Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the First Week of August

one of my lunches during the week, using up leftover baked beans,
garden produce for a salad, gifted watermelon, and the bread
that was badly over-baked and had to have the sides trimmed 

Friday
baked beans (using the leftover chicken barbecue sauce from Thursday's dinner, plus onions and cooked pinto beans)
scratch corn bread
green salad with garden lettuce and tomato
blackberries with honey

Saturday
leftover baked beans
fried cornbread
green salad (using garden kale, garden lettuce, and some onion in a homemade creamy dressing)

Sunday cook-out
hot dogs in homemade buns
homemade French fries
green salad using garden lettuce and kale
garden tomato wedges

Monday
spaghetti with beefy marinara
blackberry pie

Tuesday's dinner

Tuesday
lentil and barley salad, along with with garden greens, garden tomatoes, and garden cucumber, topped with boiled egg slices
crackers (my daughter bought the crackers at Dollar Tree for our dinner -- it was her night to cook. They tasted great with the salad!)
blackberry pie

Wednesday's dinner

Wednesday
garden beet green, garden garlic, and onion frittata, topped with marinara sauce
brown rice topped with marinara
beet salad (using the root of the garden beets from which I plucked the beet greens, some leftover sweet pickle juice, chive blossom vinegar, and salt)

Thursday
chicken curry (using chicken leg quarters, canned tomato paste, onions, homemade plum chutney, garden kale, seasonings, coconut milk)
brown rice
pears from our trees


A delicious week, with an abundance of garden produce, several meatless entrees, and lots of variety.

When I was cleaning the kitchen, one day earlier this week, I decided to get out the fall tablecloth. I'm not pushing summer out the door, exactly, but ushering in a season of harvest and thanksgiving. (Plus, the summer table runner and straw mats were needing a good cleaning.) We have so much for which to be thankful.

Live Chat Opportunity
For anyone interested, I will be online and live tomorrow morning (Saturday, August 10, 2019) from 9 AM to 11 AM, PDT with a post of miscellaneous "stuff" from this past week and to answer any questions you may have about how I do things, what my days' schedules look like, particular recipes you'd like, or even to ask a question of another online friend, here. I also have a couple of questions of my own for which I'd like to get some suggestions (one having to do with how to best patch or salvage jeans with a hole in a bad/indecent spot, and the other needing a recipe for rhubarb chutney that uses ingredients that I have on hand -- I'll specify those ingredients tomorrow). Ruthie, I'll type up my recipe for pita bread in this post tomorrow morning. Anyway, if you can drop by, say hi tomorrow morning from 9 to 11 AM PDT. I'd love to chat with you all. If you can't be there, then, I'll check back on the comments over the rest of the weekend.

Have a great weekend, everybody! Hope to hear from some of you tomorrow!

The State of August's Grocery Budget

I am very thrilled to report that the grocery money is stretching really far this month. I have shopped at the restaurant supply (SmartFoodservice/Cash & Carry), Fred Meyer, and Walmart and have spent $90.24 so far, leaving $34.89 remaining of my $125.13 for the month. The only other store at which I will definitely shop this month is WinCo. However, I only plan on spending $5.67 there. I will have $29.22 leftover for making stock-up purchases as I find great deals.

What I bought:

25 lbs of rolled oats
1 gallon of mayonnaise (a stock-up item for winter)
50 lbs of all-purpose flour
15 dozen eggs
1 lb of butter (stretching this butter with oil, making soft butter to get us through August)
8 gallons of 2% milk (for drinking -- I'll freeze what we don't use for September)
3 gallons of whole milk (for making yogurt)
1 jar of instant regular coffee
1 jar of instant decaffeinated coffee
2 cans of tuna fish (a stock-up item for winter)
1/2 gallon of coconut milk (for my non-dairy use plus a couple of nights of curry for the family)
2 packages of hot dogs (for 4 small cookouts in August)
10 lbs of chicken leg quarters
3 cans of frozen orange juice concentrate (a stock-up item for winter)
3 lbs of vegetable shortening (for pie-making this summer and fall)

I plan to buy:

12 oz of chocolate chips
80 corn tortillas
$1.50 worth of cocoa powder (a stock-up item for fall and winter)


You will notice that there is no mention of buying any fresh produce. That is because we simply don't need any this month! Yay! We were given a whole watermelon, and we've been picking blackberries, pears, and apples for our fruit. And we still have rhubarb! For veggies, we have tomatoes, lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, beets, cucumbers, snow peas, garlic, and watercress that we're harvesting right now from our garden. We still have about 5 pounds of carrots, some onions, a little cabbage, and a few potatoes left from previous months. The summer squash and green beans will be ready to harvest in about one week, and the potatoes, winter squash/pumpkin, plums, and more pears, apples, and a few ever-bearing raspberries will be ready in September. I nixed the bananas and any other produce purchases for August, unless I come across a stellar deal.

As you can see in my list of purchases, I'm already stocking up (little by little) on some foods for fall and winter. I'll continue to buy what I can, here and there, as I find good prices. So, that's the state of our grocery budget for August. We're doing well and feel so blessed.

Freezing Blackberries in Bulk and on Trays

My two daughters and I went out foraging for blackberries Monday evening. We brought 3 ice cream pails with us and each filled one. We plan on doing this three or four more times this month. That's a lot of blackberries! These berries will supplement any fresh or canned fruit that we buy this fall and winter.

The way that we use the frozen berries dictates how I freeze them. We have two main ways that they are used: one, I bake a dessert for the entire family or make a small batch of jam; and two, we add just a few berries at a time to foods like smoothies, homemade yogurt, or to add just a bit of color or flavor to foods like applesauce.

The most expedient way to freeze the berries is just washed, then scooped into quart-size freezer bags or containers. This method takes the least amount of hands-on time. The berries tend to clump together, so these bags of berries are best-suited to uses that call for an entire quart at a time.

fresh berries not yet frozen

The second method is to wash them, then spread on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper or parchment paper. I freeze the entire tray full of berries, then after a couple of hours they are frozen enough to transfer to a gallon-sized freezer bag. With these berries frozen individually, we can easily pour out however much we want at a time.

Two jelly roll sheet pans fill a gallon-sized ziploc bag

The first method can also be used to get just a few berries at a time, but it involves whacking the bag on the counter's edge to break up the clump, and risks damaging the freezer bag. I wash and reuse all of our freezer bags until they're falling apart, so by preparing the berries in such a way that whacking is completely unnecessary, I extend the life of each bag. Plus, my daughters are super pleased to have everything easy for making smoothies or adding to jars of yogurt. And I like making things easier for everyone else.

The bonus in using the second method for freezing is that the berries actually freeze faster and preserve more of their nutrient value. That's always a good thing.

I will still freeze about half of the berries in clumps in quart-sized bags, as that's easy for me, and I can use those berries in many recipes. It's one of those things that doesn't have to be all or none. I can do some each way and still come out ahead.

Basic Ingredients with Multiple Uses: 5 Different Ways to Use Rolled Oats

If you've been reading my grocery shopping plans for the past several months, you will have likely noticed that I buy basic ingredients and transform them into a diverse repertoire of meals. My pantry stock-up plan for this fall includes buying stock-up quantities of several different grains and legumes. These basic ingredients are some of the most affordable foods that you can buy, making them the  center of my plan for a spartan grocery budget. Eating the same basic ingredients can become a tad dull, however. To keep these interesting, I implement a variety of ideas in their use, trying to see new possibilities for familiar ingredients.

You may have noticed that in August's grocery plan, I planned to buy a 25-lb sack of rolled oats. The 25-lb bag was on sale at Cash & Carry, motivating me to brainstorm the many ways that I use oats.

A lot of websites will feature articles on XX number of ways to use a particular ingredient. In looking closely, a lot of the recipes are just variations on a theme. For instance, you may find a dozen recipes for baked goods when looking up what to do with oats. That type of information is definitely helpful; but what I wanted to explore was how to see an ingredient in a different way and find less traditional uses for it. Today, I'm going to look at rolled oats.

First thoughts include cooked oatmeal as a breakfast cereal, homemade granola, and oatmeal cookies. I know from my own experience that rolled oats can be used in many more ways than this.


As a beverage
Maybe you're already familiar with the non-dairy, milk-substitute beverage, horchata. My daughters first introduced me to horchata. They were studying Latin American culture in school and were tasked with preparing something Hispanic for the rest of their class. They chose to make oat horchata. While horchata is often made with rice, almonds, and/or coconut, there is also a version that uses oats, sometimes known as Agua de Avena (oatmeal water). There are lean versions (including only oats, water, cinnamon, and a small amount of sweetening) and rich versions (the above along with the addition of some sweetened condensed milk) of this beverage. For the rich version, you can take a look at the recipe on this page. When my daughters made this, and when I subsequently have made it, I've added a bit of vanilla extract to the cinnamon or omitted the cinnamon altogether and flavored with almond extract.

You can also simply make oat milk to use in savory dishes and sauces, omitting the cinnamon and sweetening. Soak 1 cup of rolled oats in 3  1/2 cups of water for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Then process in a blender with a pinch of salt added until the oats are pureed. Strain through a sieve lined with cheesecloth. Refrigerate the strained liquid until needed. Stir the oat milk before each use. Oat milk will keep in the refrigerator for about 1 week. If cooking with oat milk, for instance to make a sauce, keep in mind that oat milk, as grain-based, will thicken as it cooks. When making something like a cream soup or cooked sauce, you would want to reduce any other thickeners (like flour) that are called for in the recipe.

Once you have the plain version of oat milk, you can easily add flavors to it, such as almond or vanilla extract, chocolate syrup, cinnamon, and sweetenings like honey, stevia, or cane sugar.

I've made this for myself when I've been out of soy, almond, or rice milk. It tends to have sediment that settles to the bottom of the container, but otherwise it works very well and I especially like it as the base for hot cocoa for myself.

Obviously, oats have a different nutrient make-up than dairy milk. But oat milk does make a good substitute in a pinch or to replace other commercial non-dairy milks. Beyond just an emergency replacement, horchata is delicious in its own right and worth giving a try some evening when you're preparing a Hispanic meal.


As a flour
All out (or almost all out) of all-purpose flour? You can make flour with rolled oats. Simply process unflavored rolled oats in a food processor, blender, or coffee grinder until the consistency of flour. Pulsing the machine will result in a more uniform texture without burning out your motor. Every 60 seconds, take the lid off of your machine and stir up the particles then pulse again. This helps redistribute any particles which keep missing the blades.

You can use oat flour in quick breads (non-yeast breads that rely on baking powder or baking soda plus an acid like buttermilk and/or egg for leavening) or yeast breads.

My favorite baked good for using homemade oat flour is oat scones. I substitute oat flour for about half of the all-purpose flour in a scone recipe. They bake up nice and crumbly (just the way I like scones) with an oat-y flavor.

Oat flour also makes tasty muffins. Egg, oil, and milk help bind oat flour in the muffins, so oat muffins do turn out less crumbly than scones.

Another way that I enjoy using homemade oat flour in a quick bread is loaf-style, either as a free-form loaf of scone dough patted out into a mound on a buttered baking sheet, or baked in a buttered loaf pan, as in this honey-oat bread. For the scone bread, just like making individual scones, adding some all-purpose flour will help hold the baked bread together. Oat loaf breads are the type of thing that goes well with a pot of soup for a warming supper.

You can also use oat flour in banana bread, using about 1/2 oat flour, 1/2 all-purpose flour. If you google "oat flour banana bread," you should be able to pull up several recipes that use oat flour in the bread.

In addition to baking quick breads, oat flour can also be substituted for a portion of the wheat flour in a yeast bread. Since oat flour holds moisture so well, limit it to 1/3 of the flour called for, with the remaining flour as all-purpose flour. I've used a basic white bread recipe, substituting oat flour for some of the all-purpose flour, and the resulting bread has been very delicious. Oat flour seems to have a naturally sweet flavor, which I think makes this a great bread for toasting.


In place of breadcrumbs
Rolled oats can also stand-in for bread crumbs when making meatloaf, meatballs, or bean patties or loaves. If you pulse some dry oats in a blender or food processor for a few brief seconds, the result should be a coarse meal, which is about right as a breadcrumb substitute.


As a savory dish
Rice isn't the only grain in the pantry to be used for savory sides. For a quick savory breakfast, lunch, or supper, oats can be added to eggs, such as in this Indian Oats and Scrambled Eggs, or as the grain-base for topping with a fried egg and veggies, such as in this Tex-Mex fried egg, salsa, cheese, and avocado topped oatmeal. There is nothing remotely "nursery" about these oatmeal dishes. They are robust, full of flavor, and filling enough to stand in for a quick meal at any time of the day.

Once you're on-board with the whole savory oats as a possibility, then you're ready to try risotto-like dishes made with oats. Most oatmeal risotto recipes call for steel cut oats. However, this recipe, here, uses rolled oats, along with mushrooms, onions, stock, wine, and cheese.


As the basis for a patty
When you have leftover cooked oatmeal, here's an option for using it up that won't look or taste anything like a bowl of porridge. This recipe from SparkPeople uses egg, pepper, and salt mixed in with cooked oatmeal to make a basic savory patty.  Spruce this up with some minced onion, minced mushrooms, green pepper, bits of ham, and some garlic and you have something extraordinary.

Here's another patty suggestion, from the Prudent Homemaker. It's a rolled oats patty that is seasoned with sage, poultry seasoning, and dried onions. The patty is then smothered in a gravy made from Cream of Mushroom soup and milk. I think you could also make a simple pan gravy after frying the patties using any oil left in the pan, supplemented with other fat (perhaps saved chicken fat), flour, chicken soup base/bouillon, sage, and milk and/or water. Thanks to Gaila in the comments for calling attention to this recipe.


Here are 5 non-traditional uses for rolled oats. This should keep me going with my 25-lb sack for a while. How else can they be used?

Can This Be Salvaged? Over-Baked Loaves of Bread

Saturday afternoon, I began a 4-loaf batch of whole wheat sandwich bread, enough to last my household about 10 days. I had just picked up a large bag of all-purpose flour, so I could blend whole wheat and white to make a fluffier loaf than we'd been using for the month of July. I worked at kneading this batch to result in a light texture to the finished bread. The raised loaves went into a hot oven around 6 PM. About 6:10 PM, we received a phone call which put us all into emergency action. I completely forgot about the bread in the oven. However, I did take a couple of minutes to check and lock all of the doors and make sure the stove was turned off. We were gone for over 2 hours. Our urgent errand was taken care of and all was well, with one exception. When we walked in the door, the timer on the oven was ringing and the air had the smell of burnt toast, lots of burnt toast.

This is what very well-done bread looks like. Not only were the 4 loaves very brown on the outside, but they were very lightweight, and had shrunk away from the pans' sides considerably.

Odd thing, I went online and did an image search to see if other people had burned bread this badly, and if that bread could be salvaged, yet the only loaf that I could find pictures of online that were worse-looking than mine was a loaf that was found in Pompeii and had been carbonized by the lava flow.

After a half-hour of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to try cutting away some of the hardened crust from one of the loaves, and this is what I found. Inside, the bread was not that bad. It's a little dry, but once you cut the hard and thick crust off, it's edible, palatable, and salvageable. I estimate that we'll lose about 1/3 of the bread by removing the burnt crust, but a one-third loss is better than a 100% loss.

I like to think of this as pre-toasted bread.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the End of July

Friday
frittata with garden Swiss chard and onions (I'm now using eggs that I had frozen in June, they're working great)
brown rice
steamed carrots
freshly-baked blackberry pie

Saturday
brown rice and beans
green salad with garden lettuce and kale plus cucumber in homemade vinaigrette
blackberry pie

Sunday
bean and cheese burritos in homemade whole wheat tortillas
cole slaw

Monday
scrambled eggs
baked potato topped with steamed garden kale and cheese sauce

Tuesday
leftover refried beans
sauteed garden kale and onions
homemade French bread and butter
fresh blackberries

Wednesday
ham and egg fried rice, with cabbage, garden snow peas, garden garlic, and leftover brown rice (ham was from Easter)
freshly-baked blackberry pie

Thursday
barbecued chicken leg quarters (Walmart's 59 cents/lb in 10-lb bags)
brown rice
green salad with garden lettuce and tomatoes
freebie watermelon
blackberry pie

Looking over our menu, I noticed that we ate blackberries on 5 nights. That's a lot of blackberries!

It was a low meat consumption week -- not planned, it just worked out that way. But it's appreciated as this preserved our meat stores. Most of our produce was either free or fairly low-cost, such as cabbage at 49 cents/lb, carrots at 44 cents/lb, or onions at 28 cents/lb.

For breakfasts, we had toasted French bread, homemade granola, and homemade blueberry muffins (with blueberries from our garden).

Lunches were whatever anyone wanted to prepare for them self. I had a lot of salads, some pesto or leftover cheese sauce on French bread, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and my dinner leftovers when I couldn't eat everything. It was a good and frugal week.

What was on your menu this past week?

Where's Your Blessing This Month?

I'll show you one of mine. Even though I feel that making our grocery budget on a shoestring work is an impossible task, I can see that we will have blackberry pie all August long. Yes, that's a blessing! My pantry, fridge , and freezer may sometimes look skimpy to me, but the Lord has provided an abundance of blackberries, a big bag of sugar, and the makings for pie pastry. How I can I feel neglected by God if I can have pie every night, if I want?

My daughter picked an ice cream pail full of blackberries on Tuesday, so I made this pie for Wednesday and Thursday desserts. Being able to have blackberry pie all month long feels truly indulgent.

Where have you found your blessings lately?

Are You Bad With Money?

"You must be bad with money." "I'm good with money." Our culture likes to divide itself into heroes and villains. Maybe there's really no such thing as good with money or bad with money. Maybe it's really all about how we approach money, based on our background, life experience, and even genetics. (Yes, I do believe that some personality traits are heritable.) We each reach adulthood with baggage that infuses our money responses.

In a similar vein, I've observed that people generally fall into one of three categories when it comes to how we respond to unexpected bills. There's the person who freaks out and can't wrap their head around a bill, whether it's a $25 co-pay at the doctor's office or a multi-thousand dollar repair bill on our home or car. The unexpected bill itself hits their pain buttons pretty hard. Then there's the person who isn't fazed in the least when they receive these bills. The dollar amount is just a number to them. They've got it lucky. And then there's the rest of us, myself included. When they/we receive an unexpected bill, at first we freak out, but then we come around to the idea that this work needs or needed to be done, or that life has it's bad along with the good. This is totally me.

What brings this up is we've had a car repair need for a little while. When I first heard a ball-park estimate, I did freak out. "Where will I find the money?" "How could something possibly cost that much?" But I came around to the idea of the bill and accepted that car ownership has its costs. When I actually did take the car in to get a real estimate, the number was nearly double what I had anticipated. But do you know what? I didn't freak out, not even for a minute. Do you know why? Because I had already come to grips with the thought of a "big bill" to get the car fixed. In the real-life moment, it didn't seem to matter how much bigger that amount was. I had accepted it and was ready to move to the next step. This doesn't mean I'm "good" with money. It just means that for whatever background reasons, I have been blessed with the ability to accept this kind of bad news.

Sometimes in relationships, both partners are either the type B or type C with regards to accepting big bills. In those cases, life's unplanned emergencies don't rifle their financial feathers too much. But in other cases, one partner is definitely a type A and the other is type B or C. This can be a challenge for both partners. How would you like to feel that you were always being "forced" into spending more money than felt comfortable? Or how would it feel to be on the other end, always trying to "shock" your partner into "reform?" It's tough for both partners. I can imagine it's pretty uncomfortable to be a type A when it comes to response to unexpected bills. I'm glad that I don't have to deal with that all of the time. So, what can you do if your partner is the type A and you're a B or a C?

Be a compassionate leader in this area.
Pick your moment carefully as to when to reveal unexpected expenses. And choose your words with even more care when that moment of reveal comes up. No one wants to or should be shamed for responding to bills in "their normal way." And remember your own humanness with humility. You may be well-suited to handling difficult financial situations, but you certainly have weaknesses in other areas. I can never, ever remember which way to screw anything. My mind begins to zone out when someone explains anything technical to me. I have an irrational fear of dental appointments. I lose my temper far too easily. I am impatient. And the list goes on. My partner needs me to be understanding and careful of their financial pain points. I will never be the one to "enlighten" him to the ways of unexpected bill acceptance. And maybe that's a good thing. We balance each other out. Knowing what I know about myself and him, I can just take charge in this one little area and get stuff that needs doing done, without bringing unnecessary stress into his mind. He, on the other hand, can help me think through a financial situation and assess whether or not work/repairs/help really needs doing. I don't succumb to his fears or reactions, but carefully take a second look. It's a partnership, right? It's not at all about me being good with money or him being bad. It's just a matter of our backgrounds influencing our gut reactions.

If you happen to be a type A with these bills, it's not a moral or character flaw. There may be work you can do with yourself, so that you can remove some of the emotion when these situations arise. That could make your financial life feel a whole lot better, I'd imagine. If you're both type As, this may be something you could work on together. But if it's not, you could still be the one to lead your union through treacherous financial waters, with personal work or maybe with a therapist who deals with money response and baggage. It's painful to be either a type A or type C, so practicing a little compassion and patience, plus choosing words and moments wisely can go a long, long way. I'm neither bad nor good when it comes to money. My responses are not indications of character, simply the sum of my background. I try to remember that.

Grocery Planning For August

Our supplies were hit hard in the month of July. We ran out of so many things and had very little wiggle room to restock. I sacrificed the purchase of all-purpose flour so that I could buy more milk, fresh produce and take advantage of a deal on tomato paste. The good news is that we have a 9 or 10 month supply of tomato paste. That's a lot of pizza, spaghetti, tomato soup, and ketchup. With the all-purpose flour, I hid away a small stash (about 2 quarts) in another closet, only using it when absolutely necessary. We used whole wheat flour exclusively for everything else, pancakes, waffles, muffins, bread, and as a thickener. This worked -- we got through a long month on very little white flour. I also ran out of decaffeinated coffee. I'm on to my stock of various herb teas. They are quite good, but I do miss the taste of coffee first thing in the morning. We finished off the fresh eggs (from the 15 dozen case I bought a couple of months ago); however, we still a some frozen eggs. And we just kept running out of milk. I pre-spent some of August's grocery money on 2 gallons of milk over the weekend, as I had a coupon. I thought this would be August's milk, but I noticed yesterday that one of those gallons had been brought into the kitchen from the garage fridge. Sigh. We've gone through 10 gallons of milk this month. That is double what we had been using. I think someone must be watering the garden with the milk. What this must mean, though, is that if we're going through so much milk, then we must be going through less of something else. Produce needed constant replenishing. Even with a garden, I had to buy additional produce all month long. So for this next month, I need a better plan.

I have 13 cents leftover from July, but I pre-spent $3.98 on milk for August. For the rest of my August budget, then, I have $121.15.

Given how much milk we went through, I need to up my milk purchase to about 9 additional gallons. Flipp.com indicates that milk will be on sale at Fred Meyer through next Tuesday (Senior Discount day), so a gallon will cost me $1.71. Next item, even though the all-purpose flour is not on sale at Cash & Carry, I'll buy the 50-lb bag that I had planned for this past month. And I'll get my jar of instant decaf the next time I'm down by Walmart. Hopefully we can get by with an additional $15 for produce for the month, beyond the bananas and watermelon. We'll see. But I do think I need an extra $10 that isn't allocated to any item, just to be on the safe side to get us through till September.

Let's see how this all works out, now.

13 cents leftover from July, 2 gallons milk pre-bought ($3.98) -- $121.15 for the rest of August's groceries.

Cash & Carry/SmartFood Service

old fashioned rolled oats, 25 lb bag, 15.89 (63 cents/lb, check WinCo’s prices first)

Simply Value egg yolk mayo, gal, 5.97, thru 8/4

ADM hotel and rest. flour, 50 lbs, 13.09

First Street large loose eggs, 15 doz. 8.99

so far at C & C 43.94

WinCo

chocolate chips 1.88

oats, maybe if under 63 cents/lb

garlic powder if less than $4.61/lb

bananas, 42 cents/lb, 6 lbs total, 2.52

corn tortillas, 80 ct, 2.29

cocoa powder, about $1 worth

WinCo so far – 7.69 (w/o oats and garlic powder)

Fred Meyer -- Senior Day

butter, Moovelous 2.51 ea, get 2 (5.04),  get 1

milk – 9 gals, 16.11

instant coffee, One of the Perks, 2.69

Heritage Farms hot dogs, 75 cents, 2 packs

almond milk, 1/2 gallon, 2.25
kroger canned tuna, 71 cents, get 2 (1.42)

Fred Meyer, so far 29.01 $26.50

Walmart

decaf coffee 3.58

bananas, 42 cents/lb (if don't get at WinCo)

garlic powder 98 cents

chicken leg quarters 5.98

Great Value orange juice, 12-oz 1.23

shortening great value 3.44

Walmart so far 15.21 $14.23

Sprouts

watermelon, 1.98 whole (w/ raincheck)

That is $97.83, so far. A bit more than I would like to have already allocated. So, I went out to the garden to check on the garlic. Remember the garlic scapes from a couple of weeks ago? Well, some of my garlic is ready for digging. This means I can x out the garlic powder for the month. In addition, I thought I'd cut back on the butter to just 1 pound. After digging a little garlic, I made some soft butter just as I have done in the past (see this link).

In addition, I thought we could use oil that I flavor with herbs and garlic from the garden. Have you ever seen flavored oils for dipping bread? The oil base is usually olive oil. Desperate times call for desperate measures, or so they say, so I just used my ordinary vegetable oil (that I bought in a 35 lb box a couple of months ago -- gee, I knew that would come in handy). For this first batch I chose rosemary, garlic, and kosher salt. The salt is completely optional. I just thought it would ease the transition between salted butter and oil for my family. I made just a very small jar of this seasoned oil. In case you haven't heard this, you shouldn't make flavored oils with garlic and then store at room temperature or for too long. There's a slight risk of botulism growing in homemade garlic-infused oil that is kept unrefrigerated or for too long. (See this article for more info.) The FDA recommends using homemade garlic-infused oils within a week and to keep these oils refrigerated. So, that will be on my radar for the beginning of next week. I'll plan a dinner that incorporates any remaining seasoned oil for Sunday or Monday. (Hmmm, pasta salad might be good with this oil.)  After making the oil, I made something else that can be used for spreading on bread -- pesto! I know this won't last more than a day or two, but it will be very appreciated, here. We should be able to manage just fine with buying only 1 pound of butter this next month. (I still have 2 pounds in the freezer, but I'll be saving those for the holidays.)

This now brings me to $94.34. That will leave $26.81 for wiggle room, extra produce as we need it, and a little leftover in case I find a great sale on something. Another tight month, but I think we're doing okay. I'll be stocking up on oats for the cold weather season. (It's not that far off,  shudder.) The mayo is on sale and will replace our current container sometime this fall when it runs out. The eggs will last at least 3 months, perhaps 4 months. Our stockpile of staples is very slowly growing.

Blackberry Season Has Begun!

My daughter walked in the door all excited one evening last week and said the blackberries were ripening at the school that is along her walk home from the bus. This local school gets ripe berries about 2 weeks before the ones on our property, so this is always exciting to get a jump-start on the blackberry season. My two daughters took the car and a small ladder to the school after dinner that evening and picked 2 and a half quarts of ripe berries. In addition to eating them fresh and in a couple of smoothies, I just had to bake one of these:

I don't know if you can tell, but I tried to cut a sunflower in the top crust for venting. One of my daughters knew right away what it was, so maybe I wasn't too far off.

We will be eating fresh blackberries until the end of August. Can you guess what is on my shopping list for August? Shortening -- for making pie pastry dough. I know I have linked to this recipe several times before, but it really is one of the easiest and most reliable pie crust recipes that I know. It's named "Fool-Proof Pie Pastry" for a reason. It really does come out great every time. Here's the link to the recipe. The recipe makes enough dough for 5 crusts. When I make a batch, I divide the dough into 5 parts and make 5 round patties, about 3/4-inch thick and 4 to 5 inches across. I then wrap each in plastic wrap and keep in a bag in the freezer. To use, I simply thaw a patty on the counter for about 45 minutes to an hour and then roll out. I like to sub 1 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the white flour. The whole wheat adds a nice crispness to the crust. But the all-white flour crust is also quite good -- light and flakey.

Anyway, blackberry pie is a seasonal favorite of mine, and because we have all of these wild blackberries in our area, whole blackberry pies cost me about $1 each to make. We're hoping to freeze lots of quarts of blackberries in the next few weeks, so that we can enjoy blackberry pies all winter long.

Watermelon Rind Bread and Butter Pickles

I wore myself out completely earlier this week and have spent several days pulling myself back together. I still feel very fatigued, though, but I wanted to share this with you.

On my sandwich today, I used homemade bread and butter pickles made with watermelon rind. With my last watermelon (from the 4th of July), I made both watermelon chunk pickles, using the recipe in this link, as well as thinly sliced bread and butter pickles, adapting this zucchini pickle recipe in this link, here. My regular watermelon pickles are cubes or chunks of watermelon rind. For the bread and butter ones, I sliced the trimmed watermelon rind into thin pieces before simmering in clear water briefly to soften them up. Then I added thinly sliced onions and cooked in the pickling solution I use for the zucchini pickles, increasing the turmeric a bit to add color to the white watermelon rind slices.

These pickles turned out well, a delicious addition to my sandwich. I'm making do with what I've got.

Those Bar Cookies Were Yummy Using Just Pretzels and Peanuts

I made these bar cookies again, this time using peanuts in place of mixed nuts, plus the pretzels. I made these for our church's coffee hour, along with some gingersnaps. The pretzel and peanut cookies went over well. And here I was afraid they wouldn't look as good using just the peanut/pretzel combo. Anyway, a few people asked me how to make them and said they'd never seen pretzels used in cookies.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for July

Friday
barbecued chicken leg quarters with a homemade marinade of soy sauce, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic, ginger powder, and red pepper flakes
canned corn (dented can from the markdown rack at Fred Meyer)
salad of garden greens in scratch homemade dressing
fruit salad of garden blueberries, raspberries, and a banana in a yogurt and honey dressing

Saturday
basic lentils and rice
cooked carrots
garden greens salad with homemade dressing

Sunday
lentil and vegetable soup using chicken stock made from the bones of Friday's BBQ chicken
homemade French bread

Monday
Swiss chard quiche, using a scratch crust, frozen eggs, milk, garden greens, onions, and cheese
garden greens salad
homemade bread and butter

Tuesday
refried beans and cheese
corny cornbread (using leftover corn in a scratch cornbread batter)
leftover soup from Sunday
fruit salad using last of the watermelon, banana, and some garden berries

Wednesday
falafel (I had leftover cooked lentils from making the curry, so turned them into falafel)
coconut curried lentils with homemade chutney
multi-grain and vegetable pilaf, using leftover rice, leftover bulgur wheat, and some millet, plus carrots, peas, and seasonings, all cooked in chicken stock
cucumber salad in yogurt, garlic, cumin, salt, and mint dressing
homemade ginger snaps (I had to bake a big batch of cookies to take to our church's coffee hour this Sunday-- these were from the reject pile)

Thursday
leftovers of falafel, curry, pilaf, and refried beans
red grapes (bargain-priced at 49 cents/lb at a local ethnic market)
ginger snaps



This was a typical week of summer menus for our household. As you can see, I cook less meat in summer. It just doesn't sound as good to me as bean or lentil-based meals. But, one of my family members mentioned missing meat, so tonight I'll make spaghetti in a meat sauce.

A second thing that's pretty evident is how much I cook using basic ingredients and rarely use mixes or convenience foods. It saves us a ton of money, and also means we can tailor the ingredients to what works for our own bodies. This past week, not only did I cook completely from scratch, but so did my two daughters and husband on their nights. I've tried to teach my kids how to scratch-cook as much as possible. I've shown them how to make salad dressings, pasta and pizza sauces, flour tortillas, pie pastry and so much more. When you are young and starting out in a career, paychecks can be small. As a result, food costs can seem to take up a large chunk of meager pay, especially if you're eating out or buying prepared, convenience foods. By learning how to cook from scratch, my daughters will at least have the choice to spend less on food. It will be up to them to make that choice, but I feel I have given them the tools.

I have another batch of cookies to bake for Sunday's coffee hour. Since I still have pretzel sticks and now have peanuts, I think I'll make the caramel nutty bars using peanuts and pretzels. I think they'll be a hit.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Odd Sense of Fun or Just Plain Sensible: An Afternoon Spent Scouting Out the Produce Bargains

Our fridge had that forlorn, empty look these past few days. You know -- when you mostly shop once per month, and it's now mid-month and time to pick up more milk and fresh produce. I actually thought I had bought all of the milk we'd need for the month, but we breezed through those 7 gallons in less than 3 weeks. In addition, despite keeping a fruit and vegetable garden, we like to have a few extra produce items that I don't grow or won't be ready for a while yet.

One of my daughters was home for the afternoon and she wanted to spend some time with me, so we packed up our lunches to-go and made an outing of scouring the local produce and ethnic markets. These markets don't advertise online the way that traditional stores do. So to know the prices, you have to go out and see first-hand. I'm fortunate as far as ethnic markets go. Our area is generously sprinkled with them. I like to check them all out at least once per summer. Then I have a reference point for lowest possible price on many of our produce items. We stopped at 6 markets, breaking for lunch mid-way, finding a park with picnic tables to enjoy an alfresco lunch. One market which has a good reputation for low prices didn't actually have anything that I wanted today. I keep that thought in the back of my mind -- just because I go into a shop or market does not mean that I am obligated to buy anything.

For $8.87 we bought 2 gallons of milk, 1 green pepper, almost 2 pounds of red grapes, a head of cabbage, 3 1/2 lbs of bananas, and 2 cucumbers. The red grapes were a real steal at 49 cents/lb. There were a few soft or moldy grapes at the bottom of the bags, but I knew that I could salvage the majority of the grapes with a wash and sort right after getting home. Upon close inspection, I ended up throwing out about 20 grapes from the entire bag, so I think we did quite well. We used half of the bag for tonight's dinner and the rest are in the fridge for tomorrow and Saturday. The cabbage was 10 cents less per pound (at 39 cents/ lb) than my other lowest price cabbage spot. Some great deals and we're now topped off to get through the last couple of weeks of July.

Bargain-hunting is my idea of a fun day. When I spy a mark-down rack, my eyes light up, conversation trails off, and I am completely distracted at the prospect of a deal to be found. Paired with time spent with one of my kids, and I'd say I had the perfect afternoon.