Sometimes a price difference between two similar items just does not make sense!

Sunflower seeds are among the least expensive nuts or seeds you can buy for snacking or baking. I like to add them to oatmeal-raisin cookies, granola, oatmeal, salads, and half and half with roasted almonds in pesto, in place of the traditional pine nuts. We also like to snack on them, as is, or mixed into trail mix. And I prefer the flavor of roasted sunflower seeds over raw ones.

I was buying sunflower seeds from the bulk section of Fred Meyer on Tuesday (my senior discount day -- 10% off -- yay! me for being 55). I had my choice between roasted or raw, hulled seeds. The roasted ones were selling for $3.99 lb, while the raw ones were selling for $1.49 lb. Which ones do you think I chose?! For $2.50 lb savings and 5 minutes of work, I think I can roast my own sunflower seeds.

While I roast whole nuts, like almonds in a low-temp oven, I roast sunflower seeds and any other small seeds in a pan on the stove. I add a small amount of oil to the pan. Heat over Med flame. (You can dry-roast them, but using hot oil coats each seed so they roast more evenly in oil, I've found.) Then I add the seeds, and stir constantly for about 5 minutes, until they've turned color, from gray to light tan. I dump them onto a piece of brown paper bag, to both halt the cooking and remove excess oil from the seeds. A little salt, and they're just perfect.

The other benefit to buying seeds and nuts raw, then roasting your own at home, is that the roasting process shortens the keeping-life of both nuts and seeds, about by half (according to nutrition.about.com). There really is no telling when seeds and nuts sold in a bulk bin were roasted, from a consumer's point of view. I have a much better chance of my seeds tasting fresh, if I buy them raw, then roast them at home, myself. And once home, they will keep much longer and I'll have more time to use them up. Less waste!

Don't you think that's crazy that there could be such a price difference for a convenience so very easily replicated at home?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the week

Wednesday
*salad of lettuce, tomatoes, watercress, cucumber, baby beet greens
*baked chicken, smothered in fresh pesto
*brown rice, cooked in chicken stock, with herbs from garden
*leftover plum-blackberry pie

Thursday
*chicken fried rice, with egg, garden cabbage, kale, shallots
*fruit salad with apple, pear, blackberries, plums -- all from our garden
banana pudding cream pie (my son brought home a bag of overripe bananas from his office that were going to be thrown out)

Friday
*homemade pizza topped with marinara, cheese, basil, olives and fresh tomato
*marinated cucumbers
*sauteed yellow crookneck squash
leftover banana pudding cream pie

Saturday
bean, rice and cheese burritos
*tomato wedges with 1000 Island dressing
*leftover sauteed summer squash
banana bread

Sunday
homestyle macaroni and cheese
ham
*kale sauteed in ham fat
*steamed green and waxed beans
banana bread

Monday
*Tex-Mex black bean soup (with garden veggies, shallots, Swiss chard, summer squash, plus canned tomatoes)
sopes
*fruit salad (plums, apple, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, marshmallows)

Tuesday
*chicken and dumplings, w/ green beans, Swiss chard, carrots
*tossed salad, w/lettuce, tomato wedges and marinated black beans
hot fudge pudding cake

Wednesday
*black bean burger patties, topped with marinara sauce and mozzarella
brown rice cooked in chicken stock with garlic powder and onion powder added
*kale sauteed in ham fat
*fresh plums

*indicates part of this meal item came from the garden or orchard

So, this time of year, our fridge looks somewhat bare, almost all of the time. A good part of each day's meals comes directly from the garden, and is not stored in the kitchen. Like last night, the kale and plums were picked in the afternoon. Looking in our fridge, you would never guess that I could be making meals from it, would you? This isn't an end-of-week look to our fridge, either. It pretty much looks like this every day in late summer.

The day before, I run through my mind what main dish item we should have for the next day's dinner. Then in the morning, I rummage through the fridge for anything that needs using up, to add to dinner.

Last night's dinner :

With the black bean burgers, not only did I have the black beans cooked already, but I also had about 1/8 cup of leftover refried pintos from Saturday's burritos. And about 1 tablespoon of vinaigrette from the bottom of the bowl of last Wednesday's salad. Then the marinara was made with leftover pizza sauce (from Friday), chopped oven-roasted canned tomatoes (made on Monday for Tuesday's lunches), and the juice from the open can of tomatoes. All of those items were sitting in the fridge before this photo was taken. Leftovers rarely get shoved t the back of the fridge, here. If they're not frozen, eaten the next day, then they find their way into a dinner later in the week.

I think one of the things that helps with leftover management, for me, is NOT planning a week's worth of meals ahead of time. When I have menu-planned a week at a time, I have wound up with a lot of leftovers at the end of the week. Just my two cents. So, if you don't menu-plan extensively and you're feeling guilty about it, well, take heart, I don't do a lot of menu planning these days, either.

If you're wondering about our garage fridge, it currently has almost a case of butter, a half-gallon of whole milk thawing, some heavy whipping cream, assorted cheese, some condiments, along with the thawing pork roast for tomorrow's dinner. Our freezers, well they're a different story altogether.