My Week, Kitchen and Garden

This past week centered around and kitchen and garden. 

We did indeed finish picking blackberries. (Remember that pillow-sized bag of frozen blackberries?) I have since moved on to the plum tree. The plums ripen over a couple of weeks, so I harvest and process over this whole period. This past week I made prunes, plum jam, plum pie, as well as served a lot of fresh plums in compotes, yogurt, and out of hand. I also make chutney every fall, using plums, apples, raisins, and onions. I'm out of onions for the time being. So the chutney-making will have to wait until I can get another grocery order placed. (Gee, I miss those days when I could just run out and pick up 1 thing when I needed it.) Our fruit bowl currently has fresh tomatoes, plums, and a couple of bananas. Once I finish harvesting the plums, I'll move on to digging potatoes. I hope those did well!

This is the perfect time of year to be using our electric dehydrator. Our cool September house benefits from the heated air spewed into the kitchen by the food dehydrator. In addition to drying plums I've also been drying herbs this week. It looks like this will be the last oregano and sage harvest for the year. I cut both plants back as far as I dare go. I now have about 3 cups each of loose-packed dried oregano leaves and sage leaves. Our oregano harvest was not as good as previous years. I'll be working on that part of the herb garden next spring, weeding and mixing in some compost in hopes of getting the output higher again.

This has been about the most frustrating gardening year in terms of dealing with critters. The other day I noticed something had been on the deck and in the raised trough planters. Whatever "it" was, it didn't do a great deal of damage. Then Thursday morning I caught a squirrel in one planter digging up the turnip plants. I replanted those turnips, and I hope they'll take hold again. Then I put a stick fence all the way around the trough. Afterward, I checked the kale trough and found several severed leaves and some half eaten stems. I assume it was the little squirrel doing the damage. I salvaged what I could to use in a couple of meals then built another little fence around that trough. The weather turned chilly earlier than usual and I think this squirrel is looking for food as well as burying spots for his winter stash. I do wonder if the squirrel knows something I don't know about this coming fall and winter.

With the cooler weather I've also been harvesting tomatoes. I've picked all of the orange to red ones and am moving on to the green tomatoes. In my area, tomatoes typically die from blight and not frost. Blight usually develops after a cool rain long before we get a frost. So I pick them as soon as the weather cools like it has this last week. I let some stay on the vine a little longer, so they can grow just a bit more. But I also hedge my bets and pick some now to ripen indoors, even if they're on the small side. In another week or so, I'll use the tiniest green tomatoes in pickle relish for this next year (another reason I need some onions).

I also made the last of the tomato salsa for the year, using up most of the garden cilantro. So, for the year, I made 28 pints of salsa. My family can really plough through it quickly. I'll keep my fingers crossed that this supply lasts a while.

My potted lettuce has been growing so slowly. I don't know if this is the low-light conditions from this time of year or from the cooler nights. Anyway, I moved 2 pots of Romaine into the house and under lights. I hope I can revive them and get more salads for the family.

I came across another World War 2 British series on youtube this week and managed to binge the whole series in a couple of evenings. It's titled Wartime Kitchen and Garden. There are 8 episodes, each about 23 minutes. The series was produced in 1993, predating the series Wartime Farm by nearly 20 years. Wartime Kitchen and Farm is perhaps not as polished as Wartime Farm, but it contains a lot of interesting and sometimes helpful information. Two of the "stars" are people who lived through WW2 and personally understood how challenging the war made cooking and gardening. The real benefit I find from watching these series is a sense of camaraderie with other folks who have needed to be resourceful, make-do, and resist wasting food. Here's the link to episode 1, Wartime Kitchen and Garden. Enjoy!

I placed a Walmart order to be shipped to my house this past week, stocking up on canned tomatoes, tomato paste, instant mashed potatoes, imitation bacon bits (we like them on baked potatoes and in green vegetables), and a giant tub of black licorice for October. Everybody likes a treat now and then. I also picked up an order with more meat, milk, and a couple of pantry items that I can't get shipped.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers

Meals this last week continued to be humble but tasty. We prepared everything at home, using a lot of garden produce and making as much from scratch as possible, including scratch flour tortillas, scratch biscuits, scratch bread, scratch yogurt, and scratch desserts. My job is all about providing food for my hungry family while staying on a budget.

Friday

pepperoni pizza, sautéed kale, tomato-cucumber salad, rhubarb-blackberry crisp

Saturday

lentil tacos, rice, tomato wedges, carrot sticks, leftover crisp

Sunday

peanut noodles, sautéed cabbage, tomatoes, plums

Monday

beef and bean burritos (in homemade flour tortillas), fresh tomatoes, sautéed kale, canned corn, plum pie

Tuesday (repeat of Monday)

more beef and bean burritos, fresh tomatoes, carrot sticks and dip, leftover plum pie

Wednesday

pancake and sausage roll-ups, Swiss chard and scrambled eggs, tomato-cucumber salad, sautéed cinnamon apples, scratch brownies

Thursday

chicken and dumplings (using 1 chicken breast, sage stock, garden kale, carrots, and scratch biscuit dough), fresh plums

Breakfasts included homemade yogurt, last of the fresh blackberries, chopped fresh plums, toast, oatmeal, eggs, juice, coffee, milk.

Lunches and snacks used the leftover refried beans and rice, a pot of Italian garden vegetable and lentil soup, scratch biscuits, bread, cheese, peanut butter, fresh plums, fresh tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, brownies, and popcorn.

Extra Post

Just one extra post this week -- using the stems from homegrown, dried herbs after removing the leaves. Read about that here.

I hope you all had a wonderful week. What were your highlights? Have you watched either Wartime Kitchen and Garden or Wartime Farm? How have shows like those benefitted you?

Using the Stems From My Dried Garden Herbs

a quart of oregano stock

If you grow and dry your own herbs, you may be like me and think that the twiggy/woody stems might be useful for more than just compost additive. 

This past week I harvested more sage and oregano, cutting stems with leaves on. After washing the herbs, I dried them in the dehydrator. Once fully dried, I removed the leaves from the stems and store them in airtight containers. Remaining is a pile of twiggy or woody herb stems. 

Not wanting to waste even one little bit, I made a broth with each batch of herb stems. In one saucepan I placed the stems from the dried oregano and into another saucepan I placed the stems of the dried sage. I added about a quart of water to each pot and brought them to a boil. I simmered the herbs, covered, for about 2 hours, then strained and refrigerated the resulting stocks to use in cooking later during week.

sage stock to use in chicken and dumplings

The oregano stock is very mild and added a nice flavor to an Italian vegetable and lentil soup. The sage stock was more highly flavored. It was used as the liquid in a pot of chicken and dumplings.

Using the stems from my dried herbs helps stretch my winter herb supply. I use a lot of both oregano and sage in winter cooking, often depleting my supply before spring growth begins again. Anything I can do to maximize what I grow is a savings, as it reduces the chance I'll need to buy commercial herbs come April or May. I still compost my herb stems. I just now do that after I make stock with them.

My Week, Early September (plus links to 2 new posts)

(links to 2 new posts near the bottom of the page)

Hi friends! These short weeks go by in a blur, don't they?

This past week, we've swung from so chilly that the furnace kicked in one day early in the week to Thursday, so warm we've got the windows open. We've had drizzle, fog, and sunshine, sometimes even all in the same day. My husband has been using the dry days to complete the painting of the deck railing. While I see these sunshiny moments as opportunities to hang dry the laundry.

Unofficial summer came to an end with the conclusion of the 3-day weekend. How was your Labor Day? Did you cook-out? We had a fire-ring cook-out at our house to celebrate. I made scratch hot dog buns and we each roasted our own hot dogs. I also used garden tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and garlic to make one salad and garden plums, apples, blackberries, and preserved figs (from last year) to make a fruit salad. I also used garden kale in a cheesy kale and mashed potato casserole. 

And I made blackberry cheesecake ice cream for dessert, using foraged blackberries, heavy cream, milk, cream cheese, sugar, yogurt, and vanilla. We enjoyed all of it! 

The Tuesday following the long weekend, I put away all of the patriotic decor and dishes (red, white, and blue stuff). Appropriate to this next season, I pulled out the harvest tablecloth.

Frustrated with the mess of supplement and rx bottles in the cabinet, I made risers one afternoon out of cracker boxes. 

I taped the open end of an empty cracker box closed.

Next, I cut the box in half, lengthwise.

I slid one half inside the other.

Then stacked the now small box on top of a regular box.

Now doesn't that look better? We can actually find what we need now. And, it has stayed this way all week! That's the mark of success with these organizational projects -- it stays organized.

My fall vegetable garden on the deck is humming right along. The lettuce and spinach has been growing slowly, however the kale looks great (above). The kale will continue to grow for another few weeks. When cold weather returns, I'll push the deck planter up against the house to give it some freeze protection, extending its usefulness as much as possible. Beginning in late October through November we'll use the kale in meals. Sometime in mid to late December, the kale will die back and the plants will remain dormant through winter. In mid-March, it will return and give us several weeks of kale to harvest before going to seed.

I continue to freeze blackberries. Every time I think we're done with the blackberry picking, my husband finds more. I open the fridge door and there's another pail full. This is one of two jumbo bags of frozen blackberries. The bags are the size of a standard pillow. This is free food. Good thing we love blackberries!

I worked at making treats and snacks for my family again this week. The cinnamon rolls were a big hit, especially since I made it clear that they could be snacked on whenever and not just saved for breakfast. I also baked a couple of batches of bar cookies and made popcorn on several occasions. Making these snacks meant we used less of the commercial snack foods, like crackers. I've said before, we're a cracker-eating family, here.

New Posts

I got to writing up our grocery spending for the month of August. We spent a fair amount this past month. However, we did stock up quite a bit. You can read about it here in this post. 

Some of our pantry stock-up items were ordered online and shipped to our house. The boxes came packed with brown craft paper. I had quite the mound of crumpled paper in my dining room for the month. I finally got to getting that cleaned up. Now the big question, what can I do with all of this paper? Read about it here, and please add your ideas for how to use this. Yes, I do save and reuse this sort of stuff, just like I save string from commercial bags of beans and rice. No I don't have a ball of string the size of Minnesota in my kitchen drawer. This is the string that I use every summer to tie up tomato plants and in winters to truss whole chickens and turkeys for roasting. You know the drill -- waste no, want not.

And that's about it for the week. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. What's on the agenda for your weekend?

What Would You Do With Yards of Slightly Crumpled Brown Craft Paper?

My recent orders from Walmart.com came packed in boxes cushioned with crumpled brown craft paper. You should have seen the mound of paper I had in my dining room! As I was rolling it up to store more neatly, I was thinking of the ways I could use it all.

• a biodegradable weed barrier in the yard and garden
• layer of paper between layers of green tomatoes at the end of the gardening season
• wrapping paper (some of the smoother sections, perhaps ironed on LOW) for gifts at the holidays
• packing paper for shipping gifts at the holidays
• parcel wrapping paper for mailing
• compost additive
• scrap paper for jotting down notes

That's what I've come up with so far. What would you do with several dozen yards of slightly used brown craft paper?

At the end of my hour-long clean-up of this mound of paper, I stored in all in rolls fitted into a cardboard box. It's amazing that what was once a rather large mound can now fit neatly in a medium-sized box.

August 2021 Grocery Recap

grocery shopping with ration books during WWII
image source: 
https://flashbak.com/the-rationing-years-in-britain-1939-1954-21011/

In August, I made 3 curbside pick-up orders at our local Walmart and placed 3 online orders to be shipped to my home at Walmart.com, spending a total of $364.48. In some cases, it made more sense (and cents) to order items online. For other items, buying in-person (either in store or pick-up) was the only way to make those purchases. So that's why I take a hybrid approach when shopping.

With our garden producing so well, I was able to buy less produce and spend more in other food categories. So I stocked up on meat, nuts, flour, and a couple of other pantry items. I'm still working on completing my stock-up for the fall and winter months, thinking ahead to holiday menus and what I might need for those.

Here's a comparison of previous month's grocery spending:

Aug 2020   $92.18

Sept 2020  $182.30

Oct 2020   $304.52

Nov  2020  $189.45

Dec  2020  $77.98

Jan  2021  $54.07

Feb  2021  $184.66

Mar 2021   $152.77

Apr 2021  $447.19

May 2021  $285.53

June 2021 $127.98

July 2021 $293.58

August 2021 $364.48

My spending in August is on the high side (but not the highest ever) for my family. However, almost $150 of that was on fresh and frozen meat.

I'm just beginning to stock up on canned vegetables (carrots and pumpkin) for the winter. We went through a lot of canned carrots last winter. Not only are they easy, but they store on a shelf instead of the fridge, and the price is comparable to fresh. I'll pick up some more canned veggies this month.

Here's what I bought:

2 heads green cabbage, Walmart, 58 cents/lb
14 bananas, Walmart, 46 cents/lb
2 bundles celery, Walmart, $1.28 ea
.58 lb jalapeno peppers, Walmart, 98 cents/lb
3-lb bag onions, Walmart, $2.47
2  5-lb bag carrots, Walmart, $3.44 ea

3 packs turkey bacon, Walmart, $2.48 ea
2 24-oz packs bacon, Walmart, $5.98 ea
2  32-oz rolls pork sausage, Walmart, $4.78 ea
3 16-oz turkey Italian sausage, Walmart, $3.23 ea
20 1-lb rolls ground beef, Walmart, $2.88 ea
4 family packs boneless skinless chicken breasts, Walmart, $2.04/lb
jumbo pack (20-ct) Hebrew National kosher beef hot dogs, Walmart, $9.98

5 dozen eggs, Walmart, $7.47
3 gallons fat-free milk, Walmart, $3.07 ea
16-oz heavy cream, Walmart, $1.98
2-pack cream cheese, Walmart, $2.87 (for making blackberry cheesecake ice cream)

12 cans pumpkin, Walmart, 97 cents ea
12 cans carrots, Walmart, 48 cents ea
48-oz vegetable shortening, Walmart, $3.12
32-oz raw honey, Walmart, $7.93
8 20-oz raisins, Walmart.com, $2.94 ea
5 16-oz whole almonds, Walmart.com, $4.96 ea
2 35-oz containers cocktail peanuts, Walmart, $4.23 ea
32 oz pecan halves, Walmart, $18.68
4 boxes graham crackers, Walmart, $1.26 ea
4 bags chocolate chips, Walmart, $1.74 ea
4 10-lb bags all-purpose flour, Walmart.com, $2.50 ea
2 5-lb bags corn meal, Walmart.com, $2.36 ea
2 64-oz jars peanut butter, Walmart.com, $4.34 ea
8 lbs split peas, Walmart.com, $1.02/lb

12 cans tuna, Walmart.com, 74 cents ea
3 jars mayonnaise, Walmart.com, $1.94 ea
5 boxes bran flakes cereal, Walmart, $1.98 ea

My Week, Last of August

Hi friends,

And the month of August is over just like that! I was out walking in the neighborhood this morning and noticed many homes with autumn decorations up already. Lots of autumn-themed wreaths, a bale of hay or two, and even a small scarecrow adorning a front porch. One neighbor planted a pumpkin patch in her front yard, and she had a nice selection of big pumpkins growing. Her front yard receives a lot of sunshine from morning to evening. Meanwhile, in my rather heavily treed backyard, my own pumpkin patch is looking rather anemic. I have 3 small pumpkins and 3 extra small pumpkins, plus 2 small acorn squashes. It's time to consider taking out a couple more trees.

The blackberry picking is just about done for the year. Our "spot" got cut down in between weekends in late August and our own blackberry patch at the back of the yard is almost fully-picked. I froze somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 quarts of blackberries to use this winter.

Do you ever imagine how you could grow more food on your property if the grocery supply chain became became unreliable? I was thinking it all through as I walked our property the other afternoon. We're on a suburban lot, so it's not like we have unlimited space to garden. My best options would be to convert two spots to garden space, the back lawn and a patch that's in the center of our circular driveway.  My husband and I have been talking about that patch in the center of the driveway for a while. It's overgrown with trees and ferns and might be a nice spot to plant another apple tree plus have a sunnier pumpkin patch. Anyways, with the world feeling so crazy these days, my thoughts went to a place of "what could we do to help ourselves, if needed."

ripe radish seed pods

Back to reality, the radish seed pods are just now beginning to fully mature and dry out. I plucked a couple of pods the other day and split them open. The pods contain between 1 and 6 seeds each. I'm hoping to have enough seeds for planting next spring as well as growing sprouts indoors this winter. We'll have to see if I get enough for both planting needs.

You might remember, last summer my family decided to skip any sort of vacation for 2020. We used that savings to stock an emergency pantry. We relied on those staples all through winter, which meant I didn't need to venture out for groceries during the winter peak of Covid cases. Well, here we are into September of 2021, and we're not taking any sort of vacation for this year, either. In addition, we've now not eaten restaurant food, purchased movie or museum tickets, or bought stuff other than food and household necessities for this past year and a half. So, once again we have enough to restock our emergency/winter pantry. 

Whenever I have had a pity party moment, feeling sorry for myself for no vacations or eating out, I think about the satisfaction I have in knowing that we are putting together a full pantry and will have plenty to eat all winter long. 

Storing away food for winter was once a priority for families. I suppose this had a lot to do with farm life and growing the bulk of one's own food. But I also think there is wisdom in uncertain modern times to switch spending away from more frivolous spending and into pre-paying for basic needs, such as by paying off a mortgage early or stocking a winter pantry. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Two posts for your weekend reading, if you're so inclined.

My substitution for brown sugar. I haven't bought brown sugar in about 20 years. I never had enough when I needed it or it was hard as a rock. So, I stopped buying it. Here's how I substitute.

I made the second batch of salsa this week. I don't use garden tomatoes for salsa but instead, I use canned tomatoes. I broke down the cost benefit for using canned tomatoes to make a fairly easy and quick salsa to can in place of buying commercial salsa. Read about it here.

Have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe, especially if you'll be traveling over the holiday. Once again, we'll be having a cook-out. Either hot dogs or burgers, some oven-roasted veggies, a fruit jello salad, a garden vegetable salad, and some blackberry cheesecake ice cream.

No Garden Tomatoes for Canning Salsa? Canned Tomatoes Work Just As Well

Canned tomatoes are also easier to use, as they are pre-peeled. The sensitive skin on my hands thanks me for using canned tomatoes, too.

I buy the institutional-sized cans of whole peeled tomatoes at our restaurant supply for $3.39/can. But they're also available through other outlets like Costco Business and Sam's Club or online through Webstaurant Store. 

Of course, smaller cans could also be used. The large #10 cans that I buy contain the same amount of tomatoes as about 7 1/4  14.5-oz cans of tomatoes sold in grocery stores. So, the price on a #10 can works out to about 45 cents per 14.5 ounces (or 80 cents for the larger 28-oz can). Our local Walmart sells the 28-oz can of diced tomatoes for 96 cents and the 28-oz can of crushed tomatoes for 92 cents each. Those would also be a relative bargain for making salsa. 

The least expensive salsa at Walmart is 6.6 cents/ounce. A pint of salsa at that price comes to $1.06. The cost for my homemade salsa, using canned tomatoes, homegrown garlic, oregano and cilantro, purchased jalapenos, chili powder, red pepper flakes, vinegar, onion,  and salt comes to about 53 cents per pint of ingredients, plus another 10 cents for new lids each year and a couple of pennies for the stove, or about 65 cents per pint jar. For reference, a #10 can of tomatoes makes 8 pints of salsa, using the recipe in this link.

I make 3 batches of salsa each year (total of 24 pints). My cost is about $15.60, total. If I'd bought that amount of salsa at Walmart, I would have spent $25.44. My savings compared to buying the least expensive per ounce salsa at Walmart is a total of $9.84.

It takes me about 30 minutes of actual work per 8-pint batch of salsa. The salsa is tasty. And I find it satisfying to home-can something and save money.

What to Use When All Out of Brown Sugar

It was so chilly this past week that I made crockpot steel cut oats for breakfasts. We like brown sugar, dried fruit, and chopped nuts on our oatmeal. I don't keep brown sugar on hand. It tends to turn into rocks in my kitchen. Instead, when I have a recipe that calls for brown sugar, or if I want a dish of brown sugar for oatmeal breakfasts, I make my own with granulated sugar and molasses.

For the most part, I just eyeball the amount of molasses that I use. But I do follow these rough estimates:

• 1 tablespoon of molasses for every cup of white sugar for light brown sugar 
• 1  1/2 to 2 tablespoons of molasses for every cup of white sugar for dark brown sugar 

When a recipe calls for brown sugar, such as cookie recipes, or if I'm making a pitcher of pancake syrup, I don't bother "making" the brown sugar, instead adding the white sugar and molasses separately. When I want to have a small bowl of brown sugar available for adding to hot cereal or sprinkling on individual pancakes as I stack them, I mix the molasses and sugar together at that time.

Mixing the two together is as easy as using the back of a spoon to mash the molasses into the white sugar. No special tools required.

Round-Up of Posts Week of August 26

This week . . .

We've had more cool and cloudy than sun and warmth this week. It sure feels like fall just slid on in. The cool weather made a great excuse to spend time in the kitchen cooking and baking. My family was pleased with this turn of activities while we're still technically in summer.

The figs ripened later this year than last. Last year we enjoyed ripe figs in late July, sharing with my son and daughter-in-law. This year, the figs didn't ripen until mid-August. That's an indication of our cooler summer weather this year. Anyway, I picked a bucket full the other day, using some fresh in meals and dehydrating the rest to enjoy later. 

After my last grocery pick-up, I made several jars of salsa. This week I've added more jalapeños and will be cooking up another 8 jars of salsa this weekend.

Our summer garden has provided almost all of our produce for this past week. But summer is fading, so I've continued to work on my fall garden. I transplanted a few more seedlings and planted some radish seeds. I'm hoping to have fresh fall greens and new root vegetables through mid to late November. 

This week, I have 2 posts for your weekend reading.

1) Making my grocery budget stretch during this period of food inflation is on my mind. In this post, I discussed my 3-pronged approach that helps me maximize our grocery budget.

2) What did you eat this past week? Anything especially stand out? In the second post, I've written out our meals for this past week, again eating all of our meals at home. 

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers This Past Week

Friday
homemade pepperoni pizza, medley of sautéed summer squash, tomatoes, green pepper, Swiss chard, apple wedges with homemade caramel sauce

Saturday
beef and bean tacos (with homemade salsa), cabbage, carrot sticks, rice, blackberry pie

Sunday
pancakes, breakfast sausage, sautéed Swiss chard, cookies

Monday
meatloaf and gravy, rice, roasted zucchini, fresh figs, blackberry pie

Tuesday
chicken and vegetable soup, biscuits, cookies

Wednesday
hotdog cookout, potato chips, sweet potato fries, carrot sticks, apple wedges

Thursday
chicken and gravy, rice-stuffed grape leaves, sautéed Swiss chard, cucumber salad, brownies

Tonight -- homemade pizza again. I love our homemade pizza more than restaurant pizza. In fact, more and more I am loving home-cooked meals more than restaurant meals.

Breakfasts this week included homemade yogurt and blackberries, homemade granola, homemade instant oatmeal, raisins, applesauce, bananas, toast, eggs, milk, coffee, tea.

Lunches were more varied as I tried to use what I could from the garden. Most days, I set lunch fixins' on the counter for each of us to put together our own lunches on our individual timetables. These lunch components included cream of sorrel soup, Italian vegetable and lentil soup, white bean and vegetable sandwich spread with homemade bread, various leftovers, cheese and peanut butter sandwiches, celery sticks, carrot sticks, fresh blackberries, apple & kale salad, squash blossom salad, crackers, cookies, brownies, ice cream.

One of the commercial items that I hope to use less of this next week is crackers. My family loves them and can go through a box in a day or two. I'm planning on making some different types of buns and biscuits this next week to go with soups or salads instead of getting out another box of crackers. Baking scratch breads would stretch our supply of boxed crackers a little longer.

What was on your menu this past week? Are there commercial foods for which you try to find homemade substitutes?

The Three-Pronged Approach to Saving on Groceries

Grocery prices have been inching higher and higher every month this year. Yet, our income remains the same. So, I am having to double-down on managing our food supplies, using every trick in my repertoire. 

You know that I compare prices when shopping. Once I get those groceries home, I work to get maximum value out of what I purchase. To simplify, I follow a basic approach to providing meals and snacks on a low budget that incorporates 3 straightforward ideas. 1) I push what is cheap; 2) I stretch what is expensive; and 3) I use every morsel and drop of all food.

Push What's Cheap and Plentiful

When I say cheap, I mean both foods that are cheaply bought or that I grow or forage. So, here are some specific instances from this past week where I either nudged or served my family the cheapest of my food supplies:

a jar of homemade instant oatmeal just before stirring it all up

kale and apple salad using garden fruit and veg
plus toasted almonds and raisins

white bean and garden vegetable sandwich spread
w/ homemade whole wheat bread

• homemade granola
• homemade instant oatmeal made with my food processor, adding brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, and milk powder
• scratch desserts -- cookies, brownies, and blackberry pie using foraged berries
• homemade soups using garden vegetables -- 1) cream of sorrel, 2) Italian vegetable
• homemade bread
• salads from the garden, including a kale and apple salad one lunch, squash blossom salad another
• white bean and garden vegetable sandwich spread
• chilled bottles of tap water (to encourage inexpensive beverage consumption)
• more grape leaves stuffed with rice and garden herbs for a super inexpensive side dish and leftover snacking
• bottomless container of free foraged blackberries ready for snacking and meals

Stretch What's Expensive

Defining expensive is different for each of us. We all have those ingredients or foods that cost more relative to our budget. For my budget, meat, coffee, tea, chocolate, nuts, and butter all fall into that "expensive" category. Here are some ways that I stretched this category of foods this week:

meatloaf for 4 adults using 8 ounces beef stretched with TVP

homemade chocolate-almond candy

• I made large pots of tea with a single tea bag for us all to enjoy over the course of a day instead of each of us using our own tea bag. Savings -- 3 tea bags
• I love my coffee and decaf. However, to stretch what I have, I've switched from a 12-oz mug to a 6-oz tea cup for drinking coffee and decaf. Savings -- about 3 teaspoons of coffee granules per day
• I made meatloaf using TVP to stretch the ground beef. I rehydrated 1/2 cup of TVP granules and mixed with 8 ounces of ground beef to make a dinner for 4 adults. Savings -- 4 ounces of ground beef (I normally serve 3 ounces of beef per person in our house)
• I made scratch brownies with a mix of vegetable oil and plain yogurt instead of butter. Savings -- 1/2 cup of butter.
• When I baked chocolate chip cookies, I used 3/4 the amount of chocolate chips called for in the recipe. Savings -- 1/4 cup of chocolate chips.
• I used those remaining chocolate chips later in the week in a batch of chocolate covered almonds for my family. In our house, if we snacked on nuts, as is, we'd likely consume 1 cup of nuts in a day. Instead, I took 1/2 cup of whole almonds and coated them with melted chocolate for a candy treat for my family. Savings -- 1/2 cup of almonds. For our plain snacking during the week, I put out the much cheaper roasted peanuts. A note: while it's true we could just skip candy altogether, homemade candy is often a bargain compared to commercial candy. Example -- Hershey with Almond bar, 1.45 oz, 88 cents (Walmart). Homemade chocolate covered almond clusters, 1.45 oz,  about 40 cents.

Save and Use Every Morsel and Drop

I spend a fair amount of effort each week making sure we don't have to throw out or compost food. This week was no different. Here are a few ways I used every last bit of both purchased and homegrown foods.

squash blossom salad

• I made a beautiful and delicious squash blossom salad to have with lunches. Squash and pumpkin blossoms are often overlooked for their food value. They can be added to soups, casseroles, salads, or sauteed. The blossoms are delicate. I soak them in cold water to encourage insects to escape, then pull off the base of the blossom and tear the rest open along one side to lay flat, checking for bugs. I gently pat the mass of blossoms dry before tearing and arranging in a salad or sliced to add to cooked dishes. In the salad I made this week, I used squash blossoms, a tomato, and some greens, and arranged on plates. I dressed with an oil, vinegar, garlic, and thyme vinaigrette. As I said above, squash blossoms are delicate and this is not the type of salad to toss, but instead to arrange on plates.
• I used the bones, skin, and fat/drippings from roasting some chicken legs to make stock in the crockpot overnight. The next day I was able to pick off a bit more meat and then freeze this in the stock.
• When cooking carrots this week, I washed the carrots but did not peel them. Unpeeled carrots may not look as "clean" as peeled ones, but this ensured we ate as much of each carrot as possible. I also used the green tops of the garden carrots in the white bean and vegetable sandwich spread.
• I made a kale and apple salad early in the week, adding the bitter leaves from several garden lettuce plants that are going to seed. Lettuce leaves become bitter when the plants mature and develop blossoms. Most folks compost these leaves along with the tall stalks. I add them to salads that already have strong flavors. Every bit of edible garden produce that we eat from our garden during the growing season will spare some of the prime produce for freezing to eat later.
• When I cooked meat this week, I saved the leftover fat in containers in the freezer to use in cooking later.
• I rinsed and scraped the near-empty yogurt jars to add to the cream of sorrel soup. I also pureed the saved milk skin from making that yogurt, then added to the soup. When I make yogurt, I have to heat the milk to kill competing bacteria before adding the yogurt culture. This creates a milk skin that I then strain off for a smooth finished yogurt. I save the milk skin in a container in the fridge for use in cooking later. That's what I pureed and added to the soup along with the yogurt jar scrapings and rinsings.

This is my three-pronged approach put into action this past week. I know that sometimes it seems like I'm only saving a teensy tiny bit, but in the end, I am able to keep our grocery spending averaging less than half of the governments "thrifty" suggested food spending.

Weekly Round-Up of Posts

Our weather turned unseasonably cool and wet this past week, feeling more like fall than summer. I even made soup as a lunch for us on a couple of occasions and baked a lot as I tried to warm up the house a bit. This happens every August and it throws me for a loop. I start thinking fall when I should still be enjoying summer. Oh well, I'll have to get myself back into summer thinking.

I made a large batch (8 pints) of salsa this past week. My cilantro was ready for picking and I had the canned tomatoes, garlic, oregano already, so this was the week. I did have to buy the jalapeño peppers (as I don't grow those), adding them to my pick-up order on Monday. Next year, I may try growing one plant of jalapeños in a pot. My potted green bell peppers have done well this year. I'll make another large batch of salsa in a week, when I have more cilantro again. Sixteen pints of salsa should be enough to get my family through most of the year.

I also did some stocking up of meat. I bought ground beef, chicken breasts, pork breakfast sausage, Italian turkey sausage. It all seemed like a lot for us, but once I figured out how long this would last, I began to think I should put in another order just like this one. I'll do that next week. I also picked up a box of 5 dozen eggs. I could hardly believe how expensive eggs have become. This same sized box went from $4.75 a year ago to $7.47 this month. 

My daughters and I went foraging for blackberries last weekend, coming home with 3 ice cream pails of blackberries to freeze. It always surprises me that more people don't pick these wild blackberries. I mean, who wouldn't want free food, right? But that's their business. And it means all the more for me and my family. So far this year, I've just used the berries for fresh eating, as is and in yogurt, in pies, and freezing to use in winter. Later on in the season, I'll make a batch of pancake syrup and some jam. I freeze the pancake syrup in 1-cup portions, so I don't have to concern myself with mold growth if we don't get to using it all in a timely manner.

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are the latest of new posts.

My quirky (but useful) tendency of calculating the cost of everything has helped me figure out my goal inventories for our back-up pantry. You can read about how this relates to making pies and pudding in this post.

Do you use leftover pickle or olive brine? I used both this past week. Read about that here.

What was on your menu this past week? Our meals were simple but tasty, using as much as possible from our garden, orchard and foraging. The menus are in the post in this link.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers From This Last Week

As the garden is doing well and we've been blackberry picking, most of our meals contained a fair amount of fruits and vegetables. Our suppers continue to be humble affairs. But everything gets eaten and every tummy is full. 

Friday
scratch pesto and cheese pizza, sautéed turnip greens, rhubarb and apple crisp

Saturday

lentil tacos, fresh blackberries, cucumber salad

Sunday

tvp, rice and peanut sauce, sautéed summer squash and cabbage, blackberries

Monday 
meatloaf with gravy, rice-stuffed grape leaves, fresh figs, cucumber sticks, sautéed zucchini, blackberry pie

Tuesday
pepperoni, green pepper and olive pizza, marinated carrot sticks, fruit salad, leftover pie

Wednesday
chicken, vegetable and sesame chow mein, scratch brownies

Thursday
bean and beef burritos in homemade tortillas, salsa, cucumber sticks, marinated carrot sticks, brownies

Friday's dinner will be pizza, again. I had mentioned to my family that I thought I could eat pizza a couple of times per week. Tuesday -- pizza, tonight -- pizza. Fortunately, my family agreed that pizza twice in a week would be a good thing.

Breakfasts continued to be yogurt with fruit (this week blueberries and blackberries), toast, cold cereal, fruit, juice, and sometimes leftovers from dinner. Do you like dinner leftovers for breakfast, too? Sometimes a lentil taco just hits the spot at 7 AM.

Lunches were homemade soups (one -- Italian lentil and vegetable, the other -- turnip stems, carrot and potato), leftovers, peanut butter sandwiches, garden salads, cheese, fruit& toast, plus cookies or brownies

Snacks included popcorn, fresh fruit, cookies/brownies, peanuts, raisins, crackers

What was on your menu this past week?

Using Leftover Pickle and Olive Brine

I just hate to throw out these liquids left at the bottom of a jar of pickles or can of olives. It always seems to me that there is something worthwhile left in there. So, I try to use those liquids at the very least for flavoring.

Pickled Carrots

This is so easy and one of my favorite uses for leftover dill pickle brine. I cut a couple of carrots into sticks and plunge them into the liquid left at the end of a jar of dill pickles. I let them stand in the fridge overnight and by the next day, I have carrots that are flavored with garlicky dill. The texture of the carrots is slightly softer than fresh carrot sticks, while still somewhat crisp. I reuse this same jar of liquid 3 or 4 times within a 7 to 10 day period before finally discarding it.

Black Olive Brine for Flavoring Meatloaf and Tomato Sauce

I made meatloaf earlier this week and used about 1/3 cup of the liquid from a can of black olives to soften the bread and cracker crumbs in place of salt for the meat/bread mixture. It was delicious and flavorful.

I also made a large batch of tomato-based pizza sauce, adding some olive brine in place of the water and salt. The added flavor and sodium in the olive brine uses something that would otherwise be discarded, while enriching the final cooked product at the same time.

Both pickle and olive brine can also be used to marinate meats, flavor salad dressings, and boost the flavor in soups.

These are ways to use it all up with just small savings. However, I feel keeping my mindset into using every part helps me save in bigger ways too.

Just How Many Pie Crusts Can I Make with a 3-lb Canister of Crisco Shortening? (And why would this even matter to you?)

With blackberry picking each weekend, this is pie season in my house. In fact, I was making a large batch of pie pastry this past week. I got to thinking about how much Crisco I'd like to stock up on.

Stocking up is not just about buying as much as I can. It's equally important to know how much I will use before the product expires. It's no savings to buy too much and have to throw some away. For some items in my pantry, I instinctively know how much we use in a month or a year, such as peanut butter. I know that we go through about 16 ounces of peanut butter each week. Knowing this, it's easy to figure out how much peanut butter to buy to last us say 6 months. I don't need to calculate how much peanut butter we use on each sandwich, and how many sandwiches we might eat in one month. Other items in the pantry are used more sporadically. One example of this type of item is Crisco-type shortening.

I use shortening mostly for pie pastry (and occasionally for biscuits). Knowing how much shortening to buy for a year's supply depends on me knowing how many pie crusts we will consume in a year and how many pie crusts I can get from one 3-lb canister.

The other day I did the calculation of how many cups of shortening are in one of those 3-lb canisters. For information, there are little over 7 cups per 3 pounds or 2  1/3 cups per pound of shortening. My bulk pie pastry recipe uses  1  3/4 cups of shortening for a 5-crust batch. So I figure I can make about 20 single or 10 double crust pies with a 3-lb canister of solid vegetable shortening.

I'm currently baking one 2-crust blackberry pie per week, using all of our wonderful foraged blackberries. I'll continue with the blackberries until the Italian plums are ripe in mid-September, when I'll switch over to single crust plum pies for a month. Then later in fall and in winter, I'll occasionally bake single crust pumpkin pies. 

With my rough estimations of how many pies we'll eat (plus a guess at how many batches of biscuits I'll bake) and knowledge of how many crusts I can get out of each canister of shortening, I know that I need 1  1/2 to 2 canisters of vegetable shortening for a year. 

Too bad I can't buy 1  1/2 canisters of shortening. Fortunately, it can be frozen to push its expiry out into the future. When I notice the best-by date on the can is approaching, I freeze the shortening in 1-cup portions. Frozen shortening needs to be brought back to room temperature for making pie pastry, but otherwise works just as well as shortening that's never been frozen. 

You may not use shortening or even be considering stocking up on any in the near future. So why read this post? Well, these types of calculations can be applied to other foods you may stock up on. When I'm trying to decide how much of an ingredient I may need for a year, I make calculations based on the amount I use for my most common recipe for that ingredient and the number of "servings" listed on that item's package. Another example is cornstarch. I mostly use cornstarch for making scratch pudding. My recipe for pudding uses just over 5 tablespoons per batch. A 16-oz box of cornstarch contains 45 tablespoons. So, one box will make between 8 and 9 batches of pudding. I also occasionally use cornstarch in cookies. At one batch of pudding per month and a few batches of cookies, I would likely go through 1 1/2 to 2 boxes of cornstarch in a year.

All of these calculations may sound too nitty gritty. Just like moving oldest items to the front of shelves and taking inventory every few months, I see these calculations as another necessary part of my stock management.

Weekly Round-Up of Posts

It's been another busy week for me. I'm experimenting with my own productivity this week. So, I finished up a bunch of posts all at once and will link to them from this post.

Highlights of my week:

A neighbor gave us a dozen ripe yellow plums this week. So very kind. And the plums are super sweet.

I harvested what I think is a year's supply of garlic for our family. That's about a $25 value. This all began with a single 33-cent head of garlic about 15 years ago, saving and replanting a little more each year.

I transplanted a bunch of lettuce seedlings into pots and baskets, collecting seeds from some of the spent plants, including nasturtium and spinach seeds for planting next year. I also collected chive seeds to top a batch of rolls. The radish seeds are not quite ready. I've let a lot of radish seed pods develop, as I hope to make radish sprouts this winter.

I'm working on my garden plan for 2022 already. I keep a small notebook with what worked and what needs improvement, adding content as it comes to mind while working in the garden. Two plans for next year are to increase the size of our pumpkin patch and add another potato bed. Canned pumpkin is a more expensive canned vegetable, averaging about 90-95 cents per can compared with other veggies that I can get canned for about 50 cents per can. With the potatoes, last year we ran out of garden-grown potatoes in early February. Adding another bed will yield enough potatoes to serve them often in fall and winter, with some perhaps lasting into spring (especially if I cook, mash and freeze some or dehydrate slices).

We are experiencing the smoke from California wildfires once again. The light looks pink and even though there aren't any real clouds in the sky, the light is on the dim side. I'm wondering what this does for growing vegetables. The smell is smokey, but not terribly bad. We did have a few nice days between spells of this smoke-filled air. We spent a lot of time outdoors on those days. Dinner outdoors is such a lovely summer treat.

I found a way to make previously frozen, thawed and badly separated milk more palatable for my family. (There's only so much pudding they can eat.) I added some powdered milk (2 tablespoons) to a couple of cups of the separated milk and ran it all through the smoothie blender. The milk treated this way did not appear to separate while sitting in the fridge overnight like the rest of the frozen/thawed milk did.

And now, as promised, some weekend reading for you -- a trio of posts. Pick and choose (click on links), if they sound interesting to you. 

What else can you do with the abundance of garden zucchini? In this link, here's what I wrote this week about how I make stuffed zucchini, with a bunch of variations that I've tried and enjoyed.

A couple of friends emailed wanting a recipe for jello made with flat soda pop. I typed up how I made it in this post. 

I know, we're almost half-way through August, and I'm just now getting to writing up my grocery shopping recap for the month of July. I've included our list of items, with prices, stores and quantities in the link in this post. I've also added a few more items to our list of foods that will likely see large price jumps in the next year.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!