7 Ways I Saved This Week and Asking for Help to Save Even More

Hello, friends!

If you're reading this while I'm online (9AM to 11 AM, PDT), that's great. But if not, that's okay, too. If you have a question, just leave it in the comments and I'll check back over the weekend, then read and  respond.

So, grab your favorite beverage, pull up a chair or fluff up those pillows, and join me for a couple of hours. Say "hi" in the comments and let me know you're here, if you want. Ask questions, share tips, or post a link to a favorite recipe.

To start, Ruthie asked about making pita chips the other day. I told her I'd post a recipe for homemade pita bread. It's pretty simple to make and would really bring down the cost of homemade pita chips. This batch of pita bread costs about 80 cents, including the electricity for the oven. It makes about 1  1/2 pounds of pita bread. If baking this into pita chips after making the bread, the cost per pound would be about 75 cents per pound for pita chips, including the oven use. Commercial pita chips cost over $6 per pound at Fred Meyer. Homemade chips from homemade pita bread is a substantial savings. If making the pita bread only for the chips, you can freeze the baked pita bread, two or 3 together, enough for making chips for 2 or 3 people.

If you've ever made flour tortillas, then you can definitely make pita bread.

1) Pita Bread (for Ruthie and anyone else)

1 envelope (about 2 and 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1  1/4 cups warm water (about 105 to 110 F or 40 to 43 C)
3  1/4 to 3  3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup shortening (I used a scant 1/4 cup of vegetable oil - it's cheaper)
1  1/2 teaspoons salt

Soften yeast in water in a large bowl. Add 2 cups of flour, the salt, and shortening. Using a mixture, beat on low speed for 30 seconds, then 3 minutes on high speed. Alternatively, beat with a large spoon for about 3-4 minutes.

Stir in remaining flour. Turn onto a lightly floured board or countertop and knead for 3 to 5 minutes. (if your bowl is large, you can knead the dough right in the bowl. That's what I do.) The dough should be a soft dough, only sticks when you leave it in one place for a while. Return dough to the bowl and grease all sides of dough with a little oil. Cover and set in a warm place (80 to 90F degrees) for 15 minutes.

On the countertop or floured surface, divide the dough into 12 portions, smoothing each into a ball. Cover with a damp cloth and allow to rest for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, re-flour your surface and gently flatten each ball. Allow to rest another 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Taking one ball of dough at a time, lightly roll into  6 to 7-inch circles, working the rolling pin from the inside of the circles to the edges. Place as many dough circles as will fit on an un-greased baking sheet.

Bake for 3 to 4 minutes, until inflated, then turn each over and bake for 3 additional minutes.

Remove from the baking sheet immediately, stack on a plate, and cover with a tea towel (this holds in moisture). When cooled, wrap in plastic. You can slice pockets into one end, or halve the pita and slice pockets through the cut edge (making 2 half-pita pockets).

Occasionally I pierce a pita when flipping it over, so that it has a hole which could leak a filling. These pitas can be used for flatbread pizza or as a wrap, gyro-style.

To turn into pita chips, here are 2 links:
One for no extra oil chips, just baked. And a second one, for chips that are brushed with a little oil just before baking. The second variety will be crispier than the dry-baked ones.

2) Jam Milk, Jam Tea, and Jam Lemonade

This was a jam-making week for me, using up some of the foraged blackberries. When my son was a little boy, I would make him a special treat if he could entertain himself in a corner of the kitchen while I made jam using fruit from the trees in our rental's yard. The treat was very frugally-made with the empty saucepan after I poured the jam into sterilized jars and a cup of milk. There's always jam that sticks to the interior of the saucepan, and I hated to just waste that wonderful flavor. So, I would rinse out the pot with a cup of milk and let my son have this as his afternoon snack, The jam would both sweeten and flavor the milk. I never bought stir-ins for my children, like Nestle's Quik, so flavored milk was really a treat.

I still use the jam pot for making sweetened, flavored beverages, even though my "kids" are not so little. Instead of rinsing the saucepan out with 1 cup of milk, I now rinse it out with about 2 to 2  1/2 cups of water and make jam tea or jam lemonade.

To make jam tea, pour 2  1/2 cups of water into the near-empty jam saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir the jam off of the sides of the pan and into the water as it heats. When the now-flavored water reaches a boil, remove from heat and ad 1 tea bag or some loose black, green, or herb tea, and infuse. Strain tea leaves as needed and serve.

For jam lemonade, follow the instructions for jam tea, but instead of adding tea or herb leaves, use the flavored water for making lemonade. For lemonade, to the flavored water, add 1/4 cup of bottled lemon juice, and a scant 1/4 cup of sugar. Delicious, flavored lemonade. Nothing wasted.

The other day I made a pot of blackberry jam tea, using lemon balm harvested from my garden. This may be hard to see in the photo, but the pink color of the tea is a near match for the pink in the dishes. Beautiful, delicious, and virtually free (okay, I did have to pay for the 2  1/2 cups of tap water).

3) Watermelon Rind to Use in Savory Dishes

I finished making watermelon rind pickles for the season, so I was mindlessly tossing any watermelon rinds into the compost. Well, I was brainstorming ways to make chutney and I thought about watermelon rind chutney. Yes, there is a recipe for that! When looking up that recipe I came across a link to a recipe for watermelon rind curry. Now, you may have noticed, my family is going through a curry phase. This sounds like a wonderful use for something that I was composting. Check out this link for watermelon rind curry. And while you'e checking sites, the same site has that recipe for watermelon rind chutney that I just mentioned. Anyway, I still have a quarter of a watermelon in my fridge that has a fair amount of rind on it. Here's my thinking with regards to using the rind: every time I use something that I salvage or forage, I save on something else that I have to work to produce or buy. It just makes sense to use as much of a watermelon as possible.

4) Saving Some of the Current Batch of Yogurt to Use as Starter in Future Batches

Now that I have a good supply of milk again, I was able to make a new batch of yogurt. I let my yogurt incubate overnight. Then the next morning I refrigerate the jars. The day after that, I scoop yogurt into containers for the freezer, about 1 cup of yogurt per container. I did 4 containers the other day, marking each as yogurt starter, along with the date. This will be enough starter yogurt for 4 more batches. No need to buy fresh yogurt to use as starter. I save $14.16 per year by freezing 2nd-day yogurt to use as my starter.



5) Scoring More Fuel Rewards by Buying Gift Cards

Fred Meyer had a 4 X the fuel rewards deal going on with gift card purchases this past week. That means that instead of getting 50 fuel reward points for a $50 gift card purchase, I got 200 fuel rewards with a $50 gift card purchase. 200 fuel rewards will save me 20 cents per gallon on a purchase of gas. If I buy 10 gallons, I will save $2.


So, I don't go overboard on loading up on gift cards. But when Fred Meyer has this promotion going on (they do this 3 or 4 times per year), I assess our close future spending and determine the amount of gift cards we would need to make purchases in other stores. We're working on a landscaping project this summer and getting our supplies from Home Depot. I estimated that we will spend about $60 for the remaining supplies for this project. Therefore, I bought 2 $25 Home Depot gift cards, which will be used this month. For an extra 2 minutes of my time picking up the gift cards while I was doing my other shopping, I saved us about $2.

6) Free Trash Bag for Our Kitchen Garbage Can

Do you see what I see? This package of bathroom tissue is just about the same height and width as our kitchen trash receptacle. By cutting off one of the smaller end panels with a pair of scissors, I have a perfect "bag" for our trash can. Saved 6 cents, and I did something environmentally-responsible.




7) I've been Christmas shopping this week. While at Fred Meyer on Senior Day, I picked up a food item that I know one of my recipients will love, using a high value coupon. Basically, I bought this item for half-price! And this wasn't an impulse buy, but something I had planned on buying for this individual.

Suggestions For Patching or Repurposing a Pair of Jeans

These are my favorite around-the-house jeans, and sometimes running-casual-errands jeans. My question -- how to make them not so indecent and still okay for running to the store or bank? The fabric has a dark side that is not the same color as the front. The dark side is just threads and you can see through them when I'm wearing the jeans. What do you think? Would you patch them from the inside (and have dark threads showing on the outside), or patch them on the outside? Would you use an iron-on patch, then stitch around edges, or would you try something else? Would you abandon the idea of patching the jeans and make them into something else -- jeans' skirt? a bag? go in the scrap pile for something else? My first choice is to patch them, as I don't want to spend the money to replace them right now.

Need a Recipe for Rhubarb Chutney that has a Bare Minimum of Ingredients

We just ran out of homemade plum chutney. We'll have a very limited amount of apples and plums from our garden this year, and I don't want to spend the money to buy raisins or other dried fruit. I do have rhubarb that I could use. Has anyone made a rhubarb chutney that did not call for raisins or dried cranberries? I could maybe sacrifice one apple from our trees for a batch, plus I will have onions, spices, vinegar, sugar, and molasses to use. I'm looking for a recipe that I can can to keep for a year or two. Any recipes or links?

What's on your mind this morning? How was your week? Any frugal successes this week? Did you try any new recipes? Do you have any questions for me or anyone else who is here today? I'll be here to answer any questions just before 9 AM, PDT, and will stay online until 11 AM.



Related articles that may interest you:

More on freezing yogurt to use as starter

How to know when your jelly is done
Making jelly without added pectin
Extracting juice from fruit to make jelly
What to do when your jelly doesn't jell

Making flour tortillas

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.