Bells of the North Homestead

Since the last time I have written on our electricity bill and our efforts in reducing it we’ve had a few developments.  Now keep in mind with all of this.  We do not have some of the typical high energy items that many have.  We have no water heater that draws energy nor do we have electric heat.  We do have, however, an ancient waterbed.  Thankfully that will be replaced very soon.  Another item to keep in mind is this is Fairbanks, Alaska so we have to plug in our vehicles if they are parked outdoors when the temperatures go below -20.  That happens quite frequently here in the winter months so to combat that problem I have purchased an outdoor timer that will only turn on power to the vehicle plugged in for two hours prior to our possible departure time. Also, originally as I began writing this, my husband had been at home each month, anxiously searching for a job.  That means that we have had one adult around the house for almost 24 hou...

My most recent item to dehydrate is a sweet potato we received as part of our CSA share from Brads Produce.  This, I actually did not research ahead of time like I typically do simply because I was in a hurry to "git'r done" so I am writing about it to simply remind myself later "uhh how did I do this one?". First, I baked it along with some other items in the oven just until it was starting to get soft. I like to wrap my sweet potatoes in tinfoil because they make a horrible mess in the oven otherwise. Next, I sliced them up and placed them in our 5 tray Excalibur dehydrator for about a day and a half. I checked several times to see if they were "crunchy" yet.  Each time, even today these remain pliable and soft with crunchy parts around the edges.  Hhhmm, frustrating. A friend had remarked how this can be difficult to dehydrate these.  I can see why. Okay, so today I did a test .  I tried cutting up the now mostly dehydrated sweet potato pieces ...