A Lazy Sunday Afternoon on the Deck: A Low-Stress, Minimal Cooking Mother's Day Brunch at Home

Happy day after Mother's Day for all of the mothers out there or those who have or know a mother in their life!

We had a simple and frugal Mother's Day at home. I grocery shopped for it at WinCo (known as a low-cost grocery store) on Saturday. My daughters and husband cooked, prepared, and served everything. And my son and daughter-in-law came over, bringing a pastry, some blueberry juice, and some sparkling mineral water. 

As we were enjoying our meal, we had a friend join us. Can you guess who or what that friend might be? Up the steps of the deck came a young female duck that has befriended us this spring. I think she heard us talking and came for a hand-out. Oh, she was quite funny, begging and poking her bill wherever she thought there might be food. At one point she found my daughter's jar of water and dipped her bill in for a drink. She looked around in my flats of garden vegetable seedlings, and basically entertained us all. When we thought she ought to go back to the pond, we walked her back there. And she followed us every step.

Fun afternoon. We enjoyed ourselves on the deck until it grew too chilly outdoors.

So what did we actually eat? We had an egg, bell pepper, and cheese casserole, ham roll-ups, fresh strawberries, fresh watermelon, sautéed mushrooms with thyme, grape tomatoes (less expensive than cherry tomatoes this week), hash brown potatoes, butter croissants, fruit-filled mini pastries, an apricot poundcake, juice, coffee, tea, mineral water. The menu was comprised of simple foods which didn't require a lot of cooking time or make a big of a mess. 

I spent $38.87 on special foods for the brunch. We had leftovers to send home with my son and daughter-in-law and leftovers enough to make a complete dinner the day after, with some remaining foods to last for several days. 

I combined my Mother's Day shopping with my regular bi-weekly WinCo stock-up shopping. I had hoped to get to WinCo on Friday, but wasn't feeling well, so I waited a day. I wish I could have gone any day other than the day before Mother's Day. The store was a zoo on Saturday. Crowds in the aisles and long, long check-out lines. But I got it done and could work in the garden in the afternoon to destress.

Our brunch was lovely, and having it a home -- I wouldn't do it any other way. You know I like to analyze the whys of making the choices that I do. So I thought through why having a Mother's Day home-brunch is my preferred way to do Mother's Day. Here are my top reasons to choose celebrating at home.

• I don't have to deal with crowds or harried servers in a restaurant. Mother's Day is one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants. Reservations are difficult to get last minute. Even if you do snag a ressie, there are no guarantees that your table will be ready for you when you arrive. And there's no pressure to vacate your table for the next party when you dine at home. Dining at home is peaceful, and we can carry on conversations without needing to raise our voices to be heard over a crowd.
• I can "order up" exactly what I like and how I prefer foods be prepared, including using my "safe" substitutes so I don't feel ill later. I get to add in some of my favorite foods, such as sautéed mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, and butter croissants.
• Celebrating at home is easy-going. There's no need to rush to make a reservation, and I don't have to dress in any particular way to meet dining out expectations.
• And of course, it's cost-effective. Even with spending about $39 on the foods, that figure covers the meal for 6 adults. Aside from eating fast food, I don't think we could find a restaurant where $39 would completely cover the meal for 6. And because I knew the final cost would be relatively low, I could throw in the fresh brown mushrooms, a bottle of sparkling mineral water, a pound of fresh strawberries, a whole watermelon, uncured Black Forest ham (uncured ham is about double the cost of cured ham), and a large box of all-butter croissants. Yes, we could have done brunch for a lot less, but having the foods special to me, and in the premium category for our low grocery budget, made the me feel like a splurge. 
• I still had a crew to do the cooking, serving, and cleaning up afterward. So I did get a day off.

For me, celebrating Mother's Day (or many of the other holidays) isn't so much about a perfect meal or being pampered (although I enjoy that, too). But for me, it's about having time with all of my family, making new memories and revisiting old ones, and the love and laughter shared amongst our family. We do that best in the quiet atmosphere of our own home.

Can buying vegetable seedlings still be a good deal?

Once upon a time I believed that to be a frugal garden, I had to start everything from seed. I still try to start most of our garden from seed, some indoors and some directly in the garden. However, there are times when either the seedlings looked weak and sickly or the seeds didn't germinate well or I just don't have the capacity to start so many seeds in containers or getting a jump start on one or two pays off. 

This year, my cucumbers didn't germinate well and I was completely out of celery seeds and forgot to pick some up in time. I bought both cucumber starts and celery starts today. The celery starts came in a 6-pack for $4.99. Each cell has several little plants. I would guess that these seedlings were about 8 weeks old. Tomorrow I'll repot these into containers and separate the clusters of tiny plants, likely ending up with a dozen healthy celery plants. For $4.99 and water over the season, I'll end up with 12 bundles of celery in late summer. I guesstimate that my cost to water these plants and put a spoonful of fertilizer into each planting hole adds about 10 to 15 cents per plant, for a total cost of $6.19 to $6.79 for a dozen bundles of celery, or 51 cents to 57 cents per bundle. I pay around 99 cents per bundle of celery in the fall at WinCo and $1.29 per bundle in winter. I'm saving half by growing celery from the plants as opposed to abandoning the idea of growing celery this year. The bonus is I get to pluck stalks off the plants throughout the summer months and buy less celery in summer as well as fall and winter.

Okay, so maybe you don't want homegrown celery. How about Romaine lettuce. Many of us enjoy growing (and eating) fresh Romaine lettuce. Fred Meyer had 6-packs of Romaine starts for $4.99 as well. Each cell had at least 2 healthy looking Romaine seedlings, yielding a dozen starts for $4.99. Given the same cost for water and fertilizer added to the cost of the starts, each full-sized head of Romaine would cost between 51 and 57 cents each when ready to harvest in 2 months. At the very best price, I might be able to find Romaine lettuce for $1.79 or $1.89 per head in the produce section at the market in mid-summer. Thats' a savings of over a dollar per head of lettuce. 

Yes, ideally I'd start all plants from seeds. In some cases, I start some of the same variety that I also buy a plant for. I start seeds for 6 Early Girl tomato plants each early spring *and* I buy one 4-inch potted Early Girl plant in mid-April. That's right, I start seeds and buy a plant for the exact same veggie. Because I don't have the greenhouse growing conditions in my own home for starting some seeds, my seedlings are always smaller than the ones I can buy locally in April. My home-grown seedlings will begin to produce tomatoes in mid to late August in my yard. The commercially-grown tomato plant will begin producing in late July. I will be able to harvest tomatoes 3 to 4 weeks earlier from the commercial plant. That's almost a month that I won't be buying any fresh tomatoes at all before my homegrown tomato seedlings begin producing. 

With the plant that I bought in mid-April, I repotted it into a larger pot the next day. It's now quite large and husky, whereas my seedlings are still on the small side. The plant itself cost $2,50. If I bought fresh tomatoes for that month beginning in late July through mid to late August, judging by how much I spend on tomatoes at WinCo every week, I would spend about $5 or $6 for this high-yielding indeterminate variety. (Online estimates for first month of production for this variety suggest a minimum of 5 lbs fruit.) For $2.50 now, I'll save $5 or more later. With an indeterminate variety of tomato, harvesting tomatoes earlier doesn't mean my harvest will end earlier. Indeterminate tomato plants continue to be productive until a killing frost. So my $2.50 or more savings is on top of what I will get back from the plant over the season. My home-started seedlings will produce well enough and give us the abundance we enjoy in late summer and early fall, just not as early as the commercially-started plant.

You really have to do the math yourself to see if buying the commercially-started seedlings are worth it. Maybe you wonder what seedlings I don't feel are worth buying. I can't imagine people actually buying these, given how easy they are to start directly in the garden, but Fred Meyer also had pea and bean seedlings in 6-packs today. That's about $1.79 to $1.89 per pea or bean plant (given the above calculations for 6-packs with crowded seedlings in each cell). According to several websites, each bean plant will produce about 1 pound of vegetables while each pea plant will produce about 1/2 pound per season. Peas and beans are so easy to start directly in the garden, they actually do better if direct seeded and not transplanted, and they grow so quickly they don't need the head-start that other plants benefit from. If I lived in a location with a very short growing season (late snow on ground in mid to late spring with early snowfall beginning in late summer), then buying seedlings might make sense. The time savings for peas and beans buying pre-sprouted seedlings is about 3 weeks for these plants.

I am actually using math skills learned in childhood now later in life. Who knew math would be so helpful in gardening?

The answer to the question in the title -- it depends, but mostly yes.