A big thanks and a tiny update

Hi friends,

First of all, thank you to all of you who prayed for me concerning my fractured tooth. And thank you for the encouragement and support you gave to me. I know that many times, we read blogs and don't comment, but we're still praying or sending our support without actually saying so. And I thank you for those thoughts and prayers that weren't in the comments. I appreciate all of you so very much.

So, about today -- no actual post other than this. I had consultations today and got even more bad news. It's taken energy and talking this through with family members to reach a point of acceptance. But I am still fearful of what is to come. (Aren't we all when something is uncertain and we know will cause pain?) At some point I will reach the other side of my current dental issues. I look forward to that point.

I'll have more to talk about tomorrow. 

For now, here's a pic of one of my favorite furry friends, a small red squirrel. He's so quick, cute, and a bit nervous. In this photo, I think he's just "stolen" a plum from the plum tree. He brings his plums up to the deck railing and eats here where he can keep a watch for predators in the yard. He puts a smile on my face when he comes to visit. And yes, I'm pretty sure it's the same red squirrel that comes to visit every time. I think this one knows me and trusts me. He'll let me come outside and stand and watch him. The others scamper away as soon as I step onto the deck. 

My other bright spot today was noticing a new sunflower opened up. It's too late in the season for it to develop edible seeds for us, but the bloom is very cheery. Finding bright moments on a hard day keeps my head above water as I swim to shore.

Have a good rest of your evening/day, and once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for prayers, encouragement, and support!

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Late Garden Season

We're still using a lot of garden produce in meals and snacks, although much of what we're now using has been harvested and brought indoors and not as much is garden fresh. But the meals have been delicious and wholesome. Here were our suppers for the week.

Friday

Friday
taco salads -- tortilla chips, beef, beans, garden lettuce, garden tomatoes, garden green onions, cheese
plums and cookies for dessert

Saturday

Saturday

garden kale and tomato frittata

white rice

Sunday (sorry, no photo)

bean burritos

apple wedges

tomatoes

Monday

Monday

beef stir fry with garden cabbage and carrots

white rice

Tuesday

Tuesday

chicken pot pie, using garden pumpkin, green beans, celery, sage, garlic, parsley, and purchased onion, plus leftover chicken in stock

blackberry cobbler

Wednesday

Wednesday

more taco salads -- using the other half of the bag of tortilla chips, beef, beans, garden lettuce, garden tomatoes, garden green onions, and cheese

plums and blackberry cobbler for dessert

Thursday 

coconut lentil curry over brown rice

tomato wedges

Friends, can I ask you to pray about something for me. I'm sad, scared and worried about an upcoming dental procedure. I fractured a tooth all the way to the bone recently and saw the dentist today. She said there's no way to save the tooth, and I'll have to have it extracted. For those of you who pray, could you pray that I will have courage to face this. It will be months before I can have an implant placed in the bone tissue. I know others have faced this type of situation. Knowing that helps me. Are there dental procedures you've been faced with that have been especially difficult? I know others go through much more difficult situations. But this is what I'm going through right now.

Because I needed to distract myself from my lousy dental visit, when I came home my two daughters were around and they kept me company while I made our green tomato sweet pickle relish. We made 5 half-pint jars, enough for the year. I used small green tomatoes that wouldn't ripen indoors (the plants are blackening from blight brought on with the week of cold rains), a garden red pepper and a garden green peppers, 1 whole onions from the store, some spices, sugar and vinegar. I can't always get rid of the discouragements in life, but I can try to add some successes to bad days. It makes me feel like the good and bad are better balanced, rather than a strictly bad day.

Something just occurred to me, that I can add to the "good" side of the balance for today. Knowing that you friends are reading here really cheers me up.

Wishing you all a lovely autumn weekend.

You're still frugal even if you drop a treat item into your grocery cart, right?

I did my first grocery shopping since September 3 this morning. We have lots of food at home, so there was little of which we were running short. One daughter was free in the AM and wanted to pick up some personal things for herself. So it seemed as good a time as any to make a run down to WinCo (my favorite local store, but a good 20 minutes away).

I didn't have a lot on my list, some bananas, raisins, popping corn, peanuts, avocados, coconut oil, organic flour (no additives like barley), a gallon of milk, a jar of mayo, and oh yeah a pound of Swiss cheese for my husband and 2 packages of bacon for me. I spent $41.31 for the above.

Those last couple of items were definitely treat items for us. My husband loves Swiss cheese, but Swiss is never one of the less expensive cheeses at our stores. I like my morning bacon a few days a week. So these 2 packs will last until I decide we need more groceries, likely in about 3 weeks.

How do I justify buying treats like these once or twice per month and still call myself frugal? Being frugal is about the big picture. It's not about cutting corners in every area of spending and living a bare bones existence. It would be pretty hard to keep a lifestyle like that up for very long. It's the big picture. Are we living below our means? Are we saving for our future? Are we doing what we can to give others a little help? Are we paying all of our bills? Are we keeping up our house and car? Are we taking good care of our health? If we can say "yes" to all of those things, and there is a bit of change left in the piggy bank, then it's not only okay to drop a treat item into the grocery cart, but that treat will go a long way to stave off hunger for bigger, more costly splurges.

My family's experience has been that when we treat ourselves to small pleasures here and there, we don't feel the need to have a supersized TV, or the latest car, or a cruise vacation, or bling, bling, bling. We feel more satisfied in our daily life by having small treats, and then we can live beneath our budget, take care of our needs, help someone else with their needs, etc, etc. 

So yes, I think you can still call yourself frugal if you drop those occasional treat items into your grocery cart. It just doesn't need to look like there's a party at your house every weekend, judging by that same cart.

By the way, in the next couple of times I grocery shop, I'll be spending way more than that measly $41.31. I'll need to stock up on many items to get through winter, and that won't be cheap!

A Happy Surprise for a Gloomy Autumn Day

It's definitely autumn here now. I made applesauce this morning with the badly blemished apples. I wound up freezing 4 pint containers of applesauce. not a whole lot, but I was basically using up the apples that would probably not last long in the fridge. 

I brought in all 18 of the pumpkins and winter squash. I used part of one pumpkin in a chicken pie for dinner tonight. It's very wet this week. During a brief break in the rain, I popped outside to see if I should bring in the hanging begonia plant.

What a surprise! My begonia is not done for the "summer." It has not one, but two blossoms on it. I think it wants me to leave it out for a while longer.

This is just what I needed. The gloomy days of autumn are hard for me to adjust to. When I woke up this morning, I asked myself how I would make the day feel happy. Sometimes the answer is just outside the window.

I hope you're having a good week and not feeling the autumn blues.

Chutney and My Mom's Chicken and Cashew Salad

Chutney is one of those expensive condiments in the grocery store, selling for $6 or $7 an 8-oz jar at my local Kroger store. I can make 16 ounces of chutney for under a dollar, as I grow both apples and plums. If I had to buy the fruit as well as the rest of the ingredients, I estimate my cost would be about $2 for 16 ounces of chutney.

Over the weekend I made a year's supply of chutney for my family. We enjoy curried dishes, here. I also use chutney in a chicken salad recipe that my mom used to make in the 1970s -- so delicious!

Anyway, chutney is an end-of-garden-season recipe to use odds and ends of fruits, plus onions, spices, vinegar and sugar. My mom's recipe calls for purple or red plums, although any plum will work, it just might not be as pretty. Her chutney recipe makes 2 half-pint jars, one to have and one to share.

Here's the recipe if this interests anyone.

Plum and Apple Chutney (yields 2 half-pints)

1 1/4 cups chopped, unpeeled, pitted plums (red or purple preferred for color)
1 cup pared, chopped crisp apple

1/2 cup diced onion

3/8 cup vinegar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon molasses

1/16 teaspoon ground cloves

1/16 teaspoon ground allspice

1/16 teaspoon ground ginger

3/16 teaspoon kosher salt

dash cayenne pepper

Sterilize 2 half-pint jars and lids.

In a stainless saucepan, combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil, stirring as the sugar dissolves. Reduce to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

Fill the sterilized jars. (Per Michigan State University Extension) Process in boiling water canner for 10 minutes. Cool in draft free location for 12 to 24 hours, check lids for seal, then store. 

The chicken salad that my mom made used some of this chutney. It was a favorite potluck dish as well as family supper. I'll give you that recipe, too, as it's a tasty, fall ingredient, main dish salad.

Curried Chicken and Cashew Salad (serves 4)

3 cups chopped, cooked chicken, cold

1/2 cup roasted salted cashew halves or pieces

2 cups chopped celery

1 cup diced apple

1 cup grapes, halved

1/4 cup sliced green onion

1/4 cup golden raisins (I use regular raisins)

dressing:

1 cup mayonnaise or plain yogurt or half mayo/half yogurt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 tablespoons chutney

1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder, adjust for taste

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

pinch cayenne

Combine dressing ingredients in a large bowl. Toss gently with the rest of the salad ingredients. Chill for 1 hour.

Other ideas for using chutney:

• in curry dishes, like lentil curry or chicken or turkey curry
• on a cheese and cold meat board as a spicy condiment
• stirred into cottage cheese
• spooned over a block of cream cheese, to use as a bread or cracker spread
• mixed half and half with mayo as a sandwich spread -- leftover Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham sandwiches
• on a toasted cheese sandwich, between the cheese and the bread, then broil
• mixed into mayo with curry powder as a dressing for a curried pea and peanut cabbage slaw
• as a glaze for meat, puree with a small amount of water
• spooned over a wheel of brie cheese, then baked. A sweet and spicy warm spread for crackers or bread
• pureed to use as a dipping sauce for egg or spring rolls
• as a condiment to go with grilled sausages, roasted poultry or pork

Any other suggestions? How do you like to use chutney?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for Mid-September

Here's something new for my household's grocery shopping -- we bought 30 pounds of beef from a rancher with a small-scale operation. This was something I'd been wanting to do for a decade. Now was the right time. 

I wasn't sure how much freezer space 30 pounds would take up, so I didn't want to buy any more than that at this time. I'll buy more when we use all of this. 

This beef was a lot more expensive per pound than grocery store beef, but it is much more flavorful, and I know that the animals are well-cared for, and the quality is higher (ground beef is 85/15, the stew meat had just enough fat on it to make it tender without needing to drain the meat after searing). So, our meals for this last week begin with the first of our beef purchase.

Friday (my husband cooked and I forgot to get a photo)
beef, tomatoes, garlic and macaroni
apple wedges

Saturday (again no photo)
scrambled eggs
rice
tomato-cucumber salad

Sunday

Sunday
beef stew, using our garden potatoes, carrots, celery, garlic, green beans, and herbs, plus beef
cornbread for the rest of the family

Monday

Monday
baked beans
sautéed garden veggies
apple wedges
cabbage and cucumber slaw
plum cake (for the rest of the family)

Tuesday

Tuesday
roasted chicken, gravy
mashed potatoes or slice of bread
cabbage, cucumber, tomato salad

Wednesday

Wednesday
leftover chicken in bbq sauce
white corn grits
apples and plums
tomato, cucumber, basil, garlic salad

cookies

Thursday --
I was super hungry and barely remembered to take a pic

Thursday
chicken soup, using leftover chicken, garden celery, carrots, green beans, herbs, and a store onion
fresh-baked French bread

cookies

Lots of good produce from the garden this week to go with 1 whole chicken and 2 pounds of beef. I've been digging the carrots for meals as I need them. So far, the first 2 pots have good-sized carrots. I don't expect the other 4 pots to have equally-large carrots, as those were planted and thinned just a little later.

Breakfasts included toasted homemade bread, jam and peanut butter, oatmeal, no-bake peanut butter-oatmeal cookies (my daughter thinks of these as breakfast cookies), eggs, coffeecake, cornbread and syrup, tomatoes, plums, apples, orange juice, and some commercial cereal and pork sausage. For lunches, we used some of the leftover roasted chicken in sandwiches, plus apples, plums, tomatoes, cabbage, and salad greens for produce. 

So, that's what we ate this week. What was on your menu?

How we stay warm while we delay turning on our furnace

Maple-Pecan Cookies

I tend to bake and cook more often this time of year than even in the dead of winter. This week I've baked cookies, a pan of cornbread, 2 coffee cakes, a 3-loaf batch of wheat bread, roasted a whole chicken, cooked beef stew and 2 pots of soup, made a pan of baked beans, and kept the dehydrator going with plums and tomatoes all week, on top of using the stovetop for quick-cooking. I'm doing all of this house-warming cooking because it adds a bit of heat to the house in these last few weeks before we turn on the furnace.

Italian Prunes, halved, pitted and dried

It may still be warm during the day where you live, but for us in the maritime northwest, the daytime highs have cooled substantially. A daytime high of 62 degrees F feels chillier  to me when the temperatures drop off in the early fall than when the cold winter yields to spring. To compensate, we're putting extra layers on our bodies and extra layers on our beds.

I've never calculated if using the oven more to add heat to our house is more cost-effective than just turning on the furnace. But I do know that I can tolerate cooler indoor temps better if I'm moving around in the kitchen. And putting on a sweater or an extra blanket is the time-proven action that pairs with turning the thermostat down a degree or two. In addition, my family loves all of the extra baked goods and comfort foods they're getting right now.

Anyway, for every week we put off turning on the furnace, I'm sure we're saving at least a little money on utilities.

Want to bake some Maple-Pecan cookies?

Here's how I make mine:

I use a chocolate chip cookie recipe as a guide, substituting maple flavoring for vanilla extract and chopped pecans for chocolate chips. I use real butter as the fat and increase the flour called for in the recipe. Otherwise, the Maple-Pecan cookie recipe is pretty much like the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe on a package of chocolate baking chips.

Here are the ingredients and measurements:

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon maple flavoring
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1  1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped pecans

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and flavoring. Mix in salt, soda, flour and pecans. Chill the dough for 30 minutes. 

Drop dough by teaspoonful onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees F for 9-11 minutes, until browned and crispy-looking around the edges. Remove from baking sheet right away.

These cookies baking in the oven not only warmed me up, but definitely made my house smell like fall.

Do you use your oven more in fall to help warm the house, too?

What one fall food are you most looking forward to?

One daughter and I finished picking the apples from our three trees on Monday afternoon. It's actually kind of fun to pick apples -- like a game, trying to snag apples high in the branches using a picker tool without knocking them to the ground. We knocked 2 out of the trees, which I chopped up promptly and put in a bag in the freezer for making crisps, pies, cobblers, and spiced apple chunks later this fall or winter. We now have a produce drawer that is completely full of apples for cooking, baking and fresh eating.

While we were harvesting the apples, my daughter asked me what fall food I am most looking forward to. Hmm, that's a hard question to answer. Fall offers so many great flavors. Choosing just one fall food is difficult. There's pumpkin-spice everything, hot apple cider, roasted squash cubes, beef stew, chili con carne, gingerbread cake, pecan pie -- I couldn't decide what I want most.

Then this afternoon (Tuesday), I was taking a short walk with my other daughter and we both noticed the beautiful palette of colors on the trees' leaves in our neighborhood. This is my artist daughter. She and I often notice colors and patterns when we go for walks. The talk of fall foods came up with this daughter as well. Again, the consensus -- so many delicious foods to enjoy in fall. After all of this fall food talk, I decided the one food I am most looking forward to this fall is apple pie.

How about you? What one fall food tops your must-eat list this year?

Not having the right tools can make chores so much harder

I needed to clean the dryer lint chute this morning. Loads seemed to be taking longer to dry. And I know it can be a fire hazard to have a build-up of lint in the chute. We clean the screen with each load, but lint falls down beneath the screen. Speaking as a non-contortionist, that fallen lint can't be easily seen.

Anyway, I need to buy the right tool to make this job easier for me. But for today, the "tools" I had to work with were a wire coat hanger, lots of duct tape, a cardboard pasta box, and the vacuum cleaner. I improvised an extension for the vacuum hose with the pasta box and some of the duct tape. And I made one coat hanger/duct tape attracting tool after another to pick up loose lint and dust that the vacuum attachment couldn't reach. I did get the job done, but it took me about an hour and a half and lots of frustration.

Now on the flip side, having a good tool will make a job go so much more smoothly. After about an hour I grabbed a good flashlight so I could see down the chute and identify the remaining pile of lint/dust that was within my primitive tool reach.

An interesting thing -- we had been thinking the element on our 28 year old dryer was wearing/burning out, as loads were taking longer to dry. After cleaning the chute today, I put a load of sheets into the dryer, went to heat up a bowl of soup for my lunch, took my lunch break (which is only long enough to eat a bowl of soup), and came back to the kitchen to wash my bowl. Was I ever surprised when I couldn't hear the dryer operating! My load of sheets finished drying in about 3/4 of the more recent dry time.

I will be ordering the proper tool this very week. I could have used that hour of work time on a different project. Sometimes being cheap costs more in other areas.

Because a photo of my dryer is not terribly interesting, I also thought I'd show you one of my other projects from today -- a plum coffee cake for my family. I'm told it is delicious (contains milk, so I'm abstaining).

6 Jars of Kosher Dill Pickles This Year

These are about the last of the fresh cucumbers for us from the garden this year. Homegrown cucumbers have such a great texture and flavor. I miss them all winter long. We eat as many fresh as we can in summer. Then when the glut occurs, I make dill pickles.

I make my dill pickles as chunks instead of whole or spears. I find I can get more pickle matter into a jar by cutting the cucumbers into chunks in lieu of wholes. In addition, I can make the chunks relatively uniform in size. Whereas my whole cucumbers are all sizes, widths, and irregularities. When we want sliced pickles for sandwiches and burgers, the chunks slice up just as nicely as the wholes do.

So this is it for our family's dill pickles for the year -- 6 jars, five 20-oz and one 16-oz.. Let's hope no one goes on a pickle-feeding frenzy before next summer's cucumbers are ready.

I'll be making sweet relish with green tomatoes later next week. We go through a lot of sweet relish over the course of a year. I hope to make several jars when the tomato season comes to an end and leaves me with lots of small green tomatoes to use up.

Will you be making pickles or relish this year?

Easy Fresh Tomato Soup

Our weather is turning cooler. Our tomato plants are still providing an abundant harvest. We've been eating loads of tomato salads, sandwiches, vegetable medleys, and pasta sauces. And now today for lunch I turned about a dozen tomatoes into a pot of fresh tomato soup.

I used the blender to puree the whole tomatoes, skin included. Then, heated the puree in a saucepan along with fresh garlic, salt, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese until warmed through. Delicious and fresh-tasting, with a bit of natural sweetness. And very, very quick and easy.

What are your favorite ways to use up fresh tomatoes?

Assessing My Breakfast in Terms of Time and Cost

What I made for breakfast this morning

Sometimes my curiosity about a past version of a product takes me down a rabbit hole of cost comparisons. This a 1970s Cheerios box, from worthpoint.com. Notice it's a 15-ounce size. There's no indication on the package that this is a "family," "economy," or "large" size. It might have been considered "large" as I also found 7 and 10-oz boxes of Cheerios dating from about the same time period.

This photo of a box of Cheerios was taken from Walmart's website this morning. The 18-ounce box is labeled "Family Size." It sells for $4.93 and contains 13 1.5 cup servings at 38 cents per serving, not including milk. (A 1.5-cup serving is according to the package nutrition label.)

The regular size of Cheerios at Walmart is the 8.9-ounce box, priced at $3, containing 6  1.5-cup servings. Each serving, then, costs 50 cents, not including milk.

If one adds a cup of milk to the cereal, the cost per serving plus milk increases by about 15 to 20 cents.

Stores also sell house brands for substantially less. Great Value brand Toasted O's sells for $1.67/12-ounce box, containing 8 servings. A 1.5-cup serving, then, works out to 21 cents for the cereal alone, and 36 to 41 cents if a cup of milk is added.

Our family is not big on cereal-eating at breakfast time. Most of my family choses to have cereal as a snack. But for breakfasts, I was curious about a cost comparison between what we normally eat and the cost of a serving of cereal plus milk. A typical breakfast in our house is an egg, buttered slice of toast, and a small glass of juice. An egg currently costs us 12 cents. A slice of bread plus butter adds another 10 cents. Adding a small glass of orange juice (from frozen concentrate) tacks on 15 to 20 cents, for a total cost of 37 to 42 cents per breakfast. Our cost for an egg, toast and juice breakfast is comparable to the cost of generic toasted oat cereal plus milk.

But wait, what about the time savings with eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast? I thought about that and decided to time myself making an egg, toast, and oj breakfast. From the time I turned on the stove until I was walking away with a plate of breakfast, it took 6 minutes. And I had 15 seconds in there to give the non-stick skillet a quick wash and set it to dry on a towel next to the sink.

My conclusion in all of this is that if cold cereal is someone's breakfast "thing," then a bowl of generic-brand cereal won't cost more than an egg, toast, and juice. However, if the morning fuel you need is the latter breakfast, you really won't be spending an extraordinary amount of time frying or scrambling that egg and making toast, and it will cost just about the same as the cereal breakfast.

Just the rabbit hole I found myself in this afternoon.

Hi Friends!

Just a quick note. Wednesday I felt the beginning of a cold coming on. I went to bed and slept most of the day. Today was a day of half up and around, half resting. This was just a mild cold, and I'm definitely on the mend. I'm just resting this evening and will be back to posting very soon.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Bargain Family Holiday Celebration #479

Did you have a good Labor Day? Was it a restful day or one filled with activity? 

These Monday holidays throw me off schedule for the remaining days of the week. Today feels like a Monday, but I know when I wake up in the morning, it will be mid-week.

Our holiday celebration was once again, a frugal one. I'm not sure we have it in ourselves to do a spendy celebration. This is just our nature. It was just my husband, myself and our two daughters for this holiday. Early in the day we picked and processed plums, completely filling the 6 dehydrator trays. I'll be harvesting and drying more plums tomorrow. Later we played some croquet, badminton, horse shoes, and ping pong. Our ping pong table is damaged, so we used a large folding table in its place, marking where the net would go with painters' tape. This large folding table, by the way, was retrieved from a free pile 2 summers ago.

For our evening meal, we had a cookout over a fire using our own property's wood for cooking. About a month ago, I came across some hormone/antibiotic-free, uncured, no fillers, all-beef hotdogs on clearance for $2.85 a package. I had a coupon I could use up to 5 times for $1 off this brand. I found 4 packages of these marked down hotdogs. So I bought all 4, paying $1,85/package for some otherwise pretty pricey hotdogs. These normally sell for $6.29/package. When I bought these, they were nearing expiry, so I've kept them in the freezer since.

I didn't feel like making buns. I don't use a bun, so I scrounged the freezer for 3 bun-like bread products. I found 2 pretzel rolls and 1 dinner roll. Oddly, all three of my family members wanted the dinner roll. But dad got to have it, as he's the dad. To go with the fire-roasted dogs I heated a can of sauerkraut, sautéed some garden kale and carrots in leftover bacon fat from earlier in the week, made a tomato salad with garden tomatoes, and sliced up part of a watermelon (the only thing I bought specifically for the weekend, at 48cents/lb). We were out of sweet pickle relish, so I chopped up some sweet and spicy watermelon pickles for an impromptu relish to go with the mustard and ketchup. For dessert I found some graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate chips in the pantry for s'mores over our fire. All in all, a tasty, easy, and cheap holiday dinner for the 4 of us.

We sat outside under the repurposed Christmas mini-lights for a couple of hours in the evening, listening to Spotify music on my daughter's phone and reminiscing about the highlights of each of our summers. School begins tomorrow for the district in which both my daughters sub. Today I replaced the summer kitchen table runner with the harvest-themed table cloth. Summer is fading fast in my neck of the woods.

Whether frugal or not, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Does it feel like summer is about done for you, too?