Making the Most of Potatoes in Cooking

As we try to make our supplies last as long as possible, I find I am relying on every trick I've ever heard or known, as well as a few that are new to me. Last Friday, it was with potatoes.

I made a potato salad to go with dinner that night, using 2 russet potatoes. I peeled the potatoes in wide and thick strips, setting the strips aside. While the peeled potatoes boiled, I tossed the peels in some garlic oil, spread on a baking sheet, sprinkled with salt, then baked at about 375 F for 12 minutes or so, until browned along the edges. The result was a small batch of tasty tater skins, just enough for one large serving.

After the potatoes were cooked, I salvaged the cooking water, too. Potato water is reported to be good in many bread products, replacing milk in quick breads or adding moisture to yeasted breads. I'd never tried either before. I used half of the water in place of milk in a large batch of pancakes and the other half in place of water for a double batch of French bread. Both turned out very well.

Water from boiling potatoes can be saved in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours or frozen for a couple of months. It can be used in making soups, gravy, and added to baked good doughs and batters. 

Using every last bit of a food means that I can go longer before needing to go back to a store or place an order, extending the days that I shelter in place or have no physical contact with others outside my household.


How is everybody doing? I think my family is doing okay. Mostly, I just feel so sad for all of the lives lost and suffering experienced. Right now, just surviving this period is good enough.

Hanging Salad Bowls?

Maybe you remember two years ago I had pretty hanging flower baskets at my front entry. Then last summer, I decided to plant something pretty and edible, so I bought a packet of nasturtium seeds. Those edible flowers did okay, but not really enough in the way of food. So, this year, I've decided to just go all out vegetable garden in my hanging baskets. After rejuvenating the soil in all 5 of the baskets, I'planted red leaf lettuce seeds. From a distance, I hope the red leaves will just look colorful. Meanwhile, I hope to be able to harvest leaves for our salad bowl. I'll know if this is successful in about 45 days, as this variety of lettuce is supposed to mature in 38 days (and plants always take longer in my yard).

Gardening Therapy

In this very surreal time, I have to force myself to do some of the ordinary things around the house and yard, just to stay sane.

Yesterday, April 1, it was a chilly day with periods of sunshine as well as rain. I had decided that the first of April would be the day I plant potatoes. In addition to seed potatoes from last fall, I also found a few grocery store potatoes that had sprouted to add to the bunch. I don't know how well grocery store potatoes will do in the home garden, but I thought it was worth a try. My seed potatoes are a purple fingerling variety, which are nice, but sometimes I want just a regular old white potato. If the store potatoes work, then I'll count myself lucky. I planted 2 of the 3 rows of potatoes yesterday.

In addition, I moved blueberry bush number 3 (out of 4) to its new, much sunnier spot. I'm hoping it will be much happier and produce lots more berries in this new location.

As I was finishing with the potatoes, a rain cloud burst upon me and watered everything in well.

Over the weekend, I started winter and summer squash indoors. They've yet to sprout, but I'm hopeful. My garden is only so big, so I've been eyeing other sunny spots for some of these vegetable plants. A bush zucchini or two will blend into a bed of perennials. And the vining squash will cover a bare spot near the lawn. A bit of an edible landscape idea going on, here.

What are you doing to distract yourself these days?

Do you use the "Notify Me" option when an item you need is out of stock?

For those of us shopping online right now, a significant frustration has erupted everywhere. You go to a website that you assume "has it all," only to find out that they did "have it all" but now no longer have any.

Many retail websites offer a notification service to their shoppers. When a desired item comes back in stock, the website will send out a quick email to alert a customer of new stock. The box to select this option is often found alongside the "out of stock" notice for the item. You fill in your email and wait to be notified. (You might want to check your spam folder every day, too, just in case.)

In addition to email notification, some websites are also posting what date they expect new stock to arrive. Savvy customers can jot this date down in their calendar, then on that date, check the website for stock of that item. 

There's a lot of competition for some items right now, so it is best to respond to an alert email or check a website on a specified restock-date as quickly as you can.

I'm using these two strategies to fill out my supplies as I run low going into month 2. I wanted you to know this in case you're encountering the same frustration of those out-of-stock necessities online.

Good luck to you as you search for those items that you are most needing right now!

How are you making your resources stretch? Let's share, here

Now that COVID-19 is in every state and province to some degree, many of us are under shelter-at-home mandates by our government leaders. And for those of us who are not, the national government is strongly suggesting that if we don't need to be out, to please not be. So, a lot of us are just hunkering down, trying to ride this out while minimizing any trips to the grocery store.  As we could all guess, this means we'll run out of some food supplies before others. 

By sharing how we're managing our resources, we can bolster each other's efforts during this difficult period. I'll start.

1) You know from my post yesterday that I'm using eggs sparingly. Last night I baked a pumpkin pie using 1  1/2 eggs instead of the usual 2 eggs. That 1/2 egg saved may not sound like much. However, I intend to make a dessert for my family using that 1/2 egg instead of the usual whole egg in the next day or two. To compensate for the half egg less, I reduced the milk for the pie by 1/4 cup. The pie set up nicely and was delicious. I'll also add that this was perhaps the least extra flour I've ever used to roll the crust out on the counter. There was no leftover flour after rolling the dough, and I had to very carefully peel the rolled dough off of the stone counter to place in the pie plate. 

2) I made a large chicken and rice casserole using 1 chicken leg quarter (chicken drumstick and thigh) to feed the four of us. 

I didn't have any canned cream soup, so I made my own cream soup, using some of the stock from simmering the chicken, milk, onion and garlic powders, fresh onion and celery, seasonings, and a bit of flour to thicken. 

I simmered the chicken for a couple of hours before taking the meat off the bones. Afterward, I put the bones and skin back into the simmering stock and left it all to cook in the crockpot overnight. 

Your turn. How have you been stretching your resources?



I want to add this: a completely voluntary work-from-home began in the Seattle area almost immediately following the first death in Washington state (and the entire US). That first death was reported over a weekend and by Monday, my husband reported that all of the commuter buses he took to and from work that day were half full (usually standing room only). By the end of the week, the big tech companies were all requesting employees to work from home. By Friday, March 6, the local news had showed photos of downtown Seattle looking deserted. Although our governor mandated we all stay at home just last week, a large percentage of the Seattle population had begun social distancing by mid-March. And now, some experts are suggesting that social distancing may be working, as they can see a flattening of the curve beginning to develop in Washington state. We still have a long ways to go, here. But it has been gratifying to hear that our collective efforts may actually be making a difference in my state. Washington state was hit earlier than other states with COVID-19. So, we've been at this social shutdown for just a tad longer than many regions of the US. 

If you are wondering if staying at home will really make a difference in your area, I'm just saying that your efforts could help flatten the curve so that medical resources could be available to all who need them in your state and not overburden the doctors and nurses in your community. 

Staying at home for my family means that we're not going out except to fill prescriptions (and those we do in the drive-thru at our pharmacy to minimize interaction). We're choosing to do this not only for our own safety, but also to reduce the overall spread of the virus with hopes to spare more lives while we wait for effective treatment or a vaccine.

I've been experimenting with using half an egg in recipes

In addition to hoarding toilet paper, flour, baker's yeast, and canned goods, Americans apparently have been hoarding fresh eggs, pushing prices on eggs higher. Egg prices came close to $5 per dozen in one store in California late last week. Fresh eggs are no where near that price in my area. However, the news also reported that in order to meet the current demand in stores, the inventory that was being held back for the upcoming Easter holiday week were released for consumer purchase in the past couple of weeks. This means that those super deals on eggs may or may not happen in the second week of April, as many of us have become accustomed to over the years.

In addition, as I'm not going out to stores right now, I have limited access to buying more fresh items, such as eggs. So, I've been experimenting with baking without eggs or with half the amount of eggs. This past week, I cooked/baked two items using a half an egg in each recipe, bean burger patties and a batch of oatmeal cookies.

I simply broke the egg into a custard cup and beat it before spooning out about half the beaten egg for the first recipe, then covered and kept the remaining half egg in the fridge until I baked the other recipe. The end products for both recipes turned out well. With the bean burger patties, I didn't alter the recipe in any other way. And with the cookie dough, I added about 1  1/2 tablespoons of milk to make up for the lacking moisture from using only half an egg.

I still have a few dozen fresh eggs in the fridge. I intend to stretch out their use over the course of a couple of months, if possible. In the next week or two, I'll be freezing some of the eggs to further their safe-to-eat life and provide us with eggs for cooking into the weeks of May.

In addition the using half the usual amount of eggs in cooking and baking, I've also been using egg substitutes, such as ground flax seed and a pinch extra of baking powder. Here's a post from a few years ago that outlines which substitute to use based on the function of egg in different recipes.

I hope you're all doing well.

3 Good Things

In stressful times, I find I need to find some good things going on. Here are 3 for me for today.

1) Last night, I made meatballs and spaghetti for dinner. I used 12 ounces of 80/20 ground beef, adding seasonings and bread crumbs bread crumbs. From this, I made 16 small meatballs for the 4 of us. 

I drained and saved the fat, then deglazed the pan with water, saving the liquid. Tonight, I'll use the beef fat and liquid to make a gravy to pour over bean burgers and rice.

2) Since using a higher temperature setting on the automatic dishwasher I've noticed that everything stainless looks so much shinier, including the inside of the dishwasher door.

3) It's pretty clear that we won't be taking a vacation this spring or summer. So, I've decided to take some of our vacation budget for the year and inject it into the grocery budget. With some of that new grocery money, I ordered some extra foods online, including some all-purpose flour, peanut butter, raisins, crackers, and applesauce. 

Will You Keep a Vegetable Garden This Summer?

over-wintered radish greens
ready to harvest to add to soups

For the past 2 weeks, I've tried to get outside to the vegetable garden for an hour or two each day. I still have a lot of work to do before April begins. I'm filling a bed with soil and compost so I can transplant 2 blueberry bushes this spring before the growing season begins. Several years ago, we planted 4 blueberry bushes where we thought they'd do well. Turns out that wasn't a good spot after all (too far from the main garden so I couldn't keep an eye of the bushes for water and birds). Last spring, my husband built a raised bed near the vegetable and berry garden. I filled one-third of the bed with soil and compost, mounded to one side, then transplanted one of the blueberry bushes. It did well over the summer and winter, so this year I'm moving 2 of the other bushes over to that bed. The 4th bush will go near the other 4 bushes that we have planted and have done well over the years, but maybe not until next year when I can get a spot prepared. Anyways, I'm moving soil and compost for the blueberry bed.

I'm also preparing a potato bed this week. I've grown potatoes for the last 15 years, saving some from each year to use as seed in the next. Well, at the end of last fall, I felt like I'm getting too old to be out digging potatoes for hours in the cold and wet weather we have in fall. I thought I would be done growing potatoes. My plan for vegetable gardening was to only do simple plants from here on out. Guess I was wrong on that plan. 

over-wintered kale to stir fry or add to salads

Anyway, I've been thinking about how important this year's vegetable and fruit garden will be. I expect there will be some inflation on food in the coming months. If ever there was a time to vegetable garden, this summer is it. Gardening will provide my family with fresh produce even if I can't get out to a store for months or even if produce prices are higher than normal. So, I decided to grow potatoes after all this year. The problem is since I thought I wouldn't grow potatoes again, I told my husband to go ahead and use any of the potatoes that I dug last fall in cooking. Men love their potatoes, right? 

Well, thankfully, my husband doesn't listen to me. When I was cleaning in the garage 2 weeks ago, I found a bucket of seed potatoes from last fall! So, I've been working my tail off getting a bed ready for them. Since we weren't going to grow potatoes again (or so I thought), we put a walkway where the potatoes used to grow, so we could get to the raspberries without walking all around the garden.

In addition to raspberries, we grow a lot of strawberries each summer, here. I have 5 dedicated beds for them. Last week, I moved all of the strawberry plants out of one bed and into the other 4 beds, so I could use that one bed for my found seed potatoes.

six itty bitty tomato plants
from those seeds I started a month ago

I really thought I'd be taking it easier in springs and summers, as far as vegetable gardening goes. Despite the hard physical work, I am grateful that we have this space so I can grow a large part of our produce. I encourage anyone who has sunny garden space to plant a few seeds this spring and summer. There are so many things that we can't control with COVID19. Growing some of our own veggies is something that many of us can do. Not only could it save us some money on fresh produce, but also, by not buying as much produce ourselves, we could ease the possible tight supply of produce in the markets enough so that others who can't garden could find more affordable produce for themselves in the stores.

Talk About Bad Timing . . .

My dinner plan last night contained polenta. I had the chicken stock, milk, olive oil, garlic, rosemary, red pepper, and salt all at a boil when I took the corn polenta out of the pantry, opened the container, and found teeny, tiny bugs all over inside. I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or if there really were bunches of tiny dark bugs in the polenta. So, I took the container to my husband and asked him what he saw. Yep, lots and lots of crawling, tiny critters.

My seasoned liquids were all set for the corn polenta to be added. At that last minute, I made the switch to an oat polenta, using coarsely ground, rolled oats (ground in the food processor). 

I was thinking, this might be really gross. But as it turned out, it was actually quite good. I finished making the oat polenta just as if this was made from ground corn. I poured the cooked polenta into a pan to cool, cut it into triangles, floured and pan-fried, then topped with marinara sauce.


With the buggy corn polenta, I dumped it on the compost and gave my pantry a thorough cleaning. As far as I can see, the bugs were only in the corn polenta. To be safe, I am in the midst of freezing all of our grains in batches, as I make room in the freezer. 

My husband had thought we could just microwave the polenta and still use it. I don't feel that desperate just yet. I lost about 3 to 5 pounds of grains to the bugs. But I think we're going to be fine.


Have you ever had savory oatmeal before? I've always wanted to try something savory made with oats, just to see how we'd like it. Turns out -- we really enjoyed it. Just one of those instances when you don't know if you'll like it until you try it.

I Sometimes Go Overboard on the Substitutions

I was making a batch of brownies yesterday and wanted to stretch our butter, sugar, white flour, and eggs -- yep, almost all of the ingredients that go into a batch of brownies. So, I used oil in place of butter, reduced the sugar, replaced most of the all-purpose flour with sifted whole wheat flour, and used ground flax seeds plus water for one of the two eggs in the recipe. I also used the last tablespoon of carob powder for some of the cocoa powder.

The dough/batter was a bit stiff going into the pan. As they baked, I could see the oil bubbling up through the mass. The brownies never had that glistening, smooth look that one expects on the surface of a pan of brownies, even after baking. When they came out of the oven, they looked a bit like a dark chocolate concrete slab. In my attempts to improve the batch and fool my family members into eating them, I topped them with a couple of pumpkin-spice marshmallows, melting chocolate, and the last of some outdated cookie butter (something my daughter bought but didn't really like -- I thought it was okay, though). I swirled this all around as it all melted together. The end result was some not totally horrible bars, which in my family still gets eaten rather quickly.

Going forward -- substitutions are great and can save a recipe when you realize you don't have enough of one ingredient. But if you try to substitute too many of the ingredients at once, you may find that like me, you've made some frankenstein-esque rendition of a family favorite. Fortunately for me right now, I have a very captive audience for anything I cook or bake. These will get eaten.

Homemade Oat Flour to Substitute for All-Purpose Flour in Baking

The two foods that I can barely keep up with my family's consumption right now are homemade soup and homemade bread. I've been doing what I can to push other grain consumption, such as making more rice and baking batches of granola. Yet, bread still seems to be a favorite around these parts.

While I still have about 15 pounds of white flour (all-purpose flour made from wheat), I've been watching our family's use and have determined that we need to slow down on the white flour consumption. You all know that I bake just about every baked good that my family consumes, from cakes and pies, to breads and tortillas. In the past couple of weeks, we seem to have had a lot of white flour-only baked goods, which began to drain our supply of that flour.

When I bake yeasted bread, I use about a half and half (white and whole wheat) blend of flours. I had a thought the other day to turn some of my almost 25 pounds of rolled oats into flour, to use as a substitute for part of the white flour in making bread. Yeasted bread still needs some of the glutinous flours, so an all-oat bread would be out of the question for me. But I thought I could still use half whole wheat flour, then a quarter oat flour and a quarter of the white flour and turn out a loaf that my family would enjoy. (Homemade 100% whole wheat loaves are not as appreciated by my clan.)

I tried this out on a single, large loaf of French bread on Friday. It turned out great!

To make oat flour, I processed regular rolled oats in my food processor, much like I would for making instant oatmeal, only pulsing until it looked like a fine meal. 

I have the rest of what I processed stored in a container. I'll make a full baking of bread (4 loaves) this afternoon and use this 1/4, 1/4, 1/2 formula for the flours in the dough.

In the long run, substituting oat flour for all-purpose flour would be more expensive than simply using all-purpose flour. However, for my current circumstances of not wanting to venture out to stores while still having a lot of rolled oats that could be used, this is a good solution. It will enable me to stretch out our supply of AP flour for several extra weeks. And my family still gets lots and lots of homemade bread.

By the way, oat flour also makes great scones and muffins. 

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers While Rationing Our Supplies

We're in week 3 of living off of February's stock-up. We're beginning to run out of some of the fruit that I bought, but otherwise, I think we're doing pretty well so far. As we've talked a bit about, here, I've been trying to use both the exciting and not-so-exciting foods in the meals that I prepare. So, some rice and bean meals as well as meat or cheese meals.

I haven't posted what we've had for weekly meals in a while, so in no particular order or with dates attached, here's what we've been eating since early in the month.

rice, vegetables, and beans mexi-style
 topped with cheese

cheesy tuna and tofu noodle casserole

fried homemade tortilla and bean tostado ,
 slaw on the side

potato and veggie curry topped with cheese,
green beans on the side

homemade flour tortilla chips, carrot sticks,
bean dip

frozen pizza (bought by daughter a while ago),
carrots and green beans

meatloaf and rice smothered with
tomato gravy and carrots

bean burgers topped with gravy made with
meatloaf drippings,
brown rice, frozen spinach and onions --
I began eating right away, I was so hungry!

bean and veggie tostado, green beans

lentil salad on Romaine leaves,
pasta and marinara, carrots

tuna, tofu, veggie, noodle casserole,
sweet & sour slaw

beans 'n' greens with brown rice, sweet & sour slaw

We're eating well, or so it feels. At dinner last night, my husband commented that the kitchen is well stocked. I told him to hold that thought for another 3 weeks and we'll see just how well stocked we are. Although these meals mostly look vegetarian, we do have meat in the freezer. We're just trying to ration it all out. 

I'm excited for this year's garden! I picked a bunch of watercress and sorrel from the garden yesterday. Watercress is the green from last night's dinner. I'll use the sorrel in a pesto for tonight's dinner. I also used garden kale this past week (not shown -- a veggie and lentil soup). I've been working in the garden preparing a larger spot for planting potatoes. The rhubarb is up, but it is so, so tiny still. I'm planning on making a lot of rhubarb jello this spring, as that's such a palatable, reduced-sugar way to use rhubarb. I planted the snow peas on Wednesday and covered that patch with a plastic tunnel row cover. I'm hoping the row cover will help heat the soil and give us snow peas earlier than usual. We shall see.

That's about it for recent meals. What's been on your menu? Are you going to try limiting grocery shopping during this pandemic, or do you feel comfortable with your usual shopping routine right now? While the virus is now in every US state and I think every Canadian province, I understand that this will affect each of us slightly differently. I pray for health and safety for all of us.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Using Grocery Delivery Services

Our neighborhood roads have become eerily quiet in this last week, with the exception of delivery vehicles. If you feel that you are at risk to go out to grocery stores, then delivery is a viable option. Ill share my own experience.

As February was ending, it became to feel less and less safe in my area. I knew of a few people who had been sick for a while with flu-like symptoms. The flu season has hit hard for us, in addition to COVID19. I was also watching international news and the future for the US didn't look good. Anyways, I was apprehensive about going to my last 2 shopping venues. So, I chose to do delivery service for both of them. I used 2 different services, Shipt and Instacart.

I used Shipt for a Target grocery delivery. Shipt has a 4-week free trial. You have to call to cancel the membership before the 4-week end, or you will be charged $99 -- just beware. And I anticipate the phone lines will be busy in another 3 to 4 weeks. So, it may be wise to try canceling at your 3-week mark, instead of waiting till the last minute.

Okay, so for my Target Shipt delivery
Target has pretty good prices on their store-brands, for both non-food and food items. And the quality for those brands is very good. Our Target stores get a lot of business over the weekends and shelves can be quite bare of the basics by the end of Sunday. For that reason, I scheduled my delivery for late Tuesday afternoon. (If I do it again, I'll choose Wednesday mid-morning.) The other advantage to selecting a mid-week delivery is you're much more likely to get a time-slot. I was just checking weekend time slots this past weekend and they were all booked up, here.

My delivery person said she'd shopped for someone's order on Monday afternoon and said the milk had been completely cleaned out. By Tuesday afternoon, the milk had been restocked. However, the frozen orange juice that I'd wanted was completely wiped out by Tuesday afternoon.

When my shopper experienced no or not enough stock of one of my items, she texted me and asked if I'd like a substitute (giving me alternatives at the same time). The substitutes were not always the same price. So you may want to ask about the price difference on substitutions, if that isn't offered.

I was informed via text when my shopper was finished and would be leaving for my house. I readied my end by finding gloves, disinfecting wipes, and opening the garage. When my deliverer arrived, I took delivery in an open area of the garage. She put everything on the floor and I handed her a tip. Shipt does allow for an in-app tip, and in the future I will do that. I stood 6 to 10 feet away from her while she was bringing the items in, but did have to get within close proximity to give a tip. If I were sick, this would be too close for her safety and if she were sick, it could potentially risk infection for me.

After she drove off, while wearing heavy duty latex gloves, I wiped down every package with homemade bleach wipes. I placed items that needed refrigeration or freezing in the garage fridge and freezer. nothing came into the house at that point. I allowed the rest to sit in the garage for several hours, so the bleach could do its thing. After several hours, I brought the items inside (if you remember, we had a bit of a mouse problem last year, including in the garage), but I placed them all in a spot in the house where we don't go often. We just left those items in this spot for several days. When I did finally need to use some of the delivered items, I washed plastic packaging under running water before opening and produce with a bit of liquid dish soap and lots of water before using. After the fact, my son and DIL told me they had done something very similar after using delivery for groceries -- disinfecting, then washing well. My DIL is very conscious of household cleanliness, so I knew I was on the right track for safety, here.

For my Instacart experience
The other delivery service I used was instacart. Instacart serves many grocery stores in my area, but also Cash & Carry SmartFood Service (the restaurant supply). Instacart has a first-time free trial, nothing to cancel later. There is a service fee that is not waived. It looks like it's about 5%. In addition, a small amount is added to the price of each item compared to the store's usual price. Still, for many items, it was still less expensive for me to use Instacart for Cash & Carry than any other delivery option, because Cash & Carry's price per unit is so outstanding for institutional sizes on many items. The default for tipping on Instacart is in-app, so unless you waive the tip, you will be charged a tip of about 5%. For the service of having someone shop for my groceries and take the risk of being in public for me, a tip is an expense that is well-worth it to me.

My experience with the Instacart shopper is much like the one with Target's shipt. I used Instacart on a Wednesday morning. The shopper texted me as he shopped. I also received in-app chat messages. I had the app open on my laptop the entire time he was shopping and I could "see" when he picked up an item. In the case of needing substitutions, I was notified of possibilities by the app, which I could then approve. For the one item that I had not selected a substitution, the shopper messaged me with a photo of a possibility, along with price. I was able to approve that substitution via chat message.

Again, I took delivery in my garage and mentioned to the driver that I'd tipped in-app. I followed my disinfecting  and storage procedure for all of the items.

For both services, my receipts were emailed to me.

The one-time service charge for Shipt is about $10 (if I recall correctly). According to the Shipt website, you can also subscribe for just one month, for $14, unlimited deliveries in that one month. Shipt also marks up the cost of each item. Their website indicates that this mark-up ends up being about $5 for every $35 spent.

Is the shopping fees for someone else to do my shopping worth the expense? For certain circumstances, the expense is worth it. In my region, people over 60 and/or with medical vulnerabilities (or members of their household with the same conditions) are being asked to stay at home as much as possible. Having groceries delivered is another way to minimize exposure to coronavirus.

There are ways to minimize the service and delivery fees. There are coupon codes and/or offers for free trials. Bundling your shopping into one trip for a month reduces flat rates that may be assessed, such as Instacart's regular delivery fee (I think that's a $3.99 flat rate). 

If you schedule well in advance, you can avoid extra "busy delivery times" fees. Instacart does have a surcharge for extra busy periods. However, the customer is notified of this surcharge during the order placement. 

In addition, you can reduce service and delivery fees by just buying basic food items or ingredients for scratch cooking. As your overall grocery budget will be lowered by shopping this way, so will your percentage-based delivery fees. Buy only the foods or supplies that you cannot buy through a place like Amazon or other web store, such as fresh produce, meat, or frozen items. By making a minimum purchase through a web store, you can often get the shipping charge waived.

Key points on using grocery delivery services

• Disinfect as if these items could have been exposed to the virus. The Target items were delivered in plastic bags. I threw those bags out immediately. Cash & Carry doesn't have bags, as many items are extra large. I wore heavy duty gloves when going through all of our items and I used homemade bleach wipes to wipe absolutely everything down. I, then, left it all in the garage for several hours before bringing items into the house.
• Maintain distance from the delivery person, or opt for contactless delivery. Instacart offers contactless delivery as an option. With other delivery services, you can request the delivery be left at your door in the comment/special request section when placing the order.
• The shopper gets paid for their service. However, under our current circumstances, a 5% tip was greatly appreciated by the personal shoppers I used. Tip in-app to eliminate physical contact between yourself and your shopper.
• If you order from a web store and receive delivery via UPS, USPS, or FedEx, obviously there is no tipping, and in many cases, no shipping charge with a minimum purchase. Bonus -- with most deliveries through these organizations, it seems to be standard practice to leave packages at the door with no interaction between the driver/delivery person and resident. 
• Just like regular grocery shopping, comparing prices between stores and services can save a lot of money.
• Amazon Prime subscribers can use Amazon's grocery delivery (which includes both Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods), depending on area.

Have you used grocery delivery services before? What have been your experiences?

Birthday Eats

hot dog cook-out

homemade buns

some homemade condiments

veggie plate

dip made with plain yogurt, onion powder,
garlic powder, salt, and herbs

peas

Kool-Aid

s'mores fixins'

for the tea table

fresh-baked scones

tomato-basil soup

sandwiches and fruit cup

watermelon pickles

peppermint-dark chocolate patties

punch made with Kool-Aid and orange juice

Planning a Tea Using What I Have on Hand

I told you yesterday that one daughter wanted a cook-out for a birthday meal. The other daughter chose a tea. In addition to baking hot dog buns and graham crackers, I have been preparing foods that would work for a tea. Here's our menu:

cup of tomato-basil soup

scratch scones

banana bread and cream cheese sandwiches

egg salad and watercress sandwiches on homemade white bread

watermelon rind pickles

fruit salad

chocolate mint patties
tea and punch

I made the tomato-basil soup from canned tomato paste and frozen basil. The scones are an easy, but good, scratch recipe. I baked a loaf each of banana bread and white bread from scratch. Watercress is growing in our garden right now. The watermelon rind pickles are from last summer's canning. The fruit salad was made with a banana, an orange, and an apple. And the chocolate mint patties were made with melted dark chocolate chips with a couple of drops of peppermint oil stirred in to flavor.

With twins sharing  birthday, it's been a balancing act trying to met each of their expectations. Dividing up the meals and allowing each to choose what they wanted seemed like a good way to go for our current circumstances.

Happy birthday to my darling daughters! And for the rest of us -- happy St. Patrick's Day!

Be Resourceful

In these challenging weeks to come, I have realized that I'll need to be more resourceful than usual.

Here's an example. My daughters' birthday is tomorrow. As we are not going out for any sort of celebration until after this virus has lessened in my community (could be many, many weeks), I told each daughter to choose 1 meal on Tuesday, and I would prepare it. So, one daughter chose a cook-out, complete with s'mores. S'mores require marshmallows (check), chocolate (check), and graham crackers (not checked).

To ensure this daughter has her s'mores, I dug out my recipe for graham crackers and made a batch over the weekend. Here's how they turned out. 

I snatched one, you know -- for quality control. These are good! And they're part whole grain and egg-free. 

What ways are you finding to be resourceful these days?

By not going out to a store just to buy graham crackers for this cook-out, not only did I not risk exposure to a virus that could sicken me or any of my household members, but I also prevented an instance where I could become a mode of transmission for COVID-19. I am treating this as not just self-preservation, but looking out for someone whose health might be more fragile than my own. 


Great challenges produce great faith.