Friday, May 9, 2008

Our new wheat and grain mill

So we decided to spend some of our stimulus check on food storage this month. After looking around a little, I got a new hand grain mill and a food dehydrator at Emergency Essentials. Here are a few things I have already learned.

  • This thing is HEAVY! It's mostly made out of solid steel, so despite the small box, it's a pain to pick up.
  • You need a friend! I'm good for a quarter cup or so, but after that, I was honestly sweating!
  • Fortunately for me, Will thinks it's fun to help, so that takes care of the friend part.
  • It works best to add small amounts to the mill at a time. Too much and it won't work. Start with a little and keep adding more as you go.
  • It takes forever! Don't think you can just get this done in 10 minutes.

One of my favorite books series as a girl was Little House on the Prairie, and my favorite book was The Long Winter. Just reading that one now and I can imagine the wind howling through the prairie and the snow covering the cows. I remember when they had to grind their wheat with a coffee mill to have something to eat. Now I have an idea of how hard that must have been.

We've tried a couple of things with our new freshly ground whole wheat flour. One was a flat loaf of bread Randy made last night - really good, but no recipe because he just made it up as he went; and the other is peanut butter cookies. I substituted about 1/2 to 2/3 a cup of wheat flour for the white. Super yummy - you can hardly tell.

I'll post more ideas we've tried for saving money on groceries as I can.

2 comments:

Emilie said...

How long can you keep the wheat once it has been ground up? Someone told me it doesn't keep for long periods of time. Hum, I would like to get a grinder, mind sharing how much it cost?

Cindy B said...

Mine was about $80, but I'm not sure if that was the sale price or regular price.

I checked online, and couldn't find a lot of specifics about how long to store wheat once it's ground, but it seems to be 1 month on the shelf, 6-8 months if stored tightly sealed in the refrigerator. I would say don't grind more than you plan to use fairly soon.