The harvest is almost done!! Yippee!!

My daughters are now back in classes. Yesterday was the first day of autumn quarter. I spent the day stocking the fridge with quick and easy to grab foods for the whole family, and harvesting the last of the late apples.

My daughters did a herculean job with the harvest. The three of us did what 5 of us usually do. The girls gave up their 2-week vacation and helped with harvesting and preserving. And so, I have promised them some sort of vacation this coming winter. Don't know what that will be yet, but something fun.

There are still crabapples, late pears and cranberries to harvest, later in October. I am hoping that my son and husband will have time to help with those fruits. Harvesting is a large job. But the rewards will be evident this winter, when we'll have this home-grown fruit on our table.

I am still figuring out how our schedule will work this fall. My daughters have many evening activities (requiring my chauffeuring skills), an irregular morning schedule (some days one of the earliest buses, other days the latest bus), and new Sunday obligations (both morning and afternoon -- choir related).  I find that working this all out is best done on paper. I made out a schedule, and am seeing which days look more intense than the rest, so that I can figure my own around-the-house work schedule accordingly.

I have a bunch of stuff to tell you all, and will get to it over the next week. For now, here's what our family is eating for lunches this week:

• cinnamon-pumpkin-applesauce (about 1/2 cup of canned pumpkin stirred into applesauce, with a hint of cinnamon -- quite good, and packs some extra Vit. A and fiber)
• a casserole of baked beans, chipotle sausage, tomatoes and onions
• pumpkin muffins (they bake faster than pumpkin bread, saving electricity) with cream cheese
• carrot sticks and peanut butter (no kidding, my daughters like peanut butter as a spread/dip for carrot sticks)
• pumpkin-peanut smoothies
• apple cobbler
• yogurt
• apples
• toasted cheese sandwiches
• leftover refried beans and tortillas from Sunday

This sounds like a whole lotta food, but we don't eat all of this everyday!!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having a bit more time to keep up with all of you. Hope you're having a great week!

Lately . . .

The end of last week turned extremely busy, and I'm just now catching up. A friend passed away a little while ago, and I serve on the Hospitality Team at our church. We put together a nice luncheon to accompany the memorial service on Saturday.

In addition, my daughters and I have been harvesting the apple trees and the one super huge plum tree. The apples just get picked and stored, but the plums have to be processed in some way (making jam, chutney, splitting/pitting for prunes and freezing). My fingernails are badly stained, but oh well, that's just part of the job.

Also, a big front is pushing in today, and have been picking and storing tomatoes, as I can. The first major storm front also usually brings late blight to the tomatoes, so if we want to use them, I've got to get them harvested.

I had hoped to get in a couple of side excursions this week, but we may be very busy with harvesting before the weather turns very cool and very wet, and getting last things done for fall quarter.

Still, lunches need planning. As our fridge and freezers are packed to over-flowing, meals are based first on fridge contents, and second on bits and pieces from the freezer. (You know, all those half-full containers of this and that can really take up freezer space!)

This week's lunch menu includes:

• ham and egg fried rice (using squash, garlic and greens from the garden)
• Harvard beets
• beet green quiche
• vegetarian chili
• plum pie
• apple pie

Two pies this week, as we couldn't decide which we wanted more! One daughter made a large batch of pie pastry for me on Sunday, so the pie-making is easy for the week.

I hope that you're having a great week! And enjoying the change of seasons!

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How has my grocery shopping changed over the last year?

So, we're doing "okay" with our reduced grocery budget this year (a budget of about $165 per month, for food only, for 5 of us), even with some rising food prices. But to make that happen, I've had to make even more changes in the last 12 months.

A year ago, I posted about various ways I am cutting our grocery budget/spending. One of the methods I've used is shopping at a restaurant supply and buying institutional sizes. Even at the Cash and Carry's regular prices, institutional sizes saves us a lot of money.

However, I've now moved to an even more advantageous shopping strategy. I've become a very opportunistic wholesale shopper. The Cash and Carry does have sales. Every 2 weeks they put out a new ad, and it's available for me to view online. I go through the ad very carefully and make a list of what's on sale at a great price, determine the quantity we would need to get through 6 months to 1 year, and add that to my list. Basically, this is institutional loss-leader shopping.

Shopping this way means that I can't always pick up what we're out of, but may have to wait a few weeks, instead, to find it on sale. But it allows us to pay the absolute minimum price on almost all of our basics. (I do need to occasionally buy something at their regular institutional price. Last month, I really needed all-purpose flour, to continue on with our baking. So, even without a sale price, I bought a 50-lb sack of all-purpose flour for about $12 or $13.)

Here are a few examples, with stock-up price as well as regular price:

• whole wheat flour -- $12.99/50lb sack (regular price $13.59). I had about 25 lbs still at home. I bought 100 lbs of new flour. It should last many months. We don't have a pantry moth problem in our kitchen. But I will still re-package this flour into 25-lb bags and cycle through the freezer, to kill anything that has hitch-hiked into our kitchen.
• #10 cans (6 lbs, 10 oz) Libby's canned pumpkin -- $4.25 (regular price $8.77). I bought 4 of these large cans and will repackage into 15-oz freezer containers as we open the cans. This amount will hopefully carry us through the entire year. (Update -- We are already going through this pumpkin, and I may pick up another couple of cans near the end of the month. Sale ends on Sept 30.)
• 5-lb bags of shredded mozzarella cheese -- $11.98 (regular price $12.58). I wound up buying 4 bags (20 lbs). This cheese will be frozen as room in the freezer opens up, and should last well into spring.
• #10 cans whole, peeled tomatoes -- $2.37 (regular price is about $3.49). I bought 15 cans, a one-year supply. Canned tomatoes can be frozen after opening. So, I repackage and freeze canned tomatoes in amounts that I typically use in cooking.
• 1 gallon jugs of white vinegar -- $2.47 (regular price -- $3.29). I bought 6 gallons, again, a year's supply. We use a lot of vinegar, for hair rinsing, cleaning, making flavored vinegars for salad dressing, making pickles and for a substitution for baking powder (1 Tablespoon baking powder = 1 Tablespoon vinegar plus 3/4 teaspoon baking soda).
• 3 lb bag of dried cranberries -- $5.87 (regular price $7.37). I bought 1 bag and am saving them for holiday baking. I don't usually buy dried cranberries other than holiday/winter baking. So this should be it for the year.
• ground ginger (9 oz) and curry powder (13 oz) -- $2.88 (regular price $4.19) and $4.24 (regular price $5.17), respectively. I needed both of these, but waited until they went on sale.
• 5-lb bags frozen peas -- $3.54 (regular price $4.23). I bought 3 of these bags, for a total of 15 lbs. This should last us through most of winter and into early spring.

You can see that some items have a pretty decent "regular" price. But when you see the sale price, in some cases, the savings are significant. The canned pumpkin was about half price from the "regular" price. It worked out to about 60 cents per 15-oz portion (standard size of canned pumpkin to make 1 pie).  The canned, whole peeled tomatoes were on sale at a price of about 30 cents per 14.5 oz (about the regular-sized can for whole tomatoes), or about 60 cents for the larger 28 oz sized can. For reference, in our area, the 14-oz sized can of tomatoes goes on sale in regular grocery stores for 49 cents. The cheese worked out to about $2.39 per pound. For reference, the next best price I find on cheese of any kind is 2-lb blocks of cheddar on sale for $4.99--or $2.49/lb (and usually limit of 1).

One thing I learned many years ago about stocking up like this -- it doesn't work in our household to stock up on snacky items. So most of our stock-ups are for basic, healthy food.(The snacky food gets eaten too quickly, and winds up pushing healthier foods out of the diet.)

My hope is to continue feeding my family as well as possible, while keeping our grocery budget low. I still may need to "find" more money in the budget to allocate to groceries. I'm currently working on plugging some spending holes, here and there.  And I may be able to increase our grocery budget a smidge in the coming months.

I understand that for the most part, absolutely none of this is helpful to most of you. I just wanted to offer some explanations for how we can keep our grocery spending as low as we do. Anyway, with each budget crisis, or bout of inflation, I do find myself wondering just how I'm going to pull another rabbit out of my well-worn hat. And somehow . . . we manage.

Have you found any ways to reduce your grocery spending, overall, in the past year, despite the inflation that is hitting all of us? How are you handling price increases? Are you adding to your grocery budget? Eliminating the purchase of some foods? Do you have any stores that carry institutional sizes? (When we lived in Salt Lake City, we had one store that carried some #10 cans of fruits and vegetables, and many large families took advantage of these sizes.) Do you tend to stock the pantry, or buy just what you need for 1 or 2 weeks? If you stock the pantry, do you ever have a moment of feeling overwhelmed by how stuffed you pantry can look and feel? I know this might not make much sense coming from me, but sometimes, even I look in my pantry and get this feeling of being overwhelmed by it all.

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A September lunch round-up: staycation time!

My daughters have a couple of weeks off before uni classes begin. We had hoped to go someplace, but as it turns out, we do have a lot of commitments in the next 2 weeks, so it just didn't work out.

We are, however, making the most of lazy mornings and sunny afternoons, with local excursions to get that "vacation feel".

So, lunches are perhaps a bit more interesting and fun, this week. Here's what we're doing for lunch:

• homemade "pepperoni" pizza (thin-sliced beef hot links in place of pepperoni)
• vegetarian garden lasagna (I use seasoned tofu in place of ricotta, and lots of chopped kale)
• applesauce (using apples that I pick up under the trees every morning -- thanks to the pesky squirrels)
• apple Brown Betty (I just like the name. Sounds fun, doesn't it?)
• fresh plums, apples and tomatoes 

We are stuffing ourselves with garden produce. Sometimes I look at our plates and think, "that came from the garden, that came from the garden, that came from the garden. . .". Just fun to see how much we've grown that fills our plates.

What's on your lunch menu this week? What do you make for "fun" lunches, special occasions, birthdays, etc?

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What I like about the cooler weather of September

The weather is turning in our area. While the weekend high temperatures were right around 80 degrees, the days are shorter, so the nights have a longer period to cool off. Mornings and evenings can be quite chilly. But I love this changing period of the year.

• soup makes a delicious, warming and frugal dinner
• oatmeal warms the tummy, is easy to prepare, and doesn't bust the budget
• potatoes, again! after a summer of rice, bread and pasta, potatoes make a welcome, and frugal, backbone to many cool-weather meals. Leftover potatoes with an egg for breakfast. "Cream" of potato soup for lunch (I blend in silken tofu in place of cream, for protein without the dairy). Potato and any leftover meat and veggies for a tasty hash at dinner.
• I sleep so much better when the nights are cool, but it's not so cool that we need the furnace yet
• cooking and baking doesn't overheat the kitchen (and cooking/baking from scratch saves us mucho $$$)
• because I sleep better this time of year, I have more energy during the day!
• no more need to water outdoor plants, any vegetable rinse water that's clean enough just goes into the washing machine now (not saving it for watering the garden)
• the vegetables that I will be buying in autumn, like winter squash and carrots, are so much cheaper than spring items like asparagus
• the air smells fresh, the garbage doesn't stink up the garage and the sky is incredibly blue on a clear day
• I'm almost done with garden and will soon have more free time
• we make some favorite foods: caramel popcorn, candy apples, pumpkin everything (lattes, soup, pudding, bread, pie)
• fresh, crisp russet apples -- best flavored apples IMO!

What are some of the things you love about this time of year?

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Rising dairy prices and what can we do about it?

So, on the news this week it was mentioned that dairy prices will continue their upward climb. Aside from acquiring a cow or goat, what can we do to mitigate these rising prices on milk, cheese, butter and cream? Let's put our heads together and see what suggestions come forth. Here's what I intend to do:

Butter

• continue using meat fat for sauteing and making gravy. 
• I make Yorkshire pudding often to go with soup suppers, so I will now try using some leftover meat fat in place of the oil called for in the recipe. (This doesn't save butter, but spares oil to use in recipes that will save butter.) 
• I sauteed summer squash in chicken fat the other night and one daughter asked if I used butter. She thought it tasted amazing. 
• The same daughter asked me if we could use meat fat on toast. I reminded her of the Little House books, where Laura's family used salt pork fat on toast, when their butter ran out. My daughter and I agreed that bacon fat might be good on toast. 
• I made a savory cornbread on Tuesday, "buttering" the pan with chicken fat, and using chicken fat in place of a butter/oil mix I usually use in the batter. Very good!
• I think I will also try doing eggs for frittatas and omelets in saved fat.
• I'll switch to meat fat when buttering dishes for savory casseroles.
• continue to make butter/oil spread, to stretch the butter that we use for buttering toast and bread.
• What's the regular price on butter in your area these days? It was about $4.50/lb yesterday at the market. Meanwhile, margarine was on sale for 89 cents/lb. I'm reluctant to go back to margarine, as we avoid trans fats/hydrogenated oils when possible (except Crisco for pie pastry -- makes great pie crust, but maybe I'll consider lard). How do you feel about margarine vs. butter?

Milk

• continue shopping for markdowns on milk
• regularly compare powdered milk prices to liquid milk 
• Is powdered milk less per gallon for anyone right now? Every 6 months or so, I compare the price per gallon on non-instant in 55 lb sacks (cheaper than instant per gallon for me) to liquid milk. Back in the 90s a 55 lb bag of non-instant milk was cheaper than liquid milk. That could be the case again this next year.

Cheese

• Buy more when I find it on sale. The cash and carry restaurant supply has mozzarella on sale shredded in 5-lb bags for $11.98. I had intended to buy 2 bags, but after hearing this week's dairy price forecast, I switched to 3 bags. I'll be watching for bags of cheddar at the same price. Bags of shredded cheese freeze well, so there should be no problem of mold with stocking up so much.
• Use cream cheese more often in sandwiches. Over the weekend, I made a simple chive and cream cheese spread for lunch one day. Cream cheese often goes on sale around the fall/winyer holidays and again at Easter, for as little as 88cents/ 8 oz block, but usually right around $1/8 oz. This works out to $1.76/lb to $2.00/lb, less than hard cheese prices by about 50 cents per pound for me. And cream cheese keeps much longer in the fridge, unopened than the sell-by date.
• Does anyone here freeze cream cheese? I've never tried freezing it, but have heard the texture changes a bit. I'd like to hear of other's experiences with freezing this. Also, can sour cream or cottage cheese be frozen successfully? I sometimes find both of these items marked down because the container is squashed.  And how about freezing block cheese to use on sandwiches later? I freeze the shredded and it works as a melting cheese just fine, but want to know if block cheese gets crumbly when you freeze it, and perhaps it could be frozen in slices?

Cream

• Buying cream when on markdown will be my best money-saving strategy. Whipping cream can be whipped and frozen in mounds, to use later. I have a few frozen mounds of whipped cream in the freezer from last spring. If possible, I'll save these for Thanksgiving. Then hope to find whipping cream on markdown just after Thanksgiving for Christmas and New Year's. 
• Non-dairy whipped topping is also always an option, and often goes on sale just before the holidays.
• Has anyone here ever tried the homemade whipped topping recipe that uses gelatin and powdered milk? That's a possibility, too, and non-hydrogenated (healthier than some non-dairy whipped toppings?), calling for gelatin, dry milk, sugar, oil and water. If I try it this fall, I'll let you know what we my family thinks.

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This week's lunch round-up: fresh and simple hits the spot

I'd like to say that lunches this week will be mostly fresh items because I planned healthy lunches. However, the truth is, fresh items are simply easier than prepared items. And Monday was another very busy day.

Monday, I made the cucumber dill pickles (3 jars) and another quart of blackberry pancake syrup (now have 2 quarts of blackberry syrup), plus I dug potatoes (backbreaking and exhausting work), roasted a chicken, ran errands (2 markets), did bookkeeping, and 2 loads of laundry. So, I only had 2 prepared items this week, supplemented with fresh garden produce. Here's our lunch selection for the week:

• cinnamon-almond granola ( I have to admit, the almonds were just the end of a bag of almonds, and much more almond "dust" than actual almonds)
• rice-bean-tomato casserole
• fresh plums
• fresh apples
• fresh tomatoes
• fresh cucumbers

And of course, always there is peanut butter, bread, yogurt and mixed nuts.You may notice that this week there are no boiled eggs. We're now down to our last 3 dozen of fresh eggs, and 1 dozen frozen. I'll be needing these eggs for baking this month. So for a while, no more hard-boiled eggs.

It looks like I should be able to make another batch of cucumber dill pickles. That will bring us up to 6 jars of dill slices, to go with 8 jars of bread and butter zucchini pickles, and 9 jars of watermelon pickles. I'll also make green tomato sweet and dill relishes later this month. That should be it for pickle making. October will see me in the kitchen making plum chutney and tomato salsa.

Now, I'll go enjoy my cup of blackberry tea (the rinsings from the pan of blackberry syrup added to yesterday's tea bag, for a fruity and frugal cup of tea), and enter a couple of drawings from my recent shopping (on receipt, survey info in exchange for entrance in drawings for gift cards).

What's on your lunch menu this week?


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Plan A didn't pan out, now working on plan B

So, when I plant my vegetable garden each spring, my thoughts are filled with high hopes and expectations.

Then weather happens, bugs happen, critters happen and off-timing happens. I know I should remember this from year to year. But maybe it's a good thing I'm so optimistic each spring. If I were too realistic, I may just give up on the garden altogether.

Anyway, my family really enjoys green bean dill pickles. I make several jars each summer to pop open in winter. Well, this year, when the green beans were ready, the dill and garlic weren't. And now that the dill and garlic are ready, the green beans are about done. Rats!

On to plan B.

I've found I need to keep my mind flexible with regards to the garden. The cucumbers did far better this year than they've done in years. So, plan B will be cucumber dill slices. I should be able to eek out a few jars of those before the season ends.

All is not lost. We'll enjoy some sort of dill pickle this winter. And we did enjoy the green beans fresh this summer, so that's a very good thing.

Let's hope I don't need a plan C.

Not so matchy-matchy with my food prep any more

So it used to be that when I made soup from scratch I used "matching" ingredients. For instance, if I made a chicken-based soup I used chicken fat, chicken stock and chicken meat. I might walk on the wild side and use turkey stock with chicken "other" ingredients. But mostly, I pretty much stuck to the formula my mom always used, and I had continued.

Well, not so much any more. Last night I made a pretty decent soup, starting with turkey fat and oil, then using vegetable stock, adding ham meat and topping the whole pot off by adding the last of the ground beef gravy from the other night's dinner (of Yorkshire pudding and beef gravy).

The soup I made was along the lines of plaid shirt with paisley skirt, polka dot hosiery and a striped sweater. But you know what? It actually tasted good! (The soup, not the outfit!)

Are there any "rules" that you follow, just because you've always followed them? As they say -- some rules are meant to be broken!

(p.s. If you're curious, in addition to the mentioned soup ingredients, there were also lentils, onions, summer squash and red pepper flakes.)

First week of September lunch round-up

It's a short week to prepare for, due to Monday being a holiday for everyone at home. So, I didn't need to make as much as usual. Here's what I came up with:

• hard-boiled eggs (this must be sounding monotonous as I've been boiling eggs for the last several weeks)
• pasta-tomato-basil salad in Italian dressing
• vegetarian baked beans
• apple-cinnamon muffins
• fresh apples

There's also sourdough bread, peanut butter and jam, and yogurt, for those who want some of the usual fixings.

My daughters are still working a job without a decent kitchen. There's a fridge but no microwave, so I'm still making everything "safe" to eat without reheating (no meat in anything). My husband has a kitchen at work, so this doesn't concern him. At the end of September, my daughters start classes again, and will once again have a full kitchen to use for lunches. (They even have real plates and silverware there!) So I will be free to use meat or meat stock in anything I put together.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day!

August Grocery Money Journal -- spent $23.01 per week

Aug. 2 Last day of Walgreen's egg sale. I stop in and pick up 4 dozen eggs (99cents/dozen), and 2 packages turkey bacon (99 cents/6 oz. package). Spent $5.94.

Aug.14 Oats and mustard are on sale at Cash and Carry. I also need white flour. So, I buy 2 bags of oats (total of 50 lbs, should get us through most of a year --  $13.75/25 lb bag), 1 gallon of yellow mustard ($3.19) and 50 lbs of white flour ($13.19). Total spent $43.88

August 15 Need bath tissue at Albertson's, also check for markdowns. Saturday mornings appear to be a good time of week for bacon and sausage markdowns. I find 9 packages of breakfast sausage (maple and plain) for $1.99 each, and 10 cans of pop-in-fresh biscuit dough for 25 cents each. The biscuit dough is great for quick donuts or mini-pizzas in a hurray. The cans say sell-by date of Aug 20, but IME these have been "good" for a couple of months past sell-by date, so we have enough for Saturday morning donuts for a couple of months. Total spent $20.41

August 15 Also run by Dollar Tree for soy milk. spent $3 (3 quarts).

August 22. We are out of milk, so while at the bank I also pop in right next door to QFC to check for marked down milk. (Do I ever buy anything not marked down? I must sound like the crazy lady cruising the markdowns at the grocery store.). In luck, I find a bunch of gallons of whole milk for $2.29/gallon. I only buy 9 of the gallons, as I think that's all I can store in the freezer these days and use within a couple of weeks. The sell-by date is August 30. Also, find "ropes" of dinner sausage -- chipotle beef flavor for $2.69 each. After Kris's comments a little while back about quick dinner ideas, I thought these would be good in the freezer for "those" days. I buy 3 "ropes" and freeze right away, although tempted to cook u one for dinner tonight. Gotta find some discipline!! Total spent $28.68



My grand total spent for August is $101.91, or $23.01 per week. It sounds really low, but keep in mind I'm banking extra grocery money for fall stock-up sales. My grocery budget this month has been reduced to $165, so I was under by $63.09. Add that to my running surplus of $91.55, for a new carry forward surplus of $154.64. It's good to see that surplus number tick up.

Something else to note. It can seem like shopping several stores is time consuming, with multiple stores per week, and lots of driving around. But, as you can see, it's just not always like that for me. This month I only went to the grocery store (or comparable store) 5 times. Not bad at all. And each time, I ran in, grabbed what I needed, checked the markdowns and that was it. In and out in under 30 minutes each time (some stores even less).



I'm running low on yeast, and will be looking for canned tomato products (paste, whole and diced tomatoes), and white vinegar. For yeast, for the time being, I'm using my sourdough starter for about half of the bread these days. (how to make your own sourdough starter here, if you're interested) Hoping to find yeast on sale at the cash and carry wholesaler soon. We're doing okay on just about everything else, though, for this next month. I'll see what deals I find and what else we run low on.

So, what do my food stores look like in late August? I've still got 1 more turkey, 1 more ham, about 6 whole chickens, about 4 pounds ground beef, some hot dogs, some "rope" sausage, about 8 packages of breakfast sausage. I also have over 50 lbs of oats, about 40 lbs of white flour, 25 lbs of whole wheat flour, about 2 lbs of brown rice, 20 lbs of assorted dried beans, 25 lbs of sugar, 1 gallon of molasses, 12 lbs of popcorn, a case of canned diced tomatoes, about 3 gallons of vegetable oil, lots of frozen fruit from the garden, some apples from the trees, about 10 lbs of onions, 10 lbs of butter, 5 dozen eggs, 4 gallons of milk (frozen), about 4 lbs of pasta and lots of odds and ends. I'm better stocked than this same time last year, by just a smidge. I can feel it with the freezers, never having room to stuff a single item more in them.

I've been looking back over last falls stock-up items and seeing where I'd like to buy even more this fall. For example, last year, I bought 16 cans of pumpkin (16 oz cans), for $1 each. If I find a similar price, this year I'll buy about 25 cans. I can do a lot with canned pumpkin, everything from breads, muffins and oatmeal, to soups and side dishes. And it's very convenient and high in beta carotene. I'll be buying 2 cases of tomato paste this year, instead of 1, as we went through the 1 case very easily, and I would have liked to have had more on hand. It's nice to have these records to look back on and see what I paid for individual items and how much I bought.

I'm still doing a lot of my shopping at a restaurant supply. However, now, I try to only buy from there when I find items I want on sale. Yes, the restaurant supply has sales, too. So, for savings, here's an example of the difference between buying on sale at the cash and carry and regular cash and carry price. On the oats I bought this month, I saved $2.74 per sack over paying their regular price of $16.49 in February. Such a great savings that I bought 2 sacks this month.

That's it for August. Onward and upward!