What else is homemade at your house??

Just beer and bread for me right now. There's lots of other things on the list, but college puts a damper on that whole extra time and extra money thing

Wow, some of you people are quite adventurous. I don't think I can top many of those things. I used to mount my own deer horns on oak plaques. I learned it from my dad. Now, I only shoot CBM size and have a taxidermist.
But I do grow hungarian wax peppers which I can in quart jars. It's an 80 year old recipe. Best **** ever!
My chocolate cherry tomatoes were over 15' last year and were taller than my first year hops.
Other than that, my life is boring compared to most of yours.
Hopefully I can get my hop farm going. I'm still in the planning stage but I have a few vacant acres to work with at my dads. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it.
And no Yooper, we are not all much younger than you.

Beer, cider, paneer cheese (stupid easy), and mayonnaise.

Don't have the time to make much else as of yet.

Our 91-year-old house and 2 young kids put a damper on our spare time to work on self-sufficiency, but we:

- make 90% of our meals from scratch, using only organic ingredients (and no GMO)
- buy only used furniture
- grow our own vegetables (when we can keep in front of the weeds)
- compost
- make sausage
- do all of our own home improvements and repairs (except electrical, but that's what neighbors are for)
- cut our own hair
- wine, mead, cider, beer, vinegar, soda, and a few other beverages

Medicine.

Living in a city do have disadvantages, but I do grow some of my own hops, make beer of course, pizza from scratch, wine, pickles, and I hunt and fish so I can Rabbit, moose, sea birds, mussels, fish etc. and am looking into cheesemaking.
Being a bit of a hippy I also buy a lot of clothes from thrift stores and second hand stores. I'm supposed to give up processed meats and really only eat pickled weiners when watching hockey.....

Beer, of course! Raise Cascade hops. Wine, hot sauces from my own homegrown peppers. Home made pizza, smoked and cured sausages, lots of BBQ pork and chicken. We have chickens so we have our own brown eggs. Do some fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. We have two horses and a donkey. (No, we don't eat them!)

I dabble in welding, made my own BBQ smoker. I can fix just about anything around the house. I am currently rebuilding the transom in one of my boats.

We make our own beer, yogurt, children, and turds.

Hot-peppers! I Love me some o them! Serranos, Jalepenos, hatch, big jim, yumm! and something I GREW - that LIVED and I get to eat!

and we cook at home a lot if that counts,
home-made pizza, I like making my own dough, grilled sometimes is nice and smoky.

lots of the things others have mentioned: beer, sourdough bread & pizza, yogurt, cheese, soap, candles, fermented veggies (sauerkraut, salsa, pickles, etc.), fix everything i can myself, most foods are cooked from scratch, grow a garden each year, sausages, cured meats, a bunch of other random stuff that i've seen and thought, "hey, i could make one of those if i invest a bunch of money in supplies."

dried Italian sausage. make it twice a year in the winter cause I need the cold temps to help it cure. yummy!

Other than beer, I make meatballs and red spaghetti sauce from scratch. We grow most of our vegetables, and I've begun toying with different salsa recipes.

We also made our children...

BendBrewer said:

Medicine.

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We all make beer. That was point of the thread: What else is homemade?

soap beer furniture some few sweatshirts lots of hats and headbands. eh i guess thats about it.

Well in addition to making my own beer, I make my own wine, bread and cheese.

My wife makes Soap lotions and deodorant

Bread and beer so far here (and soon, bread with the yeast from the beer!). My father is a wood worker, so he makes all the furniture in the family. I'm debating moving back to the States and I want to make my own bacon and grow my own veggies and hops too.

I make pizza. I make the dough from scratch anyway. I make the sauce sometimes but its so cheap at the gstore. I have got it down to start to finish an hour an hour and a half for convenience sake but it tastes better when the dough is retarded in the fridge over night. Next step is sour dough. Once I get that down I would like to use it for my buttermilk pancakes as well. Also I make tunes.

Jelly and Jams.

I can build a house from the ground up, and plan to do so someday.

We have chickens in NYC, we trade the eggs for honey, baked goods, vegetables, and chicken-sitting. When I have time I'll be cooking all my meals.

B

Beef jerky ... Now that dry Italian sausage has me drooling. Share a recipe ?

Beer, bread, pizza dough, mustard, hot giardiniera. Would love to start growing veggies and hunting animals but I rent an apt in a city and don't really have room for that kind of stuff.

I built my own telescope. Yes I know you can't eat it or drink it, but it's my other hobby. I ground and polished the 8" dia. mirror, and built the tube and base from assorted plywood. The views are awesome.

frazier said:

I built my own telescope. Yes I know you can't eat it or drink it, but it's my other hobby. I ground and polished the 8" dia. mirror, and built the tube and base from assorted plywood.

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You ground and polished an 8" telescope mirror by HAND???

How long did that take you?

My daughter is homemade...

frazier said:

I built my own telescope. Yes I know you can't eat it or drink it, but it's my other hobby. I ground and polished the 8" dia. mirror, and built the tube and base from assorted plywood. The views are awesome.

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I dropped a bottle and made a mess in the kitchen. That was home made.

I try to make as much stuff as I can on my own. Some stuff I make from scratch are deep dish pizza, jerky, sausage, bbq, soups, breads actually pretty much any food item I like. I like going out to eat, finding something good and trying to make it just like, or better, than its made at the restaurant. My dream is to start a bbq/brew pub so lately I've been trying to get my recipes down to exact sciences of what would be my regular menu items before I experiment with new ones.

Inodoro_Pereyra said:

You ground and polished an 8" telescope mirror by HAND???

How long did that take you?

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About 40 hours, in a optical workshop. About a month of calendar time. Yes, it's all hand work.


The polishing lap in foreground, the mirror-to-be behind.

What I see:

Amazing.

So you work at an optical workshop?
I knew a guy, when I was a teenager, who polished a 4"mirror by hand. But I do mean BY HAND. It took him almost 500 hours to finish it. That's why I thought yours would've taken a lot longer...

Great image, by the way. Looks like a pencil drawing...:rockin:

I don't work in optics - I meant that I paid a fee to use the shop as needed until I finished.

Sorry to say, but if it took your friend 400 hours, he was doing it wrong.

I do a bunch of astro-sketching, charcoal pencils, very meditative. If it's cloudy, I have a beer!

You're probably right.
Either way, that's what, in time, discouraged me from doing the same. I was dreaming to make a 12" one, but there was no way in hell I'd spend that kind of time massaging a piece of glass.

Oh, so it IS a sketch. I have seen actual pictures that looked like that. Are you planning to add a camera to it?

Basil pesto, wheat baguettes, pizza dough and a small garden that produces loads of summer salsa.

Also building a chicken coup. Will have to add that to my signature. Not bad for a 1/4 acre!

Beer, Wine, Jerky, Bread, Soda, Dog Treats, So far! I want to learn yogurt and cheese next.

Beer, Wine, Jerky/Billtong, Bread, Dog treats (some food), Cheese, Veggies, Fruits, and I'd like to do more.
Most of you on this thread should check out http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com No tin foil hat stuff just good solid info on this type of thing.

Much like many on here, I make as much as I can. unfortunately, my time has become limited with two young children, so have had to do more with less. We hunt, fish, grow, gather and MacGuyver as much as we can. Glad to see so many other's doing the same.

Dog Treats??

4 cups spent grain
4 cups flour
1 cup peanut butter (no sugar added)
1 egg

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Press down into a dense layer on a large cookie sheet. Score almost all the way through into the shapes you want. Bake for about half an hour at 350 F to solidify them. Loosen them from the sheet, break the biscuits apart and return them, loosely spread out on the cookie sheet, to the oven at 200 F for 8 hours to dry them very thoroughly to prevent mold growth.

I've thought about starting a garden but in all honesty it didn't seem cost efficient for a small operation.

Do you guys really find that it is cheaper making your own small items like soap and cheese?
Do your gardens really pay for themselves?

I'd love to be more self sufficient but I'm with curlyfat, I work a ton and even finding time to brew can sometimes be difficult.

We have the DIY bug at our house too. We make everything we can at our house. Fishing rods, sinkers, flies, brewing equipment. Blankets, sweaters, curtains, and socks. We cure and smoke our own bacon and pastrami on our home built smoker. We make beer, bread, jam, grow some veggies. I also fish and hunt.

It's not about the cost, it's about quality.
After almost 3 years making my own soap, I got to a point when I can't use commercial soap anymore. It makes my skin feel like sandpaper.
Same with growing your own herbs. I was raised on them. My father kept a very good assortment of herbs, fruits and vegetables. Now, the stuff from the supermarket just has no taste whatsoever.

dallasdb said:

I've thought about starting a garden but in all honesty it didn't seem cost efficient for a small operation.

Do your gardens really pay for themselves?

I'd love to be more self sufficient but I'm with curlyfat, I work a ton and even finding time to brew can sometimes be difficult.

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At least for me, I don't garden to save money. Nor do I brew to save money. I do both for just the sheer joy of saying "I made, grew, or brewed that." I live on a very small lot so I can't grow much. But watching my cherry tomatoes reach 15' last year was impressive. My background is landscape architecture and horticulture so I'm naturally drawn to growing stuff. Starting a small hop farm is next.
But mostly I do things because I like a challenge. I could have bought a mash tun and a wort chiller, but making them were more fun. Making salsa and canning hot peppers takes time and money, but the consumption part is much better than the store bought stuff.