Cheap & Cheerful Suppers -- End of August

Friday (Movie Night -- we watched African Queen, checked out from the local library)
sausage, mushroom and basil pizza
garden green beans
curried cabbage, sprouted lentil, and peanut slaw
blackberries
microwave brownies

I'm still out of pepperoni. But we've been very satisfied with the sausage, mushroom and basil pizzas I've been making.

My heads of cabbage are still forming. So instead of harvesting a ball of cabbage for the slaw, I cut off one or two outer leaves from a few heads, then finely sliced those leaves.

Saturday (I don't remember what we had.)

Sunday

garbanzo bean and kale soup

drop biscuits

blackberry cobbler

I had a bunch of different liquids to use up, some from steaming vegetables, some from rinsing a can of tomato puree, and pasta cooking water. These were used as the liquid in the soup.

The leftover blackberry cobbler became the next day's breakfast.

Monday

sorrel, squash blossom and sausage soup

stuffed grape leaves

Mexican baked beans with beef

tossed garden salad

fresh blackberries

The baked beans were absolutely delicious. If you're tiring of traditional baked beans and like Tex-Mex food, try a Mexican baked bean casserole. I use 4 oz of cooked ground beef, added to 2.5 to 3 cups of cooked pinto beans, a little salsa, some fresh cilantro, chili powder, cumin, salt, water, vegetable oil. I baked the casserole at about 325 F until the water was mostly gone. It tasted like the filling to a good beef and bean burrito. Extras like cheddar cheese, sliced olives, chopped green onions, diced tomato as toppings after baking would make this really tasty.

Tuesday

pancakes with garden blueberries

bacon

blackberry-rhubarb sauce

Wednesday
spaghetti and meat sauce
sautéed zucchini and patty pan squash
cucumber and pickled chive blossom salad

fresh blackberries

I doubled the batch of spaghetti sauce for a quick meal next week, using 1 lb. of ground beef, a small handful of TVP dehydrated, 12 oz. can tomato paste, oregano, celery, garlic, salt, red pepper flakes, and water (including some of the pasta cooking water at the end). I also saved the water from cooking the spaghetti to use in Thursday's dinner as part of the liquid in the curry.

The pickled chive blossoms were added to the sliced cucumber salad. After I strained my last bottle of chive blossom vinegar, I put the jar of blossoms into the fridge. I use a tablespoon of the pickled blossoms in a salad, pulling the individual blossoms apart slightly. They provide the vinegar flavor in salads that I'd normally add some vinegar. In this salad, I added a spoonful of mayo and a pinch of salt to the sliced cucumbers and chive blossoms.

Thursday

chicken curry over rice

sautéed beet greens (we ate roasted beets with lunch on Wednesday)

leftover frozen chocolate cream pie and various ice creams

A couple of days this last week (those that 3 or more of us were at home), our lunches looked more like dinners. I've roasted and sautéed vegetables, made fried rice, baked desserts, etc. It just makes sense for our situation. I used the leafy green leaves from the carrots in a slaw and in fried rice. I used both fresh chive blossoms  (in soups and salads) and the pickled chive blossoms that are leftover from making chive blossom vinegar (in salads). I harvest the squash blossoms later in the day, using only male blossoms and only after the female blossoms have twisted themselves shut. We like the mellowness they add to sorrel soup. This was the first week that I've used our celery. And this is the first time I've grown celery. Our homegrown celery has a strong flavor compared to commercially-grown celery. I added some ribs to the fried rice and the spaghetti sauce, using both leaves and crunchy ribs. Instead of harvesting the entire plant, I cut off an outer rib here and there and am allowing the rest of the plant to continue to grow.

Our garden is producing really well, but most of what it's giving us needs someone to cook it into something. On the days that I'm cooking at least 2 full meals, I'm spending a lot of time in the kitchen. It's a season of my life. The positive part of all of this is a few more minutes with family each day. Opportunities like this will become fewer and further between shortly. 

what we've eaten from the garden this week

(I wanted to list this out just to see how much our garden is yielding right now. I feel very blessed.)

green beans

cabbage

lentil sprouts (from the kitchen "garden")

basil

oregano

garlic

thyme

rosemary

blackberries

parsley

cilantro

kale -- two kinds

sorrel

squash blossoms

grape leaves

dill weed

lettuce

spinach

nasturtium leaves and flowers

Swiss chard

blueberries

raspberries

rhubarb

summer squash

cucumber

chive blossoms

chives

apples

carrots and their greens

celery

radish leaves

beets and their greens

green onions

still waiting for potatoes, Brussel sprouts, tomatoes, fall turnips, pumpkins.winter squash, peppers, corn, and figs

Those were our meals this past week. Anything special on your menus? Do you ever have your large meal in the middle of the day and a lighter one for supper?

Have a wonderful weekend!

Grocery Shopping at the Restaurant Supply This Week

Last week I wrote about grocery shopping at Fred Meyer, primarily for milk and eggs (I also bought cheese, orange juice, bananas, and a box of marked down granola bars). That was the first time I'd shopped in a month, and I spent about $55.

I have a list of items I want to pick up before September, some of which is stocking up stuff for this coming winter and spring. In particular, I wanted a 50-lb sack of bread flour, 50-lb sack of sugar, a case of canned tomatoes (6 X #10 cans), a case of canned tomato paste (12 X 29-oz cans), 50-ln sack of whole onions,  and a gallon of lemon juice.I had been waiting to buy the onions until I could get new crop ones, so I wouldn't find myself with several spoiling onions within a few weeks. And this was that week! I've stored about half of the bag in our spare fridge and the other half I tiered in a cardboard box between layers of brown paper then stored in the coolest room in the house. I was out of bread flour and substituting regular all-purpose with less than stellar results, so it was time to buy another sack of the good stuff (expensive at 54 cents/lb, but less than the cost per pound in small bags). The tomato products are regular items that I buy every winter (good prices on both -- 3.8 cents/oz on canned whole tomatoes, 6.5 cents/oz on tomato paste). Canned tomatoes and tomato paste have jumped up in price in regular grocery stores in my area this summer. I've been completely out of lemon juice for several months. A gallon sounds like a lot, I know. It keeps in the fridge for many months and in the freezer for a few years. The gallon size was the most economical, and from my experience with cooking for my family, we easily go through a gallon of lemon juice in a year in lemonade, tea, desserts, Greek cooking, and as a milder acid in salad dressing. The sugar is to get us through jam and preserve-making season, the fall baking season, and all of those Christmas goodies. While at the restaurant supply store (we call it Cash & Carry because that was its name when we first began shopping there), I picked up a few more bananas too. My total came to about $136.

what I noticed

The prices on everything are increasing. I paid $5 more for this bag of sugar than I did the last time (a few months ago). Lemon juice is $2 more per gallon than a couple of years ago. While Cash & Carry's price on onions is better than what I'd pay at Fred Meyer, at 36 cents/lb, that's a lot more than what I paid in a 50-lb sack about 5-6 years ago (about 20 cents/lb back then). The other thing I noticed was the empty spaces on the flour shelves. I mentioned this at the check-out and the cashier said that shortly after a flour order comes in, it flies off the shelves. As this is a restaurant and bakery supply, I am guessing that small eateries and bake shops are making sure they have a good supply on hand.

I had thought I might also go to WinCo, but I changed my mind. The prospect of some peaches was tempting. I rethought that idea. We have so much fresh produce ripening every day right now that I just can't bring any more into the house. I also felt I'd spent enough for one day's shopping.

so where I stand with my stocking up

I was thinking about what else we might need. I keep a running list on my computer's notepad. I still need shortening (pie pastry), a turkey (for Thanksgiving), a 25-lb bag of carrots, and some nutmeg. Then I'd consider myself very well-stocked except for a few perishables that I will need to buy somewhat regularly, milk, eggs, cheese, a little meat (still have a lot of meat in the freezer, though), bananas, and a couple of seasonal items. If it turns out my garden potatoes did poorly (I won't know until October), then I will also add those to my need list. Otherwise, my fall stock-up is almost complete. 

Two years ago, I realized how nice it was to not need to go grocery shopping very often in winter. After that year, I decided I would try to minimize grocery shopping in future winters. This has worked very well for me. 

why I shop at a restaurant supply

There are a few main reasons why I like to shop at a restaurant supply for about half of my groceries. I pay roughly what I would at a warehouse store (factoring in the cost of membership to a store like Costco) without the temptation of lots of convenience or junk foods. (Restaurants don't buy jumbo boxes of Pop-Tarts or Oreos, but do buy jumbo bags of flour or cartons of cooking oil) I don't have to wait for sales to get a great unit price on pantry staples and some produce items by buying in institutional sizes. The convenience of buying a product in a super large package so I don't need to buy it again soon. Despite all of this, I still find better prices on some foods (like milk) by shopping in regular grocery stores. So I try to shop at both kinds of stores.

I think that's the end of grocery shopping for August. I'm glad to have it out of the way.

Walk Into My Woods

Beyond the manicured back yard is a mostly untamed area still on our property. There's a large 3-season pond that attracts a pair of ducks each spring, a stand of 50-foot evergreens, and a sunny spot where the blackberries grow. This natural area is my husband's "man space." He comes out here to chop wood, cut back canes, dig a bit, visit the mountain beaver in his den, and just chill. When we get our honeybees, this is where the hive will go. As you might guess, this area attracts a lot of non-human visitors. 

This afternoon, I knew I needed more fresh berries for tomorrow's breakfast, so I took a quart container and headed out to our woods. We eat fresh blackberries with both breakfast and dinner this time of year. In addition to picking the morning's breakfast berries, I also picked another 3 quarts to freeze on a large tray to add to our humongous zip bags in the freezer.

Walk with me.

When you first leave the manicured area of the property, trees shade the walkway and provide good cover from the sun's heat. One daughter has used a couple of trees out here to suspend a hammock for summertime evening lounging. 

In a moment, the walk opens to the blackberry patch, a sunny spot nestled between our yard proper and the woods.

If I walk just a little further and to one side, there's a large pond. It's almost all dried up now but will fill again beginning in September. 

Beyond the blackberry patch and the pond is the woods. Part of the woods is on our property and part is on other neighbors'. There's another house back behind here, but the large trees block our view of those neighbors, and likewise, their view of us.

My husband has cut paths into the wild blackberry patch, so we can get to most of the berries. If I don't find a lot of ripe berries down one path, I simply walk down another. 

My daughters have been picking wild berries in a couple of public spots around our community, as those always ripen earlier in summer than our property's berries. With the berries on our property, we run the risk that rains will return before the berries have ripened, and the berries will be lost. So we pick around the community early in the season to guarantee a good supply for winter. The other draw to foraging around the community is we can find more ripe berries in one shot at the public spots (due to the expansive areas of some of those public sites), compared to our own patch.

Our own berries are now ripening and the public places have been mostly picked over. The ones at the local school will be cut back later this week in preparation for children returning to the playfield and playground nearby. And the other patches are not looking as good now -- too much sun, too much heat, too many pickers. Because our woods is private property, there's no chance of our berries becoming picked over before we can get to them, so we leave the ripening berries on the canes until they are big and juicy. 

Last weekend I made 1.5 quarts of blackberry jam with our berries. I'll enlist the family to pick for me on Saturday and make another 1.5 quarts plus some pancake syrup over the weekend. Our two large zip bags should be full in the next day. I'll begin on the 3rd bag this week and hope to fill it half full (that's about all of the freezer space I can give to berries.)

Blackberry season is short. Right now we are inundated with fresh berries. But in just the wink of an eye, the berry harvest will be a pleasant memory of warm summer days and sweet, juicy berries.

Update on Our Kitchen Water Reclamation

Earlier in the summer, I discussed how we planned on saving most of our kitchen waste water for watering the garden. We have 2 rain barrels that fill in spring from roof run-off. We use this water exclusively for watering food-producing plants. By mid-July, both rain barrels have been emptied, and in past years we've mostly used municipal water for the garden. (We've saved some water from the kitchen, but not a big effort before this year.)

This year I came up with a workable plan for using the kitchen waste water. I put a 5-gallon bucket just outside the kitchen door and started using a plastic dish pan for rinsing produce, to catch hand-washing water, and for rinsing basically clean kitchen tools (like measuring cups) that I plan on reusing shortly. My plan was to dump the plastic dishpan into the bucket on the deck, which I would later empty into the nearest rain barrel for watering at a later time. Early in the implementation of the plan, I did all of the above. As time progressed, I often found it just easier to water parts of the garden directly from the dish pan or large bucket. However, we still poured this water into the rain barrel when I didn't have a need to water any of the garden.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten the whole family on board with this plan to salvage waste water, and we've all done our share to wash hands or rinse vegetables over or in the dish pan. We've also used the not-as-clean water from washing a pot or pan or cooled bean-cooking water directly on a couple of fruit trees just outside the kitchen instead of using municipal water for shrubbery and trees. (We normally have to set a hose on our trees once or twice per summer as our summers here are quite dry.) In addition, I've urged everyone in the house to take much, much shorter showers. A couple of us have been taking navy showers. Your standard 10-minute shower can use as much as 60 gallons of water, whereas a navy shower done right can use as little as 3 gallons. (Unfamiliar with a navy shower? Basically, you get your body wet as soon as you turn the water on, then turn the water off while you soap up. Finally, you turn the water on just long enough to rinse the soap off. It's easier to do in the heat of summer when I don't mind a cold shower.) 

Even with saving as much water as we could, I did still need to use municipal water for the garden on many days.

So here's what I've been waiting for, some sort of confirmation that our efforts have been making a difference. I received the bi-monthly water bill that covered mid-June through mid-August on Monday. And . . . we did save water! Our usage was greater than the previous 2-month period (mid-April through mid-May), but that was to be expected as we never need to water the garden in that earlier time period. But, in comparing this same time period between this year and last year, we shaved about 20% off of our water usage this year. We still have another couple of weeks where our garden will need regular watering. But the days are getting shorter and slightly cooler, meaning the garden will need less watering as we move closer to September. We will continue with water-saving methods, with hopes of receiving a water bill for the next cycle that doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach.

Using Pasta Cooking Water

In my efforts to use it all, I started saving my pasta cooking water to use as part of the liquid in soups and gravies. The cooking water is starchy, so it gives soup some body without adding any other thickeners. It also has some flavor. So I figured I may as well use this water when preparing other meals. I've been using the starchy water in soup, gravy, and as a substitute for part of the milk in white sauce/cheese sauce for binding casserole ingredients.

Friday lunch, I made a tomato, basil, and garbanzo bean soup using the pasta water from earlier this week. I normally thicken the tomato base with flour for this soup. The pasta liquid gave enough body to the soup that thickening with flour was unnecessary. I was also able to cut the salt for the soup in half, due to the already flavorful pasta water.

To save the cooking water, instead of putting the colander in the sink, I place it in a heat-resistant bowl that's placed on a trivet (the water will be hot). My favorite bowl for this task is a large, heavy duty glass measuring pitcher. I strain the liquid into the bowl and allow it to cool before transferring to a canning jar. I keep it in the fridge for up to a week and use it when I'm making soup, gravy, or white sauce. It's a thick liquid, giving substance to white sauce (used half and half with milk) where just water would be too thin.

If you're in the habit of using lots and lots of water for cooking pasta, Cooking Light actually recommends using less water, just enough water to keep the pasta covered while boiling. They recommend (and I agree) stirring the pasta during the first few minutes of cooking to prevent the pasta pieces from sticking to each other, in lieu of boiling in a large quantity of water. The result of using less water in cooking is a thick, starchy liquid. In contrast, using several quarts of water for cooking  a family meal of pasta will dilute the flavor and starch in the end water.

Do you reuse pasta cooking water? What are your thoughts?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers: Lots and Lots of Garden Produce This August Week

Forgive me for showing off. This is the soufflé I made on Monday. I used very young and tender grape leaves, finely chopped, in place of spinach. It was very delicious. And now I have another use for our grape leaves.

Friday

Friday

garden zucchini and Parmesan frittata 

brown rice with TVP/chicken gravy

garden green beans

mixed garden berries

Saturday

Saturday

Italian bean soup (with garden garlic, herbs, kale)

garden salad

scratch drop biscuits

fresh blackberries

Sunday

Sunday

refried beans, cheese and salsa

rice with salsa

garden kale

fresh blackberries

Monday

Monday

garden grape leaf and cheese soufflé

fresh apples

garden green beans

toast

blackberry pie

Tuesday

Tuesday

Salisbury steak with tomato and thyme gravy

brown rice

garden green beans

steamed garden  kale

leftover blackberry pie

Wednesday

Wednesday

tuna salad on garden lettuce (tuna salad for 3 -- 1 can tuna, TVP, 1 boiled egg, cooked macaroni, garden celery, garden chive blossoms, mayonnaise)

garden cucumber slices

crackers

steamed garden green beans

fresh blackberries

Thursday

Thursday

hummus

crackers

tossed garden salad (garden greens, garden cucumber, 1 boiled egg, scratch dressing)

steamed garden kale

fresh blackberries

chocolate pudding pie

Tonight we'll get back to homemade pizza for our Friday movie night. We've missed a couple of weeks of pizza and a movie Fridays this summer. Some weeks our schedules don't mesh. I am out of pepperoni, though. So I'll do an Italian sausage, mushroom, and basil pizza as I made a couple of weeks ago. 

I love looking at our meals and thinking about how much is coming from our garden, orchard, or foraging. I know that some of you must do the same. On Monday, without all of what we grow or forage, we would have had a plain cheese soufflé, toast, and pie crust (with sugar inside but no berries). Yes, I'm easily entertained.

Many of you have mentioned the peaches you've been enjoying. I don't live in peach country, so fresh peaches are a special treat for us. Fred Meyer has peaches at $1.99/lb this week. However, my daughter was gifted a peach this week by the lady she was cat sitting for. This lady left town and remembered she'd left a peach sitting out, so she texted my daughter and asked her to eat it. Well, my daughter brought it home for the four of us. So I cut it up and added it to other fruit for a really wonderful fruit salad to go with our lunches on day this week. Unless I find a great price on peaches, that will be it for fresh peaches for me this year. I hope you all enjoy the ones you can get.

Those were our evening meals for the week. What was on your menu?

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Apples, apples, and more apples!

I think I've mentioned that our early apples are ripening right now. It's just one dwarf tree. I think this is the most apples this tree has ever produced for us. I estimate our harvest from this one tree at about 30 lbs. 

I've been picking and using apples from this tree over the last 2 weeks. The squirrels and raccoons have also been "picking" apples for me. In the mornings, one of the first things I do each day is go out to the apple tree and pick up any apples that have been knocked off. After giving them a good wash, I cut away bruises, remove cores, and chop these apples, skin on, for the freezer (to use in crisps and cobblers later). I'm not about to let the fallen apples go to waste. I have 2 gallon ziploc bags of chopped apples so far. I've used fallen apples to bake 2 apple crisps so far this season. And it looks like we'll have a few more using the frozen apples.

I've also been picking a bucket or so of apples every day as I see them looking ready, adding them to the large drawer in our fridge. I did a major picking on Wednesday, as the heat was ripening them quickly. The above photo is of the large drawer in our fridge that spans the width of our top fridge/bottom freezer appliance. It's now full of near-perfect apples for fresh eating.

We weren't so fortunate with the plums or pears this year, no pears at all and just a handful of plums. And the late apples didn't do well, either. With less variety to choose from, I expect the early apples will last us about 1 month. Still, a month of free fruit is a real blessing. And we also have 1 & 1/2 bed pillow size bags of blackberries in the freezer so far, and there are more to come!

As I was putting the apples away in the fridge, I thought of another aspect of our apple bounty for which to be grateful. These particular early apples very rarely have disease or insect/worm issues. Whereas our later apples are susceptible to apple scab and worms. So, if I'm going to have an abundance of one type of apple, I'd rather have the "better" apples, even if they don't keep as well as the later ones.

Apple picking time always makes me feel like summer is coming to its end for the year. I know we still have a month of good weather to look forward to. Despite that knowledge, I find my mind wandering to autumnal topics, like pumpkins and chili and the return of rainy days. My efforts to live in the moment are seriously becoming derailed this week.

Just rambling . . .

I finally did some in-person grocery shopping this past week

It had been a month since I set foot into a store. Then we ran out of milk. So it was time to do another grocery shopping.

In the last two years, there have been many times that I timed my shopping trip in efforts to avoid large groups of people. This week, I timed my shopping to hopefully score some markdowns. What I've learned with our local Fred Meyer is that if I shop too early in the day, the workers haven't had the opportunity to mark down items. And if I shop too late in the morning, approaching noon, all of the markdowns have been scooped up. Although I was up very early, I waited until I thought I might just be in the Goldlilocks time range. Almost 10 AM exactly I grabbed my list, phone, and purse and hopped into the car. At about 10:02 AM exactly, I turned around and got the shopping bags that I'd left on the counter. At 8 cents per bag, I hate to have to buy new bags because I forgot to bring my own.

In through the double doors at FM, I grabbed myself a mini-cart and raced to the milk coolers. Okay, so maybe I wasn't racing so fast I knocked anyone down, but I didn't waste any time on my way to check for milk markdowns. Milk has gotten expensive. If I can find some short-dated containers, I can save a bundle of money. My family doesn't mind if I freeze the milk. So this can be a terrific way for me to shave a little off the final shopping total. I got to the coolers and SCORE! I found four 1% gallons marked down to $1.69 each. I needed five gallons of drinking milk for my family and one gallon of whole milk for yogurt. I bought the 4 marked down milks and added 1 regular priced 2% and 1 regular priced whole milk. I prefer 2% milk for my family, but I know they're not picky and will drink skim, 1%, 2% or whole milk. Often when I'm looking for marked down milk, it's the skim or 1% that's marked down, practically never the 2% or whole milk.

My next urgent stop at Fred Meyer was the clearance aisle. They've moved their clearance section to a set of shelves in the beauty care aisles. Go figure. And they have much less in the clearance section than ever before. But I check anyway, as I have found some great deals on dented cans of vegetables and some boxes of tissues. This week, I found a single 8-ct box of granola bars for 49cents. My family would be happy to have something commercially quasi-junky. I grabbed the box then headed to the egg section. Yes, I could've just walked straight down the path from the milk cooler to the egg fridge. But I might miss the clearance deals by being so logical. I zig and zag all around the grocery store so I can check all of the clearance spots right away. The egg section does sometimes have repackaged eggs marked down quite a lot. These are eggs that previously belonged to other cartons, ones where an egg or two or three have broken and made a yolk-y mess. So eggs from several different cartons are put together in a new carton. But by law they have to be marked as repackaged, and in doing so, the store realizes they have to mark it down to get customers interested in buying those cartons. But these egg deals are few and far between these days. Hence I prioritized the main clearance aisle over the eggs. The website had the price listed all wrong on the eggs, which benefitted me greatly. instead of 5-dozen cases costing in the neighborhood of $10, they were $7.89. I picked a box and added it to my cart. next stop the produce markdown shelf. on my way, I spotted a sale on 64-oz jugs of orange and orange-pineapple juice for 99 cents. I bought 2 of those. I made it to the produce section and found absolutely nothing on the marked down shelf. I bought 14 bananas at the regular price of 59 cents/lb.

Backtracking a bit, I next hit the meat department. The markdowns were items like steak originally priced at $13/lb now marked down to $10/lb. No thank you. They also had some marked down pre-seasoned chicken breast for $5/lb. Again, a big no thank you. I didn't buy any meat. But we're still stocked in that area. After the meat section I decided to check the cheese. We've been down to just a block of mozzarella cheese that I save for our Friday pizza nights. I knew my family would love to have some cheddar for lunches, etc. As luck would have it, store brand cheese had a digital coupon available, bringing the price of cheddar and mozzarella down to $4.99 for a 2-lb package ($2.50/lb). The digital coupon could be used up to 5 times in a single transaction, so I bought 3 blocks of cheddar and 2 bags of shredded mozzarella.

My last stop was to buy a couple more bags of potting soil for my winter indoor greens garden. While I'd been quite lucky on this shopping trip in other areas, with the potting soil my luck had run out. They were completely sold out of the bargain brand of potting soil and only had the pricier brands in small bags left. Oh well. I'll have to check some place else for this item.

At this point, my mini-cart was full. So I headed to the check out. I used my shopping bags, so no extra charges there. My total came to $51.55. I know that sounds very low considering I haven't grocery shopped in-person in a month. However, I've been ordering groceries online for the pantry to be shipped over the past month, stocking up on coffee, peanut butter, vegetable oil, peanuts, cocoa powder, vinegar, and all-purpose flour. Our pantry is quite full of dry goods, and our freezers are full of meat, vegetables, butter, and now berries. With all of that plus a garden in full production, we've only been needing eggs, milk, and cheese. When I go for those basic three items, I also check for other markdowns and pick up some bananas for smoothies.

I've grown accustomed to not shopping as often. Yes, I miss out on some deals. But I like using my time to do other things, such as grow food so I don't have to shop as often or spend as much money. Still, I'm spending far more than I used to. That's part price increases. But also, I've been buying some foods that were rare treats previously (like whole peanuts or almonds). My family appreciates these treats and that makes the expense worth it. 

How about you? Has your shopping changed in the last two years? When you're on the hunt for markdowns, do you zig zag all over the store to hit markdown territory first, or do you shop in an orderly fashion and wait to find markdowns as you come to them?

A Confirming Observation

For the last several months, I've been working hard to waste less of our food, both the purchased and garden-grown. I've been trimming less off of vegetables and fruits, skipped the peeling of carrots and potatoes, used all but the thin papery skin and the actual root fibers/threads on onions, cut closer to the cores on apples, and basically trying to find ways to use all of the safe to eat portions of the fruits and vegetables that come into my kitchen. I'm also saving meat fat, and some of our cooking liquids, such as the starchy pasta cooking water, liquid from canned vegetables and drained frozen fruit, cooking liquid from veggies, and the liquid in which fruits, vegetables, and pickles are canned. 

Despite doing all of the above, I wasn't sure if my efforts would be measurable.

So here's the interesting thing. On Sunday, my husband looked into the kitchen compost bucket and said that we're not putting as much into the bucket as we used to. He normally takes the kitchen bucket out to the composter in the backyard once per week. On Sunday, he commented that the bucket was only half full and could go another 4 to 6 days before needing to be dumped. He also said that it's been like this all summer. I take this as confirmation that we are indeed wasting less food in our house.

I have dual motives for my goal of wasting less food in my house. One, we want to offset the price increases and shrinking packages of purchased food. And secondly, if, as many experts have been warning, there is to be a food shortage coming, wasting less food spares more to go around for all of us.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. How about you? Are you trying to waste less in order to compensate for higher grocery or other costs?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers the First Full Week of August

Friday

Friday
sausage, mushroom and basil pizza, frozen peas, rhubarb jello 

Funny thing, when my husband first saw the plate, he asked if the pink rectangle was Spam. I laughed. He took a bite, then realized it was a fruit jello. It does look a bit like Spam though, doesn't it? I made the jello around noon and wanted it to set quickly, so I poured it into a shallow baking dish -- spreading it out to firm up faster. We ran out of pepperoni, so I had to improvise. This turned out to be a very delicious pizza, and I plan on replicating it again soon.

Saturday

Saturday
bean and beef burritos, steamed kale, fresh blackberries, graham cracker-peanut butter frosting sandwich cookies

I was starting to feel not quite well this evening. My husband made the burritos and steamed the kale. I normally try and find more in the garden to go with meals, but as I said, I just wasn't feeling great. The burritos were delicious. I picked a handful of cilantro for my husband to add to the beef and bean filling. The cilantro really made these amazing, even without any cheese in the burritos. My two daughters went out blackberry picking for us in the afternoon and brought several more quarts of fresh, free blackberries. My pillow-size bag is filling up!

Sunday
kale and sausage frittata, rice, steamed garden green beans

This was the worst night for me. I've had terrible allergies for 2 weeks, and I subsequently developed a sinus infection. I took extra good care of myself all day and evening, taking my zinc, quercetin, vitamin C, vitamin D, sipping orange juice alternating with chicken broth and tea, and rested. Again my husband made dinner which I ate in bed before turning in early for the night. I woke up the next morning about 90% better. Anyway, the dinner was absolutely delicious.

Monday -- hotdog cookout
hot dogs in homemade buns, garden kale, garden green beans, garden raspberries, s'mores

The day was a beautiful summer one, and the day before a new storm system was to roll in, bringing mostly clouds and a bit of drizzle. Since it was so nice, I planned a cookout for dinner. I made a batch of hotdog buns early in the day and melted chocolate chips to form patties to use for s'mores after the dinner. I also harvested produce from the garden to put the rest of dinner together. We all enjoyed sitting around the fire ring for an hour while cooking our dogs and eating. One daughter thanked me for making a nice summer evening for the family. I was grateful to have knocked the sinus infection down so quickly and feel much better.

Tuesday

Tuesday
chicken-kale-pasta skillet dish, apple wedges, cream of sorrel and squash blossom soup

Why does macaroni shaped pasta scream "budget"? Macaroni and spaghetti are always the least expensive shapes for me to buy. I wished I'd had a more upscale pasta shape for this dinner, like a penne. But macaroni is what I had, so I went with it. I used garden kale, herbs and garlic, plus canned tomatoes, a chicken breast, and the pasta. I was going to stir in the Parmesan cheese, but then I recalled how the cheese always sticks to the pan, which means some never gets eaten. So instead, I topped each serving with the Parmesan. My sorrel is still doing really well, which is remarkable for August. I'm trying to use it regularly, but have limited ways to use it. I make soup and use the leaves in salad. It's a perennial that does well in my garden, so I keep it. Tonight's soup also incorporated some squash blossoms. I added those for a "yellow" vegetable. I don't feel we've had enough yellow vegetables in recent weeks. Yep, those things stick in my mind. Our early apples are abundant but small. I try to use them daily.

Wednesday

Wednesday
meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, sautéed zucchini, kale salad, apple wedges, rhubarb pie

I'm very proud of how both daughters' cooking skills have grown. One daughter made this dinner. She's been asking me to teach her some of my recipes. She keeps a bullet journal and logged the recipe for meatloaf a while ago. She was proud that she could do this all herself without having to ask me anything. She made all of the dinner, except the pie. Pie is mostly "my thing" in this household. Oh and I harvest the vegetables, as I'm the one who knows what's ready and where to look.

Thursday

Thursday
hummus, crackers, lentil sprout slaw, garden green beans, garden apples, leftover rhubarb pie

Thursday's dinner was another daughter's work. She and I had planned a menu that would be quick and easy to make after a long day away from the house. Today was the day both daughters gave me my birthday gift, belated. I'd asked for a day with the two of them in the small town near the beach in our area. We walked along the beach, admired pretty shells that had washed ashore (it was very low tide), watched a heron as he caught and ate a fish, walked up to the town and went into a couple of shops, bought pastries at the family-owned bakery, came home and had lunch on the grass in our backyard, then finished the afternoon with a walk in the next neighborhood over, checking out all of the summer flowers. It was beautiful and sunny -- a perfect day. In the shops -- they bought a bar of lavender soap from the lavender store and a couple of rubber stamps from the art store for me. They also bought the pastries and lunch supplies. A lovely day, with my two lovely daughters, and all at no expense to me. One of my daughters is currently illustrating a children's book with an ocean setting. She mentioned that she needs to go back to the beach for reference drawings again soon. Guess who will be tagging along?

One day over the weekend, I made brunch on the deck for my husband and daughters, as we were all here and available. I made blueberry pancakes (blueberries from our garden), bacon, mixed fruit juice, lentil sprout and carrot top slaw. The fruit juice was a combo of the last of the orange juice, some heavy syrup from canned peaches, and the liquid from thawed and drained frozen blueberries, saved when making muffins a few weeks ago. We don't have any plans for a vacation away from home this summer. Instead, I'm trying to make special occasions and meals for our family.

I haven't been grocery shopping inside a store in a month. I'll need to go out for milk, eggs, and bananas tomorrow. While not shopping in-person, I have been ordering some pantry staples to be shipped, restocking my emergency pantry. In those orders, I bought coffee, peanut butter, peanuts, more cocoa powder, and all-purpose flour. We seem to plow through the coffee, cocoa powder, and peanut butter. I guess being home so much means that all of our coffee is made at home, I need to bake treats on the reg., and we have peanut butter sandwiches a whole lot.

So, that was my week and the meals we enjoyed. What was on your menu this past week?

Growing Mâche for Fall and Winter Salads

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was planning my fall garden. One of the plants I mentioned is called mâche, also known as corn salad, also known as lamb's lettuce. Since mâche is not one of the common vegetables in the US, I thought I'd tell you a bit more about it.

Mâche is better known in Europe, often found in markets in the spring. Some say the name lamb's lettuce is due to the fact that it is available during the spring lambing season. Others say that the name lamb's lettuce comes from the fact that it was commonly found wild in pasture land where sheep grazed. In addition to growing wild, mâche is cultivated for sale in most of Europe. Mâche grows in compact rosette form and is used both raw in salads and cooked in soups and stews. It prefers the cooler months, often planted in very early spring or in the fall after the hot weather has abated for the year.

Many gardeners in Europe and Scandinavia grow mâche in a poly tunnel-style greenhouse in the winter months. While it may not put on much growth during the shortest days, it will hold in a bed under a clear cover such as what a poly tunnel can provide. If planted outdoors in the elements, it is cold hardy to about 5 degrees F (although it needs temps of between 50 and 70 for seed germination). Mâche is considered one of the most cold hardy vegetables. In my area, where overnight lows rarely reach the teens, mâche will hold in my garden, even under snow. In late winter to early spring, it should begin to put on new growth, which can be eaten, before bolting.

I started my seeds a little over a week ago indoors inside a damp paper towel. Earlier this week I noticed the seeds were sprouting, so I very carefully transferred the seeds into soil and am keeping the tiny plants under lights. Our very hot weather appears to be over for the summer, according to the weather forecasters. We may have a week of high 70s to low 80s later this month. I will be keeping the mâche under lights indoors until the last week of August, then I will transplant the small plants into a garden bed. I'll also be starting a second batch of these seeds in another 2 weeks and then again a third batch about 1 month from now, and a final batch sometime in late September, to prolong my harvest and have some of the leafy greens holding in the garden through winter under a row cover. I expect to be able to begin harvesting the leaves in about a month, adding to our September salads. Mâche can either be harvested one leaf at a time, in a cut and come again fashion, or by cutting the plant off at the base. Since I want to maximize my harvest, I'll pluck a few leaves at a time, leaving time for more to develop. It's flavor is nutty and its texture is like butterhead lettuce.

Mâche is said to make an excellent green manure, tilling in the remains of the plants after harvest. So, I'll try that as well, instead of digging up the plants and throwing on the compost heap.

So that's mâche. Have you ever tried this leafy green?

My Two Muffin Tweaks This Summer

Yum, blueberry muffins for a summer morning. 

Our blueberry bushes are past the peak in berry production for the year. So I'm making the most of what we have left. I made blueberry pancakes the other morning. And on Tuesday, I made another batch of blueberry muffins. 

I've been fiddling around with my scratch muffin recipe this summer, trying to waste less as well as conserve our egg supply. For my last couple of batches of muffins I've left out the usual 1 egg called for. To compensate for the leavening the egg provided, I increased the ratio of baking powder (or my substitute -- baking soda plus vinegar) to flour. To do this, I cut the flour amount from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups but left the baking powder amount as originally called. The oil, sugar, salt, and milk remained the same as before. The first time I made muffins omitting the egg I was afraid the finished muffins would be too crumbly. As it turned out, they were just as muffin-y as I would expect. I'm now wondering what types of muffins actually need that egg. Perhaps muffins that are naturally more crumbly, like bran muffins. But for the rest, as long as I'm short on eggs, I'll be leaving the egg out of my muffins. The only drawback to this egg-less muffin technique is my new batch now makes 9 muffins, whereas the old batch made 12, due to reducing the flour by 1/2 cup. I could always do the math and figure a new recipe based on a greater amount of flour.  But that would be work. Some day, when I have nothing else to do and want a little math problem . . .

The other change I've made this summer is to skip the muffin papers. It has always annoyed me that so much of a muffin is lost due to sticking to the little paper cup. Simply greasing the muffin tin was never enough either. Instead of some of the muffin sticking to the paper, a thin layer of muffin crumbs stuck to the tin. After our conversation about greasing and flouring cake and loaf pans I decided to try greasing and flouring the muffin tin wells. This works amazingly well. Not only do the muffins not stick, but they come cleanly out of the tin, no crumbs left behind. Yes, it is work to grease and flour the tin. I can imagine there will be more times in the future where using the muffin liner papers will be the simpler choice. But for now, I'm really pleased to waste less of the muffin.

So those are the two tweaks I've made to my scratch muffins this summer, leaving the egg out and greasing and flouring the tins.

Getting More for My Money by Overwintering My Begonia Pot in the Garage

For the most part, begonias are tender perennials, meaning in an area that freezes in winter, there's a good chance they'll die off. If you live in a warmed climate, you can just leave them in the ground or pot outdoors for the winter and expect they will bloom again the next spring and summer. It does freeze where I live. It's recommended that gardeners in my area dig up their begonia bulbs/tubers and keep in a cool but frost-free spot for the winter. 

Last spring, I picked up this hanging basket (empty) from a free pile in my neighborhood. I went to the garden center at Fred Meyer with the hope of finding a begonia plant. They were selling pre-filled begonia baskets for $33 each. I bought a single plant for $3.50 and brought it home to pot in this basket. I enjoyed blooms July, August, and early September. At the end of the season, I decided I wanted to try to save the plant to put out again the next spring.

I didn't need to dig up the bulb, however. Since I planted mine in a pot, I decided to just bring the pot into the garage (where it never freezes, but stays cool). Just before the first frost I brought my begonia, pot and all, into the garage, set it on the concrete floor about 5 or 6 feet from the door to the house and the furnace and water heater, and gave it no thought all winter. I forgot to get it back out until late spring. I was half-expecting it to not come back to life. But I placed it in a spot where I'd remember to water what looked like a pot of dirt. Low and behold, a tiny shoot began to emerge from the soil, then another shoot, and another.

The plant has doubled in size. It looks like the bulb could potentially be divided into two plants. I'll leave them both in this pot together just as they are for at least one more season. Begonias like to be little crowded.

So the plant has now begun to bloom. I'll enjoy what it gives me the rest of this summer, then bring it into the garage again in early to mid October. I suspect many folks treat begonias like annuals and plan on replacing them the next year. I might have, too, if I hadn't read that these could overwinter in a garage or cellar and if I'd had to dig them out of the ground on some chilly autumn day. As it worked out, it was super simple for me to bring the whole pot into the garage to leave it until spring.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Week That Straddles Two Months

I don't have a single photo for this week's Cheap & Cheerful post. The charging cord for my phone quit on me yesterday. I had taped the breaking plastic cable covering together with duct tape; but even that failed on me. All of my photos are on my phone and the battery is now dead. Anyway, I ordered a new charging cord Thursday morning. It will hopefully be here on Monday. Best part -- it didn't cost me anything out-of-pocket. This cord was for an Apple product. When I was in the checkout, I wondered if my old iTunes gift card might cover the cost. After a lot of searching and playing around, I finally loaded the balance of the iTunes card into my Apple account, then lucked upon the button that allowed me to tap into my Apple account to pay for the cord at the online Apple store. This iTunes card had been a gift that I never used up. So I was thrilled to be able to use it for a new charging cord.

Our meals

Friday
falafel

dolmathes

sautéed kale

toast

blueberries and raspberries over scratch cake topped with whipped topping

I'd been craving falafel for some time. I think it was really that I was craving something fried. I cooked up a pound of garbanzo beans and used about half of them in the falafel and saved the other half for adding to lunch time salads. This point in summer I try to use and freeze grape leaves as often as we can. In addition to making dolmathes on Friday, I also picked and froze enough grape leaves for a couple of batches in winter. I'll continue picking and freezing grape leaves as more reach the right size, neither too large or too small. I'd like to have enough of these leaves to make stuffed grape leaves twice per month for October through May of next year.

The whipped topping was something my daughters bought for Mother's Day to top strawberry pie. We'd had a half-container sitting in the freezer for a couple of months. Cake and berries sounded like good companions for the whipped topping.

Saturday
refried beans

homemade flour tortillas

garden salad

sautéed Swiss chard

raspberries

leftover plain cake

My husband makes the refried beans and tortilla meals in our house. I made the tortillas for many, many years and was happy to have him do them instead. He likes doing the same thing week after week, so this works for both of us. Always tasty.

Sunday
bean burger patties

rice

kale salad

rhubarb sauce

ice cream (finishing off several different flavors)

I've mentioned that we're still trying to use up the ice cream that had been sitting in the freezers for a couple of years. Whelp, we're still working at that. We are making lots of progress. I had the last slice of ice cream cake, while other family members had confetti ice cream, chocolate fudge brownie, and vanilla bean. There's just a small amount left now. Hopefully we can finish that over this coming weekend.

Monday
grilled hamburgers on homemade buns with homemade pickles and garden lettuce

mixed vegetables

sautéed kale

berries

microwave brownies

You know, one of the great things about feeling competent in bread-making is that on a whim I can decide I'll serve burgers or hot dogs and make the buns myself -- no need to run out to the store to get the buns. Plus, I can add some whole wheat flour to the bun dough, making these extra tasty and with a nit more nutrition. The dill pickles were from last summer. how did we manage not to eat the dill pickles this past year? I don't know how that happened, as I love, love, love dill pickles and I didn't make all that many to begin with. 

Tuesday
spaghetti and meat sauce

garden salad

trio of berries

2 nights in a row of beef. I've been extra tired and I was thinking a couple of days of meat in a row might perk me up. I remember thinking after eating dinner that this one tasted especially good to me.

Wednesday
sausage and kale frittata

garden salad

apples

mashed potatoes

blackberry pie

One of my daughters made this dinner (except the pie). I try to keep them cooking one night per week, you know, for their benefit. She did a great job. Again a meal that I thought and commented on how delicious it tasted. I work with them to plan the meals they cook, so we can use things in a way that uses what needs using and doesn't use ingredients that I want to save for another month. I harvest the veggies and fruits for them, so I know that I'm picking the parts that most need using. I've noticed a contrast between what I pick from the garden and what I pick from the store. In the garden, I pick the most aged and worn looking parts of a plant, so they don't get overlooked and go to waste, then allow the younger, more attractive leaves or fruits to be ready another day. In a grocery store, I pick the youngest, most perfect looking pieces of produce and leave the aging ones, because I can. It's perhaps not the best way to shop from the store's perspective, but I think it's what we all do -- take the best looking items and leave the not great ones. Anyway, I thought what a contrast that was from how I choose what to harvest in the garden.

Thursday
ham and gravy over scratch biscuits

garden green beans

apple wedges

blackberry pie

This was my other daughter's night to cook. And once again, I said several times how delicious it was. The ham in gravy over biscuits was comfort food at its highest level. Gravy over bread product is always my pick for comfort food. It reminds me of the meat and gravy open-faced sandwiches my mom would make, using leftover turkey or beef roast. There's not a restaurant meal around that can match the comfort of a meat and gravy sandwich.

Our early apples are just now ready to pick a few at a time. They're actually still a little tart. However, we have to stay two stepps ahead of the squirrels and raccoons with the apples. As it is, I find an apple or two that's been knocked off the tree every morning. I bring those in, wash, cut off the bad spots, then chop and freeze the apples, skin on. I'll use these apple pieces in crisps this winter.  

You may have noticed, we've added blueberries and blackberries to the raspberries, which only have a few left on the canes. It's nice when the three overlap and I can make desserts using a trio of berries. 

This was the first week of fresh green beans, too. We've reached that point in the season when the garden gives us a greater assortment of fruits and vegetables to work with. Very soon we'll have zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and beetroot. Our garden is a little slow this year, due to the cool May and June, for those of you who had a warmer spring and early summer and who've been eating zucchini for weeks now.

While we have all this fresh produce in the garden and orchard, I am trying to bulk up all of our meals with fruits and vegetables. We have berries and apples with breakfast, more berries, salad greens, and vegetable soups with lunch, and again more berries, apples, rhubarb, salads, and veggies with our evening meals. My husband (who I never could get to choose vegetables before) now says he likes how his digestion feels eating all of this produce. And I even catch him in the kitchen making salads for himself or finishing off the lentil sprouts many days. It's nice that we can inexpensively add all of this produce to our meals and snacks.

So that's what we ate this week. What was on your menu?

Have a great weekend!

And the Great Blackberry Harvest Begins

We forage for wild blackberries every year. Due to our cool May and June this year, the blackberries are ripening a couple of weeks late. But yesterday, in the late afternoon/early evening, my two daughters said they thought there might be some ripe berries nearby on their walking path. They took a few containers and brought home the first of our 2022 blackberry harvest, about 12 quarts. My main job with the blackberries is to wash and freeze them all. 

Last year, I posted a photo of one of the two giant bags of frozen blackberries we put away. These bags are the size of a standard bed pillow when filled. 

Here they are empty. I've set a dinner plate on top of the stack of bags to give you a sense of just how big these are. My family will be picking feverishly for the next 2 weeks to gather as many as we can. 

We eat blackberries all winter long in pies, crisps, yogurt, smoothies, pancake syrup, in oatmeal -- anyway I can think to use them. I have no idea what the value is of this much fruit. But I do know that I don't need to buy much fruit at all during winter because of all of the berries we forage each year.

My husband commented that my daughters "were out there with all the other poor people picking the berries." I set him straight on his thinking -- we don't forage blackberries because we're poor. We forage these berries because we're smart. I suspect that there are a lot of folks who turn up their noses at these wild-grown, freely available berries.  The way I see it, these berries are super nutrient dense. They are there for the taking. If we don't pick them, perhaps half or more will fall off the canes to rot on the ground and be wasted. I feel like they've been put in our area for consumption. If we're willing to harvest and use them, that is better than allowing them to go to waste. And we save money and boost our health because we're willing to eat them.

Obviously, I hope we fill two of these large bags again this year. I guess we'll just have to see how well we do in the foraging.

The Leftover Guzzlers

our tossed garden salad composed of the bits and leftovers that might have been overlooked

There are some food categories that lend themselves to using leftovers and odds and ends, those last little bits that no one wants to finish off.

I was thinking about this as I was mixing batter for muffins Tuesday morning. I had about 1/2 cup of leftover rhubarb sauce that was getting a little long in the tooth. I couldn't get anyone to finish this. It wasn't that it was bad. It's just that there were more interesting foods to eat. Anyway, I also had about 1 cup of souring milk that I had frozen specifically for baking and had thawed Sunday morning for pancakes. I'd only used about half of that container of soured milk in the pancakes, leaving me with another cup to use as soon as I could. Both of those items would need to be used in some sort of concoction or face the garbage disposal by week's end. You know me, I certainly didn't want to waste them. Doctoring them up into something "new" was my only path. A lot of my homemade muffins are like this. I find a remnant from a previous meal in the fridge, and a plan for a batch of muffins is hatched.

Later in the day, while I was gathering garden ingredients for a tossed salad to go with dinner, I thought about how salads are great vehicles for using up those odds and ends that no one thinks to eat. I plucked the small leaves off of the beets, turnips, and Swiss chard that were setting seeds and tossed those into my harvest bucket. I also picked not only nasturtium blossoms for our salad, but also the leaves and pea-sized green seeds. I grabbed the last big leaves from the only Romaine lettuce plant that survived in my garden this year, some smaller leaves of lettuce from the hanging baskets, and a handful of small Tuscan kale leaves. Heading back into the kitchen, I opened the fridge door and found about 1 cup of leftover lentil sprout slaw salad from lunch. Put all together and tossed with a dressing, these odds and ends made a pretty good salad for our family. Other leftover foods also make good salad ingredients, like cooked pasta, cooked meat, or cooked vegetables. Perhaps no one is particularly interested in eating these small remnants. I've mentioned that I make stuffed grape leaves often. There are always one or two that don't get eaten that first night and sit in the fridge for a couple of days. Last week, I discovered these are delicious cold, sliced into 3/4-inch pieces for topping a salad. Leftover stale bread that no one will touch? One word -- croutons. On baking day, everyone wants to move on to the fresh loaves and will bypass whatever is left from the old loaf. I usually have to do something with the last stale slices of that loaf, either a bread pudding, French toast, or during summer -- a batch of croutons to top our salads.

Smoothies. So much past-its-prime stuff can go into a smoothie. Bananas too brown? No problem. Slice them up and freeze. Berries that are going soft? Again, just freeze them loose on a tray then bag up, and you have the beginnings of a smoothie for a later day. Homemade jam fail? In addition to topping pancakes, runny jam is also a great sweetener for fruit smoothies. I also save and freeze syrup drained from canned fruit and the liquid drained from thawing frozen blueberries for muffins. Future smoothies will thank the present me that saved all of those scraps.

Over the weekend I was thinking about making lunch for the family and was having a hard time coming up with an entree. I peered into the fridge and found a bunch of odds and ends, including some cooked beans, cooked rice, and about 4 different containers of leftover cooked vegetables, about 2 tablespoons in each container. At that point I realized I had the makings of a casserole for our weekend lunch. I went with a Mexi-theme and did a rice and bean bake with salsa and the leftover vegetables. If I had had some cheese, this would have been tasty topped with cheese before baking. As it was, it was really pretty good and managed to use up a bunch of lingering leftovers.

Perhaps my most commonly used vehicle for leftovers are soups and stews. Just about any sort of leftover or odd bit can make a happy home in the soup pot.

Old-time gardeners had a way to use and preserve those end of season, odd last bits -- the one lone pepper, the large handful of green beans, the small green tomatoes. These odd bits would not be enough for a family meal, nor enough for a full recipe of single ingredient pickles or preserves. However, there is a type of preserve that brings all of the bits together into one glorious, last of the garden relish. In one of my older community cookbooks (cookbooks that incorporate cherished or favorite recipes from individuals as opposed to test kitchen recipes), there actually is a recipe titled Last of the Garden Relish. All of the odd bits are chopped and cooked in a sweet and spicy brine until soft and then home-canned. What would not be enough on its own is ample when combined with other small bits. 

Some meal categories just seem like the perfect place for using up leftovers or odd bits from the garden. The interesting thing is you don't often find recipes for using leftovers in traditional cookbooks. It can't be that cookbook writers think there will never be leftovers. Judging from how much food waste is reported in the media, there are a lot of leftovers, and much of this food goes into landfills. Perhaps with the current rising food prices, many households will find themselves motivated to reimagined those lingering leftovers into yummy new concoctions. 

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have favorite ways to use leftovers, past-their-prime foods, or small tidbits?

Wartime Cooking: Using Carrots to Save on Sugar

One of the tips I came across many times in a variety of different films about foods available during World War 2 was the suggestion to use the natural sweetness in carrots as a replacement for sugar. 

Sugar was one of the first foods to be rationed strictly during the war. Stretching a small amount of sugar for an entire week must have been a challenge, Carrots, however, could be grown practically for free in one's backyard garden, yielding a plentiful supply of this slightly sweet vegetable for most households. Recipes that offset some of the called-for sugar with fresh carrot proliferated during the war. Lacking a good-sized vegetable garden, the British government fixed the price of fresh carrots to ensure citizens could easily afford this vegetable as a regular part of their daily diet.

In the film Mrs. T. and Her Cabbage Patch (mentioned last week highlighting growing cress on the windowsill), the narrator mentioned that bowls of carrots (I believe grated fresh) were placed on the lunch table in school lunchrooms for the kids to help themselves. According to the narrator, the children liked the sweet taste of the carrots, as a substitution for the sweets they might have become accustomed to before the war.

In another series, Wartime Kitchen and Garden, carrots are again called for in a couple of dishes. In episode 3, the cook follows a recipe for a chocolate pudding (steamed cake, not milk-based dessert) and uses 2 tea cups of grated carrots (beginning at the 6 min 40 second mark). The cake recipe reduces the sugar called for to 1 oz as a result of the carrots, along with what looks like 2 tablespoons of golden syrup (treacle).

Not interested in steaming a pudding? How about a dose of grated carrot to sweeten your morning breakfast. In Wartime Kitchen and Garden, this time episode 7, the cook uses grated fresh carrots to sweeten a dish of muesli (beginning at the 2 minute 34 second mark). The oats have been soaked in water overnight, then the next morning freshly grated carrot, chopped apple, and dried fruit (raisins) are stirred in. Although the cookbook (briefly shown with the recipe for the Swiss Breakfast Dish) calls for 2 tablespoons of sugar, the cook in the film omits the sugar and favors the natural sweetening of the carrot, apple and raisins.

There seems to have been no lack of carrot recipes for sweets and desserts. From carrot cookies, to carrot fudge, and carrot flan, adding a little sweetness to the life was made possible even when the sugar jar was running low. Check out the recipes at the bottom of this page from the World Carrot Museum.

I've wondered how I would adapt to some of these food restrictions. Would I find it to be a challenge that part of me enjoyed? Or would I be annoyed that I had to make so many changes to my cooking routines? I suppose I would have my moments at both extremes.