Homemade vs Convenience

It's been a few weeks of being brave and making much of our food "from scratch" The advent of the raw milk has now put fresh cream at our disposal. Not wanting to be wasteful, we have had to put that cream to good use. Tortillas have been on my list for awhile to attempt and we are in process our second batch of those.

Now we have home made ice cream and packages of beans (black and pinto) in the freezer, fresh butter and buttermilk in the frig with the tortilla balls waiting to be cooked. I'm really evaluating how much "from scratch" should/can I do and when do I buy some of these foods from the grocery store already made, like refried beans. All of the things that we have made from scratch have been quite yummy and nothing is particularly hard either but there's a huge time element that is creeping up on me. I don't feel like I have known where the last three weeks have gone. We've made butter and home made ice cream. We've made tortillas. We've made multiple different kinds of beans from dried beans. So, we've spent a lot of time in the kitchen, that's for sure! But how many times did I tell my family, "Not yet, let me finish [fill in the blank]"

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the rest of the 40 tortillas made and some in the freezer for later. Then I really need to re-think our menus and what I am and am not willing to purchase from the store and where my kitchen time is best spent. I really have loved making all of these things, but I'm at the point of evaluation...is it really worth the time savings, more healthy choices? If I am going to do this from scratch thing which I really believe is much healthier for us, I do need to come up with simpler menus that can reuse a lot of the time consuming elements. I haven't given up or don't plan to give up making our bread...and feel like I need to start getting good a buns now that grilling season is here. Oh, that's just more time! My next post may be more of my notes and thoughts around some specific foods...be forewarned!