Supper

I had a hard time today deciding what to title this post.

At first I thought about titling it "We Paid For It, I'm Using It" since that is something Ethan teases me about saying. I thought maybe I would talk about how I wash out the cereal sacks to use as toss away table coverings for projects like making noodles and bread and for the kids to do their Play-Doh and other crafts on. It only takes a second to rinse them out when the cereal is empty and makes project clean up SO much faster. The "We Paid For It, I'm Using It" phrase is a phrase that I also used a lot when I would toss my banana peels in the back flower bed to decompose and add nutrients to the soil before we started a real compost pile. But I decided against that title.

Then I thought I'd title it "Cereal Sacks and Alternative Farming" and talk about how a farmer only receives a fraction of the price of an item in the grocery store. As I was making my noodles today and using the cereal sacks we paid for, I was thinking about how we also pay for the cereal box, the processing of the cereal, the transportation of the cereal, the advertising for the cereal (unless you buy the generic like we do), the wages for the store employees, the overhead for the store . . . and really the farmer that grew the grain gets very little of the amount that was paid for the box of cereal. I thought maybe it would be interesting to post about how alternative farming and direct marketing take out a lot of those additional expenses so the farmer gets a higher percentage of the market price, but I decided against that post too.

Next, I thought about titling my post "Where Do You Want to Spend Your Time?" and talking about how trying to save money at home will reduce the amount of money that you need to earn, which can help you be at home more, which can lead to more opportunities to save money at home, which means that you will need even less to live on, which might eventually lead to allowing one parent to stay at home with the kids or even the other parent to be able to farm - all taking into consideration that you aren't trying to save money to be rich but to be able to spend time at home with family and friends. But I thought that post might get a little confusing.

So I finally decided to title my post "Supper" and let everyone know that for supper we are having ham and noodles, mashed potatoes, green beans, and bread.

By the way, the ham was from leftover ham broth I had canned. The noodles were homemade with eggs from our chickens, and I used the cereal sacks that we paid for while making them. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to can any early beans and our fall beans need another week or so before they are ready, so I had to use green beans from the store that are hardly worth the 33 cents I paid for them (and the can, and the transportation, and the. . .). And although I had spent most of the kids' nap time making bunches noodles so I could dry some for later meals, I decided to go ahead and make the bread too since a penny saved is a penny earned.