Weekly Round-Up of Posts

Our weather turned unseasonably cool and wet this past week, feeling more like fall than summer. I even made soup as a lunch for us on a couple of occasions and baked a lot as I tried to warm up the house a bit. This happens every August and it throws me for a loop. I start thinking fall when I should still be enjoying summer. Oh well, I'll have to get myself back into summer thinking.

I made a large batch (8 pints) of salsa this past week. My cilantro was ready for picking and I had the canned tomatoes, garlic, oregano already, so this was the week. I did have to buy the jalapeño peppers (as I don't grow those), adding them to my pick-up order on Monday. Next year, I may try growing one plant of jalapeños in a pot. My potted green bell peppers have done well this year. I'll make another large batch of salsa in a week, when I have more cilantro again. Sixteen pints of salsa should be enough to get my family through most of the year.

I also did some stocking up of meat. I bought ground beef, chicken breasts, pork breakfast sausage, Italian turkey sausage. It all seemed like a lot for us, but once I figured out how long this would last, I began to think I should put in another order just like this one. I'll do that next week. I also picked up a box of 5 dozen eggs. I could hardly believe how expensive eggs have become. This same sized box went from $4.75 a year ago to $7.47 this month. 

My daughters and I went foraging for blackberries last weekend, coming home with 3 ice cream pails of blackberries to freeze. It always surprises me that more people don't pick these wild blackberries. I mean, who wouldn't want free food, right? But that's their business. And it means all the more for me and my family. So far this year, I've just used the berries for fresh eating, as is and in yogurt, in pies, and freezing to use in winter. Later on in the season, I'll make a batch of pancake syrup and some jam. I freeze the pancake syrup in 1-cup portions, so I don't have to concern myself with mold growth if we don't get to using it all in a timely manner.

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are the latest of new posts.

My quirky (but useful) tendency of calculating the cost of everything has helped me figure out my goal inventories for our back-up pantry. You can read about how this relates to making pies and pudding in this post.

Do you use leftover pickle or olive brine? I used both this past week. Read about that here.

What was on your menu this past week? Our meals were simple but tasty, using as much as possible from our garden, orchard and foraging. The menus are in the post in this link.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!