Salvaging the mildly wrinkled potatoes

I'm down to my last bag of potatoes from my November purchase. I have no idea when I'll find another good buy on potatoes again, so I want to make sure that I use every last one from this bag.

About 25 spuds, of this last bag of potatoes, were found to be in the early stage of wrinkle-dom. They're still good to eat, but I know they should be cooked very soon. Yesterday afternoon, I went ahead and peeled and cooked all 25. I mashed these with plenty of butter and froze all that we wouldn't be eating for dinner last night.

The texture of mashed potatoes changes a bit once you freeze them. However, once thawed, I whip them hard either by hand, or with the mixer, then I use them to top Shepherd's Pie, or, put into a buttered casserole, then sprinkled with cheese and baked for a cheesey-potato casserole, or, as the base for a pot of potato soup.

I have enough leftover mashed potatoes for about 3 more family dinners, all cooked and ready to use, tucked away in my freezer.

That's what I do with leftover mashed potatoes, but what I really want to know, is what do you do with leftover mashed potatoes?

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Needing a small gift for a girlfriend's birthday

(another break from the grocery chatter)

Over the weekend, I found out that I have a girlfriend with a birthday this week. We generally don't do big gift exchanges, and often our gifts to each other are homemade.

I had thought to run out and pick up a small gift Saturday afternoon (to give on Sunday, after church). Then rethought that, and checked my gift stash. Nothing too appealing, so I checked my preserves from last summer.

I collect nice canning jars when I hit second-hand shops. With those, I use to put up some of my nicer preserves, to be gifted later in the year. Last summer I made cherry preserves, and spiced fig jam, both in some of the nicer canning jars that I've acquired. For my girlfriend, I chose a jar of Spiced Fig Jam.

Wanting to spiff this homemade gift up just a tad, I made a couple of labels, using a printable "frame" from Graphics Fairy, and adding customized lettering from the Pages application on my computer.

I printed out these labels onto regular printer paper. I cut them out, then reinforced and waterproofed the front of each label with a strip of clear packaging tape.

I adhered the labels to the front of the jar and the lid with a little glue stick, as well as the small amount of overhang from the clear tape (when cutting the tape, I allowed a narrow margin of clear tape all around the paper label, for extra adhesion).

A plastic bag and nice ribbon and my small gift is ready to give.

An update: I gave this to my friend on Sunday after church, as planned, and she loved it. I knew this would be the sort of thing she would like!

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Still working at keeping our grocery spending low -- I resisted the urge to buy more

To the wholesaler the other afternoon, I brought my "reinforcement team" (my two daughters). They come with me for their brute strength (those 25 and 50 pound sacks get heavy), and to remind me of what I've been saying about needing to get our out-of-whack grocery budget back in line.

My usual, when I find a great deal, is to buy a lot of that item. This week, it's sharp cheddar, at about $2.20 per pound, in a 5-lb loaf. Each loaf was $10.98. When I picked up a block of cheese, it just didn't seem like I would be stocking up by buying only one. I was imagining this 5-lb block of cheese getting gobbled up in a matter of weeks, and how we *needed* much more.

But I was also keeping in mind my goal of getting the budget back on track. I went back and forth on this one. A few blocks of cheese, or just one. It was tough, but I exercised some discipline, and only bought that one 5-lb block of cheddar. And I used some reasoning to come to that decision.

Cheese is not a necessity. We can get the same nutrients from milk, which I find on markdown often enough, to rarely have to pay full price for milk. So, while I would have loved to have bought several large blocks of cheese, my budget goal was more important this time.

I'm keeping a close watch on my spending. I tally up the receipts as I bring them home. For the month of March, I've now spent about $89.

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