Applesauce-Raisin Bar Cookies (plus my carrot green pesto)

Are you ready for another autumnal recipe?

I wanted to share a link to a recipe I've made twice this month, applesauce-raisin bar cookies.  The recipe is technically for applesauce cookies, but I added about 1/2 cup of raisins. Doesn't it look like there are raisins in the photo at the website? 

If you have an inexpensive source of applesauce, these are very budget-friendly. They call for just 1/4 cup of butter, whereas most cookie recipes that use butter call for about 1/2 cup. These sweet and spicy bars are a soft cookie. The frosting, as made by the recipe,. will use another 3 tablespoons butter. However, I made 2/3 of the frosting recipe, using 2 tablespoons of butter, and we liked them a lot that way. So, in total, I used 3/8 cup of butter, still less than most of my cookie recipes. 

I also think they're a healthier cookie than many recipes, with just 2/3 cup of added sugar and applesauce and raisins for additional sweetness. The rest of the ingredients include 1 egg, flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. For the pumpkin pie spice, I used a combination of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg, totaling just over a teaspoon (we like to taste the spices).

The recipe suggests cutting the pan of cookie bars into 20 servings. I cut mine into 24 bars. Mine baked in under 25 minutes. So I'd suggest setting the timer for 20 minutes and checking at that point.

If you try these, let me know what you think.

And for the carrot top pesto --

I made it this morning, doing a large enough batch to have some for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow (a little autumn picnic scheduled). It turned out really delicious. I didn't have any basil, so I just used oodles of carrot tops, almonds, garlic, olive oil, salt, lemon juice and just a little water to get the right consistency. It's very tasty. I added this and that until the flavor was just right. I will say, pesto is an excellent way to use up a lot of carrot leaves. I'm down to about one more recipe of some sort and I will have finished off all of this year's carrot tops. I highly recommend making a pesto with carrot greens for the gardeners on here.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend. Happy Thanksgiving weekend to our friends in Canada! 🦃

Changing how I see what our garden produces

I was out digging the carrots in the garden today, and I had this revelation about how home gardens actually are versus what we thought they should be when we first started out.

When I first began keeping a garden, I had this idea that I would grow the foods that I saw in the grocery store. I would grow carrots, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, green beans, peas, cabbage, and corn. Those were the foods that my family was happy to eat. So I thought that's what I'd grow. 

In reality, iceberg lettuce is hard to grow to maturity here. The squirrels and raccoons have decimated our corn when we've tried to grow it. And the peas are hit or miss for us. We do always get plenty of tomatoes, some green beans, at least a couple of good heads of cabbage, and carrots of varying shapes and sizes. One glaring difference in the foods that I can grow here is that they almost never look anything like grocery store produce. Some of this year's carrots are so wonky-looking. The cabbage heads have their share of bug bites. And the green beans and tomatoes have obvious blemishes.

But appearance isn't the only thing I've had to adjust my thinking on. I've made an abrupt departure on my thoughts of what to grow. As it turns out, kale does exceptionally well here. Up until 25 years ago, I'd never eaten kale. I planted it anyway and we've learned to like it. Almost the same thing with rhubarb. I had tried rhubarb in a pie when I was young, but I was not impressed. Rhubarb loves my climate. So we grow and eat a lot of rhubarb.

It isn't just what I grow, but the parts of each vegetable that we consider food in our house. Turnips do okay here. But it's the leaves that outperform the roots. So, I grow turnips for the leaves. Ditto on radishes. We eat turnip greens and radish greens now with no hesitation. Funny thing, I've never seen turnip greens or radish greens sold by themselves without the roots attached in the market. Hmmm, maybe other folks don't appreciate bitter greens like my family has learned to do.

In my garden-to- kitchen lifestyle, I've had to develop an eye for opportunity in the whole plants. Today while digging the carrots, I realized that we really get very little in the way of actual carrots for eating. What does seem to grow in copious amounts is the carrot tops. 

I've chopped and frozen carrot leaves in previous years. but I think I was thinking of the green portion as a little bonus, but not always used in a timely manner. Today I tried to switch up my thinking a bit and see the opportunity I had before me with freshly dug carrots. 

Carrot leaves are delicate in flavor. I've decided not to freeze the leaves for future additions to soups and stews this year, but instead see them as a focal ingredient to use in a seasonal soup or an unusual pesto. The availability of fresh carrot leaves is fleeting each year. They will only stay fresh on my newly dug carrots for a day or two. Today I made a cream of carrot soup that was quite delicious. Tomorrow I plan on making a carrot leaf pesto. After enjoying the soup at lunch, I found myself rethinking the leaves as an extra part of the vegetable and more of a part on equal footing with the roots.

I have a similar experience with the garlic scapes each year. I'd grow the garlic for the scapes alone each year, they're that delicious. And yet when was the last time you saw garlic scapes sold in the supermarket? 

Many of the delicacies we gather from the garden are so fragile and have such a short store-life, only home gardeners get to enjoy them. 

So, instead of thinking how unfortunate it is that I can't grow iceberg lettuce or corn, I'm trying to see how rich I am in many delightful treats that others don't have available to them.

Busy-Day Biscuits

I've mentioned these biscuits in posts before and have been asked to provide a recipe and how-to. So, since I made some to go with dinner tonight, I thought this would be a good opportunity to share.

biscuits split and spread with pumpkin butter

This method for making biscuits is about the quickest I can do with scratch baking. Both my ingredient list and method are simplified in order to get the biscuits into the oven as quickly as possible. It takes 5 minutes, tops, to mix the dough and get these onto a baking sheet. No cutting in shortening, no rolling and cutting out dough. Just simply mix and drop the dough.

dry ingredients dumped into bowl

Ingredients:

2 cups flour (I use 2/3 cup whole wheat + 1 1/3 cup all-purpose)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fat in liquid form (more on that below)
1 cup milk

bacon fat from the freezer, about 3 T.

For the fat, you can use liquid oil or solid fat, such as coconut oil, butter, shortening, or rendered meat fat such as bacon fat. 

If using a solid fat, melt it in the microwave before adding to the dry ingredients. In this batch, I used part bacon fat and part vegetable oil. I melted the bacon fat in the microwave, then added oil to the 1/4 cup line on the measuring cup.

melted bacon fat

I topped off the bacon fat with vegetable oil to the 1/4 cup line

How to:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Lightly grease a baking sheet. 

Measure the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Use your mixing spoon to stir up these ingredients before adding anything else. This should take 30 seconds or so. 

Pour the liquid fat over the dry ingredients and stir in until there are clumps of fat-soaked flour throughout. Pour the milk over all and stir together to form a stiff dough.

Drop by large spoonfuls onto baking sheet. Don't fuss with the dough too much. I scoop it by spoonfuls, then use a rubber spatula to turn the spoonful of dough out onto the baking sheet.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned. Time will depend on the size of each biscuit (my batch made 10). The degree of browning will depend on whether or not you substitute whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose. More whole wheat flour will result in less browning, but they're still fully baked.

I often make a half-batch and bake on a small baking sheet. A half-batch is about right for one meal for my family of 4. Tonight I baked a whole batch so we could enjoy these with breakfast in the morning.

split hot biscuits and spread with favorite topping

I typically get these into the oven just before I set the table, toss the salad, fill the water pitcher, and dish up the rest of dinner. They come out of the oven piping hot as we're finished saying grace. Our oven is 4 feet from the table. So, cracking the oven door open after baking warms us up on chilly fall and winter evenings.

There you go -- how I make scratch biscuits the quick and easy way. Do you make drop biscuits?

No-Egg, No-Butter, No-Milk Snack Cake (Pumpkin and Other Variations)

I had a busy day in the kitchen today. I was processing some garden produce and baking bread. While I had the oven hot, I also thought I'd bake a quick and easy autumnal cake for my family to enjoy this October week. I made the Pumpkin Spice variation of this snack cake. 

I've shared this recipe before, but it's such a great one to have in your back pocket, I wanted to share it )or the link to it), once again. It takes no eggs, no butter, and no milk. Plus it mixes right in the baking pan, so there's less to wash up afterward. Both eggs and butter are expensive for me right now. So this cake is not only an easy dessert, but a budget-stretching one as well.

Sometimes I frost these cakes. Other times, like tonight, I serve it in squares unfrosted. Since I know my family members will snack on this cake tomorrow or have some with breakfast, I made it a little healthier. I substituted 2/3 cup of whole wheat flour for some of the white flour in the batter. So it has some whole grain, plus some pumpkin. That should give it some health-points.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this recipe to the front of minds now that it's pumpkin and apple season (you can make this cake with applesauce in place of pumpkin). I'll add that for the pumpkin variation, I use 1 teaspoon of any of the fall spices, not just allspice. For today's cake, I used a combination of cinnamon, ginger and cloves totaling 1 teaspoon. 

Enjoy!

Sometimes the homemade version costs more or the same as the commercial convenience food. Why is that?

We'll first rule out poor shopping (paying more) for ingredients, as I know we all shop carefully for the foods we buy, even if we're not buying super large sizes of everything.

There's also the thought that commercial products are manufactured in bulk, working with bulk-priced ingredients. But I don't think that's the whole story.

The real answer, I believe, is we tend to use better ingredients and more of the good part of the ingredient list than the manufacturers do. 

Take the cream of celery soup I made the other day. You can see my ingredients. If I were to make a label for what's in mine, the first ingredient (the most by volume) would be celery, followed by milk, then onion, then stock, flour, butter, oil, and seasonings.

Let's compare the homemade ingredient list to that of a commercial cream of celery soup.

Here's an image of the label from a can of Great Value Cream of Celery Soup:

What? The first ingredient is water. Shocking, huh? It doesn't say dehydrated celery, just celery. Cream is listed as less than 2%, following salt. So there's less cream in the commercial "cream" of celery soup than there is salt. And there's no butter at all! The fat used is entirely soybean oil. If this isn't enough to make me want to always make my own, there are several ingredients on the list that I'm not interested in consuming.

So, when you make your version of a commercial product from scratch at home, and it doesn't seem like it's saving you much money, think about the nutrients that you're getting in your homemade product. Think about the whole food ingredients that went into your version. Think about the ingredients that you didn't include in your scratch version. 

Like I said yesterday, with my cream of celery soup, I use 1/2 that recipe for a tuna casserole to feed the 4 of us. With the celery and onion that each of us are getting in our portion of the soup alone, it amounts to about a half-serving of vegetables. That's before I add the other vegetables that make my dish a casserole. 

So, as I said, I did save money by making my own cream of celery soup. So what about other examples of convenience items where it may cost a bit more to make your own? How about boxed mac and cheese? Walmart's Great Value Original Macaroni and Cheese sells for 58 cents. That's pretty cheap. It serves 3 people. If I were to make a scratch version to feed three, I estimate my batch would cost about $1.00 to $1.10. 

My ingredient list would read as follow, from greatest amount to least: pasta, milk, cheddar cheese, butter, salt, ground mustard powder, pepper. Pretty basic and pretty simple.

Here's the ingredient list for the Great Value mac and cheese taken from Walmart's website:

There are cheese-like ingredients and derivatives, but no plain old cheese on the list. The "cheddar cheese seasoning" first ingredient is whey. Whey is a by-product of the cheese-making process. Now I know that whey is sometimes added to "health food" products, like protein shakes. But do we really think Walmart is adding whey to their mac and cheese because of its health value? I'm sure that the recipes for these products are made with profit in mind as a co-op between the kitchen and the financial wings of the company.

Anyway, I'm glad that my homemade versions contain real food ingredients that not only am I familiar with, but my great grandmother would be as well.

So my answer to why a homemade version isn't always abundantly cheaper than its commercial counterpart I believe has to do with the quality of the ingredients. Better quality simply costs more. But it's also tastier and most of the time it's better for us.

Condensed Cream of Celery Soup for Casseroles (Freezable)

Here's another recipe featuring one of the budget fall vegetables that I wrote about last week, celery. 

This isn't one of those "must follow this recipe exactly" sort of recipes. Play around with the seasonings. Add just a bit of what's recommended then adjust according to what you have on hand and what you prefer.

This recipe makes about 2 10.5-ounce cans worth of condensed cream of celery soup. This is so good in tuna casserole. In my household of 4 adults, it's double what I need for a single tuna casserole using 2 cans of tuna and about 1  1/4 cups of dried macaroni noodles plus a cup or two of vegetables. I freeze the leftover half of the batch to use in a future casserole. 

Condensed Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup diced onion
2 1/2 cups diced celery and leaves (if you like a "whiter" soup, use only the ribs, no leaves)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup flour
1 1/2 cups rich milk or milk substitute
1/2 cup stock (vegetable or chicken) or water
1 to 1  1/4 teaspoons salt (add the lesser amount and adjust according to taste)
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
3-4 quick dashes nutmeg
a pinch sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon celery seed
1 tablespoon butter, optional

Melt the butter in the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Saute the onion in the melted butter/oil until translucent. Add the diced celery and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic.

Stir in 1/3 cup flour. While stirring, slowly pour in the liquids (milk and stock). Cook, while continuing to stir, until the sauce thickens. 

Stir in seasonings. Remove from heat. Allow to cool for a few minutes. Blend in a pitcher blender, or with an immersion blender, or in a food processor.

For additional richness, especially if using a dairy alternative milk, swirl in 1 additional tablespoon butter. Taste for seasonings and add more if desired.

If you don't have all of the herbs and spices, this will still turn out tasty for use in a casserole.

Yields 3 cups of condensed soup or the equivalent of two 10.5 ounce cans of cream of celery soup.

This soup can be frozen to use in casseroles in the future. Stir well upon thawing. 

As for cost . . .

If I were to buy all of the above ingredients, the cost for this recipe would be about $1.30 or less for two cans worth, or 65 cents per can! Walmart's Great Value brand Cream of Celery Soup sells for 92 cents per can. Campbell's Cream of Celery sells for a whopping $1.72 per can. That's $1.30 for 2 cans homemade vs $1.82 for 2 cans Great Value or $3.44 for 2 cans Campbells. 

What if you don't love or don't have celery? You can make a thick white sauce for binding casseroles, or make a cream of whatever-vegetable-you-have condensed soup following the above recipe using said vegetable in place of celery. For the most part, the flavor of the binding condensed soup is significantly muted by the other casserole ingredients.

So there's the recipe for the condensed soup to use in casseroles. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post as a continuation of this one.

Our neighborhood is doing something really fun right now

It started with one of my daughters baking brownies to share with a neighbor who spent a small fortune on fireworks for the 4th off July that they set off in the front of their house so everyone could watch. Next another neighbor gave a bunch of neighbors some fresh melons. This was followed by yet another neighbor with plum and fig trees that produced abundantly. She shared her bounty with several of the neighbors. Then my other daughter baked some blackberry pies and delivered slices of pie to several neighbors, including the melon neighbors and plum/fig neighbor. 

The plum and fig neighbor shared even more plums and figs. I baked a large batch of  mini pumpkin loaves and paired it with some nice tea for neighbors. Then this afternoon, someone left a box of fresh apples on our doorstep with a note that simply said "went apple picking, some to share" signed by her first name. We're racking our brains trying to figure out which neighbor this is. I think I'll be doing more baking this week to deliver to our neighbors.

Anyway, this has been a fun and spirited season in this neighborhood, which is saying a lot. We're not known for the "Seattle chill" for no reason. People generally keep to their own friend group in my area. But this has been fun. Maybe our neighborhood is turning over a new leaf.

What was in my grocery cart for September?

a north-facing window seat -- our produce staging area for the time being

If you'll recall, last month I spent a whopping amount grocery shopping. Part of that was a beef delivery, which about doubled my spending for the month. Another hefty part was stocking up for an extended repair of our car after my daughter's accident. (The car is still not repaired -- ugh -- they ordered the lamp kit and it went missing. Waiting on a reorder. . .) Anyway, I expected to spend a lot, lot less this month, due to all of the stock-up last month and not having a car for several weeks.

So, how much did I spend? How did my shopping differ from my norm?

Here we go . . .

Just before turning in the car -- on the way home from church, we stopped at Fred Meyer to pick up hot dog buns and applewood smoking chips for our cook-out and smoke-out the next day. I spent $7.19. 

The car went in for repairs Tuesday morning, September 3.

By September 13 (Friday the 13th), we were out of milk and had no car. One daughter needed a few things for herself, so she took a bike up to the highway, then caught a bus to Walmart. She had enough room in her backpack to add a gallon of milk and head of cabbage for the family. I reimbursed her $7.21 for those items.

We found out our car was totaled -- repairs exceeded the value -- so my husband and I took 2 buses to get to a car dealership. We thought we'd just be looking, but we came home with our new-to-us car. Directly across the street from the car lot is a Walmart. We swung by there just to get bananas, turkey snack sticks, and a couple of non-food necessities, spending $8.05.

Loving having a car again, I happily drove to pick up one daughter from a cat and house-sitting gig on September 21. We stopped by QFC to get some apple cider. They had half-gallons of cider for $1.99.

September 26. In the deal for our car, we asked to have the windshield replaced. Today was the day it was scheduled. Both Grocery Outlet and Walmart are a short walk from the dealership. I went to Grocery Outlet for a package of bacon ($2.50) and Walmart for a gallon of milk ($3.56) and a bag of frozen turkey sausage links ($6.98). I spent $13.04 this day. The brand of bacon at Grocery Outlet is Top Valu. It's uncured bacon from Canada. The quality of the bacon is good, although the slices are irregular. GO's regular price on this bacon is $2.50/12-oz package, much, much less than bacon at Walmart or WinCo. I seek out uncured deli products when I can.

Something weird that I noticed in Walmart today -- the freezer compartment where frozen sausage is located was practically empty, ditto on the milk case. I haven't seen bare shelves like this in a couple of years. And it wasn't overly crowded when I've been lately. It doesn't feel like they're just selling out of everything quickly due to crowds. The last time I saw a milk shortage in a store was during a winter storm period when trucks couldn't get through mountain passes, I think in 2019. Eggs were $22.00 per 5-dozen case, almost $4.50/dozen at Walmart. I did see at Grocery Outlet that they had medium eggs for around $2.60 or $2.70/dozen. I'll be picking up several dozen eggs at Grocery Outlet later this week or sometime next week.

September 29. So far this month I have spent $37.48 for the month of September.

I'll stop right here for a moment. Grocery shopping in person without a car is challenging, but not entirely impossible if you have physical mobility. I wouldn't want to go through a month without a major stock-up again. My last major stock-up was the last week of August. So it has been a month using primarily what we had. The good news is that with a garden, I could do this in the summer and early fall months again if I had to. We got so much produce out of our own little yard. The garden along with a big stock-up in August carried us through, nicely.

What I bought this month through September 29:

2 gallons milk

2 packages turkey snack sticks

12 oz package bacon
bag of turkey breakfast sausage

1 head cabbage
1 bunch bananas

1/2 gallon apple cider

1 package hot dog buns
1 bag smoking wood chips

Now on to the rest of September's grocery shopping.  I could have bought more at Walmart the day we bought the car. But I didn't think we'd actually buy a car that day, but just look. So I didn't have a shopping list made out for a big shopping trip, and I really, really don't do well shopping without a list. Without the car, we would've been carrying the groceries home on 2 buses then walking a mile at the end. My husband is disabled and uses crutches all of the time. He couldn't have helped with the carrying. So the plan had been one bag of groceries at Walmart that day. As for the rest of the month, I've been busy with getting the garden taken care of and canning. 

Today, Monday the 30th, is the first day I could dedicate to a big shopping trip. I went to WinCo, which is further from our house that any of my other stores. WinCo has a great bulk section, and I needed a few bulk items. The rest of their prices meet or beat Walmart's most of the time.

Here's what I bought at WinCo this morning:

Fruits and Vegetables (fresh and frozen)

head of cabbage

bananas

2 bags Gala apples (green tag--means marked down)

jalapeños for salsa

green pepper

red pepper for relish

acorn squash

whole pumpkin

frozen broccoli

Bulk Section

bulk sliced almonds (for almond coconut bars)

bulk baking powder

bulk kosher salt (for relish, pickles, and salsa)

bulk iodized salt

bulk peanuts

bulk corn starch

bulk natural peanut butter, freshly ground

bulk orange slices candies

Meat

family pack boneless skinless chicken breast

Pantry

bag of dates

vegetable oil

5 jars of applesauce (green tag)

6 cans tuna (also green tag)

mayonnaise

Dairy

gallon milk

4 lbs butter (green tag)

I spent $109.07 today at WinCo, bringing up my monthly spend to $146.55.

This shouldn't be at the tail end of my post, but to all of those impacted by the hurricane and storm damage, my prayers are with you. We have friends here on this blog in NC, SC, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida. If you're okay, could you let us know? Take care, friends.

Bacon-Pumpkin Quiche

just out of the oven and still puffed up

I have a recipe to share with you that uses 1 of the budget fall vegetables from yesterday's post, pumpkin (plus onions, which are also a budget fall vegetable.) I've been looking for more savory ways to use pumpkin, as it's such an affordable vegetable for me (especially when they grow well in our garden or when buying Jack o Lantern pumpkins for cooking in October). 

So this savory pumpkin pie sounded like just the right thing. The flavors of pumpkin, sage, onions, and Parmesan cheese complement each other really well. I make a pasta sauce with those ingredients (plus Italian sausage) that my family enjoys.

just before going into the oven

If using home-cooked pumpkin, drain off as much liquid in a mesh strainer before measuring as possible. I know one of us has a family member who doesn't do onions. This recipe could be made without the onions. Increase the bacon/ham and Parmesan cheese to compensate for flavor and bulk.

I loosely used the following recipe from Food Network: here. I decreased the fat, eggs and milk/cream, increased the onions and pumpkin, added the Parmesan cheese to the quiche and baked it longer. I also left off the arugula salad topping, as I didn't think my family would enjoy that. 

I served this with a tossed salad and a rice-millet combo. My family thought it was very good. It has a very mild pumpkin flavor and a rich and dense texture. The next time I make this (and it was good enough to qualify for a next time), I'll increase the sage and Parmesan just a bit, and add a dash of nutmeg.

Below is how I made mine.

Bacon, Caramelized Onion and Pumpkin Quiche

Ingredients:

6 to 8 strips of bacon, reserve about 1 tablespoon bacon fat --or 1 cup of ham diced plus 1 tablespoon fat

1 large yellow onion, sliced thin
1 cup pureed pumpkin (or butternut squash)
1 tablespoon thinly sliced fresh sage leaves or 1 tsp dried sage
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
6 large eggs
1/3 cup rich milk, heavy cream, or milk/cream substitute 
1/2 cup shaved Parmesan cheese or 1/3 cup of shelf stable grated Parmesan (shaved Parmesan lends a nutty and sweet flavor which compliments the caramelized onions) 

1 9-inch pie shell, chilled. Prick with fork, press foil into shell, covering edges. Bake at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes, allow to cool

Pre-bake the pie shell, covered. Set aside.

Pan-fry the bacon. Remove from pan. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the rendered fat. (If using a leaner smoked meat, such as turkey bacon, or lean ham, lightly brown the meat in about 1 tablespoon cooking fat, then set aside.)

Sauté the sliced onions in the pan from the bacon, stirring, until caramelized. Crumble the cooked bacon into the cooked onions. Stir in salt, pepper, and mince sage leaves or dried sage. 

Whisk eggs, pumpkin puree, milk/cream/substitute. Gently fold in the bacon-onion mixture and Parmesan cheese. Pour into baked pie shell.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 45-50 minutes, until knife inserted comes out clean. Allow to stand for 10-15 minutes before cutting into servings. Yields 4 to 5 servings.

Bon Appetit!

Six Budget Vegetables for Fall And How to Store Them

With October arriving this next week, we're sliding into the fall menu season. Most of us think of summer as the great fresh produce season for value. Fall can also offer several varieties of fresh vegetables that are budget-friendly. I do stock up on canned vegetables in fall, but we save these for use in winter when fresh produce is much more expensive.

Here are 6 of my favorite vegetables that are very budget friendly in fall.

(All of the storage times are for purchased produce, which may have been harvested weeks before your purchase.)

cabbage -- Cabbage is such a budget-friendly vegetable practically year round in my area. If I don't have them ready in the garden, I buy a head every time I do a major grocery shopping. But I find the quality and price is better in this favorite in fall. 

Green cabbage is the thriftiest, but red cabbage is just another 20 cents per pound in my local stores. So I like to buy red cabbage a few times a season for visual interest and phytochemicals. 

Lacking a root cellar, cabbage stores well in the refrigerator for up to 2 months. I keep mine in the plastic produce bag from the store. If I'm buying several heads and plan on storing them the maximum time, I wrap each head in a piece of flour sack or tea towel then place in a plastic bag. This cuts down on spoilage by keeping the cabbage leaves from direct contact with the plastic bag.

winter squash -- Choose squash that have the stem intact. Store in a cool, dry location (55 degrees F is optimal), partially wrapped in crinkled newspaper to aid air circulation and absorb moisture from the air, and prevent each piece from touching. Winter squash should keep 8 to 10 weeks. I've had luck transferring aging winter squash to the fridge in late November/early December to hold them another few weeks. 

There are some varieties of winter squash that keep especially long, such as turban, buttercup, and Hubbard squash. Keep in mind, the tougher the skin, the longer the storage potential. 

pumpkin -- Choose pumpkins that have the stem intact. Store as winter squash, however pumpkins are thinner skinned than squash and won't keep as long, perhaps 6 weeks. 

In early December, I cook any remaining fresh pumpkins to puree and freeze. Don't forget to cook up your carved Jack o'Lantern on November 1. For my entire adult life, I have always used regular field pumpkins for cooking and pureeing. They're more watery than pie pumpkins, but they're also a lot less expensive.

sweet potatoes --Fresh sweet potatoes go on sale just before Thanksgiving. While the sweet varieties don't store as well as white potatoes, you can still keep them for a month or more in a cool and dry location, much like the conditions needed for winter squash storage. 

Sometime in late December, I freeze whatever fresh sweet potatoes I have remaining. An easy way to store sweet potatoes in the freezer is to bake them whole and freeze. 

I scrub them well, pierce with a fork, then bake at 425 degrees F for about an hour. After cooling to room temperature, I transfer the baked sweet potatoes whole to a ziplock bag and toss them into the freezer. They'll peel easily once thawed to use mashed or cut into chunks. Alternatively, you can reheat the thawed sweet potatoes in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes, then split and top with butter and spices, as desired.

celery -- Celery adds great flavor to cooked dishes and fresh in salads or as a crudité. While celery may be more expensive per pound than veggies like winter squash, it doesn't take much in recipes to get that flavor. Use the leaves in soups/stews, rice pilafs, egg and tuna salad, and green salads. The best deal on celery is usually just before Thanksgiving. 

If you're buying extra celery to use at a later date, you can chop and freeze celery to add to soups, stews, stuffings, pilafs. 

To store celery fresh, you'll want a cold (40 degrees) and humid spot. The crisper drawer in your fridge is the perfect place. You may have read of using aluminum foil to keep celery for long durations. This actually does work. If you wrap the celery loosely in foil with the ends left open, ethylene gases which could hasten rot can escape. Alternatively, wrapping celery in damp paper towels, then placing in a well-pierced plastic bag is a great way to store fresh celery. 

You can expect fresh celery to keep in the fridge's crisper for about a month to perhaps a little longer if you're lucky. I like to cut the leaves off the bundle of celery and use or freeze before storing the rest of the ribs longterm. 

whole carrots -- Carrots are a budget's friend year round. In fall, however, I often find the 25-lb bags of carrots for less per pound than in the 5 and 10-lb bags at stores like WinCo, the produce stand that shuts down on November 1, and at the restaurant supply. If you happen to find a deal on fresh, whole carrots in smaller bags, you can stock up for future use. 

I've had the best success storing fresh carrots for a couple of months if I remove them from the plastic bag in which they came and sort out the damaged carrots that look like they'll keep for a shorter period. These are set aside to use first. I then wrap smaller bundles of the sound carrots in paper towels then place in plastic bags. The paper towels prevent moisture contact with the carrots and delay rot. Carrots stored this way in the fridge will keep a couple of months. Any limp carrots can be rehydrated by soaking in cold water in the fridge for 30 minutes.

So those are the top 6 budget fall vegetables in my area. Your region or state may differ from mine. What are your area's thrifty veggies? Do you have any tips on storing fresh vegetables?

This is how I know it's really fall in our house . . .

I made another failed batch of caramel sauce. My daughter makes beautiful caramel sauce. Mine, not so much. 

But I keep trying. Wasn't that a car rental slogan -- We Try Harder? I try harder each fall to make a good caramel sauce. What I will say is, I'm persistent. 

Each fall I get this idea that homemade caramel sauce for dipping apple slices would be wonderful. We have all of these crisp apples from our own trees. A nice caramel dip would turn a fresh apple into dessert. Surely this year my batch will turn out. Each year it fails miserably. But I do try to fix it. This year's batch is not quite caramel sauce. It's something like a cross between brown sugar syrup (I added molasses at one point in the "fixing") and milk-less butterscotch pudding (after trying to reduce the graininess, I added more water then finally gave up and thickened it with corn starch).

See, it looks like caramel sauce. But it's really not, at all.

My family is grateful that there's any sort of sweet sauce to add to tea or for apple slices. So there's that. It also might be good as a topping for vanilla ice cream.

I'll try again in October, maybe under the tutelage of my daughter.

Why does a tidy-looking fridge matter to you?

We're been working hard to use up leftovers lately. And I've made a point to keep the refrigerator organized so we can find everything. I mentioned to my family how clean the fridge has looked for the last week or so and how happy that makes me. One daughter said she loves that too, then asked why I thought a tidy fridge would make us happy.

My thoughts:

• it's clean and that's always pleasant to see.
• it means we're not wasting any food, so more food to go around for others. 
• it means we are getting full value of the food we grow and purchase. We could and do compost food waste, but commercial compost is much cheaper than food. So using food to make compost is not a good value.
• it saves money, obviously. If we spend money or labor procuring food then don't eat it, we have to spend more money or labor to proceed additional food at some point. This is why I work hard to use as much of our garden produce as possible. I try new recipes to use fruits and vegetables that don't have a chance to ripen, or over-ripen, or are tough, or have a strong flavor. If I go to the trouble to grow something, we're going to eat it.
• keeping a tidy fridge just seems like the responsible thing to do and being responsible actually makes us happy. 

If you like a clean and tidy refrigerator, what are your reasons?

The car saga is coming to an end

Okay, so Tuesday we found out that the cost to repair our car exceeded its resale value -- it's totaled. It makes little sense that a car that still runs well and is solid other than a headlight out and fender damaged that a car would be scrapped. Tuesday evening after my husband came home from work, we talked about the options we had at this point.

One, we could accept the check from the insurance company for the car's resale value minus the deductible but with the salvage payout of a few hundred dollars, and say goodbye to the car. 

We could keep the car and the check for its value, forgo the salvage payout, change the title to a salvage title, and pay for the excess of the repair bill ourselves so our car would be restored. In this second scenario, the car would no longer be insurable for future damage (since the value of the car had been paid out), but would carry liability insurance. The excess cost for restoration could be $1000 or more. In this case, we have our car back in the same condition it was in before the accident and we go back to life with the car and four drivers.

The third scenario is that we could keep the car and the check for its value minus the deductible, forgo the payout for salvage, change the title to a salvage title, carry liability insurance only on it, but only get the repairs done that would make the car road worthy again (headlight kit replaced but body damage pounded out but not looking really great). The car would look a bit rough, but run well. The insurance check would more than cover the cost to get it road worthy, so we'd come out ahead financially, but with a crummier looking car. And the four of us would share the car for longer.

The fourth scenario is that we do everything in the third scenario, turn this car over to our daughters to share, and my husband and I buy a second car that is in good shape for just ourselves. The upside to this is we would be a 2-car family with 4 drivers. The downside is a new-to-us car would cost us.

In case you missed it, both my husband and I have been frustrated these last two and a half weeks being car-less. We've both taken the bus to places that were not bus-convenient. When I went to my new Bible study earlier this week, I walked an additional 3 1/2 miles to and from buses coming and going, in the rain. My husband needed to get a rx filled and walked a mile to the bus to get to the pharmacy. Another day, he needed to get to the library to pick up a hold, again walking mile+ to get to the bus stop. 

After many conversations about pros and cons, we decided to go with scenario number 4. Yesterday morning, my husband took a vacation day from work and the two of us walked up to the bus stop (1+ mile), got off that bus, walked a bit to the next stop, got on another bus, got off and walked 1/4 mile to a car dealership that we've worked with in the past. I had checked their used car inventory online the day before and had picked out a couple of cars that I liked, were in our price range, and had low miles. 

When we got there, we looked at every car that was within our parameters. My first choice didn't look nearly as good in person as it did online. It showed a lot of signs of wear, despite not having too many miles on it. My husband was favoring another car that was a lot older, but had been maintained really well, had fewer miles, and was in almost perfect shape. It's also a lot smaller than I wanted, but it's very fuel efficient. This one was also less expensive than my first choice car.

We went back and forth between these two cars, spending a good two and a half hours looking, inspecting, and talking.  My husband looked under the hoods of both, we examined every inch of the interior of the cars, and we read the CARFAX reports and car lot inspection report. The smaller car's CARFAX report indicated that it had been taken care of really well. We could see the dates it was taken in for servicing, noting its frequency of regular maintenance. My husband had pretty much talked me into this smaller car. During one of our inspections, though, I noticed a small star crack in its windshield. That was an instant "no" for us on this car. That is until the salesman, who gave us a lot of space, happened to be coming back to see if we had any questions. We pointed out the crack in the windshield and he said he could take care of that for us. We asked if that meant complete windshield replacement and he agreed. We took the car for a test drive and privately discussed what would make this deal work for us. We decided that if they knocked $1000 off the price, replaced the windshield and got us a second key we'd take it. My husband did the negotiating, and in the end we got exactly what we wanted.

So we have a new car (new-to-us that is)! And once the old car gets its minimal repairs done later this week, we'll be a 2-car family until my daughters buy their own cars.

I wasn't expecting we'd drive home in a new car. But I'd brought the checkbook with us in case we found something we thought would serve its purpose for us. My husband and I are not high-maintenance types. We're pretty satisfied with a car that runs well and looks clean. I think knowing what matters to you and skipping the rest is how many of us live out our frugality. There are other areas of my life that I prefer to spend more. A car is just not one of them.

And here's what I learned in all of this -- if a car is "totaled" but can still be functional, there is a way to keep the car. I had previously thought if the insurance company made a payment for the value of the car, that we had to surrender it.

And where did we go right after driving off the car lot? Why to Walmart, of course! Like I said, we're low-maintenance types.

Prayers please

I'm rather distracted today and tired from a long morning. More on today's morning in a post tomorrow. But for now, could I ask you to pray for my niece? She had surgery on Saturday to remove a mass. Now the pathology report is back, and it was cancer. My niece is a young 24 years old. She still needs to meet with her doctor to talk about next steps. So I don't know what else is in store for her. Thank you, friends. You're some of the most kind and compassionate people that I know.