From A - Z {Alpha to Zucchini} ~ A "Shabby Chic" Frugal Farm Lifestyle ~ Entry #2

{Entry #1 is shared here, titled A "Shabby Chic" Frugal Farm Lifestyle}
{Entry #2 is shared here, titled "From Beautiful Books to Blueberries"}

Each journey has different beginnings. Our personal journey toward a home-grown, debt-free lifestyle started with one word, "simplifying". Ladies, many of us have too much and think we need even more! Frugality is at its finest when we are not swimming in chaos and clutter. It is like the woman who is dressed tastefully and yet you can't put your finger on exactly what she was wearing. You just remember she wasn't gaudy or over-done, she was classy. And as downsizing is often necessary in order to live within one's means, let's start with the simplification process and how it relates with our humble version of the "shabby chic" frugal farm lifestyle.

When we moved into our old homestead, space was significantly smaller. We sold off one-half of our household belongings in order to fit into the farmhouse! Why buy something so small you might ask? Small was our budget and therefore small was our home :) It is embarrassing and sad how much one can accumulate that one does not really need. In our case, every time someone gave something away in the family, they thought of us and I had a hard time saying "no".

"A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more you own, the more "it" owns you in the form of time spent cleaning it, storing it and maintaining it. This lifestyle is not about accumulating things, rather it is about appreciating and maintaining with love, everything you do have. Do you remember Ma Ingall's prized possession of the shepherdess? She had little but made a big deal out of the little. This is what makes something precious, quality and not quantity.

"The key lies in simply weeding out the unnecessary, trusting your instincts about what is comfortable and practical, noticing details..."

~ Rachel Ashwell, Shabby Chic

I know that many times we can fall into the trap of thinking we need mounds of money to make our home appealing and beautiful. However, let's begin with the truth of the matter, the real "pretty" is practicality and order. For a home to be cozy, it needs to be somewhat tidy and clean. Having a organized home without excess distractions is better than any decoration at all (in my opinion). In fact, a clean home is decoration in itself!*

*Note: Although I do say that (and mean that) about an orderly home, I realize that we women do like to fluff our nests! I will be sharing some of the frugal ways I have done so in a future post.

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know

to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

~ William Morris, Victorian Era English Designer

For those of you that want change and don't know where to start, I suggest that you remove any decorations, dust-collectors, small appliances, odds and ends, etc., that you do not use and love and put them in a box labeled "garage sale". If you find that you have lived without these items in one year, feel at peace to sell them or donate them. It is best to start off with a clean slate as clutter is not clean nor beautiful nor frugal. As a fellow friend put it, real estate in your home is valuable space! 

"... if the cost of your house per square foot is $100, every plastic bag of clutter is worth $100 of real estate! Now, that's real estate investment!"

~ Mrs. Laura Lane, Harvest Lane Cottage

We can live in smaller homes and within our means if we rid ourselves of the excess. For example, many moons ago we ditched our microwave. It took up valuable "real estate" on our kitchen counter and I was also quite leery of its safety (to be honest). We also let go of the toaster oven (we found the broiler on the oven did just as well) and the waffle maker (we made pancakes more than anything and I never did like cleaning the waffle maker). I sold many of our individual small appliances (i.e., juicer, blender, food processor) and used the money to buy the attachments to such things on our Bosch mixer. This saved us much more space than housing the individual units! 

Now that we have touched a bit on the "alpha" (simplifying and downsizing), it is time to talk zucchini. I did mention this would be random writings! And if any of you have a garden, then you know this topic is inevitable! You are probably swimming in it. But there is a bit more to it (the nitty-gritty so to speak), it is about using what you have.

You see, this new life taught me that having something like coconut oil in the pantry is not a necessity but a luxury (as much as I love it!). In fact, the grocery list is a luxury when one is trying to homestead on a budget. I don't take certain things on our grocery list for granted anymore. Though it isn't as tight as it was in those first few years, I still very much need to keep a watchful eye on household expenses because there is always winter here on the farm! There are some weeks that what the garden produces is what we need to eat. It isn't about what is in the supermarket but what is in our back yard. And so, "shabby chic" meals were created.

Though this meal was the simplest ever, my husband marveled at it because it was presented with love on pretty dishes! 

One day it was a bag of potatoes and a beautiful harvest of squash. I steamed the potatoes and placed a pile on each of our prettiest dinner plates. I drizzled them with the olive oil we had purchased during our last sale of hay. This we reserve for foods that don't require cooking, to serve it raw, to receive the health benefits. This is now a treat for us to have and I use it sparingly and with much appreciation. I sautéed mounds of zucchini and layed them proudly upon each plate of potatoes. I clipped a bouquet of our parsley, chopped it coarsely and scattered it atop. The last bit was a final sprinkle of dried herbs, nutritional yeast seasoning (I would have loved parmesan cheese!) and sea salt. It was a humble little meal but made with affection. The idea here is, plain food can be made fancy with a bit of love!

Having an herb garden is also very helpful. It gives meals that gourmet feeling without spending a penny and adds nutrition. Parsley grows like weeds and can be sprinkled atop anything to make it special.

I fear that all the magazines and fancy food blogs have created more work and has overwhelmed the homemaker. We think we must make certain meals! Each dish has to have a name which everyone can recognize as a food. For instance, we had "tacos" tonight, or we had "lasagna" tonight. Not many are proud to say, "we had squash over potatoes" tonight. Is there even such a menu? Perhaps not, but for those who are trying to practice frugality, we must often-times make this stuff up depending on what we have.

These breaded zucchinis may be an appetizer on a restaurant menu, however, they are the main course in our home. Served with a green salad and our farm-raised hard boiled eggs, this is filling, frugal and satisfying. 

There are many things we may need want that will get ignored on the grocery list for awhile. But when the day comes when the tractor (aka hubby) brings in another paycheck, we will rejoice at the fulfillment of the list. And we will appreciate everything the more that is placed in our pantry! These foods are like embellishments. Sometimes we have a bit more to add, sometimes a bit less. In between, our God given creativity will guide and inspire us on how to make do.

But back to the zucchini. The one year my zealous husband planted 38 plants (that is a story in itself and I barely lived to tell it), that was the "meat" of our meals. I had to be creative to prepare them differently each night to appeal to everyone because that is what we had to work with! It wasn't meal planning around what our family was accustomed to eating, it was about learning to like to eat and planning around what we had. Traditional dishes were not in the budget because they would cost money to create. Here I had zucchini to work with that was homegrown, organic and free.

Zucchini was dehydrated for the winter to put into soups and sauces, blanched and frozen in serving-sized pieces and when time is an issue, it is shredded and frozen in a flash! Our favorite method of preserving zucchini for the future is to make and freeze quiche fillings in freezer bags. This we simply dump into homemade pie shells and serve with whatever vegetables we have growing at the time. All of these preparations help lower the grocery bill and are a blessing during the slow winters.

Preserving meals for the future does take work on one day, but think of the ease on the day you will reap from it! Though I normally limit myself to one cup of coffee in the morning, on days like this, when I need to tackle an additional project, I lure myself in with an afternoon cup of coffee. For I will not lie, I do get tired and it does take energy and effort (but again), like the Good Book says, "In all labor, there is profit". 

So, this is how we ate zucchini for a month and through the long cold winter (via what we preserved). All of these meals were very thrifty to make and yet they were all delicious because they were made from scratch. Simple foods are tasty when prepared with fresh and seasonal ingredients! 

"That's the way Great-grandmother did it. She looked in the larder, the cellar and then took a walk through the garden to see what she had. And then she made menus for the next couple days."

~ Carla Emory, The Encyclopedia of Country Living

I suppose the moral of the story is thinking outside of the menu-planning box. We need to look around at what we have growing (or what is on "special" if you haven't a garden or means to plant one due to living in an apartment, etc.). "Normal" menu ideas can be very expensive when you need to purchase every single ingredient that goes into them. Ma Ingalls did not survive like that. Her food revolved around very basic, bulk pantry ingredients and what they had growing or preserved. For instance, here zucchini is the main dish. As it is both the "free" ingredient and "main" ingredient, with a bit of flour and a few eggs, we can prepare a variety of pleasing and thrifty meals with them!

Well, it is time for me to step away from the computer and enter the "real world" called "home". I am out of breath! I didn't realize how much one could speak about squash. My apologies, my next post will be shorter I hope! I am wondering what ideas you have to share on these random topics of simplifying and zucchini? Have a lovely week!

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