Day 40

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And on day 40 we moved everything over to a new jug and added: Cinnamon, cloves and honey.

And now the long wait happens, we let this sit for about 4 months. I will bottle it around Labor Day…..more to come! 

New Baby

​We start this new year with a new fur baby: Bailey Piddles:

She is a golden doodle….I have no idea what that means. We got her from some stranger in the parking lot of a Home Goods….

The wife wanted to stop and look….and 30 seconds later we have a new baby! She is full of energy, tootsie rolls and puddles! 

Welcome to the family!

Apple Spice Mead

​I have taken on the mantle of making mead, honey wine.

I have always been fascinated with the idea of brewing your own booze, but the idea of setting up a whole elaborate set just was not what I was into. 

So last Christmas the wife got me this mead kit and I was off to the races. I made my first and second batch with the kit and the ingredients they supplied. The third one I used an old Viking recipe that used only the ingredients one could have found back then, and the last one I made I followed a blueberry mead recipe I found on YouTube. I will not be doing the blueberry mead again….that was way too sweet for my taste!

And now I am trying another recipe I found on the YouTube….Apple Spice Mead.

Simple ingredients:

Apples, honey, apple juice, cinnamon sticks and some cloves.

I am currently on step one: fermentation. This is supposed to last 40 days….once that part is done we will circle back 

Homemade….Vanilla Extract

​We started this in April and this weekend we pooped it open to make pancakes! 

We made homemade butter last weekend and saved the left over buttermilk for pancakes. We have really been on a ‘Home Made’ kick lately, here is a list of things we have made and are making:

Mead, honey wine

Butter

Buttermilk 

Sour Dough (Just started this, more to come on this)

Vanilla Extract 

Coming soon: Pasta

And how to make vanilla extract….take some vanilla beans, add to a large bottle, fill with vodka and then let it sit for about 7 months….BAM vanilla extract!

How to Save Money

​On today’s episode of living during hard times I present to you:

The Costco Tube of MEAT!

This is 10 lbs of 90/10 ground beef! This monstrosity cost about 57$.

We cut it up and separated it into 10 individual one pound sealed bags and froze them. In the end this came to about $5.70 a pound! And I am not sure where other people are around the world but here in my neck of the woods this meat usually runs about $11 a pound. 

And as you can see this is what they are charging at my local food store. I did a search on the average price of ground meat but as well all know the average of the whole does not always reflect the actual price of the local. 

According to the Googles the average price is $8.18 and after going to a few different stores I could not find any for that price. 

And no not looking to go political on this, or point fingers, at the end of the day I have eyes and a calculator. For reference here is the chart that also talks to the rise of the price of beef:

( https://www.macrotrends.net/4486/us-ground-beef-prices )

Prices go up we get frugal!