The weather turned suddenly, and left me with dying tomato plants (and lots of small green tomatoes that could never ripen)

September and now October has flown past in a flash. What I thought was several more weeks to manage what's left in the garden turned into just a few days. The tomato plants were hit by blight, and I had just days to deal with what was left on the vines.

I went out to the garden on Monday, and I picked all of the small green tomatoes, even the ones that didn't have a chance at ripening indoors. Any tomato larger than a pea was fair game.

After washing all of these tomatoes, I ran a bunch of them through the food processor, along with onions, and baby green peppers from the garden. I used this finely chopped veggie mix to make our sweet pickle relish for the next year.

I used about 4 cups of chopped green tomato, 1  1/2 onions, chopped, and about 1/2 cup of finely chopped green pepper. Adding in some vinegar, sugar, salt and spices, I was able to make 3 pints of sweet relish, for about 50 cents total, including lids for the jars.

This is enough relish for the year for our family, with a small jar leftover for gifting in a basket of home-canned goodies, to a certain someone, special to me.

I have enough green tomatoes leftover to make a small batch of dill relish, too, if I work quickly. Once tomatoes have been caught out by blight, they turn brown and unusable.

And so another summer's garden is coming to a close. A nice respite for me. And by spring, I'll be eager to get my hands in the dirt, once again.

Making this relish reminded me of all of those end of the season recipes, like piccalilli, that I find in old cookbooks. Ones where you add bits of mis-matched this and that to the mix, and end up with something really yummy as a result. Have you ever tried piccalilli, or some similar garden relish? What do you do with those last bits from the garden?

Prepackaged snacks on a budget

It's super important that I eat healthy and that I don't skip meals. That last one is hard for me, as I'm often out over a meal time, and frequently that is unplanned.

Many of the packaged snack bars contain too much sugar for me, personally, in the form of honey, cane sugar, and dried fruit. And even a banana or bag of raisins (what had long been my favorite items to grab going out the door) is no longer the best option for me to snack on, in place of a meal or main snack.

So I need something moderately balanced in energy, fats, proteins and carbs. But not a pricey health food store bar or snack mix. But it has to be as convenient as a packaged energy mix or bar.

You already know that I buy nuts, seeds and dried fruit from bulk bins at Fred Meyer and WinCo. The change that I've made is to pre-package some of those snacks into custom mix blends, just for me to grab when I need a portable, instant snack.

I've been filling snack-size ziploc bags, from Dollar Tree, with measured amounts of roasted almonds, roasted edamame, raisins, dried cranberries, and as an extra, a few jumbo chocolate chips. I set up several open bags on the counter, and measure ingredients into each bag, assembly line fashion. When I'm done, I have enough snack mix bags for the week, for myself.

I calculated the calorie count to be about 200, which is what I need when a meal is delayed. And my costs are about 65 cents per bag.

These packaged-by-me, energy mix bags meet all of my needs. They're nutritionally balanced. They're affordable. And they are quick to grab.

So, I chose dried edamame and almonds for protein, raisins and dried cranberries for some natural sugars and fiber, and the chocolate chips, just for my chocolate fix. What would you choose if you made energy mix for yourself? Do you have any favorite easy and healthy grab-and-go snacks?