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| photo by Mrs. Mac |
Here we are approaching winter and all of the snow we received two weeks ago is gone. It's actually been warmish (late spring temps) in the 40's to nearly 60 degrees (F) of late. Warm enough to thaw out the ground to plant approximately 75 bulbs of garlic.
Since Daylight Savings time has ended a few weeks ago, I have reset the time on the thermostat so my heater doesn't automatically come on an hour earlier any longer. Let's see: one hour early x 30/31 days per month ='s 30/31 hours each month that the heat would run when not needed. We keep it at 65 F in the morning and evening, and 59 at night. At noon it's set at 62 and I wear a sweater and/or turn on our little gas cast iron room stove. Of course, if company comes over, I turn up the heat to make them more comfortable. I'm still at that stage in life when a 'personal summer' hits me once in a while .. which isn't all that bad during the winter months ;).
It's been eleven months since we bought our wheat grinder. I'm always one to examine purchases to see if what we buy is really paying off and or used. We (I) make about 90% of our baked goods, and have gone through almost two 25 lb bags of wheat berries, using the grinder two times per week. The wheat cost $26. I've also gone through about 30 pounds of white flour ($17). When you add in the extra ingredients such as eggs and the 7-grain cereal blend I use ... and the fuel to bake, I think we will be way under $100 for the year.
This has produced approximately : 52 loaves of bread, 382 rolls, 20 rounds of pita bread, 36 biscuits, 150 ableskivers, 72 waffles .. and countless batches of cookies. I do believe that, by the time January rolls around, the wheat grinder will have almost paid for itself if we had had to purchase this amount of baked goods.
