Monthly Archives: December 2009

How to make coconut cream and milk

When I discovered about three months ago that Trader Joe’s carried an inexpensive and kosher coconut milk, I was thrilled!  However, it’s light, not whole fat (which I prefer), and as you know, I’m always looking for ways to maximize my grocery dollars. 🙂  I bought a 50 lb bag of dried unsweeteened coconut a while back, and it occurred to me that I might be able to use it to make my own coconut milk.

However, in trying to make it, I actually ended up with coconut cream!  This is something I haven’t yet found kosher, and was thrilled to be able to try it out in our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie – it was rich and delicious!  I also used it to make pear crisp.

It was exciting to be able to make something so tasty and incredibly frugal; here’s what I did:

Homemade Coconut Cream/Milk

  • 2 c. shredded unsweetened coconut
  • 4 c. boiling water

Blend both in a blender.  Let sit for about fifteen minutes, to give the water a chance to absorb the coconut flavor.  Pour into a strainer lined with cheesecloth over a pot, and let it drip through.  Then press it so as much liquid as possible is removed – you want the pulp to be as dry as you can get it.  Put the coconut pulp to the side – I’ll tell you what to do with that in a minute.  🙂  Put the coconut liquid in the fridge, and in the morning the rich cream will have risen to the top and solidified, and the water will be left below.

If you want to use this as coconut milk, let it sit out and melt a little, and mix the water and cream together by hand – it’s very quick and easy to do.  If you want to use it as cream, scoop the top layer off and put it in a separate container.  Use in recipes as you would cream for a rich flavor.

Now, about the coconut pulp.  This is where this gets even more frugal and fun!  Put the coconut pulp into the dehydrator, and dry.  Blend until smooth.  I’m planning to use this as coconut flour for baking.  When you buy coconut flour, it’s been defatted and doesn’t have the coconut flavor anymore, so this seems like it should work well!  I haven’t yet purchased coconut flour because of the cost ($7 lb).  Now I can use dried coconut for which I pay less than $2 lb, and can make my own coconut milk/cream, as well as coconut flour for a fraction of what they cost at the store!

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Avivah

How can you stand to be around your kids all day?

>>you get so much credit for not losing your mind being home every single day with 8 kids. really.<<

Quick correction – there are actually nine kids. 😆

At the camp my dd13 was working at this summer, there were two adult women and another teen assistant in addition to her.  She came home one day, once again telling me how amazed these two women were about me.  I asked her how they could be impressed by me when they don’t know me from a hole in the wall?  She said “They can’t understand how you can have all of us around all day – they said they would go crazy.”   Now you see how easy it is to show you’re made of the stuff of angels – be able to tolerate your kids without checking in at the loony bin and that’s all the proof anyone will need. 🙂

“How can she stand to be around her kids the whole day?  I mean, I like my kids but I don’t like them that much.”  My dd has heard me say I think it’s unfortunate that this is such a common sentiment, but this is the first time she’s heard it herself, and this is exactly what she was asked.  The women told my dd that Shabbos and Sundays are the hardest days of the week for them, because their kids are home (one was, ironically, a preschool teacher).  One went on to tell dd:

“My kids get bored all the time.”    My dd13 responded, “That’s because they go to school so they’re used to being entertained.”  “Really??”  This took the woman aback – she clearly had never considered this.    After they asked her these questions and more, they continued discussing their perplexity with one another about me.   “It must be the kind of personality that she has.”  “Maybe all of her kids were just born good.”  They were ‘mystified’, to quote dd.

My dd was laughing when she told us about this since she knows quite well that I’m a regular mom and that she and her siblings weren’t all ‘born good’.  She said it seemed like they knew what they were offering as reasons couldn’t be the answer but they couldn’t think what else it could be.

So are you wondering what the answer is??  🙂  I can reassure you that I wasn’t born with a special personality that equipped me to enjoy my kids any more than anyone else!  By nature I’m not an especially patient person nor was I one of those women who just loved being around kids before having my own.  Those qualities have been developed over time.  See, you don’t need to be naturally saintly to enjoy having your kids around!

The secret to enjoying spending time with your kids, is to spend more time with them and make it enjoyable!  When you spend relaxed time with your children, you enjoy them and are pleasant to them. They then respond to your pleasantness by behaving better and wanting to please you, to which you positively respond by wanting to spend more time with them…..  It creates a positive spiral between you and your children, and this positive spiral is what makes it enjoyable for parents and children to spend lots of time together.  Everyone likes being around people who love and respect them, right?

It’s not hard for me to be around my kids because I like them.   I don’t mean that I love them – all parents love their children.  I mean that I really like them.  (Having well disciplined children makes this much easier- your positive view of them isn’t constantly being overshadowed by their bad behavior.)  And as kids get older, they just get better and better.  I’ve said it a couple of times before, but teenagers are awesome!  They have the maturity and critical thinking skills to have really stimulating conversations and fun interactions.  It’s kind of like getting to be around your friends all day.  The myth of impossible teenagers is really a shame, since everyone buys into it and it becomes a self perpetuating reality, and parents end up missing the enjoyment of an amazing stage in their childrens’ lives.

Even though this concept is so simple, it’s foreign to our culture.  Parenting is supposed to be hard, filled with struggle and aggravation.  Motherhood and martyrdom seem to go hand in had.  When someone tells me how wonderful I am for spending so much time with my kids, I know they just don’t understand.  Raising children is work; it takes lots of time, energy, and effort.  But I’m not suffering or gritting my teeth every day – I’m so grateful and feel so blessed; I often feel that it’s not fair my husband has to go to work all day and doesn’t get to spend the kind of time I do with the kids.  It’s true that it took work to get to this point, but the hardest thing was probably to let go of my ideas that being around my kids was something to be endured.

Avivah

Patio costs

We were cleaning up the yard recently and as I admired how nice the yard looks with the patio we put in, I remembered that the post I wrote about it was one of two that were only up for fifteen minutes before they disappeared with the hacking a couple of months ago.  Since this was a really nice project, I want to share what we did with you!

As some of you remember, we decided to make our own brick patio.  There are two ways to lay a patio – one is set in cement, the other is set on a gravel/sand base. We decided to do it with a gravel/sand base, since it’s more forgiving to work with – you can pull something up if you’re not happy with it and do it again; it’s easier, and if you decide to one day use the space differently, then it’s not a very big deal.

I can’t deny that making a patio is a lot of physical work – we hauled 14,000 pounds of bricks and 8000 pounds of gravel, both of which we got free on Craig’s List.  Do you have any concept of how much shlepping that is?!?  Trust me, alot! And then there the ground had to be dug up, which amounted to 10,000 pounds of dirt.  And 10,000 pounds of sand from where it was dumped behind our house to where we needed it in the garden….yes, lots of physical work!

Because we started this project when the baby was six weeks old, the kids did most of the heavy hauling.  I found the supplies, did the driving, organizing, and my share of physical stuff, too, though I tried to do work I could stay in one place for.  Like chipping the mortar off of the reclaimed bricks that we used.   But the kids really get almost all of the credit, particularly my ds16, who took the project from the idea in my mind to reality.  He did the bulk of the heavy work, while also getting his younger siblings involved; they enjoy doing things with him.  Dh didn’t have the time to be involved, though once or twice he came home when we were working and lent a hand.

We now have a lovely brick patio that is about twenty feet by 15 feet (about 320 square feet), that cost us under $400.  My inlaws had a patio and walkway done a year or two ago, which together were a bit under the size of our patio.  And you know how much it cost?  $4000.  Even though their patio looks more professional than ours, it doesn’t look ten times more profesional!

Here’s how the cost broke down: sand – $220 – I ordered 4.5 tons and had it delivered, which was the main expense.  I got a half ton more than we needed to be on the safe side.  But it turns out that we needed another ton, and we ended up having to buy that the expensive way, in forty pound bags from Home Depot.  The additional sand cost us almost $80, whereas it would have been just another $30 if we had ordered more in the first place.  We also ran short of bricks, so I had to buy contrasting pavers.  That was another $60 or so.  We could have made the patio a couple of feet narrower, but the kids really wanted it to be the size they were planning on, so I was fine with it the extra expense and shopping.  We also had to buy a few tools, like a brick set, and a couple of diamond blades for our saw to cut the bricks on the end down to size.  For the frame that the bricks were set in we used lumber from the deck we took apart.  (The rest of the suitably sized lumber became raised garden boxes.)

So all in all, under $400!  If I could have waited to get the sand for free (which I’m confident I could have eventually found), it would have been super cheap (saving $300 of the costs). But my yard was piling up with a mountain of excavated dirt, gravel, and bricks, and I didn’t want my yard to be a long term eyesore for my neighbors or (me!).  I didn’t know how long I would have to wait before I would find enough sand.  Plus, hauling is really a lot of work and we were all feeling kind of run down by the effort to bring the supplies home. Everyone felt the expense to have a truckload of sand delivered very worthwhile!

I also could have saved on the expense of pavers by getting enough bricks when I originally got them, but the bricks had all been stacked in a huge pile, and the ones on the bottom were firmly stuck in the dried mud.  It was the heat of the summer, I was tired and running out of time to be away from the baby (since he was six weeks old so more than two hours was pushing it, and it was over a half hour in each direction to where the bricks were), and I wasn’t interested in prying them up.  So I told my kids we weren’t going to spend the time and energy on it.  They told me then I might regret it if we wouldn’t have enough for the patio, that they thought we’d need them.  I told them I’d take my changes and pay the price if necessary!  And that’s what I did.  🙂

We all agreed that this was worth the time and energy, even though there was a point that it felt endless.  This is mainly because we had to stop for the Nine Days; you know how it is when you stop the momentum on a large project – it’s hard to get it going again.  If we could have had one more day before the Nine Days began to work on it, we could have had it all done without feeling like it was dragging out.  Thanks to everyone’s work, our new patio gave us the room to expand our sukka this year, it looks so much nicer, and the yard looks larger now than it did with the smaller platform deck.  I think it’s because the patio is flush with the ground, and there’s nothing to break up your line of vision when you look out.

And it was hard to beat the cost! 😆

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

Sunday – breakfast – yogurt; l – eggs, popcorn; dinner- meat sauce, potatoes, carrot salad, tomato salad

Monday- b- Amish oatmeal; l – broccoli/cauliflower cheese soup, coconut flour biscuits; d –

Tuesday – b- Dutch puffs; l – colcannon; d – spicy beans and beef

Wednesday – b- banana date muffins; l – spicy beans and beef; d – chili, cornbread

Thursday – b – hot rice and milk; l – CORN; d – lentil pecan burgers, baked yams

Breakfast includes milk and fruit – this week the fruits are persimmons and oranges.  Lunch and dinner includes vegetables – I have several ferments going now so those will We had a bunch of snow yesterday so after it melts from the garden beds, I’ll get to see how my greens have held up and how much there is to use this week!

Avivah

Traveling to save money

>>A totally unrelated question- when you write how much you spend on your food budget each month, I know you’re able to do that because you travel far to get things. I know you mentioned how even with the traveling time and the gas it is worth it financially because of all the savings you get, but i’m just curious, if you included the gas for those trips, how much would your “food and going to buy the food” budget be?<<

I’m answering this as a post because there’s a misconception here that I think other people might also have.  That misconception is that my budget stays low because I travel far to get things.  This is accurate only to a small degree.  I’ve shared about the possibilities involved in saving money by looking for grocery discount stores as one of a number of frugal strategies I’ve mentioned; staying within a budget requires more strategies than one, and this wouldn’t even be my primary one.

So I’m going to clear this misconception up right now, because otherwise some of you will be thinking you can’t keep your budget down because you don’t/can’t/won’t travel to do your shopping!  There are many, many ways to save, and most of them will be useful to most people – I don’t want anyone giving up because they pick out a little detail that doesn’t fit them.

My food budget is firm and always has been, regardless of where I shop.  I don’t stick to it because I can get great deals somewhere, I find great deals so I can stick to it!  Do you see the difference?

About four years ago I started traveling two hours away once in a while in order to buy raw milk, which I can’t get in my state because raw milk sales are illegal.  (At that time, though gas was high, my fuel costs were inconsequential since we had converted a van to run on waste vegetable oil – we sold this almost three years ago, though.)  In order to maximize my time, I eventually began looking for shopping in the area of where I buy my milk that I could do, and after a couple of years it evolved into the way I shop now.

I’ve been blogging for over three years and sharing ways I stay within a budget.  It wasn’t until less than two years ago that I started shopping monthly for the bulk of our food, so clearly this couldn’t have been my main strategy.  Now that I’ve been doing it so long and it’s part of my routine, I probably would continue doing it even if I wasn’t getting the milk; I find monthly shopping very efficient in terms of time, energy, and money.  But I’d still keep an eye on the expenses and savings involved to be sure it continued to be worthwhile.  I doubt I’d go more often than every 2 -3 months.

I use 15 gallons of gas to do my ‘monthly’ shopping.  This is usually done every 5 – 7 weeks, never more frequently than once a month.  With gas currently at 2.50 a gallon, it costs me 37.50 for about every month and a half, which works out to a little over $6 a week.  So it would add another $24 per month to my food costs.  I have a monthly gas budget of $200, and this expense is budgeted for in that category.  When gas was up to $4 a gallon, I went about every 7 – 8 weeks instead, to keep the gas costs in check.

I also have to remind you that though I say that I spend $600 a month, it’s technically less than that since most of the staples I buy last for at least 5 – 6 weeks.  So if I were going to be really accurate, I’d have to say I spend about $450 monthly, with another $24 in gas costs.  But I budget $600 a month and whether I manage to buy  a month’s worth of food with that or enough to last a bit longer, it’s still the same monthly amount that I’m spending.  (Anyway, it’s hard enough for people to believe that I can spend $600 on a family of eleven with a bunch of adult portion eaters without starving everyone; I can just imagine the disbelief a smaller number would engender! :))

As you see, I have taken into account what the travel expenses are and determined that for my needs, it’s worthwhile.  But here’s something I often wonder about when getting questions like yours.  How many people have figured out how much they spend on gas by going shopping every day, or even more than once a day?  How much are they spending by going to several stores every week and buying the loss leaders?  How many people consider how much they spend running around to three different drug stores to use their coupons to buy things they don’t need or want to ‘save’ money?  I know that most people would mentally write off those gas costs without thinking of them as part of daily living, but it’s likely they’re not spending much less! (Most of my driving is highway driving, so it’s very gas efficient.  Lots of small trips in town use more gas because of the stop and go nature of driving locally.)  And how much time are they spending?

I have absolutely no criticism of that approach, since until I started buying raw milk I used to hit three local supermarkets weekly to stock up on the loss leaders. But the above questions regarding gas costs and time/energy output are relevant for everyone consider when determining what their true costs are.

By the way, I integrate outings for my kids into my monthly shopping; I usually I make at least one special stop for them (last time I made two, one in the beginning of the day and one at the end).  I’ve taken them to parks, a chocolate factory, a potato chip factory, a motorcycle factory, a dairy, and a living history museum.  This is another way I maximize my gas expenses; spending the money to go to each of these places on their own would be cost prohibitive, but we can enjoy it as a ‘freebie’.

Avivah

Raising expectations without being a drill sargeant

>>I am trying to get the kids into a different set of expectations (things got a bit too chilled with all the insanity that went on here over the past few months). I’m kind of being overly strict to get to the middle point (as per the Rambam, perhaps). I feel/figure that once they know Mommy means business, things will flow much smoother. The problem is I feel like a drill sergeant and I don’t want the kids to feel like they are in boot camp (nor do I want to make homeschooling a miserable experience). What can be done? Am I wrong in being stricter for a bit? How can I make it work best so I don’t feel like anyone is being treated unfairly?<<

I think it’s natural to go a little more to one side when you’re changing your standards and trying to get to the golden middle path.  I know I did.  Don’t worry about being stricter.  You’re right that life gets much easier when your children know you mean what you say – there will be much less testing and provocations at that point.

The issue isn’t your strictness, it’s the lack of joy that tends to go hand in hand with strictness. It”s not fun for the kids to feel you have your eagle eye on them, waiting for them to do something wrong and then correcting them every other minute!  And it’s not fun for you either. We think of being strict as being emotionally distant and somewhat harsh, right?  But that’s not what it’s about!

This is where you’re going to have to have a mental shift, and realize that a mother can be fun to spend time with even when she’s raised her expectations and is being firm (a word that I think is more accurate for what I’m describing than strict – my kids don’t consider me a strict parent)!  Discipline shouldn’t be punitive; it’s about teaching and training. There’s a big difference between punishment and training, and the more you can internalize the difference, the more effective you’ll be and the less conflict you’ll feel.

So the answer is, when you’re raising your expectations of your kids, you must, must, must be making spending relaxed and enjoyable time with them a priority.  Read more books, play games, dance with a kiddie cassette – whatever you enjoy.  You’re keeping them close by but that shouldn’t mean tuning them out while you are online for long periods of time and then snapping at them more than usual because their proximity is annoying!  Kids being on a short leash doesn’t mean being in the figurative doghouse all day long – it means getting to be close to you for more time than usual, and should be enjoyable for all of you.

I think I mentioned last week that keeping your kids close can be draining.  It’s draining in a different way than yelling or having constant power struggles with a toddler; this is positive all around but still takes energy, especially in the adapting stage.  Make sure you’re getting enough sleep at night, and take time to rest in the middle of the day, even if you can’t actually nap.  If you make your main focus really spending time your kids and doing things you all find enjoyable, then the supervisory aspect becomes more of a technical function (and there’s less need for constant corrections since you’re catching things when they’re pretty minor) and less of an emotional function.

Does that clear things up a bit?

Avivah

Mock Larabars (grain free)

This is delicious enough for a snack and nutritious enough for a quick breakfast!  This is our adaptation of this recipe, which was an adaptation of yet another recipe!   There are endless ways to play around with this basic recipe.

Mock Larabars

  • 2 c. sliced almonds (ideally soaked and dehydrated- can use different nuts according to your tastes), processed finely
  • 1/2 c. shredded coconut
  • 3/4 c. coconut oil
  • 2 t. vanilla
  • 2 T. cocoa
  • 1/2 c. pecan meal (you can use any nut flour)
  • 1/2 c. raisins
  • 1/2 c. dates

Melt the coconut oil, add in vanilla.  Mix all dry ingredients, then whiz in a food processor with the coconut oil.  Add the dried fruit, and whiz again.  (You might find it blends up better if you process the dried fruit alone, then add it in again and the end and process it again.)

Press the mixture firmly into a greased pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes.

When ds16 first mixed these up, he didn’t process the sliced almonds, which was why he initially thought they were a failure – they didn’t look like they’d hold together.  He added eggs and more nut flour to compensate, but if you do what you’re supposed to in the beginning, you won’t have to.  🙂

Thanks to the dates and cocoa combination, these have a sweet, almost chocolatey flavor.  At least that’s what someone like me who has hardly had any sweeteners in my food for two years thinks!  Seriously, though, my kids all loved these.  The biggest challenge is to wait after eating one to realize you’re satiated before gulping more down – they’re packed with healthy fats and are extremely satisfying.  If you want it to be sweeter, use a cup of dates instead of half a cup of raisins and half a cup of dates, or you can double the amount of dates/dried fruit. Or you could add some honey.  🙂

(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.)

Avivah

Enforcing chores

>>hi avivah! i am wondering if you set certain standards for jobs? for example, whoever does the bathroom must do the floor, toilet, counter, garbage, etc. i found that i needed to make checklists for jobs like that, and nobody did it thoroughly, and although i was willing to supervise once or twice, i ended up feeling like a prison warden. <<

Yes, I do set standards.  At the beginning of the year I explain to all of the kids who will have that chore what is expected.  Then at the beginning of their month (or two weeks, depending what the job is), I give a quick reminder.  I do periodic checks, but not every day.

I let my kids know that it’s worth it to do the job right because if I see it’s done wrong………you guessed it, they get more opportunities to practice doing it right!  If it’s once, I’ll tell them to correct it, but if it’s more than three times that they’re doing things in a shoddy way, they’ve earned themselves an extra amount of time on that chore.  That might mean doing an extra week on this chore after the cycle changes, or it might be an extra job somewhere else. It depends on the specifics and what I sense will be most effective at that time.  I’ve done this on a number of occasions and they know what to expect.

>>also, what are your consequences for a shoddy job? like if one of your older kids decided to just make toast for breakfast every day because they didn’t feel like making anything more? would you step in and correct that? would you encourage in a different direction? or is part of them becoming internally motivated that you stay out of it? thanks, as always, for the great advice! you are the voice in my head that keeps me headed in the right direction!!<<

I post the weekly menu plan on the side of the fridge.  For the person on breakfast duty, I try to show them the recipe I have in mind the night before, so they won’t be held up if I’m not up when they’re ready to start.  Sometimes, usually on Sunday morning (when the complete week’s plan usually hasn’t yet been posted) or the first of the month (when the new person is taking over) there will be a morning where they’ll make what they think they should, because they don’t know what I want.  I’m absolutely fine with that. I can’t remember anyone refusing to do this.  If they did, I’d let them know they’ve earned the privilege of washing the dishes or cooking lunch and dinner for the day (or week, if it was said with disrespect) as well as making breakfast.

So for your question about if I’d step in or not, it would very much depend what the motivation of the child was and what my level of concern about that particular thing getting done.  I’m actually pretty relaxed – I know, I probably sound like a drill sargeant with my extra work motto, don’t I? 🙂  But really, I view my kids as responsible, hard working, and know they want to do the right thing, so I feel there’s plenty of room to give the benefit of the doubt.  If they overslept and wanted to make something faster, it would be okay with me assuming oversleeping wasn’t a habit; things happens and I don’t expect perfection!

But – here’s where I’m not relaxed: if someone is flouting authority  or being disrespectful.  If they simply didn’t feel like doing what I posted, then too bad.  Since when do you have to feel like it to do your job?  Sometimes kids need help developing good habits.  Doing the right thing is often not comfortable or easy, and they need our support and encouragement in overcoming their desire to procrastinate or take the easy way out.

After saying all of that, the real question is what is your goal when having your kids do chores?  Is it to accomplish something specific in terms of character development, cleanliness level, smoothness of home functioning?  Or are you happy to have whatever help they can give you in the way they give it to you?   For me, it wouldn’t flow with my goals to let a child do whatever they wanted in spite of what I said.  But everyone has their own goals and will need to take different steps depending where they want to go.

Avivah

PS- After I write my response, I often read the question to my kids and ask them for what they would do and what they think I would do. Dd13 right away said the child has to make what’s on the menu and should make lunch in addition to breakfast.  Dd15 (she just had a birthday :)) said it depends how much you care if they eat toast every day, and if it’s fine with you, then leave it be.  As you read, I agree with them both. 🙂