Can Breakfast Burritos Save My Life?

I have long been intrigued by the idea of cooking or prepping meals en masse and freezing them. It's all over Pinterest and Facebook. I love the promise of easier dinners and less mess in the kitchen. Part of surviving in a tiny home is staying on top of the daily tasks that can overwhelm a small area in short order. It has made life a bit hectic on those weekends when we are busy with sports, family and church. We're home long enough to eat and sleep and make a mess, then out the door again. Sunday afternoons used to be mandatory rest time. Lately, we've been coming home to the leftover mess from Friday and Saturday, which is not very peaceful. I've asked myself week after week, "How can we protect our day of rest without eliminating the family outings?" Eating out all weekend would break or budget in a hurry. The kids are getting too old for the children's menu so even eating fast food (which we despise) adds up quickly.
So, back to the big cooking day. I have researched it. I have looked at menus and considered how I can alter recipes to fit our whole food lifestyle. The problem is that I was a little nervous about getting in over my head. I needed to just get a toe in and make sure I could pull it off. The test recipe: breakfast burritos. My husband works long hours and over  night. He likes to have breakfast on his last break so he can come home and go to bed. I decided to make some breakfast burritos and freeze them. I thaw them in the fridge in the morning and by the time he wants them, they microwave easily. It worked out so well that it gave me the confidence to go all out! I'm not going to make a formal recipe, because you can really put anything inside that you like. For this batch, I used the soft taco size tortillas, eggs, all natural sausage, jalapenos, onion, cilantro and cheese. I cooked everything but the cheese. I put shredded cheese on the tortilla, then the egg mixture and rolled it up! I wrapped them individually in foil, then put them all into a freezer zipper bag. It really was easy and took me about 20 minutes from start to finish. Now, I'm seriously planning my big cooking day!

Life in a Cabin

I can't believe that we moved in just over 6 months ago. I can't believe that it has been over 6 months since I could string together more than a few sentences! So much has happened, and our lives were turned upside down for a bit, but now we have settled into a routine in our little cabin.
Cabin. That is what we have been calling it. When we were shopping for a building that would accommodate us, we looked at several styles. The designs varied from cabin, shed, barn, lofted barn, barn cabin, etc. In the end, we customized a side lofted barn, which only means a barn style roof and a side entry, as opposed to a door on either end. We could correctly call it a barn, but it doesn't sound quite as cozy. That is the best adjective for or new home. Cozy. It is small and we are never more than 38 feet from each other at any given moment. Many people don't understand what we are doing, and some even refer to our new home in less flattering terms, like shack, or shed. I have to bite my tongue and choose not to walk in offense. It is difficult, because the implication is hurtful. It is our chosen home, though. We planned and prayed, and this is what we decided to do. It is temporary, because the end goal is to build a house. That being said, people still think we're a little nuts. That is why they make thoughtless remarks. I get it. We are living the original American dream, not the dream of today. We are pioneering and carving out our dreams, walking in faith that they are within reach.
Today, one might say that the American dream is a job, a mortgage, car payments, 2.5 kids and a dog. That makes me laugh, just looking at it. We drive late model vehicles that we paid for in cash and our family of 6 lives in a cabin (lofted barn) while we work toward building a home paid for, again (hopefully), with cash.
It is a good life, though! We have new, different challenges from our old life. This winter has been a challenge. We have experienced a lot of snow, ice and sustained sub-freezing temperatures. When we lived in town, that might mean staying inside and enjoying a snow day. One of our newfound challenges was having animals outdoors. We had to not only build good shelter for all if them, but we had to go 2 or 3 times a day to check on them and often had to bring in water containers to thaw. It also meant we had large, concave ice chunks in the front yard where we threw them once the ice loosened from the edges of the water bowls. They looked like a bunch of tiny igloos!
At one point, our family vehicle needed some work and it was over a week, during the snow and freezing temperatures, that the kids and I were house bound. We had all we needed, but we did start to get a bit cabin fevered toward the end.
I smile about these "adventures" because I know that some day, we will sit around the dinner table in our house that we built and remember fondly, the days in our little cabin. Yes, it is a cabin, because I say so. After all, isn't a home what we make of it?