My Week: It's Definitely Fall Now

Last Friday, I made a Walmart pick-up order in the morning. The parking lot was about half full, and I was the only pick-up while I was there. They were out of a couple of items on my list and made substitutions with more expensive brands. Our state has implemented a plastic shopping bag ban in stores and all stores must now charge a bag fee. This went into effect on October 1. My family and I have since made pick-ups at a few different stores and have had differing experiences with the bag ban. With pick-up orders, most stores allow the option of not using their bags and having the employee transfer the merchandise to your own bags, avoiding the bag fee. The information for a bagless pick-up is not always easy to find on the order form. At Walmart, I have so far avoided the per bag fee, by ticking the bagless box on the form. However, they've continued to use bags and not charge me the fee. At other stores, I've either paid a per bag fee or had small numbers of items transferred to boxes or bags set up in my trunk. 

In the evening that same day, we had our usual pizza and movie night. We watched Beetlejuice, which seemed appropriate for the Halloween season.

Saturday was a day of puttering. I got quite a lot done and felt productive. I had been thinking about using the preserved figs and decided to try pureeing them and mixing them with the last of a jar of applesauce. I used our smoothie blender to get a good puree. There wasn't much applesauce in the jar, so this was mostly green figs. The flavor was flat and color was a little off-putting (pale green applesauce), so I doctored it up with about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger. We all enjoyed this very much and I plan on making another batch to go with tonight's dinner. I think this would be a good solution for other fruits that don't seem popular in my household that we wouldn't want to waste. I have some pears in the freezer that I've been avoiding, but now think I'll puree and mix it with applesauce.

I made a delectable pot of tea over the weekend, using 1 cheap black tea bag and some lavender from my garden. I've mentioned this before, black tea with lavender tastes a lot like Earl Grey tea to me. I was able to get several mugs of tea from that pot.

I potted the tomato cutting that I rooted in water and have noticed it now has some new growth! I don't know if I'll be able to keep it alive long enough to actually grow a tomato or two, but I'll give it a shot. not only can I see new growth, but there are also the teeny tiny buds just beginning to form. This just might work . . .

Also this week, I picked the last 2 green pumpkins. One of the pumpkins has a slight yellow cast under the green skin. This one may ripen fully to orange, given time. The other pumpkin I'm not so sure about. I'll wait another few days to see if it, too, shows signs it could ripen before deciding if I should cook it as a green pumpkin or wait. I took a long length of vine with each pumpkin, with the hope that a long vine would continue "feeding" the fruits for a couple of days. Both pumpkins are sitting in a south-facing window, not that that would help with the dark and dreary days we're having this week, but a little extra light nonetheless. So, my morning ritual of going out to the pumpkin patch to check on my pumpkin babies has come to an end for this year. 

My new morning ritual is to check on my radish babies. The radishes are not only growing greens, but several radishes are now developing red, bulbous roots.

Later in the weekend I watched the Christmas edition of Victorian Farm. This was very interesting. The crew celebrated Christmas in the Big House -- the landowners home. Everything was much more elaborate than the humble celebration shown in a previous episode, from gifts, to gift wrap, and the foods eaten. I have made plum pudding before and may try it again this year. My recipe for plum pudding looks a lot like their recipe for Christmas pudding.

I packed up most of my collected seeds, using repurposed envelopes from solicitations for donations. We get a lot of requests for donations to various causes. I save the inside envelopes for purposes just such as this -- something to hold small items.

My new computer arrived, and I can't believe how much easier this is to use! I should be able to do some things with this blog that weren't possible with my last computer. I answered a lot of questionnaires to earn enough for this new computer!

On Wednesday, a bunny managed to get into a fenced area where the Brussel sprouts are growing. I spent a good hour fixing the fence. Fortunately the bunny didn't do too much damage to the sprouts. He did, however, manage to clean out the Swiss chard in another bed. Oh well, I can let a little garden produce go for nourishing our cute critters. I will, however, work on fencing for all of the beds before planting in the spring.

Our natural gas company is now sending out audits where they compare your natural gas usage to that of similar homes in the area. It didn't surprise me that our usage falls very low in comparison to other homes. We do keep our home on the cool side and we try to take shorter showers. While their comparisons were interesting, I think that their analysis doesn't take some things into consideration. The utility company doesn't know how many people live in each house (more heated showers or loads of laundry) or how well insulated each home is. In addition, some folks need to keep their homes warmer in winter. I don't think a utility company should be guilting some folks about their natural gas use.

My baking this week included 2 large loaves of French bread (instead of sandwich bread, for a change of pace), blackberry and rhubarb crisp (using frozen fruit from the summer's garden and foraging), no-egg pumpkin snack cake, and a batch of brownies. It seems to take a lot of baking to keep my family full! I also made a batch of yogurt on Thursday. I'm still using decedents from the same original yogurt as my starter, freezing a few cups of freshly-made yogurt every other month.

More baking, a garden coming to completion for the season, the furnace running daily, and lots of rainy days -- this definitely feels like fall is here.

What have you been up to this past week?

Two more posts this week:

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers For the End of October

Making Instant Cocoa Mix

Chilly Weather Calls for Some Hot Beverages: Making Instant Cocoa Mix

The weather is turning, we're all wearing sweatshirts and fleece jackets indoors, and cups of hot cocoa have been on all of our minds lately. This last week it was apparent that now was the time to start up the instant cocoa jar for the season. I make instant cocoa by the quart for everyone to help themselves whenever they wish.

Sure, I could buy instant cocoa packets and for less than homemade instant cocoa costs. However, commercial instant cocoa has very little nutritional value. For example, Swiss Miss packets make an 8-oz mug of cocoa and provide 1 gram of protein. 1 gram! 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) of liquid milk have 1 gram of protein. That's how little actual milk is in each packet of Swiss Miss. Sugar and corn syrup are the number one and two ingredients in Swiss Miss instant cocoa. According to the box's label, there are 23 grams of added sugar in each serving of SM. That's about double what my homemade mix contains. So, by making my own instant cocoa mix, I boost the protein content and cut the added sugar content in each cup.

I used to mix this in a bowl, but I've gotten lazy and have discovered that I can mix it up in a quart canning jar and save myself from having to wash a bowl. I don't often follow an exact recipe, but follow loose proportions and taste the dry powder as I go. One quart of instant cocoa mix reconstitutes into about 8 mug-size servings.

My ingredients:

• instant powdered milk
• baking cocoa powder
• powdered (confectioner's) sugar
• salt
• mini chocolate chips

For each mug's worth of cocoa mix, I use about 1/4 cup of instant milk, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 1. 1/2 to 2 tablespoons powdered sugar, and a pinch of salt. So -- about as much instant milk as cocoa powder, sugar, and salt combined (maybe slightly less on the sugar). 

I layer these ingredients in the canning jar in half-jar batches and stir the first half-jar batch before adding the second half-jar batch and stirring. I taste the dry powder and when it tastes "right", my mix is about done. At the very end, I toss in a handful of mini chocolate chips then stir and shake the jar to distribute.

To make a mug of cocoa, use a scant 1/2 cup of mix to 8-9 ounces of hot water. 

The chocolate chips are definitely an extra ingredient. But I know one daughter especially enjoys their addition. She tells me that the cocoa tastes like truffle cocoa with the chocolate chips.

Pricing of ingredients

My best local price these days on instant powdered milk is at a Kroger affiliate, lower than Walmart. I buy cocoa powder at either WinCo ($4.48/lb) from the bulk bins or Walmart ($3.96/lb) in 8-oz canisters. I think the WinCo cocoa powder is slightly better and has a slightly richer flavor than the Walmart cocoa powder. By the way, Kroger cocoa powder costs between $4.58 (on sale) and $5.18 (regular price) in my area. I pick up confectioner's sugar when I find a good price, and I buy several bags as it keeps for years. Currently, Walmart's confectioner's sugar is 2 cents cheaper per pound than Kroger brand. Walmart and Kroger's house brand of mini chocolate chips cost $1.98 to $1.99, respectively, for 12 ounces. If I didn't have mini chocolate chips on hand, I would use regular chocolate chips and hand chop them into smaller pieces. The smaller chips melt better in a mug of hot water. As always, it pays to shop around, stock up when you find a good price, and work from the perspective of the Pantry Principle (Tightwad Gazette).