Bism Illah.
On our return to Saudi Arabia, things didn't just go back to the "normal" life we lived prior to our summer of sustainability on Healing Earth. We brought one of our washboards back with us and a plunger-style breathable clothes washer. Just as we established over the summer, we still do our laundry by hand here. Not only that, but the girls continue to do their own laundry - the 7 and 10 year old as a team. They take pride in showing me how good their socks look once they've done their washboard scrubbing!
Knowing that we will not be able to grow rice, we have made more adjustments to our diet to incorporate grains that we will be able to grow and more potatoes. This is really a health boon, because super-foods like quinoa are easy to grow and yet expensive to buy. We have eliminated the need for crystalline sugar (albeit organic) in our baking and cooking, with great success. We have also transitioned deliciously to using all wholewheat flour - whether hard red, hard white, or soft white - for our baking.
As for making our own, I am now whipping up all the things the hubby was missing - the crunchy stuff and the yummy treats. We have mastered honey graham crackers, organic wholewheat cheese-its, hard pretzels, homemade "Grape Nuts" type cereal and granola, pop tarts, soft pretzels, bagels, our own pasta and noodles, and even our own chocolates (imagine being able to eat homemade Bounty/Mounds/Almond Joy and call it medicinal health food! Whee!
We have found Azure Standard, an organic food co-op, that could provide us with a year's worth of organic wheat or flour (600 lbs) for around $220. Buying bulk from them for the things we cannot grow or won't have during the first year or two, will at least half our food bills. It could even provide organic foods and produce for resale in our farm stand.
We have started making our own all-purpose healing salve, lip balms, lotion bars, and hair pomades to add to our homemade staples of shampoo, deodorant, tooth oil, laundry soap, and household cleaners. No more plastic and foam sponges for cleaning, we now use cotton dish cloths (we can knit them), loofahs for soft scrubbing, and stainless steel for pots and pans.
The lifestyle we live is becoming closer and closer to the lifestyle we wish to live, and that is a great feeling, alhamdul'Illah.
