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!

12 Years in the Making

I have always been a blogging/journaling kind of person. Inconsistent as hell but I still plug along. I started this particular journal in December of 2013, about a month after arriving in California. It really helped with getting my thoughts, frustrations and even some of my mental vomit out of my skull and onto a medium.

I have always loved the old fashion pen and paper kind of journals, at times I feel I have a real problem…I have started more journals than I have finished! The wife gets them from work, if a see a nice leather bound journal I have to physically and emotionally move away from it before I buy, yet another journal!

And yes I am probably going to get the same journal to continue what I have deemed, The Work Journal. To be honest it is one of the few journals I have actually been somewhat consistent with.

Work is s such a huge part of adult life and a place where soo much irritation is generated, it is hard NOT to want to journal about it! I really should go through my journals and thin them out…but they are mines…my precious…why should I give them up!?!?