny grating side of my regular cheese grater. You want it to be as small as possible to help it dissolve in the water. Then add your washing soda, Borax, stir and voila! You now have homemade laundry detergent! I put my detergent in an air tight container like a Mason jar.

Also, I use regular white vinegar as a laundry softener. Sometimes, I add about 8-10 drops of essential oil to it just to give a hint of smell to my clothes as the detergent and the vinegar won't leave any kind of perfume on your clothes. During summer time I use citronella essential oil to help repelling the mosquitos and the rest of the year I use lavender only because I love the smell of lavender!

On the down side, because of the grated soap, this detergent works better in warm or hot water (at least for us during winter time) as our water comes from an underground source and is SO cold.

The break down. Keep in mind that I'm not good with math so the amount may not be exact but it came down to something like $3.30 for 1.3kg of detergent. Considering the fact that you only use 1 or 2 tablespoons of detergent per loads, I think it's pretty cheap.

So here you go, try it and see for yourself, it's cheap, efficient, it works well and soft enough for babies clothes.

Food stuff from scratch

So I decided to empty my freezer & pantry before buying anything else from the store (except for veggies & fruits and special items like milk, yogurt, etc). I mean, no meat as we are raising chicken, turkey and pork. We have lots of chicken breast, turkey meat, porck chops, ground pork, pork roast, sausages, bacon, etc. If beef is needed I might buy some but I'm trying very hard to use what I have here.

While cleaning my freezer and pantry, I realized how much stuff I have at home and how much stuff I don't need to buy (I found something like 6-7 packs of rice, lots of barley, frozen meals that I made couple of months ago, etc). So clearly, I don't really need to go to the store.

As I've never been good at making something without all the exact ingredients needed in the recipe (which made me buy stuff at the store "just in case there is none at home") it's a big deal for me to come up with something to eat since then but I'm sticking to my idea!

So, with 1lb of ground chicken some spices, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese and eggs, I cooked us some delicious chicken nuggets! I found a recipe on Pinterest that was easy to make and I was able to use what I already have here. Here's the link: http://natashaskitchen.com/2014/11/19/baked-chicken-nuggets-recipe/ and here are my chicken nuggets!!!

There was also 3 small portions of frozen french fries (in 3 different bags) that I bought (clearly more than once!!!) "just in case there is none at home" So, I used them too.

In the end, for 1 meal, I used 4 items that I already had in my freezer + some stuff from the pantry!!! YAY! I'm sticking to my idea!!!

I think I'm doing pretty good so far, the Ministry of Finance (aka hubby) could hopefully tell me if I'm wrong or not by checking the amount of money I didn't spend at the grocery store lately comparing to "before".

2016

2016! YAY! New year, new projects, new ideas and of course, resolutions!!!

As far as this Blog is concerned, I'm going to try to be more present in 2016. Inspired by my friend's Blog (go check it out and subscribe: https://ruralcanuck.wordpress.com) and her good tips on how to blog, I think I can do it, write 1 or 2 articles per week... Let's try that!

As far as eating well is concerned, I'm going to keep you updated on how we're doing, what we're eating, how I'm doing it and what new am I trying.

Farm stuff, hopefully hubby will keep you updated if not, I'll do it... Let's just say having a new laptop would help me a lot (wink!!! wink!!!) but if not, I'll still do it :)

So here are the big idea for 2016. Blog soon :)