Back again

I’ve been a busy. Back to working part time while being a full time mama. My little baby is now 8 months old and I’ve started giving her solids. I followed baby led weaning guidelines with my older daughter. If you are not familiar with baby led weaning, here are a few highlights:

– wait until baby can sit independently and shows an interest in solids.
– give baby soft foods that you are eating. This includes things like steamed veggies, avocado, and other foods that are not highly spiced. Kate’s first food was steamed sweet potato.
– give an ounce of water in a sippy with meals.

That’s it in a nutshell.

My other past time is cooking. My hubby and I are trying to cut down on our expenses. Eating out and convenience foods are a huge budget buster. So I’ve been trying to cook almost all our meals at home. If we eat out once a week, that would be a vast improvement.

Of course to help me do that, I had to get some new kitchen toys.
– a bread maker. This helps me make organic breads. I can buy a 5 lb bag of organic flour for about $4. A jar of yeast is $2. The bag of flour makes at least 6 loaves of bread. When I buy a loaf of organic bread, it can cost me between $4 and $5.
– a juicer. I bought an Omega 8004 which is a masticating juicer. This is definitely a luxury item but I love fresh juices. This helps use up veggies that I don’t feel like cooking but need to use up.
– an Instapot. This is an electric pressure cooker. I have been using it for making soups. But I hear that it is wonderful for cooking beans. It can cook dry beans in under an hour!

So we’ll see how much I spend on food this month. Our goal is to save enough money to start furnishing and fixing up our home without creating debt.

Here’s a random picture of the dessert I made last night. It’s a peanut butter cookie milkshake. I am vegan so now cows were harmed in the making of this dessert:)