Fresh Apples and Sea Glass

Yesterday was an apple-picking day. When we planned our orchard, we guessed at when some fruits would ripen in our own yard and hoped for a variety of fruits and berries that would be ready over the course of the entire season, not all at once. We began with 5 apple trees. We've now lost two of them and are down to an early, a late, and a very late apple. 

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been finding some of the early apples here and there on the ground in the garden, partially chewed then discarded by either raccoons or squirrels. Time to beat those little rascals to our fruit, even if they're still a bit green. So, yesterday I took the large stock-pot, 2 ladders, and a jacket with deep pockets out to the orchard. Luckily for me, I'm still able to keep my balance on the ladders. I climb, fill my pockets with apples, then descend to add to the stock-pot. I came away with an overfull pot of apples yesterday. 

I did pretty well, only dropping 2 apples out of the whole bunch. When I realized I was getting tired and was likely to make a mistake or lose my balance, I called it quits for the day. This afternoon, I'll see if I can reach those last few apples.

The ripening of the early apples serves as a reminder that summer doesn't last forever and cooler weather is on its way. It's a bittersweet moment. I love the coziness of fall weather, but I love summer so much and know that I will miss it terribly until it arrives once again next year. This feeling serves as an impetus for me to get out there and do those summery things that I love, such as beach combing for sea glass. 

Remember my wire-wrapping jewelry? Well, I'm working on wrapping some of the sea glass that I've collected over the years to make pendants, earrings, and beads for a necklace or bracelet. The learning curve isn't too steep for wire-wrapping sea glass, but my technique is still definitely an in-progress thing. But it's been fun seeing what I can do with my collection of glass pieces. Here's a piece of green sea glass wrapped in silver wire to use as a pendant.

Back to those apples -- later yesterday afternoon, I cooked a pot of caramel sauce for dipping apple pieces. 

If you love the taste of caramel apples but are not keen on the precision for making a thick caramel coating for whole apples, an imprecise caramel sauce is just the thing. I like to cut the apples into wedges and place them around a pool of caramel sauce. This makes a delicious dessert or snack for my family members (and of course, for me).

And now, I'm back out to the orchard to get those last early apples. I hope you are enjoying these fleeting summer days!

Using My Emergency Food Supply

Back to my emergency food supply . . .

Building a supply is just the first part of utilizing an emergency food storage. Using everything up in a timely manner, minimizing redundancy, and maintaining variety in meals for the duration of the supply is the next step.

The other week, I mentioned that I have a simple but very effective manner for using all of the foods that I've stockpiled. This is literally a quickly scratched out plan, using a leftover calendar and page of a notebook.

Back in early May, I spent an afternoon taking inventory of several of the backbone ingredients to our meals, such as grains, meat and other protein sources, and fruits and vegetables. I could easily see that for some foods, we had an ample supply. So, metering out the use would be as simple as deciding to use each a set number of times per week. For example, we have enough rice and pasta to just say, "okay, we'll have rice 3 dinners per week and pasta for two." No need to make any sort of elaborate use-scheme for metering out those ingredients. Similarly, I bought enough raisins, peanut butter, and jarred applesauce to simply bring out 1 or 2 containers of each at the beginning of each month. Other foods, such as dinner protein sources, were a tiny bit more complex and therefore required more calculations and planning. 

For dinner protein, I have quite a variety in the freezer and pantry, including canned tuna, canned chicken, chicken leg quarters, b/s chicken breasts, whole chickens, breakfast sausage, pork bacon, turkey bacon, loose ground beef, frozen burger patties, hot dogs, a whole ham, frozen eggs, TVP, and an assortment of beans. I tallied up the servings of each protein source, then plotted out their use on a sheet of paper, allotting an entire calendar year. I've used tally marks to indicate how many meals of each protein source are to be used in each month. I made sure to plan for some holidays and celebrations, for which we might want specific foods/meats. 

not at all elaborate -- my quickly scratched out distribution of dinner protein
foods, using a page in a notebook. A bit of a mess, but it works.

To use this distribution chart, I circle the tally marks as I plan for each meat/protein when making out a rough menu plan each week. I received a free, small calendar this past January and had not yet figured out how I would use it. Anyway, this seemed like the perfect little planning tool for our dinner menus. Once per week, I take out the distribution chart and plot out the protein sources for each night of the week, noting the meats for the week first, then filling in with eggs, TVP, or beans for the non-meat days. If for some reason we don't use one or more of the meats for a month, then those foods become bonus meats to use in lunches. For example, we didn't use 1 batch of hotdogs and 2 cans of chicken in July. Those meats will now be added to August lunches.

July's dinner ingredient planning.
The upper left corner of the menu is where I add my grocery shopping totals.
I shopped twice for groceries in July.  Most of July's food
came from the emergency pantry/freezer stocked in April and May.

I spend about 5 minutes per week rough-planning our dinners. I don't choose recipes during this planning time, but merely allocate what meats we'll be eating on which night. As I do other things during the week, I figure out how we'll prepare the meats. In addition, our garden's abundance is also plotted out on the calendar as I see what needs using up. The other household members each cook a night per week, so the calendar (posted on our fridge) is there for them, too, to see what foods they should use in their meal.

I'm not one to go to elaborate planning for meals. This solution was simple, cost nothing, and has been a boon to our dinner planning for the past 3 months. I expect it will continue to be a success as we go into fall and winter, too.

I mentioned above that I took note of celebrations and holidays when distributing the protein foods by month on the first chart. With Thanksgiving and Christmas in a yet unknown period of transmission of the coronavirus, I've saved whole chickens to be used in lieu of turkeys for those holiday meals. I've also set aside special breakfast foods, such as sausage and bacon for holiday and other celebratory breakfasts.

You may be wondering, how is this an emergency food supply if we're currently using it up? Every couple of months, I am refilling most of the basic foods in our storage, so that we could continue to have an emergency supply for as long as we feel it's needed. This approach gives me the freedom to watch for sales and deals as I fill the developing gaps.

Anyway, this is the scheme that I've developed for using our stockpile. An easy-peasy plan for our emergency pantry -- no waste, no redundancy, and low effort meal planning. 

I hope you're all having a wonderful first week of August!