Rice flour pancakes

I tried a new pancake recipe tonight. We normally try to follow a paleo diet but I do like to eat some of our old favourite foods sometimes. Tonight was one such time. If I can, I still try to avoid wheat and cane sugar so finding this recipe was a real bonus because I have tried almond flour pancakes (yuck), and I have tried gluten-free flour pancakes and they were okay but I was not happy with the extra bits in the flour. Rice flour is not very nutritious I know, but at least it is not doing any harm, just empty calories. Here is a link to the original recipe over at the Yummy Supper blog. The only change I made was to remove the sugar and I used 2/3 cup of rice flour instead of 10 tablespoons. I served with lashings of top grade maple syrup (which happens to be priced quite well at Costco) and ice cream. It was really easy to make. They tasted delicious and were surprisingly filling!

Becoming an urban homesteader

About a year ago, I read the blog entry "How to be a (Suburban or Urban) Homesteader" over at The  Prairie Homestead. It got me all excited because our dream is to have a small farm. One where we raise our own meat, and grow our own food. I have dreams of an orchid, a vege patch to feed a huge family, chickens for our own eggs, probably even some other animals for meat (I'm not really an animal person, but I would love meat and would love to know my food had a nice life) and lets not forget a two story house and green rolling fields in every direction. That is our dream. It is currently out of our reach, we don't even own a house, but we are confident our time will come when God blesses our dream and we live this life. That's when I get impatient... when will it be our time? Then I read the above post. It changed how I thought, suddenly I realised all the skills I could be acquiring now that could help in our long term goals. I don't want to finally get our farm and then have to start to learn how to grow veges! Of course, I need to start learning and practising now!

I sometimes say to Westley, "What a great homemaker I would be by now if I had have quit work when we got married and started being a full-time housewife then. That is, before we had children rather than trying to figure it all out now after we have the children. My systems and processes would have been all figured out and then adding children to the equation would have been easier". Well, I can't turn back the time on that issue but I can use it to my advantage now with homesteading. We can learn loads now before our lives depend on what we produce ;)

So that was a year ago, I feel like we've made some pretty good progress, especially considering we have had an extra baby in that time. Westley has done a lot of the hard labour. I hope to share details of our progress in posts to come.