Bring On the Bratwursts!

I've said before how much I love my Kitchenaid mixer. Not only does it serve in its primary function as a mixer, it has oodles of attachments to play with. By far, the one I use the most is the meat grinder. Often, there are cuts of beef on sale for cheaper than ground beef (and without the potential presence of the dreaded “pink slime”). Even better, it has a sausage stuffer on it, enabling us to make our own bratwursts.

Making bratwursts is remarkably simple: grind the meat, add seasonings, and stuff into casings. The hardest part is finding the casings...and that's as simple as going to your closest meat market. If you're squeamish about using natural casings, you can also order collagen casings online.

Enough hog casings for 100 lbs of bratwursts

How the casings come packaged will vary based on the store selling them. At one of the markets near me, they just cut off a length from what they have soaked and prepared for their use that day...if they have enough out, they'll cut some off and put it in a baggie. The other only sells it by the hank – which is enough for about 100 pounds of sausages. Luckily, it can be sealed up with a Food Saver – making 100 lbs of sausage in one shot would be difficult! Regardless of which store I go to, I've never paid the same price twice for casings. I think the person working just guesstimates a price based on...something. The hank is more standardized in price – $25-30, and is much more economical in terms of per-pound cost; the shorter length tends to run about $1/pound. This time, the hank cost us $30.

We've been slowly buying meat to turn into bratwursts for the past few months; every time we go shopping, we buy a pork shoulder or a turkey. This month, we had trouble closing our freezer after we got back from shopping, so knew it was time to get to work making brats (and time to get a bigger freezer!)

Before we started, though, we had to strategize – this much sausage would take a while to make, and with a toddler and an infant, we just weren't going to have the time to get it done in one shot, unless we stayed up all night, sacrificing precious, precious sleep. Since that wasn't going to happen, we decided to spread the process out over three days (if we were making a smaller batch, we would have made it in one day).

DAY ONE: Cutting and Grinding

Gotta sharpen the blade!

We decided to focus on pork for the simple reason that one of our pork shoulders was thawed and we couldn't fit that and all three turkeys in the fridge. I think they were the same cut of meat, but they were labeled differently – one was called a “pork picnic roast” and the other was a “pork shoulder roast”. The only difference I saw was the pork picnic roast had more bones. In the end, $45 of pork shoulders yielded 29.25 lbs of ground meat.

One of three hunks o' pork

 

All cut up

Randy cut the meat into strips small enough to feed through the grinder (the instructions call for 1” chunks, but I've found that strips work just fine, as long as the diameter is not too large) and ground it all up. He then packaged it in gallon Ziploc bags – five pounds per bag. This process took two hours and three beers.

Get your grind on!

When all the grinding was done, we threw the bones in the crock pot and let it simmer overnight both to make stock, and to get some more meat off of the bones. This sounds a little penny-pinching, I know, but we ended up getting nearly two pounds of additional meat, which we drenched in barbecue sauce for sandwiches. We also got three quarts of stock.

DAY TWO: Seasoning

While Randy cut, ground, and packaged the meat on day one, I had child duty and looked up recipes in our sausage book this wonderful book. Luckily for my decision-making abilities, I was limited in my choices by the ingredients we have on hand. Plain bratwursts were a guarantee, as was a spicy version – we made double batches of both of those. However, with nearly 30 lbs of meat, we wanted to try some new variations as well. I settled on Garlic Sausage and Southwest Sausage.

Just a touch more heat, please!

That meant on the second day, we were ready to season the meat. We were not precise in our measurements according to the recipes, since most of them called for four pounds of meat and we had five pounds for each recipe. Also, we wanted to make the spicy sausages much spicier than the recipe (we had made it before).

Randy had the pleasure of mixing the seasonings into the cold meat. I was excited for him to do it; usually it's my job and I know how much it hurts after a bit...at least until your fingers go completely numb! By the last couple of batches, he had figured out how to minimize the time required. He spread the meat out in the bowl as thinly as he could and evenly sprinkled the seasonings over it so there were fewer clumps of spices. It still requires several minutes of mixing to get everything evenly distributed.

Randy before he mixed the meat.  That joy left about 20 seconds later

At that point, we put the ground meat back into the bags to sit overnight. This was mainly because it's much easier to stuff the casings when you have two people, so we had to wait until Zoey was asleep. It's too much to hope that both kids will sleep at the same time at this stage, but Parker is at least more or less stationary. The thought of chasing a toddler down with sausage hands is not fun.

A secondary, but also valid, reason was to let the spices meld and develop the flavors in the sausages. Given our general lack of patience, we were going to cook the brats the day we stuffed them; if we had seasoned and stuffed on the same day, the flavor wouldn't be the same.

This doesn't adequately show the loss of feeling in his fingers

The final step for day two was to prep the casings. They come packed in salt, which has to be rinsed off thoroughly. We pulled one long strand of casings out of the hank and rinsed it under cold water, then put it in a bowl of cool water to soak for 30 minutes. Then we put the casings in a Ziploc with fresh water and put it in the fridge to wait for the next day.

This process took one hour and one glass of wine to complete.

DAY THREE: Stuffing and cooking

This started with putting Zoey down for her nap and convincing Parker that he liked his swing. Once both kids were contained, we rushed to action. Sadly, this meant we didn't get any pictures of the process.  While it is tempting to use the longest strand of casings possible – both to maximize the look of the final product (who doesn't want a 30-foot string of sausages?) and to minimize the times I have to tie a knot in slippery casings, I've learned that anything over around six feet makes it difficult to twist the sausages into links.

Stuffing the sausages takes quite a bit of patience and a little trial and error in the technique used. The ground meat feeds through the stuffer quite slowly. To complicate matters, if you push too much meat through at a time, the plunger gets stuck and pulling it out creates an air pocket, which turns the casings into a balloon. Randy has mastered this end of it; he pushes the plunger down 2/3 of the way and then feeds more meat in. This ensures a steady flow of meat into the casings with no air pockets. Yet again, patience is the key – if you rush this, it will end up creating more work and frustration. If you do end up with an air pocket, just pop it with a toothpick and keep going.

The other aspect is holding the sausages as they are stuffed. Because our stuffer is an attachment to the Kitchenaid, it's about a foot over the counter. This means the weight of the stuffed sausages drags down the casings, resulting in thin, sad sausages unless someone supports the sausages as they are stuffed. The trick is moving the casings along so the sausages are full but not overfull; overfilling means the bratwursts will burst when twisted into links. We were reminded the hard way of this, as I overstuffed the garlic brats and had several split open while I was twisting them into links; I had to remove some of the sausage and try to tie off casings that had already been stuffed. Profanity ensued, and I ended up relegating those sausages to immediate cooking.

Casualties of over-stuffing;See the meat exploding out of the end?  Tragic, but still tasty!

It's also important to remember to leave a few inches of empty casing at the end, so you can tie a knot. Thankfully, this is easy to remember, and I didn't have to swear at this stage! It's better to leave a little more room than you need than not leave enough. Twist the stuffed casing into 4-5 inch lengths – you want to give it three or four turns. When you cut the links apart, the ends will stay sealed. I really don't know how it works, but it does – I suspect magic.

Some meat will always be lost – what is left in the tube of the stuffer. Because we had so many different batches, we didn't bother to clean the stuffer after each one; instead, we tried to sequence our stuffing to flavors that would match well, as we knew we'd have some blended sausages. Spicy-Southwest, Southwest-Garlic, etc. This way, we ended up losing the least amount of meat possible – maybe enough for one bratwurst.

Totally worth all of the effort!

The stuffing process took the two of us (in varying degrees of cooperation due to necessary child wrangling) three hours and three beers.

We ended up with 111 bratwursts. Even with overestimating the cost of the seasonings at five dollars, that comes out to a price of $0.54/brat, or $2.00/lb. The WinCo brand bratwursts sell for $3.99/lb and have who knows what quality of ingredients. I couldn't find an ingredient list for the WinCo brand, but Johnsonville (which costs a little more) has the following ingredient list:

         Pork, water, corn syrup and less than 2% of the following: salt, dextrose, monosodium            

         glutamate, flavorings, BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid.

I like the vagueness of “flavorings”; it lets me use my imagination!

Zoey and her grandpa waiting for bratwursts

Aside from knowing exactly what “flavorings” are in my sausages, I discovered – completely by accident – another health benefit. My dad has breathing problems, and some additive in the store bratwursts messes up his breathing. These don't. Needless to say, he likes the freshly made version a lot better. We are making him about 15 pounds of them – enough to keep him in stock for a while!

Some of these recipes call for differently ground meat – some call for a double grind (coarse, then fine), some call for one grind on fine, some for one on coarse. We did one coarse grind for all of it – the batch was big enough to make switching out the blades a pain in the butt - and didn't double grind any of it. I didn't notice a difference between these and the previous batches where we did the double grind.

My favorite of the four variations was the spicy, followed by the garlic because of their stronger flavors. The other two were also tasty, but it's hard to beat a good spicy bratwurst, and I believe garlic should be one of the main food groups, so that's an automatic win. Actually, with both the spicy and garlic recipes, we doubled the quantity of the main seasoning to enhance the flavor a bit more.

We also altered the directions that call for the meat to sit in the freezer for a short stint between steps. Since we refrigerated the meat overnight between steps, we didn't need to freeze it. All this does is chill the meat so it travels through the grinder better. A long stay in the fridge has the same effect. When making a smaller batch, I include the freezer step.

RECIPES

Process for all variations:

Prepare the casings if needed, by rinsing off any salt, then placing in a bowl of cool water for 30 minutes. Run cool water through the casings before stuffing.*

Cut the meat into 1-inch cubes. Freeze for 30 minutes to firm up before grinding.

Grind meat through the coarse plate of a meat grinder

In a large bowl, add seasonings and mix well, using your hands.

Stuff mixture into prepared casings, prick air pockets, and twist into 4-to-5-inch lengths. Cut the links apart with a sharp knife or scissors.

Refrigerate for up to three days or freeze.

Bratwurst

6 feet hog casing

5 lbs ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)

1 t white pepper**

1 t kosher or coarse salt

½ t crushed caraway seed

½ t dried marjoram

¼ t allspice

Garlic Sausage

6 feet hog casing

5 lbs ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)

½ c white wine

3 T minced garlic**

1T plus 1t kosher or coarse salt

2t sugar

1t black pepper

½ t ground ginger

¼ t allspice

¼ t cinnamon

¼ t nutmeg

¼ t ground thyme

Sicilian-Style Hot Sausage

6 feet hog casing

5 lbs ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)

2T kosher or coarse salt**

1T black pepper

2T habanero chili powder

¼ cup crushed red pepper

Southwest Pork Sausage

6 feet hog casing

5 lbs ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)

1T plus 1t kosher or coarse salt**

1 T black pepper

2t crushed red pepper

1t coriander

1t cumin

½ t chili powder

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

*If desired, you can soak the casings again, this time adding 1T white vinegar for each cup of water. This softens the casings and makes them more transparent so the end product looks nicer.

**all measurements are for rounded spoons, as the base recipe was for four pounds of meat rather than five

Fried Rice - In 30 Minutes, You'll Want It Again!

Big bowl of yum

One of our favorite ways to stretch leftovers is with fried rice. When I first made this several years ago, Randy was skeptical. Fried rice should be left to restaurants, he thought. I soon converted him, to the point that he now suggests I make it even when we have no leftovers to use in it.

Leftover BBQ works perfectly. 

I like cooking this because it is so versatile and uses a little bit of whatever I have on hand, rather than sticking to a strict recipe. I've made it with leftover teriyaki, barbecue, even meat cooked in mushroom soup. I usually include eggs, but it's good without. Fresh veggies and frozen both work well (and again, you can choose to include pretty much whatever vegetable you want). I also like it because I get to eat fried rice when I'm done!

While I don't stress about having the exact right ingredients to make fried rice, I have found some seasonings make a big difference. The main one? Fish sauce. It surprised me when I first discovered it – I don't even remember why I decided to put it in. Probably because I had a bottle of it in the cupboard forever and thought something along the lines of “Fish sauce and fried rice are both Chinese* Therefore, they should be good together.” And they were, therefore proving the infallibility of my logic.

If you are missing some of the seasonings, you can always just mess around with what you have on hand. At one point or another, I have made this successfully while missing one or more of the seasonings, and I change it slightly each time I make it – the different result each time is one of the joys of making fried rice. This works because with fried rice, the technique is as important as the ingredients. As with most recipes, patience is the key when making fried rice. If you rush it, you end up with a dish that tastes like fried rice, but has the wrong texture. Patience plays into texture in two ways.

See how the grains are separate? Hard to do with fresh, hot rice.

First, fried rice is best when made with leftover rice. Whenever we have rice for dinner, I make a full 6-cup rice-cooker full, even though we never eat that much. That way, we can have fried rice the next day. Day-old rice works better than freshly cooked because it dries out a little, and the grains separate more easily.

If, like me, you sometimes forget to make rice ahead of time (or forget to put the rice in the fridge overnight and end up tossing it) you can still achieve this effect to a lesser extent by cooking your rice a couple of hours ahead of time, then separating it as much as possible and putting it in the fridge. If you have room, spread it out on a cookie sheet; if not, use the widest dish you can – you want to increase the surface area as much as you can. This might seem like a petty step, but it really does make a difference.

Look at all that goodness!

The other time that patience comes into play is during the cooking. You want to be sure to let the rice cook long enough so the flavors blend and so the rice gets the right fried texture. I'm not a patient person by nature, so I have to distract myself with cleaning or something similar to prevent myself from messing with the rice too much or getting bored and deciding it's done prematurely.

Other than that, the main effort involved is in prep – chopping up the meat into small pieces, scrambling eggs, cutting veggies (if using fresh), etc. Once all the chopping is done, it's mostly a matter of waiting for the rice to fry up to the right consistency.

In the recipe below, all measurements are of the “ish” nature – I more or less just dump things in on top of the rice in the wok and then adjust if it tastes off. I did measure the oil the last time I made it because that's a delicate balance – you want enough to coat the rice and let it fry, but not so much that the end product is greasy.

Taking pictures prevents me from eating it too soon!

We make this as our full dinner, but it can easily be made as part of a Chinese food feast with some egg rolls and sweet and sour pork (recipe forthcoming!). It holds up well as leftovers, and I often will have it for lunch the following day.

*Wikipedia informs me that fish sauce is actually used more in Vietnamese and Thai cooking. It is used in some parts of China, though, so I wasn't totally ignorant and wrong. Just mostly.

RECIPE

2 cups leftover meat

4 eggs

1-2 cups vegetables

4-8 cups cooked white rice

4 T vegetable oil

2 t sesame oil

2 T fish sauce

2 T rice vinegar

2 T soy sauce

2 T teriyaki sauce

1 t 5-spice

1 t ground mustard

½ t ground ginger

*Dice meat into small (¼ – ½”) cubes

*Scramble eggs and set aside

*Dice up vegetables into small (¼ – ½”) cubes

*Heat vegetable oil and sesame oil in wok or large frying pan over medium high heat until a piece of rice sizzles when it's dropped in

*Add rice to oil and stir well to coat with oil. Let fry, stirring occasionally for 4-5 minutes

*Add fish sauce, rice vinegar, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, 5-spice powder, mustard, and ginger. Mix well to evenly season the rice.

*Cook, stirring occasionally for 10-15 minutes.

*Add meat, vegetables, and eggs, and mix well.

*Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat and vegetable are hot (5-10 minutes)

Linked to This Week's Cravings at The Daily Dish

Back to Basics: Baking Soda

Well, Parker hasn't shown up yet. He apparently is quite comfortable where he is, thank you very much! I was positive he'd have arrived by now.  On the plus side, the weather has been gorgeous all week long, and I'm on maternity leave already, so I got to enjoy it!  

Still, it means I'm sitting around waiting...and waiting...and waiting.   I even had an induction scheduled this morning that got bumped to tomorrow.  Not sure how Parker managed that one, the little stinker!

Unfortunately, it means no cute baby pictures to share.  Instead, you get...baking soda! Woo!

I know it's not nearly as exciting, but at least it's not dead air, right? There are several uses for baking soda and vinegar as cleaners. Baking soda can clean a wedding ring with decent results, if you're too cheap/broke to take it in to get cleaned (that's me!). Vinegar can replace rinse agent in a dishwasher or fabric softener in the laundry.

However, none of these really are fascinating uses or provide good pictures. I'm all about pictures. More fun and visually stimulating (although still not terribly exciting) is using baking soda and vinegar to clean your drains. At our last house, we had nasty, nasty drains. We poured gallons of Drain-O and similar products down them with pretty terrible results. Poor results + expensive products + adding nasty chemicals into the ground = three strikes and you're out in my book!

Luckily, this house has better drains, but they still need cleaning occasionally. After a little research (read: mindlessly dinking around on the internet and stumbling across some interesting uses for baking soda/vinegar and then looking at a couple more sites to verify the information) I discovered that this combo can clean drains. Something about the chemical make-up of the baking soda cutting through grease, etc. I think the vinegar is just for fun foaming action. Maybe the bubbles help knock stuff loose as well, but does it really matter after the science experiment you just completed in your sink or tub?

The process:

Pour some boiling water down the drain. This loosens things up a bit, at least at the surface level.

Dump ½ cup or so of baking soda down the drain. Let it sit there for a few minutes. This step involved more work than I expected, mostly because I couldn't remove the stopper to the drain, which meant that I had to work the baking soda into the drain with my fingers. While obnoxious, it wasn't all that difficult.

Well THAT didn't work the way I expected...

It took a few minutes, but I jammed it all in

Ooh!  Ah!  Bubbles!

Pour 1 cup of hot vinegar down the drain. Watch the fun bubbles. Plug the drain for better agitation/knock-stuff-loose-action. I didn't plug mine because a) I was having fun showing Zoey the reaction with baking soda and vinegar and b) the baking soda was packed into the drain so tightly that it wasn't going to move until the vinegar had its way with the soda anyway.

Pour some more boiling water down the drain to rinse it all clear.

People have different results with this, and there are a plethora of methods people use; there are also a lot of people that argue against it. From what I've read, this works best as a preventative measure; it doesn't really eat away at a clog, although it will help cut away the grease that holds a clog in place so it can move on down the line. To me, as long as the drain works better than it did before, it's a success.

The only drain I had that was at all slow was my bathtub. This is usually the worst drain, given the amount of hair I have and its tendency to shed into the drain. The baking soda treatment seems to have worked to speed it up. And hey, if it didn't, it cost me less than a quarter, rather than $4 for a bottle of drain cleaner. That's a cost I can live with.

Next steps:

After Parker is (finally) here, I'm going to try the unfortunately named “no-poo” method. Luckily, the “poo” in the name stands for shampoo. Why proponents think people will want to try it after giving it that name escapes me. On the other hand, I'm going to give it a shot, so I guess it worked after all. Basically, it calls for using baking soda/water instead of shampoo and replacing conditioner with apple cider vinegar.

The theory is that commercial shampoos over-strip your hair and convince your scalp it needs to produce more oil than necessary, which then requires you to shampoo more frequently with even crazier chemical compounds. I'm all for simplicity (and saving money – baking soda is $0.50/lb in bulk, which is significantly less than the cheapest shampoo), so I have wanted to try this for a while.

The only problem is that it takes a couple of weeks for your head to stop over-producing oil, which means you look pretty greasy while you adjust. That's why Parker's arrival will make such a good time to try it – no-one expects a new mother to look her best. 

And hey - if it works, I may never have to clean the tub drain again, since I'll be sending baking soda and vinegar down it on a regular basis!

Next week will be Parker pictures – there's no WAY he's not going to be here by then.

It started when Randy's brother, Cody (aka Uncle Buck), sent him some messages on Facebook – he wanted to make jam. There were two recipes he wanted to try: spiced blueberry and apple. I was all for it, although I will admit to some hesitation when I realized the two of them would make the jam while I was at work.

Boys in the kitchen. Unsupervised. With alcohol. And boiling sugar. Yikes!

On the other hand, jam is pretty easy and foolproof. Also, it worked out well for us in that Cody was providing everything but the jars and the pectin. Randy was providing the “experience” and the kitchen.

Needless to say, I left work as quickly as possible that day so I could see how they did/assess the damage. When I got home, they were working on the second batch – the blueberry spice. Their commentary went something like this:

Cody: Ok, now we add the sugar and boil for five minutes

Randy: Huh. I added sugar a long time ago.

Cody: Oh. Uh...then I guess we add the stuff and call it good?

I'm pretty sure that was how the first batch went as well; wasn't there for most of it, as I said, but they took pictures, so I'll provide a pictorial essay.

First step: set up the all-important directions.  Use your wife's laptop in case  of industrial accidents...

Get the canning kettle going. Uncle Buck demonstrates how to use a lid!

Put some sugar and other spices in a pot.

Chop up some apples.  Be sure to have all the ingredients out on the counter

Are you two sure you used a big enough pot?  That's a lot of apples.

The toddler was right - pot upgrade initiated!

Apple jam in the jars and ready to seal - looking pretty good.

Hot.  HOT!  Someone should have used a potholder...

ANOTHER batch? Are you sure?

Start over, measuring out the blueberries

Every surface of the kitchen was covered in jam-making paraphernalia, and Zoey was on a huge sugar high, since her Uncle Buck kept feeding her cookies, but it all turned out well - each batch made six or seven jars, and they all sealed well.

I like it when Uncle Buck comes over!  Cookies for everyone!

The end result was pretty tasty, although the blueberry jam has anise in it, which I'm not a huge fan of (I have a lifetime supply, though, because Cody left his jar here and he only used a little of it!)

Recipes: 

Apple Jam from this instructable

1.2 kilo apples
1 kilo sugar
1 packet of pectin
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
1 Big bowl of water with the juice of 1 lemon squeezed into it.

*Quarter the apples, peel and core them, then chuck every apple quarter into the bowl with water and lemon juice.  (This will keep the apples white/ green/ yellow (so they don't get brown and horrible )).
*Once you have cored and peeled and quartered all the apples , stage 2 is getting all the apple quarters thinly sliced, then in thinly cubed.Think 1 x 1 mm !
*Chuck the tiny cubes all in the big pan, add the sugar, the of pectin ( don't breathe in, it will make you cough ) the vanilla sugar, and the cinnamon.
*Stir the whole thing through- ( this can be a bit heavy going ) till you have a thick gloop.

* Put it on a medium heat and cook for at least half an hour, stirring frequently.  Don't go and do something else and leave it bubbling away.
*Test if the apple is "done " ( = soft )- this can take quite a bit of time.( so say make it at least 40 minutes).

*WHILE waiting for the apples to cook: Let the jars you intend to use for your jam run through a dishwasher cycle, till they are clean and warm, or clean them with boiling water.  Put the lids in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer.  Turn off the heat, and let lids sit in the water.
*Fill your canning kettle 3/4 with water and bring to a boil

*Fill the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headroom

*Wipe the rims clean, then put on a lid, screwing the ring on tightly

*Fully submerge in the boiling water for approximately 10 minutes.  

*Remove and let cool - you will hear a popping sound as the lids seal.

Spiced Blueberry Jam from this instructable

1 1/2 lbs . Blueberries (fresh or frozen)
3 cups Sugar
1/2 cup Water
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
5 Tablespoons (2 1/2 oz) Cider Vinegar
1/4 teaspoon Star Anise (finely ground)
1/4 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
10 - 20 grinds fresh Nutmeg (1/4 teaspoon pre-ground)
1 Packet of Pectin

*Run all jars through a cycle of the dishwasher or boil for 10 minutes.  Put the lids in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer, then turn off heat, leaving lids in pan.

*You need to grind up the spices, especially the star anise. Put them in the coffee grinder until finely ground.

*Place blueberries in the saucepan over medium-low heat. Sprinkle with the pectin, followed by the cider vinegar, spice mixture, and lemon juice.

*Once liquid starts to gather in the bottom of the saucepan, bring the heat up to high, and bring to a boil.
*After reaching a boil, lower the heat slightly and boil gently for 5 minutes, mashing it occasionally.

*Mash in the sugar, and add the water. Return to a boil for 1 minute. 

*Fill your stockpot 3/4 of the way full with water, and put your dish towel/canning rack into the bottom.  Bring to a boil.

*Fill jars, leaving 1/2" head room.  With a clean towel, wipe any spills from the rim

*Place the lids on the jars, screwing the rings on as tightly as you can.

*Place jars into stockpot and boil for approximately 10 minutes. 

*Remove jars and put on a towel or rack on the counter to cool.  You will hear a pop as each jar seals.

Next week's post will probably be on Parker's birth and mostly include a zillion baby pictures.  If it's not...well, he's late to the show!

Broke Doesn't Mean Boring: Decorating a Nursery on the Cheap

Last weekend, Randy and I finally put the last touches on Parker's room. Considering he's due in two weeks, I'd say it was about time! Being on a tight budget, we didn't have much cash to spend, so we had to figure out how to furnish and decorate it on the cheap. All told, we spent less than $100. Looking back, we realized that we spend about that amount on Zoey's nursery also.

Considering how much people can spend on nurseries, we feel that we did pretty well. If you go into any store that sells baby furniture – cribs, dressers, rocking chairs, etc. Any one item can set you back hundreds of dollars. It's ridiculous.

Especially when you consider all the free – or nearly free – stuff out there. Because really, once anyone's kid has outgrown their swing, bouncer, crib, etc., the main goal seems to be to get rid of it quickly so it stops taking up room in their house; after all, most kids just accumulate more and more and more things. 

Here's how we furnished the rooms:

Crib

Zoey's crib, converted to a toddler bed

We didn't have to pay for a crib for either child. For Zoey, we got one from my sister, who had kept the crib she bought for her daughter and had recently come to the decision to not have more children. It is a convertible crib/toddler bed; Zoey is now using it in toddler bed form.

Parker's Crib

For Parker, we got a crib off of freecycle.org. Between Freecycle and Craigslist, you can find almost everything baby-related for free or next-to-free. Both these free cribs were sturdy and in good condition.

                                     Rocking Chair

I believe a rocking/gliding chair is important for those late night please-dear-lord-go-to-sleep sessions, as well as for feeding. That doesn't mean I want to pay a month's rent for one. Rocking chairs – or the modern favorite “gliding” chair sell for a LOT of money. When we were shopping for Zoey, we saw chairs from $300-$1,000. And they didn't even give massages. We got ours from Craigslist for a whopping $10. It's a basic rocking chair that gets the job done.

Dresser

This is another essential. Not only does it perform the basic function of holding clothes, it provides the best place to put a changing station (unless you're rich enough to buy a separate changing table for $100-$200). We got a contoured changing pad (that you need for the top of a changing table anyway) from a friend who was off-loading baby equipment and put it on top of the dresser.

Zoey's re-fabbed dresser

The problem with dressers is that people so rarely get rid of them. After all, unless they're in really bad shape, they still hold clothes just fine. Heck, I still use the dresser I had when I was 10. So does my sister. With Zoey, this wasn't a problem, as we had an extra dresser that came with our house. It was dark, ugly wood, but Randy stripped off the stain and painted it to match the room.

Dressers appear on Craigslist and Freecycle occasionally, but unless you are sitting and watching constantly so you can be sure of being the first responder, your odds of getting one are low. We attempted to get a half-dozen or so – a couple of times replying less than an hour after the ad was posted – and got beat out for all of them. If you live in a metropolitan area, it's easier because there are more dense postings, but it didn't make sense for us to drive 70 miles each way for a free dresser.

It's modern.  For the '80s....

That meant we had to go out and buy one. Our budget meant we were limited to a chintzy press board chest of drawers from a store like Target, or second-hand shops. We finally found a dresser at Goodwill for the bargain price of $40. That's the most we spent on any one item for either nursery. It isn't the most attractive dresser – black lacquer and gold trim – but it's sturdy, and has enough room to hold not only clothes for the first six months, but also all of the cloth diapers and accoutrements.

Decor

We spent a bit more on decor for Zoey's room than for Parker's, mainly because we painted Zoey's room. Randy painted the walls a pale yellow and the ceiling a pale pink. We used the same paint on her dresser. Now that we're in a rental, we didn't want to pain the walls, so we didn't have that expense.  If we weren't renting, we'd have painted the walls again - for a relatively small expense, it really makes the room look more coordinated. 

For both Zoey and Parker, we wanted to put their names on the wall, so we got craft letters from JoAnns ($2/letter) and painted them, then hung them over the crib. Unless you name your child Evangelica or something equally long, this is a cheap but nice decor.

If we had any artistic skill whatsoever, we would have painted the walls rather than buying art...but we don't. We originally had flower decals on the wall for Zoey (a package at Target runs around $10) and that was it. Then Randy's sister Megan – who DOES have artistic skill – painted some pictures that we hung instead.

For Parker, we decided to craft it. We wanted to decorate with a dinosaurs. Again, our lack of artistic ability combined with our lack of money limited our funds. We decided to make our own wall art by making frames from frames from 1”x2” lumber ($2/8 foot board) and stretching dinosaur-patterned fabric across them. We had a little snag in our plans when we realized that apparently dinosaurs are not in style any more, so there's not much in the way of dino cloth. We did manage to find a couple of prints we liked, and went to town.

While we were at it, we found this neat United States map print for Zoey's room. We spent about $15 total on cloth and another $15 or so on the wood – not too bad.

We got Zoey's curtains at Target for about $15 – they had some with an extra-thick backing to block out light (in both houses, we gave her a room with a western exposure). Randy's sister made the curtains for Parker's room.

Swing/Bouncer/Floor Gym/Playpen/Diaper Genie/Hamper

All of these, we got for free from a friend who was off-loading baby gear or for our baby shower for Zoey. When Parker is done with them, we'll pass them on to someone else for free. Considering the extremely short time they are used, any free version you find will likely be in excellent condition.

Clothes

We got two years' worth of clothes for Zoey (so many, in fact, that she never wore some of them!) and one year's worth or so for Parker for free. Just like baby-related furniture, people want mainly to get rid of the extra clothes taking up room – and especially for the first year or two, kids wear clothes for such a short period of time that many of the clothes are in new or near-new condition.

High Chair

Ok, this isn't for the nursery, but you'll need one eventually. There are tons of chairs out there with various add-ons. They can get quite large, not to mention expensive. We originally got one for free from my sister, but found that it wasn't much good when we left the house, since it wouldn't fit in the trunk of my car. The answer – a $30 bare-bones chair from Ikea. It's a simple molded plastic seat with four straight metal legs that snap in and a tray. Easy to clean, easy to transport, and space-efficient.

We also saved a lot of money with Zoey by making our own baby food and freezing it – I'm sure I'll make a post about that when I start doing it for Parker. We're going a step further in savings this time by trying cloth diapers – now that we have a good washer/dryer, it makes sense and doesn't seem to be that much more work than disposables. I'm confident that you'll get an update on that, as well!

All in all, we discovered that – with the notable exception of a dresser – just about everything essential for babies is easy to find for free or next-to-free. If you aren't the first in your family/friend group to start having kids, you'll probably have most of what you need given to you before you even think to ask.  Otherwise, your Craigslist and Freecycle will supply a plethora of options.

If we had to start over this time, I'd have started the dresser search as soon as I knew I was pregnant, rather than just looking intermittently. Free/cheap dressers do exist, but they get snatched up quickly; this makes sense when you consider the price of a new dresser (easily $300 or more). How much you want to spend on decor is up to you, but by doing a little more work yourself, you can decorate the room for less than $50 even without purchasing from thrift stores.