Holiday Grocery Shopping Before the Mad Rush

I read an article on WKRK's website yesterday that suggested some groceries (and other items) may be in short supply this fall. Included in the list were holiday baking ingredients, canned goods, frozen meals, and pasta (plus the expected cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and paper towels).

For those in the US, the article suggested that grocery shopping for Thanksgiving might best be done before November 15, as traditional Thanksgiving foods would be in high demand from mid-November on. I suspect that Christmas and Hanukkah baking supplies, such as flour, sugar, butter, spices, nuts and nut pastes, canned pumpkin, dried and candied fruit, leavening agents, colored sprinkles, chocolate, and cocoa powder might also sell to shelf-depletion levels before Thanksgiving for the value-priced brands. I had a Walmart curbside pickup scheduled for this morning. After reading this article, I thought now would be a good time to go through my holiday baking plans and put the ingredients that I needed on my list for today's order. (I added confectioner's sugar and a couple of cans of mixed nuts -- not a lot of extra items, but these ingredients would be missed this holiday baking season. Obviously, I chose the least expensive brands of both items and was pleased that they were in stock today.)

If you haven't tried curbside pickup due to not wanting someone else to select your produce items, what I've been doing is scheduling a pickup for the bulk of my order then gone into the store for the few fresh produce items that I wanted -- a hybrid approach. This works well for me. I choose a pickup time that is in the earliest grouping, shop in person for my fresh produce as quickly as I can, then go back out to the parking lot to receive the rest of my order. This morning I was in the store for less than 10 minutes, including self-checkout. If I had done the entire shop in-person, I would have spent about an hour to shop for 3 weeks worth of groceries and encountered many more other shoppers and employees in the process.

Anyway, I thought I'd share what I'd read in this brief article. I hope your week is off to a great start, friends!

Growing Our Retirement "Garden"

And the harvest is finally done. I canned my last 2 pints of jelly on Wednesday afternoon. I am now moving on to the management phase. I can't plant anything else in the outdoor garden at this point in the season. So it is up to me to ensure that we use the produce of my efforts wisely. 

I was thinking the other day that keeping a garden can be likened to the lifetime challenge of earning enough income to set aside assets for the years when earning potential drops off.

In the early weeks of a garden, it doesn't look like a lot of progress is taking place, but that progress is under the soil's top layer and perhaps just barely breaking through the crust to show a small green blade or two. Similarly, in the early years of a career, there is often little leftover to set aside for financial growth. However, despite little to show for a burgeoning career, the groundwork for later success is being laid. And of course, everyone knows that it is wise to live below your means at all income levels, so that the small amount you can set aside during this phase has time on its side for maximum growth.

By early summer, most gardens will have something that can be harvested for the table. And as summer develops, opportunities for putting aside some of the garden's bounty increase. In early summer, I was canning rhubarb, trying several different flavor and texture ideas. In the life of a career, this is the period when incomes are rising enough to afford a few luxuries. It's also the time to increase contributions to retirement accounts and other investments for use a couple of decades into the future.

Late summer brings the bulk of the harvest from the garden. I made pickles, salsa, chutney, jams, jellies, preserves, and relishes with my garden bounty in late summer. This is the period in a garden's life when the maximum amount of produce is set aside for winter. Similarly, these would be the later years of a person's income-producing career. The maximum allowable amount for contributions to retirement accounts in the US include a catch-up bonus for individuals over age 50. This makes sense as this time in an individual's career often coincides with one's peak annual income. 

The last of the harvest in my area is brought in sometime in early fall. I work to harvest and preserve as much as I can during this time each year. I don't want to let a single opportunity to preserve our produce pass me by. Likewise, I find that my husband and I are being extra cautious with our income in this period of our lives so that we can set aside as much as possible for later years. There may be opportunities to earn a little side money after retirement, in the same way that winter offers tiny opportunities to grow produce indoors, such as with sprouting lentils.

When the harvest is complete, we can look at our pantry, fridge and freezer and see that we have indeed enough to get through winter. Similarly, I hope that at the end of our income-producing years, we will be able to look at our assets and see that there is enough for all of our future needs. We can't just open all of the jars and start using our produce haphazardly in the same way that we can't start spending our retirement funds without any sort of plan in place. This is the management phase that I mentioned in the opening. With my canned produce, I have made a plan for how to use it all up while ensuring variety in what we eat. I wouldn't want to end the winter with nothing but plum jam to eat for the last week. So I've made a plan. I hope that when my husband and I retire that we will have a comprehensive plan to ensure that we don't "eat up" all of our investments in the early years by spending recklessly, leaving us with a paltry amount for our final years. 

In addition to setting aside produce for the winter, I also harvest some seeds at the end of the gardening season for starting the next year's garden. At the end of my life, I hope that I'll be leaving some "seeds" to my offspring and  a couple of charitable organizations for the next generation to plant. Careful planting, regular cultivation, and diligent harvesting yields a bounty both for our table and our pocketbooks.

Just some thoughts rambling through my mind as I put the last 2 pints of crabapple jelly onto the shelf. There, the mass of jars look beautiful. Enjoy your weekend, friends!

A Dry Run for Our Outdoor Thanksgiving Celebration in the Sometimes Wet and Chilly Seattle Area

Yesterday, we decided to test out an idea for how to celebrate Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law, safely. The two of them live just 15 minutes away from us, but we've only seen them 4 times in all of 2020. They are our only in-person social contacts, while we are one household of a couple for them. So, we want to make sure that nobody passes anything on to anyone else in our family.

Sharing a meal safely during this pandemic means eating outdoors for us. During the summer, we could spend time with our son and daughter-in-law with barbecues on the grill and cook-outs over a fire ring and feel safe. 

For a couple of months, we've been brainstorming how to do the holidays. Our best thought was to simply have another cook-out. We held a dry run yesterday to see if this was even do-able in cold weather for us. 

Our area has had a stretch of unseasonably cold temps, making this the ideal time to try this in weather similar to what we can expect at the end of November. It was 44 degrees F outdoors when I was starting the fire. The average high temperature for late November is around 48 degrees F. Of course, we could very easily have colder than normal weather or even wetter than normal. If that happens, we'll need to consider Plan B or Plan C.

What we discovered

It takes longer to get a fire going when the air is so cold. 

We will need a larger fire than we might normally use in summer, so the warm air can reach further away from the actual fire.

A couple of us needed to go inside and add extra layers of clothing, including hats, and parkas.

In the end, it was warm enough to roast our hot dogs then sit and talk around the fire, so long as the fire was kept good-sized. I think this will be a possibility for us for Thanksgiving. 

Some thoughts on doing our Thanksgiving outdoors -- 

• We'll need to be flexible about the day we get together, and choose the warmest and driest day of the 4-day weekend.
• We'll want to be eating about the time of day when we hit our peak high temperature, which means a mid-afternoon cook-out for our yard.
• Obviously, we'll be skipping the turkey this year and opt for sausages like bratwurst to roast over the fire. I can still make all of the traditional sides to a Thanksgiving dinner, including pumpkin pie for dessert.
• I'll keep a crockpot of hot apple cider going on the deck, using an outdoor electrical outlet.  I can also keep an electric kettle filled with water  and plugged into the same outlet for those who'd like a cup of tea. The rest of the Thanksgiving foods can be brought out to the deck table, and we'll eat around the fire ring on the patio below.
• We have several throws that can be taken outside. I'll wash 6 of them, so we each have one for our backs and shoulders. And I'll advise my son and daughter-in-law on the attire that worked for all of us yesterday. I wore a thick, long-sleeved tee, covered by a thick fleece jacket, then topped with my parka, as well as a knit hat for my head. It looked like we were ready for snow. When you're just sitting around, the body cools off quickly in 44 degrees F.
• I'll need to check our wood supply and move what I think we'll need into the garage for the next few weeks to keep it out of the rain. It was a little slow-going getting the fire to start yesterday.

I think this is do-able for us. Now, to see if our son and daughter-in-law are as adventurous as the rest of the family.

Anybody else plan to celebrate Thanksgiving outdoors? If not, have you come up with a plan that will keep you and your family safe while eating indoors? 

Trying to find positive ways forward in this pandemic.

October Grocery Recap

This was another expensive month. Are you finding this too, that your spending on groceries is far higher than usual? On paper, I had it all planned. Over the summer, I put together a large surplus pantry that I would supplement with some fresher foods throughout the fall and winter with a small-ish budget of about $100 to $150 per month. That sounds totally reasonable for my family. After all, how much can a few gallons of milk, produce, eggs, cheese, and a little meat actually cost each month, I reasoned.

So, in October I shopped in 4 stores, twice in Walmart, once in Dollar Tree, and once in Cash & Carry/SmartFood Service (restaurant supply). I spent $304.52. (Remember, this amount is to supplement all of the food that I bought for my emergency pantry. So about $150 to $200 more than I had planned for the month.)

Curious about this extra spending, I sat down and wrote out the reasons why I'm spending so much on food.

• We're all eating 3 meals and multiple snacks each day, for 7 days per week. Obviously, we all must have been picking up food here or there, such as meals and treats offered at the office or school, or a midday break at Starbucks for a treat and beverage. Since late February, I haven't had so much as a single French fry from McDonalds, frozen yogurt Sundae from Menchies, or a donut from Henry's Donuts. Home-cooked meals have become a 3/7/365 thing for my household. 
• I'm no longer able to shop at multiple stores each week to get all of the sales and deals. Instead, I am choosing just one store to shop at a time (except the week that I also went to Dollar Tree, as it's usually a quick stop) and buy all that I am wanting at that store, spending more on some items than I used to. Here's an example -- I won't be shopping at the year-end clearance at my favorite produce stand. I typically buy a lot of produce on that day, saving a hefty amount on our fresh produce for the next couple of months. But, that day is crowded at that venue and I don't feel like standing elbow to elbow as I pick through the apples. Instead, I bought 10 pounds of apples in bags at the restaurant supply, spending nearly double per pound what I'd spend at the clearance event at the produce stand.
• I'm not shopping as often as I used to, so I'm not catching clearance markdowns on needed items, such as milk or meat. Instead, I'm paying full price on almost everything.
• The least expensive brand on an item is typically sold out, now. As a result, I've had to buy more expensive brands than I'm accustomed. Example -- Great Value decaf coffee is $3.57/jar, while Folger's decaf is about $6.50/jar. I've had to spend nearly double on decaf on several occasions. Great Value canned pumpkin has been sold out since mid-August at my local Walmart. I broke down and bought Libby's pumpkin this week. I was still able to save some money by buying the #10 can at Cash & Carry, but it was not as much of a savings per ounce as Walmart's store brand.
• I try to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible these days. I don't spend time in the aisles comparing prices, but instead make out a comprehensive list for each shopping trip and stick to that list like a fly on fly tape. I do make online comparisons as much as I can before I shop. But you often miss out on unadvertised deals when your only comparisons are made online before shopping.
• We need treats. Face it, life during a pandemic is complicated for many reasons. If treat food can help us all in dealing with the stress, then that's what we'll do. I don't eat a lot of sweet, baked items, so some of our treats are foods like nuts, crackers, and pretzels, which all adds up.
• I am feeding 4 adults while doing several other things each day. There simply isn't enough time in a day to make my own crackers and pretzels or other snacky foods. I bought frozen French fries this month, a processed food item that I would normally just make from whole potatoes. We could just always have oven-roasted potatoes, but back to needing treats -- French fries perked up a homemade burger meal.
• We all eat a lot of fruits and vegetables in our household. A lot of fruits and vegetables. My garden provides for summer, but not much for winter with our appetites.
• We're all being much more physically active, which results in larger appetites and more food.
• I am trying to shore up our health with a larger variety of fruits and vegetables to get through the next few months. I think that I've bought more items like Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cranberry sauce, beets, and yams than I would normally buy in fall. Since my fridge space is limited, I am buying many of these items in canned form for pantry storage. Canned yams are more expensive than fresh yams in the fall. But they store on a shelf and not in my limited fridge space. 
• It seems like there are fewer deals out there. Fred Meyer discontinued Senior Discount Day and their Friday freebies. There has been little to nothing on Walmart's clearance shelf. In fact, many of Walmart's regular shelves have been looking empty. At Cash & Carry, I got the last bottle of lemon juice that was on sale this week. Cash & Carry doesn't offer rain checks. So, I would have been out of luck had I not been at the right place at the right time. 
• Many grocery items are more expensive this year. According to usinflationcalculator.com, the cost of food in September 2020 was 3.9% higher than the same month of 2019. 2020's food inflation is the highest it has been since 2011, when the cost of food rose by 4.5% over that of its previous year. While I moan about the current food inflation, it's really not that bad. The US hasn't seen truly significant food inflation since early 1981. From 1973 through early 1981, there were several years that saw double-digit food inflation. We can be grateful for a mere 3.9% increase today.
• I think I am panic-buying food. I am afraid that I could run out of any particular ingredient in the next few months right during a period with high virus transmission in my area. Not wanting to run out for that necessary ingredient in an unplanned way, there is a part of me that is trying to prevent running out of anything. Now to qualify my fears, when I checked our counties "heat map" for most recent COVID cases, my immediate shopping area is right smack in the middle of the hardest hit neighborhood of our rather large county. In addition, case counts have nearly tripled in just the last month for this county.

These are not just excuses. Life has turned upside down with this pandemic. I've had to change how (and how much), when, and where I normally shop. The end result is a greater cost to keep my family fed.

So, since I know that we're all kind of curious what others have in their shopping cart, here's my list of what I bought (not with quantities, cuz I'm writing this from memory):

milk, cheese, eggs, beef, hot dogs, crackers/pretzels, peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin, tomato paste, beets, corn, sauerkraut, spinach, green beans, peas, pineapple, applesauce, carrots, apples, a green pepper, broccoli cuts, cauliflower, mixed vegetables, blueberries, French fries, sugar, flour, salt, molasses, lemon juice, chili powder, ground ginger, curry powder, yams, cranberry sauce, graham crackers, cabbage, bananas, apple and orange juice concentrates, coffee/decaf, black-eye peas, toasted oat cereal, olives, candy corn, and a small amount of trick-or-treat candy (just in case) -- whew!

What I think will happen in November, December, and January is that I truly will not need to buy much in the way of groceries. My November list only includes celery, more carrots and bananas, oranges or mandarins, some sort of meat for Thanksgiving, sparkling cider, eggs, and milk. I expect that my grocery spending will be much lower in November than this month and last. 

So that's my grocery recap for the month of October. I realize there's still a week left to the month. However, I'm done shopping until November.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

Simply Beautiful Pickled Figs and Other Delectables

I know this post will have little to offer to practically every reader, here. I get that. This is so un-relatable to most. After all, who has unripe figs to deal with? And who really wants to go to the trouble to pickle them? I'm only posting about this recent project because it gave me so much pleasure in the making process.

Figs tend to have two crops per season. The first crop ripens in mid to late summer in my area. I've mentioned before, that in my climate, the late crop never ripens for us. In mid-October, I find myself deluged with hard, green figs. In previous years, I've made an unripe fig jam that's pretty good. However, this year, I have more jam and jelly than I think we'll actually use. So I set out on a quest for a good recipe to pickle these figs.

The recipe that I found called for unripe figs. cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, ginger root, lemon peel, honey, vinegar, and sugar. What I had included unripe figs, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, ginger powder, lemon juice, vinegar, and sugar, but no honey. Good enough. I was absolutely thrilled to find the cardamom pods. I don't recall what I bought them for, but I was very glad to have just barely enough for this project.

The aroma of the heated liquid was amazing. As the spices were simmering with the figs, I kept lifting the lid to smell their essence. After 30 minutes of gentle cooking, my beautiful figs were ready for bottling. 

In total, I made 3 large and 1 small jar of pickled figs.
This was such a satisfying project. I enjoyed this whole sensory experience. I felt like I was making something gourmet, plus I preserved garden produce to make it actually useful for us.

Another satisfying project this past week was a small jar of peanut butter-cocoa powder spread for toast. I had been watching Nigella Lawson earlier in the week as she made a Nutella cheesecake. Yum, that looked delicious! Nutella has milk in it so it's something on my don't eat list. But my own spread was made with ingredients that are okay for me: peanut butter (the cheap kind), cocoa powder (the good kind -- Special Dark Hershey's), confectioner's sugar, and vegetable oil to thin to spreading consistency. It tastes like peanut butter cup candy. It's been delicious on both toast and graham crackers, like a cross between a sweet breakfast and a dessert.

Earlier this summer, I made rosemary-rhubarb preserves. I've been experimenting with using fresh herbs in jelly and preserves. I made a batch of crabapple-sage jelly just last week. Adding herbs to these preserves elevates them from simple spreads for bread or sandwiches to something almost gourmet. I served the crabapple-sage jelly with biscuits to go with a soup supper late last week. The rosemary-rhubarb-preserves were delicious as a condiment with roasted chicken and in chicken salad sandwiches.

In my family's early years, foods had to be simple and very recognizable. PBJ's had to be made with a plain jelly, no jams or unusual flavorings. Pickles had to at least look like something from a store. I might have gotten away with my peanut butter-cocoa powder substitution for Nutella, simply because it tastes a little like candy spread on a piece of toast. However, the rest of my little experiments would have been a waste of space in the fridge. I'm grateful to have finally reached a place where I can make things that appeal to my own tastes and are actually appreciated by the rest of the family. This is a good place.

My Practically-Free Garlic Haul

I showed you my garden potato haul a few weeks ago. Now I'll show you my garden garlic haul, all grown with sneaky little cloves of garlic that have hidden in various spots of my garden over the years.

About 15 years ago, I decided to plant some grocery store garlic cloves in my garden. Yes, I read the warnings -- viruses, pests, tiny crops. I decided to give it a try anyway. So, I planted 1 head of garlic (about 10-12 cloves) in my garden. The next summer, I dug about 10 heads of garlic from those cloves. I replanted some of these new garlic heads in a new spot in my garden the next year. And so on, and so on. 

Garden garlic is a bit like garden potatoes in that there are always a few sneaky heads that remain hidden from my trowel when harvesting and basically replant themselves for the next year. Most of the time, I'd notice in spring they came up but then forget about them by the time the tops died back.

This past spring, I found several spots in my garden with new garlic growth. As I had a hunch my garden would be more important in 2020 than previous years, I dug up what I found and grouped them all together in one single spot so I could more easily harvest them this summer. I'm not even sure how many individual cloves I planted last spring, maybe 40 or more, just a guess. In late August/early September, the tops were dying back and I decided to dig my garlic patch. This is what I harvested.

Some of these are full-sized heads of garlic, some are smaller heads of garlic, and many are swollen single cloves. All of these are usable in cooking.

To give you an idea of how much garlic I harvested, the head just to the left of the pile is about the size of a regular supermarket head of garlic. I harvested what I think is about 1  2/3 to 1  3/4 pounds, or the equivalent of about 20 or so heads of garlic. This is more than I would normally buy in the fall to last through winter and into early spring for our family of 5, years ago. 

I had left the garlic in a box for a month, curing for storage. The other day, I sorted my garlic according to use: those cloves that need using right away (a couple had begun to sprout), those for planting, and the bountiful remainder for use over the next several months. Yesterday, I cleared a spot in one bed and planted 3 heads (34 cloves, total) of the best of what I harvested in September. I'm hoping for a plentiful garlic harvest in 2021, too.

I've noticed a few green sprouts still in the garden that I missed either last spring or this summer when digging. I thought I did a thorough job. But that's just how sneaky garden garlic can be. I'll be finding garlic in my garden for years to come, all descendants from that one supermarket head planted many years ago.

My Blustery Autumn Weekend in Pictures

It was a wet and windy weekend here in the northwest. That's about what we can expect this time of year. Just before the rain, leaves swirled down, littering the lawn, garden, and driveway. At this point, the leaves are simply a beautiful reminder of the season. We'll get to raking them up later in the month.

As a result of the turn in weather, I spent almost all of my time indoors (with exceptions to darting outside to harvest whatever I needed for the time). It was a productive weekend. Here are visuals of the highlights:

autumn-inspired brownies -- very, very simple. Lightly place candy corn pieces onto top of batter before baking; do not press into batter. I used this recipe, but baked in the traditional oven at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.

bread -- with wet weather came cooler temps. Baking loaves of bread helped heat the kitchen just as we were sitting down to a soup supper.

crimson crabapple and spice jelly -- one of several batches in the next 2 weeks (our tree is loaded). Pro-tip: use lightweight scissors to clip the apples from the branches to harvest hard to pluck crabapples -- the picking goes much faster and doesn't damage next year's fruiting spurs.

3 small jars of bread and butter pickles with almost the last of the cucumbers

more dill relish with some green tomatoes that were showing signs of blight (trimming away the browning parts first) and garden-fresh dill weed. We now have 5 jars of dill relish to begin the year. I have a couple more blighted green tomatoes  waiting in the fridge to be made into sweet relish tomorrow or the next day.

herbs -- dill for the freezer and sage, oregano, and thyme to be dried

an early Saturday AM trip to Dollar Tree, picking up several bags of pretzels and jars of roasted peanuts for our winter pantry. The pretzels were a better buy at DT than Walmart's Great Value, but the peanuts were slightly more expensive at DT. Win some, lose some. I also bought some much needed liquid dish detergent, sponges, and a bottle brush.

All of this is not to say that I didn't have any less-productive moments. I played my share of games of solitaire on the computer and read lots of news sites while sitting by the electric fire in the living room (so very handy that fireplace). I also vacuumed and did laundry. But do you really want to see pictures of my vacuum or piles of laundry? I thought not.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! What kept you busy? 

A shout-out to anyone reading from Canada -- Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

A Little Autumn Outdoor Decorating

Today, a break from recounting my adventures in harvesting. You all know that I like to decorate my home for various holidays. It brings me a lot of joy to change up the looks of our house for each new season.

Will you be decorating for Halloween or fall? A recent survey polled Seattleites on what they might be doing this year to celebrate Halloween, as trick-or-treating and parties are likely to be "out" this year. The majority replied that they'd be decorating their houses for Halloween/fall. And you know what? If I were a betting person, I'd say they were polling my neighborhood, as so many neighbors have put up lights in their front yards and on their homes.

I talked it over with one of my daughters and we agreed that putting up decorations just for Halloween seemed like a lot of extra work, but that doing some decor that would be appropriate for all of autumn, through Thanksgiving, would be appealing. Besides, I really don't go in for the ghoulish Halloween decorations, but prefer understated, general-purpose autumn decor.

Since it is getting dark so early now, and lighting can be seen from the street as our neighbors drive passed, I put some extra effort into a little fall lighting project this year.

I had been eyeing some beautiful, lighted garlands in a catalog in August. Of course, these were pricier than I was comfortable with. So, I set out to make my own. I used two strands of mini LED lights (1 orange and 1 yellow, both ordered online) and several lengths of Dollar Tree faux leaf garland which I'd bought several years ago and have used in different applications each fall. I offset the light strands by about 2 inches, so the individual lights would appear closer together. Then I wrapped the faux leaf garlands around the light strands and secured the lighted garland to the surrounds of the kitchen window with cup hooks screwed in at the corners and center top of the wood window trim. 

The whole project took me about 30 minutes from finding the cup hooks and wrapping the garland and lights, to securing to the house's exterior. My cost would've been much less if I didn't have it in my mind that I wanted colored lights and instead had used some strings of regular (white) Christmas twinkle lights. In fact, this lighted garland would've been free had I taken that route. But you know, sometimes the heart chooses instead of the mind.

I also changed out the lights to all orange in the bush to the left of the kitchen window. If you'll recall, last fall I put an old C-9 string of lights on a conical shrub and filled the light sockets with green and orange lights only. This year, I bought some additional orange C-9 lights, so I could have all orange lights on this bush. Yep. the heart was in the driver's seat the day I made these purchases. Like I said, it brings me a lot of joy to decorate for the seasons and holidays. Money well-spent.

Lighted evergreen garlands for the winter holidays can be very pricy. This same sort of idea can be used with inexpensive Dollar Tree evergreen garlands or homemade garlands made from evergreen branches wired to a rope and wrapped with strings of mini-lights. I plan on making a couple of those for our house later this fall. Anyways -- just thought I'd share my latest home decorating.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Green Tomato Pickle Relish: My Favorite Way to Use Those Tomatoes That Don't Stand a Chance of Ripening

Green tomatoes, lots and lots of green tomatoes. 

With a coolish summer climate in my area, the bulk of our garden tomatoes come to us unripe, just before the cool fall rains bring blight to the plants. Blight will ruin the fruit, so I try to harvest all of the tomatoes before I see those tell-tale dark patches in the stems. This means that I'm harvesting some tomatoes that are mature enough to turn red indoors, while others don't stand a chance of ripening due to their immaturity. 

We wait patiently for the larger, more mature tomatoes to ripen indoors. It's those latter green tomatoes, some as small as peas, that need a plan. These tiny tomatoes, along with any other small green ones, can be made into pickle relish.

I make both dill and sweet relishes with the green tomatoes. The Green Tomato Dill Pickle Relish is a tasty relish that is reminiscent of kosher dill pickles. We use it on hot dogs, bratwurst, and burgers.

I also make a sweet relish that tastes a lot like commercial sweet pickle relish. We use this sweet green tomato relish on dogs and burgers as well as in salads, such as macaroni, potato, chicken, egg, and tuna salads. 

I made 2  1/2 jars of the dill relish this past Saturday, then made 4 jars of the sweet relish on Monday. As we don't get that many cucumbers, the abundance of immature green tomatoes are welcome every fall.

Here are my recipes for both types of green tomato relish.

Green Tomato Dill Relish

yields 3 to 4 half-pints

Wash and sterilize jars and lids.

I chop both the onions and tomatoes in the food processor, using the pulse feature, then measure.
Drain vegetables in a colander for 30 minutes. After drained, put in a stainless saucepan.

• 4 cups chopped green tomatoes
• 1  1/2 cups chopped onion

Add the below ingredients to the vegetables. Simmer until soft (about 15 to 20 minutes), stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. 

• 1 tablespoon kosher or pickling salt
• 2 cups vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
• 1  1/2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small dried red chili pepper, minced, or large pinch of red pepper flakes
• fresh dill weed, about 1/4 cup, chopped, or 1 tablespoon dried dill weed

Scoop cooked relish, while hot, into sterilized jars, then seal and process in a boiling-water canner. The National Center for Home Food Preservation recommends processing relish for 15 minutes if at 1000 ft or lower, 20 minutes if at 1000 to 6000 ft, or 25 minutes if above 6000 ft in elevation. (Even though I hot-water bath my pickles and relishes, I still opt to store them in the fridge.) The NCHFP offers information on safe use of a boiling-water canner at their site.

Green Tomato Sweet Pickle Relish
yields about 4 half-pints

Sterilize jars and lids.

Use a food processor to chop the vegetables, then drain in a colander or mesh strainer for about 20 minutes to remove excess liquid. Discard the liquid.

• green tomatoes, washed, and chopped in the food processor, measure 2 cups
• 3/4 of a large onion, chopped in the food processor
• 1/2 of a green or red bell pepper, chopped in the food processor

After the vegetables have drained, put them in a stainless saucepan, along with the vinegar, sugar, salt.

• 3/4 cups vinegar
• 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1  1/2 scant teaspoons kosher or pickling salt

Tie the following up in a small piece of cheesecloth, then add to the saucepan.

• 1/8th of a cinnamon stick
• 1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
• 1 tablespoon mixed pickling spices

Over Medium heat, bring all to a boil, reduce heat and simmer (stirring occasionally to prevent sticking) until the vegetables are soft (about 15 minutes, or so -- the white onion pieces will be translucent).

Scoop relish into sterile jars, cap, and process. The National Center for Home Food Preservation recommends processing sweet relish in a boiling-water canner for 10 minutes if at 1000 ft or lower, 15 minutes if at 1000 to 6000 ft, or 20 minutes if above 6000 ft in elevation. 

By the way, my tomatoes are from the plants that I started from seeds on March 1 (mentioned in this post) These were seeds from a couple of years ago, but still had enough viability to give me several sprouts. I thinned the sprouts to 6 plants. One of those plants didn't make it, so I had 5 healthy, small plants to transplant to my garden in late April. The plants were quite a bit smaller than what I would have bought at the nursery, but they did well in my garden anyway (although ripening was about 2 to 3 weeks later than I might have expected with larger, nursery plants). It all worked out.

A September Recap for Groceries

Happy October, friends!

In September, I shopped on 2 occasions, 1 time hitting 3 stores, the other time just 1 store (trips 3 weeks apart), spending $182.30. That amount is greatly supplemented by the use of our emergency pantry/freezer, which I stocked in late spring and early summer. I spent more than I had planned in September. (My goal is to keep monthly spending to about $100 to $150, bringing my average monthly grocery spending to about $250 to $300/month when the use of emergency pantry is factored in). However, a good chunk of what I bought this past month contributes additional stock for the fall/winter pantry and freezer.

I'm shopping in-person for the time being, and 3 weeks seems to be my comfort zone. Any longer and I begin to feel antsy about running low on a few key ingredients. Any closer together and I worry about not-completely-necessary virus exposure. 

Here's what I bought:

Walmart (twice in month)

jalapenos -- for salsa

kosher hot dogs --Labor Day weekend

1 loaf of bread, some sandwich meat, and sliced cheese for a picnic -- Labor Day weekend

2.75 lbs beef stew meat

a couple dozen bananas

2 heads cabbage

2 bags pretzels

1 box graham crackers

2 bags oyster crackers

2 boxes cheerios-type cereal

several decaf and regular instant coffee

3 lbs dried black-eyed peas

12 canned corn

8 canned carrots

10 canned green beans

13 gals milk, whole and 2%

4.5 dozen eggs

6 frozen broccoli

2 frozen broccoli/cauliflower mix

12 frozen apple juice concentrate

6 frozen orange juice concentrate

1 bag frozen French fries

Dollar Tree

6 bags frozen blueberries 

Cash & Carry/Smartfood Service

25-lb bag of carrots
50-lb bag of onions
#10 can tomato paste

1-lb yeast

5-lb frozen peas

6-pack green bell peppers

50-lb whole wheat flour

cantaloupe

There are a few items that I bought that were just fun foods, since we're not eating out or getting take-out at all, such as French fries, sandwich meat, cheese, and a favorite bread just for a family picnic, good hot dogs for a cook-out, and the pretzels and crackers. These "treat" foods have been so enjoyed by my family; even the cold cereal was met with significant appreciation.

Going forward, this past week I did a thorough inventory and made up a shopping list of exactly what I want to buy in October to complete my emergency winter pantry/freezer. I am close to finishing and when I am done filling my stock, I'll be able to slide through the holiday season with minimal shopping. I'm not expecting a doomsday scenario with the virus, but my plan is to just stay out of stores this fall/early winter, if I can. I did read in the Wall Street Journal that stores are putting together "pandemic pallets" full of goods for this fall and winter in preparation for any surge in shopping. That's good news. No hunting for yeast, toilet paper, or flour. Last spring was a wild time to be shopping.

I'm still working away at the harvest this week. I picked the last bucket of plums this afternoon. I left about a dozen on the tree for my squirrel friends to find. Wasn't that nice of me? In reality, these were plums that I couldn't get to without risking life and limb. I started another batch of cucumber pickles, too, today. I feel so blessed this year. 

I hope that you're all enjoying a beautiful first day of October! Be back soon!

Garden-Fresh Potatoes Galore

Last spring, when this virus was first unfolding in the US, I made plans to plant an entire bed of potatoes in my vegetable garden. The bed I chose was one of the strawberry beds, an 8 X 4 bed. I transplanted all of the strawberry plants out of that bed and into the other beds to clear a spot. 

In the fall of 2019, I made the decision to not grow potatoes any more -- they're a lot of work to dig. So, we decided to eat all of the potatoes that I dug that fall and not save any for replanting. When spring rolled around and I changed my mind about the potatoes, I thought I was out of luck with the seed potatoes. Yet, to my delight, while cleaning out the garage in late March I came across a bucket of our potatoes that hadn't been touched. It wasn't a lot, maybe 2  pounds of potatoes. Next, I dug through the old potato bed in the garden and found a few stragglers that I had missed in the fall. Then I added 2 russet potatoes from my pantry that were sprouting. All totaled, I had about 4 or 5 pounds of potatoes to plant in the prepared, former strawberry bed.

With each mowing this summer, we mulched the potato bed with grass clippings. I'm not sure I'd recommend grass clippings as a sole mulch for potatoes, as they tend to mat with time. But they did do their job of holding in moisture and providing a dark place for potatoes to grow under the mat. In future years, I might add layers of shredded paper to the grass clippings.

The Harvest

First off, remember those 2 russet potatoes from my kitchen that I planted? Do you want to know how much I harvested from those? Well, I planted 2 russet potatoes, and I harvested -- drumroll please, wait for it -- 2 russet potatoes (wah wah). Yep, my russet potatoes only produced a single russet potato each. Fortunately, I did not put all of my potatoes into 1 egg basket (I know, mixed metaphors there). Instead, in addition to those russets, I planted  seed potatoes from our own potato stock that I knew from experience would be productive, purple fingerling potatoes. And were they ever productive. I harvested about 42 pounds of potatoes. And to make things even better, I only damaged 3 potatoes in the digging. (I can still use those damaged potatoes, just need to do so right away -- next week or so.)

I've always thought that growing potatoes is a great way to rejuvenate garden beds. I say this for 5 reasons: 1) I work the soil before adding the potatoes, digging deeper than I might if just planting lettuce or tomatoes; 2) I mulch potato beds heavily throughout the growing season, which not only helps hold in moisture but also blocks out weeds. I only found 1 single weed in the bed when harvesting; 3) that mulch, whatever I choose, gets worked into the soil when I harvest, enriching and aerating poor or depleted garden soil; 4) potatoes are harvested at the end of the growing season, meaning I leave a bed clean and weed-free for planting new vegetables in late winter or early spring (in this case, I'll move strawberry plants back into that bed in late fall); and 5) my rejuvenating work rewards me with lots of delicious, garden-fresh potatoes.

My back and shoulders are rather sore from yesterday's marathon potato-digging, but my mind is at ease, knowing we have enough fresh potatoes to last several months.

Making Plum Vinegar

Our Italian Prune tree has gifted us with so many ripe plums this year. In the last two weeks, we've eaten copious amounts of fresh plums and open-faced plum pies. And I've been making plum jam, plum chutney, and dried prunes to enjoy in winter. Today, I started a batch of plum-infused vinegar. I make most of our salad dressings from scratch, so it goes without saying that we use a lot of vinegar in our kitchen. I vary my homemade vinaigrettes by using a variety of flavored vinegars, from herb and chive blossom vinegars to fruity, berry vinegars. 

This plum vinegar is made with white vinegar and fresh, ripe plums. I've used regular distilled vinegar, as that is what I had. In an ideal world, I'd use a white wine vinegar for clearer flavor. 

This is how I made my plum vinegar:

• After washing the plums, I pitted and sliced them. For each pint jar, I used 1 cup of sliced, fresh plums. 
• I filled the jars with the plum slices, then poured vinegar over all to the fill line on the jars. I capped with a plastic lid and put away to infuse in a dark cupboard for about 6 weeks. I'll check the vinegar level after a day and top off if needed. (Sometimes there are air pockets between the plum slices that I miss when filling the jars with vinegar.)
• In 6 weeks' time, I'll strain the fruit out of the vinegar, add a pinch or two of sugar to sweeten and intensify the plum taste, and pour into bottles. That's it!

This is the time of year to be thinking about handmade gift-ables for the holiday season. Fruit-infused vinegar is so easy to make, yet so lovely to receive. A pretty bottle of flavored vinegar tied up with a bow and left on a neighbor's front porch in December would be a treat for the eye as well as the palette.

I hope all is well with you. I think about you all daily and wish I could be connecting with you more often. The harvest should be winding down dramatically in the next couple of weeks. Enjoy the rest of your day!

When Unhealthy Air Keeps Me Locked-up, I Turn to Google for DIY Instructions

The wind that we were expecting late Sunday, to scour out the smoky inversion, never arrived. And now, the forecasters are saying we could be in this "unhealthy" to "very unhealthy" air for most of this week. A now-sore throat combined with apprehension about what the smoke could do to my car's engine mean that I won't be going any where, any time soon. I had planned on doing a grocery shop this past Saturday, at which time I'd pick up the chili powder that I need for making more salsa.

In a moment of make-do attitude, I looked up recipes for homemade chili powder. Sure enough, there was a recipe that called for ingredients that I had on hand, primarily the dried chili pods (I use them for enchilada sauce, so I usually have a bag of them in the pantry).

This is what I used: dried red chili peppers, ground cumin, dried oregano leaf, garlic powder, and my handy, ancient (1980s) coffee/spice grinder. 

Following the recipe's instructions, I cleaned out the peppers then roasted them in a low oven before grinding them down. The chili powder tastes delicious, like mild versions of chili powder. The entire process, including rinsing the dried chilis, de-stemming and deseeding, roasting, then grinding took about 20 minutes, tops, and about half of that time I was simply waiting for the pods to roast or cool.

The bonus to making your own spice blends, such as chili powder, is if someone in your household has sensitivities to additives or is on a low-sodium diet, you can often leave those ingredients out. In checking the label on my empty chili powder container, the commercial kind had the following ingredient list: "spices (including red pepper, chili pepper), salt, garlic, silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent)."

If necessity is the mother of invention, then quarantines and other isolations are the mother of DIY via googled instructions.

If you're wondering this is the recipe that I mostly followed for the chili powder.

The "Super Massive Plume of Smoke" That Settled over My Area

 

A couple of you were asking about my area and the fire situation. While we do not have any fires near us, we are blanketed by a thick plume of smoke and haze from the California and Oregon fires. The other evening, one news source dubbed this a "super massive plume of smoke."

Here is a photo from this morning at about 9 AM. This is what the smoke and haze looks like in my backyard. The camera doesn't pick up the brownish tint of the sky or yellowish light throughout the yard as well as I am seeing out my window. If you look closely at the bottom of the V in the clearing between the trees, you can make out the silhouette of a couple of evergreen trees in the distance. These are behind the trees that you can see more clearly. Again, the camera doesn't pick up this image as well as I can see. But, these trees are on our neighbor's property, just over our property line. The smoke and haze are obscuring the view of these trees this morning. 

The air quality this morning is right around 200, depending on what source I check. This is the "unhealthy" to "very unhealthy" range for all individuals. The news has advised us to stay indoors with the windows closed. Even with windows closed and running an air purifier in one room 24/7, I've had a dusty feeling in my mouth and throat since yesterday morning. Parks, beaches, and some businesses have closed for the weekend. While this is not an emergency for my family, this is such a strange occurrence. I thought I'd update what it's like this morning for my area north of Seattle, for those of you who have expressed concern for our welfare.

BTW, air quality is expected to begin improving for us tonight into tomorrow morning. Until then, I am held captive indoors by air.

Is it ever economical to make preserves with store-bought ingredients?

Common wisdom is that if you want to save money, you shouldn't buy ingredients to make your own preserves, pickles, or relishes. While in many cases that's certainly true, I've found several instances where it did save me money to make some of my own preserves using store-bought ingredients. 

One of my favorites is tomato salsa. I make my salsa with almost exclusively purchased ingredients, including the tomatoes. I use canned, whole tomatoes that I buy in institutional-sized cans (known as #10 cans). I can get about 7 or 8 pints of salsa using 1 #10 can of tomatoes (cost me $3.10 to $3.50 a #10 can). I also buy the onions in bulk (50-lb sacks, at about 20 cents/lb), and jalapeno peppers (under $1 a pound). The other ingredients include garlic or garlic powder, salt, chili powder, vinegar, oregano (I grow), cilantro (I grow), and red pepper flakes (sometimes use those free packets that you can ask for with a pizza purchase). 7 to 8 pints of salsa cost me about $4 to make, or about 50 cents per pint jar, which is about 1/3 the cost of the cheapest commercial salsa at my local Walmart.

I love, love, love blueberry preserves. Bit I don't like the price so much. Walmart sells Smucker's Blueberry Preserves (18-oz jar) for $2.68. Bonne Maman 13-oz Wild Blueberry Preserves are even pricier at $4.34. I can buy a 10-oz bag of frozen blueberries at Dollar Tree for $1 ($1.60/lb) or a 40-oz bag of frozen, wild blueberries at Walmart for $4.88 ($1.95/lb). A 10-oz bag of frozen blueberries contains about 1  1/2 cups. So, using the Dollar Tree blueberries, I need 2.66 bags of blueberries, about 5  1/4 cups of sugar, 3 oz of pectin, and 2 tablespoons lemon juice (lemon zest in strips is also nice). This makes about 48 ounces of preserves for a cost of about $3.50 to $3.75, or the equivalent of $1.31 to $1.40 for an 18 ounce portion, half the price of Smucker's Blueberry Preserves. A comparable amount of wild blueberries (if I wanted to go the Bonne Maman Wild Blueberry Preserves route) would cost an additional 58 cents per batch, or $1.10 to $1.17 per 13-oz jar. That's almost 1/4 of the cost of Bonne Maman preserves.

You may recall that I make watermelon rind pickles, using the white portion of the watermelon rind. This part of the melon would otherwise be discarded, so I consider it to be free to me. However, I do have to buy sugar, spices, and vinegar to make those sweet and tangy pickles. If you can find watermelon rind pickles in your store, you'll see that they run about $4.75 to $5.00 for a 10-oz jar, or $7.60/16 oz. Even if I compared the price of homemade watermelon pickles to a more ordinary pickle, such as a bread and butter cucumber pickles, the least expensive jar of B & B pickles at my Walmart costs $1.84/24 oz. My homemade watermelon rind pickles cost me about 25 cents/16 oz (or 37 cents/24 oz).

Pickled carrots are another good example of making a pickle frugally with store-bought ingredients. I can buy carrots in 25-lb bags for under 40 cents per pound. The vinegar, spices, and sugar are also pretty inexpensive, so these pickles are a bargain to make and yet so nice to add to winter meals. Most of us likely wouldn't buy pickled carrots. So, a better cost comparison to the homemade pickled carrots is once again, the bread and butter cucumber pickles. Homemade carrot pickles cost me about 65 cents for a 16-oz jar, or 97 cents for a 24-oz comparison (to Walmart's B & B pickles) portion.

The trick to making preserves, pickles, and salsas inexpensively is to look for the main ingredient to be inexpensive to begin with, such as canned tomatoes, fresh carrots, to-be-discarded watermelon rind, or frozen blueberries. Sometimes this means buying in institutional-sized packages, other times on sale or from a discount store, or even buying "seconds" or imperfect produce. There are a couple of bonuses to making preserves and salsas with store-bought ingredients. One, even if it's a bad garden year, I can still make some much-enjoyed extras for our winter table. And two, I can make most of these preserves in the off-season, too, when I'm not overwhelmed with other end-of-summer tasks. 

Do you have any favorite frugal canning recipes that rely mostly on ingredients from the store? Please share!

Not Naturally Inclined Toward Organization

One of my activities for this summer has been decluttering and organizing cupboards, drawers, shelves, and closets for the whole house (with exception to others' personal spaces). The obvious advantage of doing this is less frustration when putting away or retrieving needed items. The bonus (which may or may not be greater than the organization part) is uncovering all of my forgotten supplies, often times in duplicate. A thorough annual or semi-annual clean-out is a necessity for keeping all of my family's belongings accounted for.

For example, I found 2 new rolls of clear packing tape. Packing tape is obviously good for sealing packages to be mailed. It also doubles as "scotch" tape for gift-wrapping, repairs torn freezer bags, laminates paper items (like recipes recorded on paper/cards), cleans lint and hair from clothing and upholstery, etc. We find this kind of tape so useful that I buy a couple of rolls per year.

I also discovered that I have enough pj bottoms for another winter season. I had thought I would need a new pair when one of my two current favorites wore thin in the seat this past winter. I also have enough sweat and fleece jackets to get through another cold weather season. And, I found that I had more socks than I need, so I donated 4 good-condition pairs to one grateful daughter. 

I pulled all of the gift items together that I've acquired over the past two years and now have them in one spot -- the designated gift closet (where they should have been all along). I've got a great start on holiday and birthday shopping/gifting for the coming season. 

In the kitchen I found several stashes of cleaned, gently used freezer bags. We now have enough freezer bags for all of our freezing needs this summer and fall. 

I also discovered that we can stop buying hair conditioner now. I think I have enough hair conditioner to get through this pandemic and the next one. 

And, we have not one but 2 ping pong balls for our table. I found each ball in a different cupboard. Go figure.

You may not know this about me, but I am not naturally inclined toward organization. When it comes to putting things away, my mind scatters in a multitude of directions. To give you an example of what I mean, I'll tell you about my recipe card file. 

The sorting dividers for my recipe box are alphabetized index cards (with A, B, C, etc tabs). I can never settle on just one section for a particular recipe card. For instance, with my recipe for rhubarb custard pie, some days I think "I'll file this under R for rhubarb, so when it's rhubarb season again next year, I'll know where to find it." On other days I think, "this recipe is for a pie, so I'll file it under P for pie." And yet on another day, I'll find myself certain that the most logical place for this card is under D for desserts. Even if I had the kind of divider cards that said Desserts, Entrees, Vegetables, etc, I might still find myself conflicted over which section to place the card. Can you imagine what it's like when I need to actually find a particular recipe card? I was making salsa this morning and had to search through several sections to find that card. I ultimately found it under T, you know, for tomatoes. *smacks hand on forehead* 

And if you think this sounds bad with me trying to organize a house, imagine what it's like when you throw a bunch of other people into the mix. No one here really gets my "system." So I may put item X away in the drawer with other Xs. Yet my husband will put item X in the drawer with Ys. Most of the time, we all just hunt around for whatever we're seeking. This really does make a good case for not packing cupboards and closets completely full, and instead leaving lots of air space around each item for better visibility. And that brings me back to my big task this summer -- getting rid of everything not truly necessary and organizing what is left. 

I sometimes throw out something that I later regret. This used to really bother me. (You know -- "I just knew I shouldn't get rid of that do-hickey. Now I am do-hickeyless right when I most need one.") I now look at this as one of the "costs" of getting and staying organized. Just about everything we do has a cost of some sort, be it time, money, or effort. So I may have a regret or two after this summer's clean-out. But for the most part, the wee bit more of sanity we'll enjoy when retrieving or putting things away will out-weigh the expense of replacing those do-hickeys.

I would like to say that the flip side to my lack of inclination toward organization is that I'm creative and spontaneous, and loads of fun to be around. However, I'm sure my mother would point out that I can be creative and fun while still putting my socks away in their proper drawer.

Back to decluttering my drawers.

Are you the naturally organized type? What are your secrets?