Wine & Whiskey
- Jan 13
- 3 min read

Around the House

Updated: Feb 19

There are many household things I do which others probably would not. For example, making homemade liquid laundry detergent, buying a whole pig and a half a cow (butchered of course) from a local farmer, fermenting veggies and raw milk, making sourdough bread, and feeding firewood into a wood cookstove for fifteen hours a day. It sounds exhausting.

I could not do any of this if I worked full-time outside of my home. Now that I do client work very part-time from home, I have time for such things.

Homemade laundry detergent is a new endeavor. Buying jugs and jugs of detergent generates lots of plastic waste and it is expensive. The recipe I make costs about $1.00 a jug versus $11+ from Walmart. If I only could figure a way to do this with wine and whiskey 😁.

Here is my recipe.

laundry detergent

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Our freezers have recently been filled with pork and beef; this will last for a year. The meats are cut, packaged, labeled, and frozen. Animals are raised humanely by No-View Farm.

The laundry baskets are filled with beef cuts, the bags contain ground beef and bones. In addition, to the beef is the bacon from the pig (pork cuts picked up weeks ago). Lots of bacon!

Buying this much meat is a big chunk of money all at once, but I literally don't have to go to grocery store for meats all year. I buy chicken as needed from local farms: Moose Mountain Farm and Top of the Hill Farm.

If you aren't bored to death at this point...here are a few other things happening around the house.

Our carpenter friend is back in town, so we get back to our bathroom add project. If you know our house, this bathroom is being added where the stairs next the living room fireplace are. Those stairs are being closed in.

In the kitchen, I continue making a mess daily. While making a mess I have mastered homemade gnocchi. It is so easy and such a great base for stew. And now that we have a freezer full of meat, I need sides to serve.

I've tried several recipes, and this is my favorite. Homemade Gnocchi - Damn Delicious

The only difference is that I peel and boil potatoes and put through a ricer instead of baking potatoes. Side note, I never thought I needed a potato ricer till now. It is a great way to smash potatoes.

Now that I can make my sourdough without reading my notes, I branched out a bit and made a cinnamon raisin loaf. I liked it very much.

The snow is back! Then we got rain, then snow, then rain. Sigh. But it is still white outside so that is good. Whiskey had a heck of a time plowing eight inches of slush. So heavy, wet, and slippery. Not fun.

The first snowstorm of 2024 was beautiful light and fluffy. Whiskey got the sled going and made a trail for walking around. That is all ruined now with the two rain / slush storms since.