Today I Made Bread.
As I continue the work of learning to live with less, I am focusing quite a bit on adopting practices or learning skills that help my household to be self-sustaining. I will say more about our living situation soon, but right now, I haven’t quite figured out the best way to grow food in our apartment. I’m going to figure it out, but it’s not the first thing on my list. For now, I’m being intentional about making small, sustainable changes, and so far we are doing pretty good. In the last month, we have not purchased one bottle of water for our home. THIS. IS. MAJOR! I don’t remember a home without bottled water, at least not for the last 20 years or so.
In truth, I had not really given much thought to the possibility of living without bottled water until a month or so ago when on a Monday morning I went to out recycling room to dump our bag of bottles. The bin was empty when I arrived, but after I dumped our bag, our household had single-handedly filled the entire bin. There was no room for anyone else on our floor. That was the first visual I had of how my family might be contributing to the problem. That day, I began the search for water bottles. I was afraid of stainless steel ones because my experience before had been bad. The water seemed to taste like metal. Admittedly I was purchasing the cheapest, “cutest” bottle, not really thinking about quality. After some research and sale shopping, my husband and I settled on using Hydroflask bottles and we haven’t looked back sense. In the change, we also discovered that our building offers filtered water free of charge near the water fountains on each floor. We’ve made some other changes too, that I’m sure I will highlight in other posts.
Living with less for us is also tied to the desire to save more money and to eat more healthily. I’m a bread eater and not only is processed bread expensive, but it’s also full of a lot of stuff that’s not so healthy. On top of that, my husband and son are big breakfast eaters. They both like oatmeal, but my desire has been to figure out a breakfast alternative that is equally as filling. French toast was the thought that came to my mind. So, I began to look up bread recipes. Initially, I was going to make it by hand, but I decided that it would be easier and more sustainable for me to use a bread machine if I could find a used one at a really good price. My aim was $10 since that’s what I paid for my last one. Well, turns out I ended up spending $30 for one. It was gently used. stainless steel and a high end brand. It had all the parts and the measuring components. I measured the ingredients out, placed in the machine, pressed the start button and went on a about my day. 3 hours later, I had a huge 2lb loaf of bread. I suspect it cost me somewhere around 60-75 cents for the whole loaf. I split it into two parts and it will serve us well for breakfast through the whole week.