Cozy WINTER Homemaking _ MINIMALIST Living.

Hi and welcome back. I haven't done a day in the life vlog in a while and I thought today might be a fun one to share because it is a unique situation. The temps across the country outside are so cold and especially so here in northern Minnesota. My goodness it is I think negative 50 or 60 degree wind chill it was this morning and we are so grateful to have a nice warm house on days like this. Homeschool co-op classes for the girls and I have been canceled and our two high school boys are having an e-learning day at home. I'm not sure if that's a common thing in other parts of the country but essentially it's an option for online classes when there is predicted bad weather. It is a really nice option to have but it isn't used very often thankfully. I appreciate that the boys don't have to go out and navigate the roads today and then risk their vehicle not starting after it's been sitting outside in that wind chill. And my husband as you know he also works from home and so we are all just hunkered down and cozy inside the cottage and I've got a lot planned for the day so let's get started. Before the sun came up I took care of all of the essentials getting myself ready, making the bed, my bible typing and also some morning stretches and light exercises. Now it's a little after 8 a.m and my next stop is to the heart of the home the kitchen getting last night's dishes put away and doing a bit of meal prep. On the meal plan is a lunch of homemade chicken noodle soup perfect for a cold day with fresh sourdough bagels and dinner will be a mix of sourdough pizzas. But first I'm going to portion out the yogurt that I made for this week. I just made this fresh batch about a day and a half ago and it's been straining in the fridge because my family prefers to have a nice creamy thick greek yogurt and I take out the whey from it which is this yellow liquid here and that can then later be used in smoothies or soups. Then I just scoop the yogurt into these little snack sized four ounce mason jars. I don't really fill them completely to the top. I like to leave a little bit of space for any mix-ins that we might add later like nuts fruits or some of my kids even like to put in a spoonful of jelly. I prefer granola. There are a whole lot of options and I really enjoy this process of making yogurt weekly because we ensure that we always have fresh yogurt and it can also be used for things like sour cream or dips or sauces. Turning my attention now to my sourdough bagels. I've been trying out a few different things with this recipe from Little Spoon Farm. I found that the amount of flour the original recipe called for was making it almost impossible to work with the dough and I realized the issue was probably because I don't like to weigh all of my ingredients. Instead I prefer the cup measurements and I think they were just getting a little bit too densely packed and so yesterday I mixed up the ingredients but used about a fourth cup less flour and so I'll be interested to see how these turn out. I'm really trying to be more brave with experimenting in the kitchen and not being afraid to fail and I figure the only real way to learn is through trial and error and it's pretty hard to mess up bread because even if things go wrong it will more than likely still be edible or I can use the mistake to create some croutons or breadcrumbs. So after sitting on the counter here overnight this dough is ready to be shaped into the classic bagel form. I like to create really large center holes right at the start of this process and as the dough puffs up over the next few hours they will close in nicely and give it that nice bagel look. This recipe indicates a yield of eight bagels but I make them slightly smaller so we can get 10 and all of my kids really enjoy bagels so as soon as these are available to be eaten I'm sure they are going to be gobbled up in no time. One last task here in the kitchen before I move on to other things that I have planned for today. I'm going to get that chicken noodle soup ready to go and put into the crock pot so that it stays warm and is ready for anyone to eat on their own schedule because I'm not entirely positive when the boys will have a lunch break for their e-learning and it's unlikely that we will be able to all sit down together and eat as a family. So this is sort of my hack to make sure we all get nice hot soup on this cold winter day. To me there's nothing worse than cold soup. As you know I grocery shop just once every two weeks and something I've been doing over the last few months is picking up two rotisserie chickens each time that I shop. I used to grab the ones that are hot and ready to eat right there by the front entrance and thought that it was a pretty good deal at $5.99 per package but I recently discovered that if you walk back to the cold meat section they have fully cooked but chilled chickens there for two dollars cheaper so $3.99 per chicken and I don't need to use our electricity or natural gas to cook them at home. To make the most of this great deal as soon as I'm home I take one of the chickens and pull all the meat off the bones then I stick the bones and pulled chicken into the freezer. The other I keep in the fridge to use on things like salads wraps or pizza then once that fridge chicken is all used up I use the bones of both birds and add them to a large pot along with some onion carrot and potato scraps. Then I fill the pot up with water and simmer the mixture on the stove all day long. This creates the most delicious chicken bone broth that I can then add to soups or casseroles. It's a rhythm that has been working really well for me and it kind of makes me feel like a homesteader without the hassle of raising the chickens. And while I'm stuck at home I figure it's the perfect time to really go through and wash up the bedding today and so I'm going to throw that into the washing machine and just let that marvelous modern convenience do all the work of cleaning up the bedding while I get other work done around here. The big chore on my to-do list today is going to be taking down the Christmas decorations. I am almost positive that this is the longest I have ever left them up. Usually by January 1st I'm ready for that clean slate look around here but even today nearing the end of the month I'm not quite sure I'm ready to see them go. They add that cozy glow in the evening hours and a special kind of warmth. But today has to be the day because our second oldest son who's a junior in high school has his first formal dance tomorrow evening and the group he's going with has plans to come to our house for pictures beforehand. I need that extra space in here so the tree will come down and then I'll try my best to add in some extra textures and warm colors to get us through the rest of the bleak winter months. One of the best things about decorating minimally is that the amount of effort required to take everything down is also minimal. It is still a process but I know exactly where every decoration will go and am confident that I won't have overstuffed bins to stash away for next year. I'll get through this part pretty quickly and then do a bit of a clean and then I like to let the space rest undecorated for a couple of hours while I just dream up the fun and creative ideas of what I could do to decorate for this new season. It's almost lunchtime and so I'm going to get these bagels into this pot of boiling water which also includes a tablespoon each of baking soda and sugar and basically all you need to do is put the bagels into the water 30 seconds flip them and then 30 seconds on the other side and then put them onto some parchment lined baking sheets and into the oven for about 15 minutes. If you want the exact recipe I can try to write that up for you but like I said I have tweaked it a little bit so it's not the original form. I can't link anything for you here but they turned out absolutely perfect. This is going to be my new go-to bagel recipe and I'm really excited about that. They were the perfect texture not too chewy but also that beautiful golden brown color. They tasted great with the chicken noodle soup and one of the things I have on my mind I'm going to go down into my craft space and work on right now. I've done a bit of updating in here since my last video partly because we have been doing some rearranging in my husband's office. He had this little desk and this rolling chair in his space and he wanted to free up some room for other things so I am the lucky one to inherit them. This desk is the perfect size for my sewing machine which was actually my grandma's and today I'm going to be using it to make some pillow covers and a table runner out of a bedspread that came from my husband's grandma. So kind of a full circle moment here. This whole idea of using this fabric this blanket bedspread to make pillows was actually my mom's idea and I have already made her a set of pillow covers. I also really love neutral textured items and so I'm really excited about this project and it will be fun that we will have the same type of pillows in both of our houses. Sewing is not something I do very often and my skills aren't really great but I am able to sew a straight line and so pillow covers and table runners and things like that are easy enough for me to do and it's just one of the many crafts or art projects that I can do down in this space. It has been such a great transition for me to have this little area here in our basement. I love being able to come in here and just get those creative juices flowing without having to worry about cleaning up immediately. Another thing that I've been working on down here is some garden planning some different plantings I'm dreaming up for our yard and that's always fun to do this time of year too because even though it's really cold outside and looks kind of sad and depressing I can think forward to the summer the spring and summer months and all of the colors that are going to be popping up and get really excited about that as well. And to finish off this project I'm going to use the fringe at the bottom of this pillow cover as the closure just by tying a couple pieces together. This is a good way to keep the pillow insert nice and firm inside but not having to go through the hassle of sewing on buttons or adding velcro or a zipper or something like that and I think this is going to work great. I didn't film the process of decorating today but I want to show you what I came up with and I apologize that at this point it is 5 30 in the evening and the sun is going down so the lighting in here isn't the greatest but I decided to just make a few small changes. I kept the winter scene image on the mantle and just rearranged the furniture ever so slightly. I was sure that I wanted to keep the couch and chairs focused near the fireplace at least until the end of March or early April when I will be decorating for spring. The warmth and the glow of the fireplace is very important this time of year and this is actually the first time I've ever had this particular setup which is really saying something because I like to rearrange my furniture often and so I've used many different arrangements in this space but I've never put the couch and the chairs at this angle and I think that it adds a little bit of interest and it's also sort of fun. We do still have the puzzle table set up and this corner will be a good place for it. It's out of the way but still part of the action and another new decorating thing that I did this time around was to put a piece of art on this large wall behind the dining table and I've had many comments over the years asking why I don't have something on this wall and the truth of the matter is I just didn't want to put a bunch of holes up there but this piece of art is very light and so I was able to use one of those push through metal hangers that make the tiniest of holes in the wall and that can be easily removed. I think they're called gorilla hooks or something like that but they're very handy and the the little mark that they leave is no big deal so I thought I would try this out and I do like the way it looks. All right it's been a pretty busy day. I've been on my feet a lot and so just one last task I need to get to today and that is to make supper and thankfully I have sourdough pizza on the menu. I was struggling to find a sourdough pizza crust recipe that was easy to roll out because every time I tried I found it was much too springy and I would constantly be frustrated trying to roll the flat and then disappointed when the finished size of the pizza was too small. Then I saw a video from Lisa over at Farmhouse on Boone talking about how she uses straight sourdough discard to make her crust so I gave that a try and I found it to work okay but I added a few tweaks of my own until it was just perfect. So here's what I do with my dough. This recipe will make between four and six pizzas depending on what size you use and how thick you pour it on. Last night, so the night before I was planning to make pizza, I poured into a large bowl one and one half cups of cold sourdough starter, four cups of flour and three cups of warm water. Now I keep my starter in the fridge and so if you have yours on the counter you could probably mix up these ingredients the morning of having pizza. I just like to give mine a lot of time to get nice and bubbly and active. Then about 45 minutes before you're ready to bake you add your cast iron skillets to a 500 degree oven to preheat them. They need to be very hot for this method to work. I have these large cast iron skillet pans that are rectangular and they come in very handy for pizza night because I find that I can get more pizza with less effort. Five minutes prior to baking and this is the step that I found that helped me the most. I add in about one tablespoon of baking soda and I stir it vigorously. Now this is going to change the mixture from being really sticky to a little bit more runny by adding in those air pockets and after stirring I let it sit for a few minutes and then I'm ready to scoop. Take the preheated pans out of the oven and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil onto the pan spreading it all over and don't skip this step or the dough will likely stick. Then two scoopfuls of the mixture seem to be about right for these this size of pan and I just work quickly to spread it all around and you can see how it sort of begins to cook through the dough almost immediately. If you want a thin crust pizza you can spread it thin if you want more of a chewy crust you can leave some of these areas a little bit thicker and I tend to do about two of each. So then you just bake it in the oven for a few minutes until you can tell that it's cooked all the way through take them out put the toppings on and then put them back in the oven. I usually reduce the heat down to about 425 at this point and bake them for another five minutes or so to make sure the cheese gets melted and then they are ready to take out and cut. And here are the finished pizzas for this evening a really good assortment we have Italian sausage, Hawaiian barbecue chicken and a classic pepperoni of course. I am going to get myself a plate of this and sit down to relax maybe watch a show or read a book. I have been going all day long and it's time for me to just wind down for the rest of the evening. So I'm going to close the video here I hope that you enjoyed coming along today and seeing what I was up to during this very cold winter day keeping it cozy inside of our home. Thank you so much for watching today and I will see you next time.