Outdoor Thanksgiving Looks Like It's a Go!

The weather forecast looks like it should be dry for my town on Thanksgiving day, greatly simplifying our plans to get together with our son and daughter-in-law. The daytime high is only expected to be 46 degrees F, so we'll cookout midday over our fire pit on the patio. We should be able to remain entirely outdoors for the whole visit.  The sunset is around 4:25 this time of year, so I expect we'll not linger much beyond then.

The Menu (no turkey!)

bratwurst cooked over the fire

buns

sauerkraut, cheese, mustards

green bean casserole

praline sweet potato casserole

corn souffle

mashed potatoes and gravy

pickled beets

relish tray of carrot sticks, olives, homemade pickles

apple & cranberry crumb pie

pumpkin pie

hot spiced apple cider

I can put most of this together on Tuesday and Wednesday. Without a turkey to roast and time, the cooking should be simpler and more predictable. I'm using a lot of canned foods, including the sauerkraut, green beans (and soup for casserole), sweet potatoes, corn, beets, olives, home-canned pickles, cranberry sauce, pumpkin puree, and apple juice. The end result should be easy cooking for me. I even opted for pre-made buns and instant potatoes for this occasion. I'll be busy, but not so much that I feel exhausted.

One of the bonuses to having an outdoor Thanksgiving is that the house doesn't have to be completely clean. I'll be making the outdoor area as festive as I can, however. My decor plan for our patio is to pull together as much of the autumn pieces that I have around the house and porches (faux and real pumpkins/squash, artificial autumn flowers, baskets, lantern, cushions, blankets) and group them together, with this sort of look. (Cover Victoria Magazine 2014)

This shouldn't take me more than about 20-30 minutes to assemble -- simply put it all into place on the patio tables and chairs. My version may not be as well color-coordinated as the magazine cover, but I think it will be homey.

Wishing you all a good Thanksgiving week!

This Week's Menus Plus Homemade Brown 'n Serve Freezer Pizzas

wrapped homemade brown 'n serve pizza

We're plowing through our rotation of canned vegetables. This week, we made creamed spinach with some of those canned leafy greens. My daughter prepared it, adding a topping of Parmesan cheese over each serving. Delicious -- we all loved it! 

I roasted a whole chicken this week and managed 3 dinners from the bird, 1 lunch of chicken noodle soup, and enough stock for our upcoming Thanksgiving side dishes.

And we made desserts twice this week -- one a no-bake bar cookie and the second a cake. Both of these lasted for several days.

One of the side effects of this pandemic is that many of us are cooking dinners at home much, much more than normal. Sharing our weekly menus may provide much-needed inspiration for each other, as we find ourselves more and more drained from this experience. As you can see, my menus are all pretty simple and rely heavily on our pantry staples.

Saturday

fried TVP patties in a homemade teriyaki sauce

rice

canned beets in vinaigrette

canned peas

leftover peanut butter, cracker, and chocolate bars

Sunday

refried bean and TVP tostadas, using homemade fried flour tortillas and served with homemade salsa

canned carrots

canned green beans

leftover bar cookies

Monday

roasted chicken and gravy

canned cranberry sauce

bread and butter (it happened to be bread-baking day)

canned yams baked in a sugar, spice, and butter topping

oven-roasted frozen broccoli (drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of salt)

leftover bar cookies

Tuesday

leftover chicken in homemade marinara sauce (canned tomato paste)

pasta

creamed spinach with Parmesan cheese

leftover bar cookies

Wednesday

pigs in blankets (sausages wrapped in refrigerator crescent roll dough)

canned corn

green beans

canned pineapple

German chocolate cake

Thursday

chicken and dumplings with canned carrots and canned peas

leftover canned cranberry sauce

prunes stewed in pineapple juice (leftover from canned pineapple)

leftover cake

Friday

homemade frozen pizza (brown 'n serve pizza)

carrot and celery sticks

tangerines

leftover cake

Needing some family fun time, our foursome decided to make every Friday evening pizza and movie night. I make a pizza and we rotate who chooses the movie. Making a pizza from scratch each week adds up to a lot of work. However, making one large batch of dough and sauce for several pizzas at a time saves work over making small batches each week.

I bake the first pizza for us to eat right away, using a hot oven (about 400 degrees F) so that the bottom is crispy and the cheese and toppings are bubbly and golden. I prepare the rest of the pizzas as brown 'n serve pies. When I reheat them later they brown and crisp up without over-browning, like those dinner rolls which are pale but cooked when you buy them to be toasted in the oven at home. 

underside of part whole wheat pizza
before second bake time

I follow similar suggestions for brown 'n serve pizzas as I do for homemade brown 'n serve rolls. To make brown 'n serve pizza, I prepare the whole pizzas as I would for immediate consumption, except I bake them at a lower temperature. My goal is to bake the dough fully and melt the cheese, but not brown either.

topside of pizza before second bake time

To do this, I bake the topped pizza on a baking sheet at 350 degrees F (until the crust is thoroughly cooked, but the toppings and cheese have not reached the point of browning), about 18-20 minutes, depending on thickness and toppings. After cooling for about 30 minutes, I wrap the extra pizzas in plastic wrap and freeze. 

To reheat, I thaw the pizzas on the counter for about 45 minutes then brown them on an oven rack (no pan) for about 9-11 minutes at 380 degrees F. They turn out perfectly. 

Brown 'n serve pizza are my homemade version of commercial frozen pizza. I spend a couple of hours one afternoon to make enough pizza for several easy dinners without sacrificing any of the fresh-baked flavor or texture upon reheating.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Frugal Gift Wrapping Hacks

I've posted these two hacks previously, but old tricks can be useful again and again.

My son and daughter-in-law are celebrating birthdays this week!. I thought I'd get out to a store long before now to pick up more gift wrap. As you can guess, that just didn't happen this year.

For my daughter-in-law's 3 gifts, I had 2 large sheets of pink tissue, 1 small sheet of black and white striped tissue (from a Sephora birthday freebie two years ago), and some silver holiday curling ribbon. In addition, I printed another sheet of homemade birthday gift wrap, a tip that I posted about in 2019.

Here's how the wrapping went:

Gift no. 1

gift wrap hack -- wrap the package on the diagonal to save paper

the sheet of tissue was too small to wrap with the traditional method

turning the box on the diagonal means less paper is needed

(I placed a sheet of white copy paper on the top side of the box - here seen as under the box - so the label would not be visible through a single layer of tissue.)

fold up opposing corners and tape

fold in and up remaining corners to cover the rest of the package

once the package is flipped over, it looks well-wrapped

added some shiny silver curling ribbon to finish the package

Gift No. 2

gift wrap hack -- turning a sheet of paper into a gift bag

I had an assortment of small items for which I wanted a small gift bag. I used a single 9 X 11-inch sheet of homemade birthday wrap. A 9 X 11-sheet can make a bag that is about 4 inches wide, 1 inch deep, and as much as 6 or 7 inches tall. I chose to make a 4 X 1 X 5-inch bag.

I found a box with similar width and depth dimensions to the size of bag I desired. The length of the box simply overlapped the edge of the paper -- not a problem for this.

I wrapped the sides of the paper over the box and taped the paper side together (but not onto the box itself).

I trimmed the excess length of the paper, so that my bag base would be neater. Then I folded the remaining bottom end of the paper as I would do when wrapping the ends of a package -- sides in,

 

flaps down and taped

I creased the corners all around the box 

before carefully sliding the box out of my newly-formed bag.

I added handles with two short lengths of black ribbon by threading the ribbon through holes punched in the top of the bag and stapling together the ends of each ribbon (overlapped) inside the bag.

Once filled, I added a crumpled half of the striped tissue to the top. 

Obviously, a single sheet of copy paper makes a very lightweight bag, the sort that would not support being held by the handles alone if the gift has much weight.

Gift no. 3

No hack, just wrapping an upright gift in the second large sheet of pink tissue, other half of the striped tissue, and a bit of the silver ribbon.

I'm pleased with how they turned out and I hope my daughter-in-law will be too!

Keeping the Mood Festive: Our Pandemic Snack Jars

One of my roles during this period has been to keep my family's spirits up. All of our lives have been severely disrupted (to say the least) with the imposed restrictions on social and work activities, death or illness of family or friends, and fears of contracting the virus ourselves. It is easy for depression or anxiety to settle in for all of us under these circumstances. To counter this, I do whatever I can to keep the mood cheerful around here, such as these pandemic snack jars. 

Under normal circumstances, I don't stockpile commercial snacks or breakfast cereal, even when I do find a good price. My reasoning (which comes from our family's experience) is that these commercial goodies, like chips, pretzels, and cereal, are often favored over the homemade foods for quick snacks and gobbled up in a flash, regardless of how much I buy at any one time. Here's an example: Years ago, when triple coupons were a thing, I bought about 15 boxes of assorted packaged cereal at a steep discount. While the boxes of cereal were considerably less expensive than their regular price, the cost per ounce/serving was still above what I would spend for homemade foods. I don't eat most commercial dry cereals; so imagine my surprise when about 10 days later, I opened that cupboard to make room for more groceries and was met with 14 mostly empty boxes (the bran flakes were the only untouched box, ha ha).

So, keeping a small stockpile of commercial snack foods is out of the ordinary for our household. However, this is an out-of-the-ordinary time in all of our lives. Wanting to provide quick, easy, and quasi-fun snacking experiences for my family members, I did buy several packages each of saltine-type crackers, graham crackers, pretzels, roasted peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, toasted oat cereal, applesauce, and canned pineapple to have for quick and easy snacking. You'll notice, I deliberately did not buy the uber-fun, sugar-sweetened, brightly colored or super cheerfully-shaped treats. Those would be devoured far too quickly. I stuck with rather boring versions of snack foods. 

Even so, I've found the best way to ensure that our supply will last for months and not weeks is to ration what is available through some fun (fun is a subjective word -- my family thinks these jars are fun) jars on the kitchen counter. (As you can see, the jars themselves are simply jars that I already had -- nothing fancy.) To keep things new, I rotate what goes into each jar every Sunday or Monday. Some weeks I add a sweet treat like a very small jar of chocolate chips or small candy pieces. This week, we have Cheerios-type cereal, oyster crackers, raisins, roasted sunflower seeds, and candy corn.

To give you a comparison indicating how this is a change for us, in "normal" times, cereal would mean homemade granola or a cooked cereal, crackers would come out as an accompaniment for soups, raisins would always be available in the pantry, nuts and seeds would be occasionally out, and candy would be for special occasions, like movie night. In the past, snacking for us has mostly meant simple foods like popcorn, homemade tortilla chips, toast or pbj sandwiches, raisins/other fruit, carrot sticks, or any baked good. But nothing really sitting out on the counter, at the ready for impromptu munching.

Do any of you remember the character Julie from the TV show The Love Boat? Julie's position was that of cruise director. I've often thought of "cruise director" as an appropriate title for my own role in our household. On a cruise ship, the cruise director is responsible for entertainment, hospitality, and social events -- the job of making fun for everyone onboard. This may not be the Love Boat, but call me Lili the cruise director for the Mounce family cruise, which features such highlights as a pandemic and a heated national election. 2020 has been a doozy. Anyway, keeping jars of snacks has been a part of what I'm doing to keep the mood in our house festive and not gloomy.

As an aside, I'm so glad that I had already been planning a cook-out for our Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law. Our governor announced yesterday that indoor gatherings with members from outside our household are prohibited, including Thanksgiving dinner. The only exception is if every person quarantines for 14 days or for 7 days plus a negative COVID test. So, outdoors for Thanksgiving it shall be!

I hope your week is off to a good start! 

Time for me to get back to cruise-directing.

My Nasturtium Surprise

a surprise nasturtium

Maybe you remember that a year ago spring, I planted nasturtium seeds in some hanging baskets instead of buying annuals. Then this past spring, I planted red leaf lettuce in the same baskets. Whether or not I'd be comfortable picking the lettuce when the baskets looked full and pretty remained in question at planting time. I'm happy to report that we had no qualms picking that lettuce. This past summer, we cared more about feeding ourselves than what things looked like.

the red leaf lettuce salad basket in summer

Anyway, sometime in mid to late summer, I noticed one tiny nasturtium plant growing in one of the lettuce baskets. One of the nasturtium plants from summer 2019 reseeded in the pot without my knowledge (not that I'd do anything to interfere with a free plant growing in a pot). 

So, I let the nasturtium plant grow for the rest of the summer and into early fall. This basket hung right outside the bedroom window, providing a beautiful view of cascading yellow nasturtium blossoms. They attracted a hummingbird on a daily basis, too, for my viewing pleasure (and I'm sure also for the hummingbird's gastronomic pleasure).

one of the nasturtium seed pods

Last Friday afternoon, I went outside to check on some plants on the deck and noticed that the weather had grown quite cold. It felt like we'd receive a good frost overnight, so I brought that basket into the kitchen. Sure enough, it did frost pretty heavily in our yard.

I am currently keeping the hanging basket on the kitchen desk while the new seeds finish ripening. If I can keep this plant alive for another few weeks, I should be rewarded with about a dozen nasturtium seeds to harvest for next summer's baskets.

While we enjoyed having the red lettuce in all of the baskets, I especially loved this one basket with both the nasturtium plant and the lettuce plants. I'm thinking that for summer 2021, I'll plant a few different types of seeds for edibles in the same baskets, including lettuce, nasturtiums, and perhaps some parsley and other herbs -- perhaps something like this:

Gardening is full of surprises. Often what I think will happen in the garden doesn't come to fruition, while that which I never anticipated comes along and surprises me. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

"This would be a better world for children, if the parents had to eat the spinach." -- Groucho Marx: Using Our Stash of Canned Spinach

This post is as much a call-out for ideas and recipes as it is my own experience in using canned spinach.

Over the summer and fall, I bought cans of vegetables for my winter pantry. Included in what I bought are: pureed pumpkin, sweet potatoes, tomato paste, whole tomatoes, sliced beets, carrots, corn, green beans (Blue Lake variety), Italian flat green beans, peas, and spinach. I was trying to amass a variety of orange, red, and green vegetables. I like to serve at least one orange or red and one green vegetable with each dinner. For the month of November, I have laid out a rotation that ensures we use the cans of vegetables in a balanced way.

Maintaining variety in how I serve each vegetable is the biggest challenge. I'm not a huge fan of canned vegetables; however, they do store neatly on a shelf instead of in my already-packed fridge and freezer.

This week, we tackled the canned spinach. I found that even with a rotation plan in place, we were still avoiding the spinach. 

In the past few days, I found two ways that were not only acceptable, but actually delicious ways to use the canned spinach: a personal omelet and a souffle that's not a souffle.

Spinach and cheese omelet

I was making my lunch the other day and there was a can of spinach sitting on the counter, staring me down. (I thought if I left the can on the counter, someone would eat it.) I was going to make myself a scrambled egg, then thought, "why not add some spinach?"

I made myself a simple spinach and cheese omelet by pouring a beaten egg into a hot, buttered skillet, spooned a little drained spinach on top of the cooking egg, added a pinch of nutmeg, some onion powder, salt, and a tablespoon of Parmesan cheese. When the egg was set, I folded the whole thing up. Easy-peasy done. 

My family members sat at the table with me and followed my first forkful with their eyes, waiting to see if this was something awful or something tasty. (Cue the iconic TV commercial scene with Mikey and Quaker Oats breakfast cereal Life, circa 1972.) I loved it, but I have yet to convince them to try the same for themselves.

I knew from cooking other recipes that spinach goes well with nutmeg, onion, garlic, and a variety of cheeses (cottage, ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan, cheddar, feta). That knowledge provided inspiration for both the omelet and this souffle.

Spinach Souffle (serves 4)

A variation of my personal spinach and cheese omelet, the souffle used: 

1  1/2 cans spinach
5 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
about 4 dashes nutmeg
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

about 3 tablespoons milk

about 2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
 

In a mesh sieve, I drained and pressed most of the water from the canned spinach, then processed in the food processor using the chopping blade until mostly chopped, but not completely pureed.

In a large bowl, I beat the eggs with a whisk and stirred in the spices and powders, milk, and yogurt. Once smooth, I folded in the spinach and cheeses.

I baked the souffle in a well-buttered, glass round baker at 325 F (convection) for about 30 minutes, until the center looked puffy and set. 

I served the souffle topped with a quick, microwaved marinara sauce made from tomato paste, water, garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano, salt, and red pepper flakes.

The family verdict? This was delicious and I think I converted all of my household to spinach-lovers with this souffle. The dish wasn't your traditional very puffed up souffle (which are made puffy by beating egg whites separately then combining with remaining ingredients), but more like a slightly puffy baked egg custard. If you've ever enjoyed Stouffer's Spinach Souffle, my version was along those lines.

The marinara-topped spinach souffle was accompanied by sausage links, roasted potatoes, and applesauce. However, for protein content (for a vegetarian meal), the souffle could stand alone with the protein in the eggs, cheeses, milk, yogurt and the spinach (a 13.5 oz can of spinach has 6 grams of protein). Total protein for the souffle was about 60 grams or 15 grams per serving.

For a first week of really trying with the spinach, I think I did well. But I am seeking other ways to use this canned vegetable. 

What are your favorite ways to use canned spinach? And actually, frozen spinach would fit here, too, as their textures are comparable once cooked. Recipes? Links? Ideas?

No Shampoo for a Month

I have a confession to make. I haven't used shampoo in a month. No, this isn't a "pandemic-hair, I don't care" moment. This came about because I was searching for a way to tame my unruly, naturally curly and frizzy hair. Well, it turns out that the naturally curly part is something I'm stuck with, but not the naturally frizzy part. 

About a month ago, I read about the curly girl hair method. Curly hair tends to be dry, as scalp oils don't slip down the hair shafts as easily on curly hair as on straight hair. To add to this, I color my hair, which increases the dryness. Well, dry hair attracts moisture from the air, leading to frizz.

So, one of the ideas behind the curly girl method is to "heal" some of that dryness by skipping traditional shampoos (which contain oil-stripping and drying ingredients) and wash the hair either with a sulfate and paraben-free shampoo or wash hair with a conditioner. It turns out that conditioners have enough of the cleansing agents needed to actually wash away dirt and bacteria and get the hair clean. (I never knew that!) The sulfate and paraben-free shampoos tend to be expensive, so I opted for washing with conditioner only. The bonus is since I'm "shampooing" with conditioner, my hair color (from a box) doesn't seem to be fading as fast. The sulfates in traditional drugstore shampoos are a no-no for colored hair, as they strip color while stripping oils.

There's more to the curly girl method, such as using gels to hold the curl in and never brushing the hair. But for now, I'm sticking with just my co-washing (washing with conditioner only). 

What I thought would happen

I thought that my hair would feel greasy or I'd develop dandruff. It didn't and I didn't. I thought I would need to co-wash my hair more often than I'd been shampooing with regular shampoo. I didn't. To clean my scalp, I use my fingertips to scrub the conditioner into the scalp, then rinse thoroughly before adding a bit more conditioner to the ends. In spite of my fears, I wound up with soft hair that feels and looks clean and appears to be improving significantly in the frizz department.

This doesn't surprise me

The success of using conditioner to clean my hair doesn't really surprise me all that much. About 15 years ago, I stopped using facial cleanser to wash my face. After struggling with some small patches of facial eczema for about a dozen years, I decided to ditch the cleansers and just "wash" my face with my moisturizer (a drugstore moisturizing lotion, not necessarily for the face only, but recommended for eczema). Like the hair and shampoo, I thought I might have to deal with break-outs or greasy-looking skin. I didn't. I used the lotion to wash my face, then rinsed with water before patting dry and applying a small amount of new moisturizer. The eczema flare-ups are few and far between, now, and mostly related to trying cosmetics to which I'm allergic. The bonus is my face never looks red or ruddy any more. I think that facial cleansers (even the expensive ones that are meant for dry skin) were simply too irritating for my sensitive facial skin. As I've gotten older and my skin has become a little more dry, I've switched to the heavier moisturizing cream by the same company (CeraVe, in case you're curious). Whether this is just good genes or ditching the facial cleansers, I do get a lot of comments that my skin looks young for my age. I hope that with even more time of co-washing my hair, its texture will improve to the point of just looking and feeling like normal, healthy hair, instead of always looking like it's been damaged. And maybe I can cut back on future purchases of expensive hair masks.

Do you remember when I said, "I also discovered that we can stop buying hair conditioner now. I think I have enough hair conditioner to get through this pandemic and the next one." Well, I now know how I'll be using up this surplus of hair conditioner.

Co-washing isn't recommended for straight, fine, and/or oily hair, although I have found a few women with thick and barely wavy hair that say co-washing works for their hair type, too.

Has anybody, here, used conditioner instead of shampoo? What were your results?

Thrifty This and That for the Week

I've been using the immature winter squash that I harvested just before a killing frost about 10 days ago.

The immature squash can be used much like summer squash. If the skin seems too tough for eating, I peel them first. This one in the photo was the most mature of the baby Hubbard squash that grew in my garden. (Our garden provided 1 fully ripe Hubbard and a bunch of immature ones.) I trimmed the ends, peeled the exterior, scooped out the seeds, and diced the remaining flesh.

Then I simmered the diced squash in water for about 20 minutes before adding to a pumpkin-sage pasta sauce. The yellow bits in the sauce below are the pre-cooked, immature winter squash dices.

I've been making a savory juice for my family with the liquid from canned tomatoes. When I drain a can of tomatoes, I save the liquid to mix with onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt, a pinch of red pepper, and a splash of water, all to taste, resulting in a delicious seasoned tomato juice. 

I wanted to share another of my wire-wrapping pieces. This is a beach-themed wire book hook.

I used a larger gauge wire (18 gauge) to bend into a wire hook. Then I added a length of chain and attached 3 charms. The lower charm is a piece of sea glass, found on our local beach, turned into a charm with wire wrapping. 

The pearl charm is simply a pearl bead that I threaded onto a short length of thinner wire. I spiraled the end piece of that wire to create a stop on one side of the pearl and made a loop in the wire on the other side of the pearl (for hooking the charm onto a jump ring). The possibilities for book hooks using wire wrapping, lengths of chain, and beads are endless. Just pick a theme and go from there.

I got a new-to-me phone -- a hand-me-up from my daughter. This is my first smartphone. My daughter was upgrading her phone to one with a better camera for shooting auditions. Lucky me! I'm very grateful for this gift as I'm not sure I ever would have bought a nice phone for myself. (Expensive tech stuff is not a very high spending priority to me.)

That's about it for the week. What's been some of your thrifty fun this week?

Holiday Grocery Shopping Before the Mad Rush

I read an article on WKRK's website yesterday that suggested some groceries (and other items) may be in short supply this fall. Included in the list were holiday baking ingredients, canned goods, frozen meals, and pasta (plus the expected cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and paper towels).

For those in the US, the article suggested that grocery shopping for Thanksgiving might best be done before November 15, as traditional Thanksgiving foods would be in high demand from mid-November on. I suspect that Christmas and Hanukkah baking supplies, such as flour, sugar, butter, spices, nuts and nut pastes, canned pumpkin, dried and candied fruit, leavening agents, colored sprinkles, chocolate, and cocoa powder might also sell to shelf-depletion levels before Thanksgiving for the value-priced brands. I had a Walmart curbside pickup scheduled for this morning. After reading this article, I thought now would be a good time to go through my holiday baking plans and put the ingredients that I needed on my list for today's order. (I added confectioner's sugar and a couple of cans of mixed nuts -- not a lot of extra items, but these ingredients would be missed this holiday baking season. Obviously, I chose the least expensive brands of both items and was pleased that they were in stock today.)

If you haven't tried curbside pickup due to not wanting someone else to select your produce items, what I've been doing is scheduling a pickup for the bulk of my order then gone into the store for the few fresh produce items that I wanted -- a hybrid approach. This works well for me. I choose a pickup time that is in the earliest grouping, shop in person for my fresh produce as quickly as I can, then go back out to the parking lot to receive the rest of my order. This morning I was in the store for less than 10 minutes, including self-checkout. If I had done the entire shop in-person, I would have spent about an hour to shop for 3 weeks worth of groceries and encountered many more other shoppers and employees in the process.

Anyway, I thought I'd share what I'd read in this brief article. I hope your week is off to a great start, friends!

Growing Our Retirement "Garden"

And the harvest is finally done. I canned my last 2 pints of jelly on Wednesday afternoon. I am now moving on to the management phase. I can't plant anything else in the outdoor garden at this point in the season. So it is up to me to ensure that we use the produce of my efforts wisely. 

I was thinking the other day that keeping a garden can be likened to the lifetime challenge of earning enough income to set aside assets for the years when earning potential drops off.

In the early weeks of a garden, it doesn't look like a lot of progress is taking place, but that progress is under the soil's top layer and perhaps just barely breaking through the crust to show a small green blade or two. Similarly, in the early years of a career, there is often little leftover to set aside for financial growth. However, despite little to show for a burgeoning career, the groundwork for later success is being laid. And of course, everyone knows that it is wise to live below your means at all income levels, so that the small amount you can set aside during this phase has time on its side for maximum growth.

By early summer, most gardens will have something that can be harvested for the table. And as summer develops, opportunities for putting aside some of the garden's bounty increase. In early summer, I was canning rhubarb, trying several different flavor and texture ideas. In the life of a career, this is the period when incomes are rising enough to afford a few luxuries. It's also the time to increase contributions to retirement accounts and other investments for use a couple of decades into the future.

Late summer brings the bulk of the harvest from the garden. I made pickles, salsa, chutney, jams, jellies, preserves, and relishes with my garden bounty in late summer. This is the period in a garden's life when the maximum amount of produce is set aside for winter. Similarly, these would be the later years of a person's income-producing career. The maximum allowable amount for contributions to retirement accounts in the US include a catch-up bonus for individuals over age 50. This makes sense as this time in an individual's career often coincides with one's peak annual income. 

The last of the harvest in my area is brought in sometime in early fall. I work to harvest and preserve as much as I can during this time each year. I don't want to let a single opportunity to preserve our produce pass me by. Likewise, I find that my husband and I are being extra cautious with our income in this period of our lives so that we can set aside as much as possible for later years. There may be opportunities to earn a little side money after retirement, in the same way that winter offers tiny opportunities to grow produce indoors, such as with sprouting lentils.

When the harvest is complete, we can look at our pantry, fridge and freezer and see that we have indeed enough to get through winter. Similarly, I hope that at the end of our income-producing years, we will be able to look at our assets and see that there is enough for all of our future needs. We can't just open all of the jars and start using our produce haphazardly in the same way that we can't start spending our retirement funds without any sort of plan in place. This is the management phase that I mentioned in the opening. With my canned produce, I have made a plan for how to use it all up while ensuring variety in what we eat. I wouldn't want to end the winter with nothing but plum jam to eat for the last week. So I've made a plan. I hope that when my husband and I retire that we will have a comprehensive plan to ensure that we don't "eat up" all of our investments in the early years by spending recklessly, leaving us with a paltry amount for our final years. 

In addition to setting aside produce for the winter, I also harvest some seeds at the end of the gardening season for starting the next year's garden. At the end of my life, I hope that I'll be leaving some "seeds" to my offspring and  a couple of charitable organizations for the next generation to plant. Careful planting, regular cultivation, and diligent harvesting yields a bounty both for our table and our pocketbooks.

Just some thoughts rambling through my mind as I put the last 2 pints of crabapple jelly onto the shelf. There, the mass of jars look beautiful. Enjoy your weekend, friends!

A Dry Run for Our Outdoor Thanksgiving Celebration in the Sometimes Wet and Chilly Seattle Area

Yesterday, we decided to test out an idea for how to celebrate Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law, safely. The two of them live just 15 minutes away from us, but we've only seen them 4 times in all of 2020. They are our only in-person social contacts, while we are one household of a couple for them. So, we want to make sure that nobody passes anything on to anyone else in our family.

Sharing a meal safely during this pandemic means eating outdoors for us. During the summer, we could spend time with our son and daughter-in-law with barbecues on the grill and cook-outs over a fire ring and feel safe. 

For a couple of months, we've been brainstorming how to do the holidays. Our best thought was to simply have another cook-out. We held a dry run yesterday to see if this was even do-able in cold weather for us. 

Our area has had a stretch of unseasonably cold temps, making this the ideal time to try this in weather similar to what we can expect at the end of November. It was 44 degrees F outdoors when I was starting the fire. The average high temperature for late November is around 48 degrees F. Of course, we could very easily have colder than normal weather or even wetter than normal. If that happens, we'll need to consider Plan B or Plan C.

What we discovered

It takes longer to get a fire going when the air is so cold. 

We will need a larger fire than we might normally use in summer, so the warm air can reach further away from the actual fire.

A couple of us needed to go inside and add extra layers of clothing, including hats, and parkas.

In the end, it was warm enough to roast our hot dogs then sit and talk around the fire, so long as the fire was kept good-sized. I think this will be a possibility for us for Thanksgiving. 

Some thoughts on doing our Thanksgiving outdoors -- 

• We'll need to be flexible about the day we get together, and choose the warmest and driest day of the 4-day weekend.
• We'll want to be eating about the time of day when we hit our peak high temperature, which means a mid-afternoon cook-out for our yard.
• Obviously, we'll be skipping the turkey this year and opt for sausages like bratwurst to roast over the fire. I can still make all of the traditional sides to a Thanksgiving dinner, including pumpkin pie for dessert.
• I'll keep a crockpot of hot apple cider going on the deck, using an outdoor electrical outlet.  I can also keep an electric kettle filled with water  and plugged into the same outlet for those who'd like a cup of tea. The rest of the Thanksgiving foods can be brought out to the deck table, and we'll eat around the fire ring on the patio below.
• We have several throws that can be taken outside. I'll wash 6 of them, so we each have one for our backs and shoulders. And I'll advise my son and daughter-in-law on the attire that worked for all of us yesterday. I wore a thick, long-sleeved tee, covered by a thick fleece jacket, then topped with my parka, as well as a knit hat for my head. It looked like we were ready for snow. When you're just sitting around, the body cools off quickly in 44 degrees F.
• I'll need to check our wood supply and move what I think we'll need into the garage for the next few weeks to keep it out of the rain. It was a little slow-going getting the fire to start yesterday.

I think this is do-able for us. Now, to see if our son and daughter-in-law are as adventurous as the rest of the family.

Anybody else plan to celebrate Thanksgiving outdoors? If not, have you come up with a plan that will keep you and your family safe while eating indoors? 

Trying to find positive ways forward in this pandemic.

October Grocery Recap

This was another expensive month. Are you finding this too, that your spending on groceries is far higher than usual? On paper, I had it all planned. Over the summer, I put together a large surplus pantry that I would supplement with some fresher foods throughout the fall and winter with a small-ish budget of about $100 to $150 per month. That sounds totally reasonable for my family. After all, how much can a few gallons of milk, produce, eggs, cheese, and a little meat actually cost each month, I reasoned.

So, in October I shopped in 4 stores, twice in Walmart, once in Dollar Tree, and once in Cash & Carry/SmartFood Service (restaurant supply). I spent $304.52. (Remember, this amount is to supplement all of the food that I bought for my emergency pantry. So about $150 to $200 more than I had planned for the month.)

Curious about this extra spending, I sat down and wrote out the reasons why I'm spending so much on food.

• We're all eating 3 meals and multiple snacks each day, for 7 days per week. Obviously, we all must have been picking up food here or there, such as meals and treats offered at the office or school, or a midday break at Starbucks for a treat and beverage. Since late February, I haven't had so much as a single French fry from McDonalds, frozen yogurt Sundae from Menchies, or a donut from Henry's Donuts. Home-cooked meals have become a 3/7/365 thing for my household. 
• I'm no longer able to shop at multiple stores each week to get all of the sales and deals. Instead, I am choosing just one store to shop at a time (except the week that I also went to Dollar Tree, as it's usually a quick stop) and buy all that I am wanting at that store, spending more on some items than I used to. Here's an example -- I won't be shopping at the year-end clearance at my favorite produce stand. I typically buy a lot of produce on that day, saving a hefty amount on our fresh produce for the next couple of months. But, that day is crowded at that venue and I don't feel like standing elbow to elbow as I pick through the apples. Instead, I bought 10 pounds of apples in bags at the restaurant supply, spending nearly double per pound what I'd spend at the clearance event at the produce stand.
• I'm not shopping as often as I used to, so I'm not catching clearance markdowns on needed items, such as milk or meat. Instead, I'm paying full price on almost everything.
• The least expensive brand on an item is typically sold out, now. As a result, I've had to buy more expensive brands than I'm accustomed. Example -- Great Value decaf coffee is $3.57/jar, while Folger's decaf is about $6.50/jar. I've had to spend nearly double on decaf on several occasions. Great Value canned pumpkin has been sold out since mid-August at my local Walmart. I broke down and bought Libby's pumpkin this week. I was still able to save some money by buying the #10 can at Cash & Carry, but it was not as much of a savings per ounce as Walmart's store brand.
• I try to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible these days. I don't spend time in the aisles comparing prices, but instead make out a comprehensive list for each shopping trip and stick to that list like a fly on fly tape. I do make online comparisons as much as I can before I shop. But you often miss out on unadvertised deals when your only comparisons are made online before shopping.
• We need treats. Face it, life during a pandemic is complicated for many reasons. If treat food can help us all in dealing with the stress, then that's what we'll do. I don't eat a lot of sweet, baked items, so some of our treats are foods like nuts, crackers, and pretzels, which all adds up.
• I am feeding 4 adults while doing several other things each day. There simply isn't enough time in a day to make my own crackers and pretzels or other snacky foods. I bought frozen French fries this month, a processed food item that I would normally just make from whole potatoes. We could just always have oven-roasted potatoes, but back to needing treats -- French fries perked up a homemade burger meal.
• We all eat a lot of fruits and vegetables in our household. A lot of fruits and vegetables. My garden provides for summer, but not much for winter with our appetites.
• We're all being much more physically active, which results in larger appetites and more food.
• I am trying to shore up our health with a larger variety of fruits and vegetables to get through the next few months. I think that I've bought more items like Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cranberry sauce, beets, and yams than I would normally buy in fall. Since my fridge space is limited, I am buying many of these items in canned form for pantry storage. Canned yams are more expensive than fresh yams in the fall. But they store on a shelf and not in my limited fridge space. 
• It seems like there are fewer deals out there. Fred Meyer discontinued Senior Discount Day and their Friday freebies. There has been little to nothing on Walmart's clearance shelf. In fact, many of Walmart's regular shelves have been looking empty. At Cash & Carry, I got the last bottle of lemon juice that was on sale this week. Cash & Carry doesn't offer rain checks. So, I would have been out of luck had I not been at the right place at the right time. 
• Many grocery items are more expensive this year. According to usinflationcalculator.com, the cost of food in September 2020 was 3.9% higher than the same month of 2019. 2020's food inflation is the highest it has been since 2011, when the cost of food rose by 4.5% over that of its previous year. While I moan about the current food inflation, it's really not that bad. The US hasn't seen truly significant food inflation since early 1981. From 1973 through early 1981, there were several years that saw double-digit food inflation. We can be grateful for a mere 3.9% increase today.
• I think I am panic-buying food. I am afraid that I could run out of any particular ingredient in the next few months right during a period with high virus transmission in my area. Not wanting to run out for that necessary ingredient in an unplanned way, there is a part of me that is trying to prevent running out of anything. Now to qualify my fears, when I checked our counties "heat map" for most recent COVID cases, my immediate shopping area is right smack in the middle of the hardest hit neighborhood of our rather large county. In addition, case counts have nearly tripled in just the last month for this county.

These are not just excuses. Life has turned upside down with this pandemic. I've had to change how (and how much), when, and where I normally shop. The end result is a greater cost to keep my family fed.

So, since I know that we're all kind of curious what others have in their shopping cart, here's my list of what I bought (not with quantities, cuz I'm writing this from memory):

milk, cheese, eggs, beef, hot dogs, crackers/pretzels, peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin, tomato paste, beets, corn, sauerkraut, spinach, green beans, peas, pineapple, applesauce, carrots, apples, a green pepper, broccoli cuts, cauliflower, mixed vegetables, blueberries, French fries, sugar, flour, salt, molasses, lemon juice, chili powder, ground ginger, curry powder, yams, cranberry sauce, graham crackers, cabbage, bananas, apple and orange juice concentrates, coffee/decaf, black-eye peas, toasted oat cereal, olives, candy corn, and a small amount of trick-or-treat candy (just in case) -- whew!

What I think will happen in November, December, and January is that I truly will not need to buy much in the way of groceries. My November list only includes celery, more carrots and bananas, oranges or mandarins, some sort of meat for Thanksgiving, sparkling cider, eggs, and milk. I expect that my grocery spending will be much lower in November than this month and last. 

So that's my grocery recap for the month of October. I realize there's still a week left to the month. However, I'm done shopping until November.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

Simply Beautiful Pickled Figs and Other Delectables

I know this post will have little to offer to practically every reader, here. I get that. This is so un-relatable to most. After all, who has unripe figs to deal with? And who really wants to go to the trouble to pickle them? I'm only posting about this recent project because it gave me so much pleasure in the making process.

Figs tend to have two crops per season. The first crop ripens in mid to late summer in my area. I've mentioned before, that in my climate, the late crop never ripens for us. In mid-October, I find myself deluged with hard, green figs. In previous years, I've made an unripe fig jam that's pretty good. However, this year, I have more jam and jelly than I think we'll actually use. So I set out on a quest for a good recipe to pickle these figs.

The recipe that I found called for unripe figs. cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, ginger root, lemon peel, honey, vinegar, and sugar. What I had included unripe figs, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, ginger powder, lemon juice, vinegar, and sugar, but no honey. Good enough. I was absolutely thrilled to find the cardamom pods. I don't recall what I bought them for, but I was very glad to have just barely enough for this project.

The aroma of the heated liquid was amazing. As the spices were simmering with the figs, I kept lifting the lid to smell their essence. After 30 minutes of gentle cooking, my beautiful figs were ready for bottling. 

In total, I made 3 large and 1 small jar of pickled figs.
This was such a satisfying project. I enjoyed this whole sensory experience. I felt like I was making something gourmet, plus I preserved garden produce to make it actually useful for us.

Another satisfying project this past week was a small jar of peanut butter-cocoa powder spread for toast. I had been watching Nigella Lawson earlier in the week as she made a Nutella cheesecake. Yum, that looked delicious! Nutella has milk in it so it's something on my don't eat list. But my own spread was made with ingredients that are okay for me: peanut butter (the cheap kind), cocoa powder (the good kind -- Special Dark Hershey's), confectioner's sugar, and vegetable oil to thin to spreading consistency. It tastes like peanut butter cup candy. It's been delicious on both toast and graham crackers, like a cross between a sweet breakfast and a dessert.

Earlier this summer, I made rosemary-rhubarb preserves. I've been experimenting with using fresh herbs in jelly and preserves. I made a batch of crabapple-sage jelly just last week. Adding herbs to these preserves elevates them from simple spreads for bread or sandwiches to something almost gourmet. I served the crabapple-sage jelly with biscuits to go with a soup supper late last week. The rosemary-rhubarb-preserves were delicious as a condiment with roasted chicken and in chicken salad sandwiches.

In my family's early years, foods had to be simple and very recognizable. PBJ's had to be made with a plain jelly, no jams or unusual flavorings. Pickles had to at least look like something from a store. I might have gotten away with my peanut butter-cocoa powder substitution for Nutella, simply because it tastes a little like candy spread on a piece of toast. However, the rest of my little experiments would have been a waste of space in the fridge. I'm grateful to have finally reached a place where I can make things that appeal to my own tastes and are actually appreciated by the rest of the family. This is a good place.