It's Yogurt Time!

That two-year-old daughter of ours, Baby Bear, doesn't like to eat much. She'll ingest as much juice and milk as you put in front of her -- usually a quart of each per day -- but the foods she'll take are pretty limited. Burritos with hot sauce, beans and rice, Goldfish and a few other things.

But that kid loves her some yogurt. And good yogurt, as you may know, ain't cheap. You can buy the little tubs laced with aspartame and other chemicals SUPER cheap, but not the good, clean, non-chemical varieties like Greek yogurt.

Enter the crock pot yogurt recipe Mama Bear found somewhere online.

Here you go:

It only takes a half-gallon of milk and a half-cup of store-bought (or other) yogurt with active cultures.

--Put the milk in a crock pot and turn it on Low. Leave for 2.5 hours.

--After 2.5 hours, turn off the crock pot and leave the lid on.

--After 3 more hours, remove two cups of the milk. Mix the half-cup of yogurt into the two cups of milk, then return to the crock pot. I usually do the mixing in an old pasta sauce jar. Just dump the milk and yogurt in, and shake. Stir it into the rest of the milk in the crock pot.

--Replace the lid and wrap the entire crock pot with a heavy towel to keep the remaining heat inside. Leave for eight hours, and when it's done, you have yogurt.

Very easy.

We've been buying powdered milk for about $12 for 22 quarts worth. With two quarts needed for this recipe, that means we're paying just over a dollar for a half-gallon of yogurt -- assuming we don't strain it to remove some of the extra water (or whey). And that's a bargain!

You can strain it. I take a small screen sieve, insert a smallish (unbleached) coffee filter, and pour some of the yogurt into it. Let the loose liquid drip through into a separate container to be discarded, then dump the remaining (very thick) yogurt into a bowl to be used anytime in the next week or so. The same filter can be used several more times, until the entire half-gallon of yogurt has been strained. Very good, very thick.

Remember to save a half-cup of the new yogurt to use as starter with the next batch, and you'll never have to buy yogurt again.

Hello. It's Papa Bear. Call me PB. No J. As I mentioned last week, I'm a big fan of berries. I recently noticed what appeared to be a huge thicket of blackberry shrub out in the country here in southern Mississippi. The berries I could see at that time were mostly green, and the few black ones were tiny, about 3/8 inch long on average.

Went back to the site today on my motorcycle, all leathered up, with a straw hat and a bucket in the saddlebags. Got there, put on the hat and a denim jacket -- against the sun and the stickers, respectively -- and got down to business. It's early for blackberries in most places, but it's been over 90 most days for the last few weeks, so I was hopeful.

My hopes were dashed. But it wasn't the weather's fault. Instead, I discovered while slogging my way through the thicket that it was a near marsh. Several inches of water over several more inches of mud in many places. The entire spot is in a cutover swath of land under a massive powerline, always a likely place to look for the berries. SOMETHING had to grow where the utility company cuts out the natural growth while putting in powerlines. Might as well be berries.

The plants were there, as were the stickers and a few berries. I got about two cups by picking for an hour. Hard to get to, they were.

And then the snakes started showing up. Two copperheads in ten minutes.

And that's when I split. Yeah, I was wearing 14-inch leather motorcycle boots. But what if the little slitherers aimed higher than that? Most people don't know that a coiled snake can jump at least 2/3 as high as it is long. Meaning that a 3-foot-long snake (relatively small) can jump two feet in the air before biting.

My boots aren't that tall.

A couple of cups of blackberries just isn't worth it.

Cheap lawnmower

Our yard had only been mowed once this year, and that was when a neighbor asked "are you planning to mow your yard? Ever?" He offered to mow it for us, and there you go. But that was a month ago.

So on Saturday I hit up CraigsList and found a mower (20-inch pushmower, nonfuntional, hasn't been started in about 4 years) for $20. Drove 15 miles roundtrip to the other side of town, pulled the cord to make sure it would turn over and wasn't locked up. It did and it wasn't, so 20 bucks it is -- and I now have a mower.

Dude left the gasoline in it several years ago, so the carbeurator and gas tank were all kinds o' gummed up. Could have saved it and used the residue to varnish some furniture. Seriously.

Anyway, the old Briggs and Stratton engine on the machine was essentially the same as the one I learned about engines on, back when I was 10 or so. Got that one for a birthday present. Was told, "take it apart," then "put it back together." I did, and the beastie worked! Since then I've had to rebuild a few other carbeurators, usually on motorcycles, and have kept my skills.

To sum up: $20 for a mower, $10 for carb cleaner, oil and gas, and about 45 minutes invested, and we have a mower that functions flawlessly. Chopped down the 2.5-foot-tall grass next to the road, ignored the serpentine that isn't growing too well, and saved us about $100 or so. The cheapest RUNNING used mower I could find locally was $125 at a small-engine-repair shop.

CraigsList and knowledge. A powerful combo. And I probably lost about a pound or so while mowing.

For what it's worth, grass is a worthless crop, but we spend more money growing it than any other crop in this country. Why do we spend so much time and money growing and "reaping" and throwing away something that is useful only for holding down the dirt? A dream: Plant a grassless lawn, or buy a goat to eat it. Some good should come of this plant.

Healthy Peach Pantry Muffins

I (Mama Bear) wanted to make something that we could have for breakfast all week. I also wanted to use only items I had on hand in our pantry. It kind of amazes me that if you are resourceful enough, you can take pantry items and create a food product virtually from nothing except effort, heat and know-how.

I found a base recipe from Paula Deen and adapted it to make it healthier. These muffins are DELICIOUS! The have fruit, some whole grain and they are very filling.

1 cup whole wheat flour
Add in 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt
1 cup self rising flour
1 cup 2% milk
1 cup of melted margarine
1/4 cup of rolled oats
1/4 cup of chopped almonds
1/3 cup of Splenda
1/8 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 can (15 oz) of sliced peaches (chopped to 1/4 inch thick chunks) I used the No Sugar Added variety.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add all of the wet ingredients. Mix til wet through without overmixing. Fold in peaches and almonds.

Divide into 12 muffin cups (greased with Pam or similar). Bake at 350 for 25-35 minutes til toothpick test comes out clean. Let sit in hot pan on stovetop for 10 more minutes.

You can freeze these in a ziploc bag and reheat them in an oven or toaster oven so you have them all week.

Enjoy!

I also did a version of this that substituted pineapple chunks for the peaches and cashews for the almonds and it was also very tasty. Another version that works well is to chop up candied ginger and use it instead of the almonds. The basic idea of these muffins can be endlessly adapted to what the pantry has to offer.

Best thing is that I used a lot of items from my pantry that don't often get used and I will have breakfast on hand all week. I can even eat my breakfast while I walk to work. Yum!

So, I will have a healthy breakfast on hand all week which I can eat while exercising (walking to work) and I didn't have to spend a dime in order to create it. Plus, because I did not buy anything new, I reduce my environmental impact by not buying a package of pre-made muffins and creating more waste. Pre-made muffins would also have been much less healthy too!

Going to the blueberry farm

I (Papa Bear) love berries. So does Mama Bear. We both need more fruit in our diet. Berries are expensive. But we found out recently that there is an organic blueberry farm near our home in southern Mississippi. $9 for a gallon of berries, so long as you pick them yourself.

So we drove to the Pearl River Blues berry farm in Lumberton, MS to find that we were their first customers for the season. Good timing, us! We were greeted by the owners, two dogs, a cat, and about 20 chickens. The chickens were in their movable shed -- more on that later -- but they still said howdy.

After being outfitted with buckets and given a brief lecture on blueberries, we were turned loose in the rows of bushes. Turns out, Baby Bear loves blueberries, too. As the owner of the farm noted, it's a good thing they don't weigh you coming in or going out, or we would have had to pay extra for what she ate. And it only took a few attempts at eating green berries for her to discover that the blue ones taste much, much better.

Picking the berries was a relaxing experience and also good exercise. It was a beautiful day and while it was hot, the productive nature of the work made it bearable. Mama Bear said she would love to do it every day. Baby Bear also seemed to enjoy chasing kitty cats between the bushes while improving her farmer tan.

We collected our gallon bucket full, ate a bunch straight off the bushes, then sat around and talked to the owners for a while. Good people. And while we were still there, Mama Bear got a lesson in raising chickens for eggs. We can't keep chickens where we currently live (as renters), but that's in the long-range plans.

For being the first customers of the season, the gave us a free jar of blueberry jam and a recipe booklet. We also bought 6 organic eggs (collected that morning) and they gave us 6 more free, just because. So for $11 and the gas to drive there, we got a great morning filled with learning, meeting new people and good exercise, and plenty of healthy, wholesome food.

We froze a bunch of blueberries last night and made a batch of blueberry frozen yogurt. Today, we made enough blueberry pancakes to last all week. Recipes for both to follow. Mama Bear scrambled some farm fresh eggs this morning and found them to be of far superior structure and taste than any store eggs. She can't wait to bake something with them. Most likely a diet heavily supplemented with blueberries makes those chickens' eggs taste great and they were probably 2-3 weeks fresher than anything from a store, whether organic or conventional. Ultimately whether organic is worth the extra price is up to the taster and his or her budget. For us, organic and/or farm fresh eggs will have to be an occasional treat. At least for now.

Welcome to Small Changes

Hello and Welcome to Small Changes!

We are a family of three and we want to talk about the progressive changes we make in our lives that help us to be leaner, richer and greener. Currently, we are both a little overweight, flat broke, and interested in developing a more sustainable lifestyle.

Good, healthy food can be more expensive than processed faux food, but we believe achieving and maintaining a healthly weight is possible -- even on a tight budget. We want to show that spending less money can in fact help you in your pursuit of health. Similarly, choosing to do things yourself -- using manual tools instead of machines, walking or biking to work instead of driving -- can burn lots of calories and save you a little money, too.

Many of these changes that help make us leaner and richer (or at least less broke) are also, coincidentally, "greener". We believe that before people will begin to adopt an environment-friendly lifestyle, they must believe it is in their best interests to do so.

So, our focus will be on how certain behaviors can help us live healthy -- healthy bodies and healthy wallets, but with the added benefit of a healthy earth. There are lots of blogs that talk about how preserving the earth is good, but there's not much information out there about how doing good for yourself can also do good for the environment.

Ultimately, its all about frugality in the exchange of energy. Where money is concerned, we want to keep more of our cash (which is a stand-in for energy). When we talk about weight management, we want the highest nutritional quality for the lowest calories (energy). And we want to expend our own energy to do as many things as possible, rather than pay for someone else's energy -- whether it's gasoline, electricity, or even help with construction projects or sewing.

A lifestyle of increased simplicity (or decreased complexity, whichever you prefer) can help you have an abundant household, physically and fiscally.

Best,

Papa Bear and Mama Bear