My List of 20 Budget Summer Activities

It's another stay-cation summer for us. I don't mind. In my area, summer is the best tome of the year, the only time we can almost count on sunny day after sunny day. Despite loving our summers, I still want to punctuate these months with planned activities to celebrate summer, and that don't break the bank. So, I've come up with a list of 20.

In our own yard and home

• Stop and smell the roses. Well, our roses don't have much fragrance, but I want to take a moment every day to really appreciate the summer flowers in our garden. 
• Cut flowers and make bouquets for the dining table a few times this summer. 
• Press flowers and fern fronds.
• Cut lavender buds and sew a sachet.
• Eat watermelon, lots of watermelon. Watermelon is the least expensive fruit in summer for us. And in summer, it's at its best. I plan on having a lot of watermelon all summer long.
• Make gourmet popsicles.
• Bake lots of fruit pies.
• Make root beer floats at home. Ice cream parlors are expensive for what you get. The last couple of summers we've bought a two-liter of root beer and container of vanilla ice cream. On hot summer Saturday afternoons (when everyone is around), we find a shady spot and enjoy root beer floats. Doing our own at home is a bargain summer treat.
• Host hot dog cookouts around the fire ring, followed up with s'mores.
• Host Sunday afternoon barbecues.
• Sit outside after dark and check out the stars. My husband is a fount of information when it comes to stars and planets. (I'm more the expert on the moon.) Every summer, he identifies everything in the sky for me and helps me find them on my own. Around August 9 to 13, the Perseid meteor shower will be at its peak.
• Read a fun adventure novel from our local library.
• Sew some summer pajama pants. I have the fabric, pattern, elastic already. All I need to do is make the time.
• Keep a photo journal of my summer, taking one photo per day that sums up the best of summer.

Go places for free

• Take picnics to the beach more often.
• Take a picnic lunch to a nearby, really lovely and peaceful park.
• Visit the farmers market.
• Go hiking on a local trail.
• Visit a local (and free) arboretum.
• Visit the local art galleries in my town. (Again, free to visit.) 

My purpose in making out this list is to give me something to refer to if and when I begin to take summer 2025 for granted. I aim to savor every minute of this summer.

What would you put on your budget summer activity list?

Using Every Bit of Your Produce: Tips From WWII

This is from an article titled "Make the Most of Every Leaf" in the April 1944 booklet Health For Victory: Meal Planning Guide. 

"We can't do our best to make Food Fight for Freedom unless we make sure we use every edible bit of food. And that applies to fresh vegetables and fruits as well as to any other type."

This article goes on to suggest various ways to use the parts of produce items that some folks are in the habit of throwing away. 

Outer leaves from a head of lettuce -- leaf, Romaine or iceberg 

• wash and shred into bowl salads (as opposed to wedge salads)
• serve wilted with hot bacon dressing, much like a spinach salad. Here's a recipe for a hot bacon dressing that can use reserved bacon fat from cooking bacon, While you're free to add some bacon bits to the salad, this recipe appears to only use the bacon grease for flavor.
• cook with green peas to retain a bright green color of the peas -- braise with a little chicken stock and some green onions for flavor. Check this recipe 
• shred outer leaves and add at the very last minute to the soup pot.

Outer leaves of cabbage 

• shredded and added to slaw. Years ago, one of you friends (Lisa) made a suggestion for a Curried Pea and Peanut Cole Slaw. Click on that link for my rendition of that salad. My family loved it, and we make it several times per year now.
• chopped/shredded in soup. Cabbage Patch Soup is one of our family's favorite autumn soups. It's a tomato-based soup with carrots, celery, onions, cabbage, meat and seasonings.
• to make easy cabbage rolls. Peel the outer leaves carefully off the head of cabbage and wrap around leftover meat balls, steam and serve with a spicy tomato sauce.

Wilted green onion tops

• chop into green salads, cottage cheese, scrambled eggs, soups and fried potatoes.

Leaves surrounding a head of cauliflower

• cauliflower leaves may be diced, cooked and served in a cream sauce as a separate vegetable. [The core/stem of a cauliflower can be finely sliced or julienned to use in a curry, such as this one.]

Beet tops 

• cooked and served as greens. The tops of the early beets are especially tender. [We add tender young beet leaves to salads.]

Grated lemon or orange rind 

• Grate the outer surface of the whole fruit. If you don't grate too deeply the fruit will keep a day or two until used for juicing. [My add to this, if you won't be using the juice within a couple of days, freeze the juice and also save the "shells" in the freezer to use to freshen mechanical garbage disposals or to stuff into a whole poultry with other aromatics. ]

There are obviously more types of produce that one can use almost all of. Watermelon comes to mind. I make watermelon pickles from the white part of the rind. This portion can also be sliced and used in stir fries. And of course, there are some parts of produce items that can't be eaten, apple seeds come to mind. However, you can make apple cider vinegar with apple cores.

Anyway, I really relate to the idea of trying to use as much of our produce items as possible.