Hi! I found you on the latest thingie. I write as well, so your intro post caught my eye.
Check out a book called "My Bread." You absolutely cannot go wrong with its basic bread recipe and tutorial--and it uses barely any yeast, so it's pretty economical. All you need is instant yeast (obtainable through King Arthur Flour's site, sometimes through grocery stores), bread flour (KAF, grocery store), and a big cast-iron dutch oven (Amazon, sometimes wal-mart or harris teeter type places, get the big one for about $35). If the book's out of reach let me know and I'll post just the recipe itself, though I won't be able to reproduce its stunning step by step instructions. The bread the recipe makes is stunning--you won't believe for an instant that it came out of your oven and not some professional bakery. Otherwise, Cook's Illustrated and KAF have terrific recipes for bread (and KAF is free).
Speaking of the Dutch Oven, you'll love it for economical recipes like Boston baked beans, roasts of all sorts, and soups. It holds heat like a champ (so can be used as a slow cooker of sorts) and is large enough to contain anything up to a small turkey. That pot takes all the challenge out of cooking. When I roast chickens, I make stock out of the carcass with mine, and I love green beans slow-simmered for hours with a lump of bacon.
I learned to sew by taking a quick little class out of Joann's some years ago. It wasn't expensive at all, like $20, but it was money well spent--it gave me a lot of tips about preparing fabric for sewing and doing the seams right and finishing them. When I was a fundamentalist, I sewed all my clothes by hand, and I've done a fair bit of Renn costuming too. Simplicity makes some super "1-hour" patterns. The name is a total lie, but what isn't is that they are quite easy. I'm wearing PJs I made from one right now. I get my fabric as cheap as humanly possible so that home-sewing makes more economical sense; Joann's is famous for its sales racks, but larger fabric stores sometimes hold huge sales, so keep your ears open (in Atlanta there was a place like that which had semiannual "by the pound" sales).
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Check out a book called "My Bread." You absolutely cannot go wrong with its basic bread recipe and tutorial--and it uses barely any yeast, so it's pretty economical. All you need is instant yeast (obtainable through King Arthur Flour's site, sometimes through grocery stores), bread flour (KAF, grocery store), and a big cast-iron dutch oven (Amazon, sometimes wal-mart or harris teeter type places, get the big one for about $35). If the book's out of reach let me know and I'll post just the recipe itself, though I won't be able to reproduce its stunning step by step instructions. The bread the recipe makes is stunning--you won't believe for an instant that it came out of your oven and not some professional bakery. Otherwise, Cook's Illustrated and KAF have terrific recipes for bread (and KAF is free).
Speaking of the Dutch Oven, you'll love it for economical recipes like Boston baked beans, roasts of all sorts, and soups. It holds heat like a champ (so can be used as a slow cooker of sorts) and is large enough to contain anything up to a small turkey. That pot takes all the challenge out of cooking. When I roast chickens, I make stock out of the carcass with mine, and I love green beans slow-simmered for hours with a lump of bacon.
I learned to sew by taking a quick little class out of Joann's some years ago. It wasn't expensive at all, like $20, but it was money well spent--it gave me a lot of tips about preparing fabric for sewing and doing the seams right and finishing them. When I was a fundamentalist, I sewed all my clothes by hand, and I've done a fair bit of Renn costuming too. Simplicity makes some super "1-hour" patterns. The name is a total lie, but what isn't is that they are quite easy. I'm wearing PJs I made from one right now. I get my fabric as cheap as humanly possible so that home-sewing makes more economical sense; Joann's is famous for its sales racks, but larger fabric stores sometimes hold huge sales, so keep your ears open (in Atlanta there was a place like that which had semiannual "by the pound" sales).