"Those look like REAL sunflower seeds!"

seeds from one head

This is exciting! (Have I mentioned before that the bar is set pretty low with regards to my idea of what constitutes excitement?) I have never been able to grow sunflowers to the point of harvesting edible seeds. I unseeded one of the 8 heads earlier today and came away with about a small bowlful of seeds in shells, about 1 cup.

Seven more heads to deseed. That's the upside. The downside is the head I deseeded today was the largest of the 8. So, I won't be harvesting a huge amount of seeds. but I have learned a lot about their growth and how to do better for next year. And I saved some of the seeds from this head for planting next year.

the same sunflower in mid-July

When my husband came into the room, he said "those look just like real sunflower seeds!" Well of course they do, as they are real sunflower seeds!

Although the quantity of food is not as great as other edible plants that I grow, I have to say sunflowers were the prettiest edible addition to my landscape.

My Grandmother's Ball of String

Opening a 25-lb sack of dried lentils, I carefully clipped the string in just the right spot so I could pull it off in a long piece, coiling it up afterward. I use this string to truss whole chickens, tie up plants in the garden, and tie bundles of grape leaves for the freezer. 

My grandmother's kitchen drawer had a ball of string that she'd saved from sacks and packages to reuse at a later time. Any newly received string would be wrapped around the ball. And the ball would grow and shrink throughout the year, depending on if she was accumulating new string or using up her stash. She used the string to tie packages to be mailed for the holidays (back when you could use string for packages), to tie the legs together of whole poultry to be roasted, to tie up roasts to form a compact lump of meat for even roasting, to tie paper-wrapped sandwiches for the lunches of my grandfather, my uncles, and my mother, to tie waxed paper squares on top of opened cans of food as makeshift lids, and to mark straight lines in the vegetable garden so her seeds would form neat rows. It seemed that string had endless uses. 

In my grandmother's time, a lot of packages came either tied with string or the opening sewn shut with string. I come across far fewer sources of free string than she did. However, I do find extra large sacks (25 or 50-lbs) of dried beans and lentils, rice, and onions sewn closed with string. And I always save that string for reuse.

I'm finishing up the summer gardening season, and until I opened this sack of lentils, all of my string had been used in tying up plants to their support stakes. I have now replenished my stash of string, enough for several roasting chickens or perhaps a Thanksgiving turkey.

Did your mother or grandmother have a ball of string in a drawer for reusing?

Freebies This Past Week

The neighborhood where I live is adjacent to a more upscale neighborhood. As a result, I come across some pretty good free piles.  Here's what I came across on my walks this past week.

An exercise ball chair with stand. These retail new for between $50 and $70.

A Krups 12-cup coffee maker. Amazon has this model on their site for $199.00. I found the same model in white on eBay, used for $28.00

A Rival Crockpot, 5-qt. eBay has similar crockpots selling used for $30 to $45.

We picked up the ball chair for my husband to use in his home office, hoping it will help with his chronic pain. The two appliances are large for our household size. However, I know I can use the coffee maker when we have guests. Our current coffee maker is a 4-cup model. 12-cups will be nice to have. I saw the crockpot and thought of the holidays. It will be nice to have an extra crockpot for big holiday meals.

I think folks in my area are seeing these as the last couple of weeks to set items out in free piles before fall rains arrive. I'm grateful.

Musings of the Day: Reframing Life's Smaller Disappointments

A week or so ago, I was thinking about reframing how I see some of life's lesser disappointments. Sometimes we don't get what we want. For example, shopping a clothing store's clearance sale, finding the "perfect" top, only to not find it in my size. Or, planning for and prepping for a career change into a specific role, only to have circumstances prevent any of the plans from coming to fruition. Or, growing a garden, only to have it fail, big time. 

And sometimes we get what we want but in a different time frame. For example, putting high hopes into a home garden to have it fail one year, but the following year the garden does splendidly. Or more specifically, trying to grow a particular plant a couple of years in a row with no success. But then many years later to try again, this time producing a beautiful plant or set of plants. 

It often feels like there's no rhyme or reason for these less significant disappointments. We may be doing everything we can that is right. Yet still, our efforts are fruitless. Then another time, we put just a bit more effort in to our project and it does very well. It can feel discouraging to not understand why.

I don't believe life is so random. I feel things happen as they do and when they do by design. That's not to say that catastrophes are by design. But those little provisions or lack of provisions made on our behalf happen as they do in ways that benefit us or someone else. 

Where is the benefit? I was trying to reframe some disappointments. When I've been disappointed in trying to get a bargain on something I thought I wanted, I can see it as this "thing" isn't the right one for me.  My daughter bought an item on ebay that she really wanted. After her offer was accepted, the seller "lost" the item. My daughter was very disappointed in how this turned out. We talked about how sometimes that special thing isn't as special as we're thinking it is, when all is said and done. And perhaps there's an even better special thing that will pop up right around the corner. Or perhaps she'll discover that deep down, she's glad she was "saved" that money, so now she can afford something else.

I was picking the next round of apples off of an apple tree this afternoon. I was using my picking tool and being careful to not knock other apples off. However, I still managed to knock 6 apples off the tree and onto the brick walkway. I had wanted to harvest this batch of apples to save for October and November meals and snacks. These are long-keeping apples. As each hit the paved area, I felt my heart sink a bit. One more apple that won't keep. Then I tried to reframe this disappointment. So this is what I do when I knock and bruise apples. I bring them into the kitchen, wash, cut off bruises, cut into chunks, and freeze for making crisps, cobblers, and snack cakes in fall. Perhaps these bruised apples will provide variety for my family in how we eat apples -- some baked as treats in addition to eating fresh. Or perhaps I just need to find a better technique for harvesting apples in the future, which will save untold numbers of apples from bruising.

I had planned and prepped for a particular job in my field, awaiting an interview just after winter of 2020. I had taken courses to help me qualify. I had networked to land this interview. I had made a good connection with the recruiter. Then the pandemic shut everything down and kept it closed for a long time where I live. The recruiter was forced into early retirement. My connections evaporated. And I became a couple of years older. So yes, this is a disappointment for me. It's obviously a greater disappointment than not finding a sale shirt in my size or bruising some apples. But it is not the worst thing to happen in my life. So, I'm choosing to see this an an opportunity in disguise. Perhaps there would have been unknown-to-me-now complications in taking on this role at my age. Perhaps I would not have felt fulfilled by this job, but instead felt harried. Perhaps it would have been stressful in ways that I don't experience in my at-home role. Perhaps being at home opens additional doors and opportunities that fill a role that is greater than my life alone, instead serving a greater purpose. And that last "perhaps" is a bingo moment for me. The time I've had at home has opened spiritually fulfilling doors in my life. 

I can draw an example of a disappointment that was just a matter of when and not if in growing mâche in my garden. I did try to grow mâche (AKA corn salad) many, many years ago. I've since learned that germination can be tricky with these seeds. So I tweaked my seeding with this batch and, as a result, I have a lovely small patch of mâche growing now. For what purpose would this not have grown well for me all those years ago but now does grow. For one thing, my children were all young then, and unwilling to try new foods. The kids that are still at home now have much more sophisticated tastes and will appreciate this new-to-us green. Another garden item -- my pumpkin patch. I really worked hard at this new garden spot. And it has barely produced any pumpkins. I have one largish green pumpkin and a tiny almost orange one. I had dreamed of having a whole lotta pumpkins growing by now. It just wasn't to be. While it's a disappointment for this year's garden, that doesn't mean that next year I won't have a spectacular pumpkin patch. I can learn from this year's growing experience and make needed changes. Perhaps I was meant to have to work a bit more to make the pumpkins grow well. Perhaps if it had come too easily to me, I would not have appreciated the outcome. Alternatively, perhaps this year I am in a better financial position to buy pumpkins and squashes from the produce stand on the highway. Or perhaps, my purchase from the produce stand will benefit the employees and owners there. Whereas if my pumpkin patch had been successful, I'd have had no need to purchase any.

All of this makes me think about a quote that was once told to me -- "what is for you won't go past you." Those things, big and small, that are destined to be ours will become ours in the Creator's time. But if something is truly not for us, there may be a reason unknown to us. 

Just something on my mind.

My Mâche (and an update)

Remember the winter salad green I talked about last month? I wanted to show you what the mâche looks like now that the plants are a little bigger. Their growth pattern is called a rosette form. The leaves radiate from the center stalk near to the ground, stretching outward to allow the plant to absorb maximum sun, even in the cool season. I transplanted some of the seedlings into the garden the other day. I will keep fingers crossed that they have time to grow before winter. I couldn't plant them out until our weather cooled, which didn't happen until this past week. I'm excited to have another green that I can harvest in November and December.

The other news, my stepmom passed away. In spring, I told you she'd been diagnosed with a cancer that had spread already. My family drove to Arizona where she lived to see her in May. Several of you prayed for my stepmom, me and my family. I truly appreciate your prayers and kindness. Thank you.

I'll be back tomorrow with a new post. Have a great late-summer day, friends!

Cheap & Cheerful Meals: Using as Much Garden Produce as We Can

Friday's pizza and movie night -- we watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of The Lost Ark

Friday
homemade sausage, mushroom and basil pizza
orange segments and fresh figs
garden green beans
cabbage and celery slaw
blackberry pie

I can't quite say that I "found" an orange in the spare fridge, as I've known it was there since late last winter. What I did find was the motivation to use the orange. I'd been hanging on to this last orange so I could make a batch of candied orange peel (how I make candied orange peel here). Friday afternoon, I peeled the orange for segments to go with fresh figs in our dinner, then sliced and candied all of the peel. I'd intended to chop and freeze the candied peel for baking with this winter, but we ate it all.

My cabbage has not grown to a good size at all this year. So, I've been plucking off the outer leaves from several heads to slice thin and make into slaw. We will still get some small heads of cabbage, but this way we will get more food from each head overall. The outer leaves tend to be tougher and less crunchy than the inner portion of cabbage. Because of this, I slice the leaves as thin as I can. 

I picked blackberries Friday afternoon for Saturday and Sunday's breakfasts.

Saturday

Saturday
refried beans (cooked from dried beans) and homemade salsa

rice
sautéed kale
cucumber and tomato "salad" (cucumbers with a light dressing and tomato wedges)

Sunday

Sunday

kale and onion frittata

garden green beans

tomato wedges

mashed potatoes

blackberry pie

I picked blackberries again on Sunday for the family's breakfast the next day. At the same time, my daughters picked a large bucket of blackberries to make a pie for us. Our plan is to pick and use as many blackberries as we can for daily meals while they're still good. This will help us stretch out the other fresh fruit that we have coming in or already harvested and stored.

Monday

Monday

teriyaki chicken and garden vegetables, using leftover pickle juice in the marinade

leftover rice mixed with cooked broken noodles

garden salad, using leftover pickle juice in the dressing

fresh figs

blackberry pie

Tuesday -- I promise there's a hot dog under the relish and mustard in that bun.

Tuesday Cook-Out

hot dogs in homemade buns from freezer

kale, apple, celery, pecan, raisin salad in a rosemary-rhubarb dressing (rosemary-rhubarb preserves with mayonnaise)

grilled onions and squash (a winter squash that fell off the vine long before ripening, peeled/seeded, chopped)

blackberry-rhubarb jello 

s'mores

The blackberry-rhubarb jello can be made with any fruit that will gel (these won't -- pineapple, figs, mango, kiwi, prickly pear), stewed, fresh, or frozen. Instructions for making gelatin with real fruit or fruit juice are in this link.  For this batch, I stewed rhubarb and blackberries together until the rhubarb was soft. I then sweetened and puréed the stewed fruit and mixed in the softened plain gelatin. On the plate for Tuesday, it's in squares. that's because I wanted the gelatin to set up quickly, so I poured the mixture into a shallow baking dish. It set up in about 3 1/2 hours.

Wednesday

Wednesday

blackberry cheesecake French toast with blackberry syrup

steamed green beans

tomato, cucumber, cheese salad (in mustard vinaigrette made by rinsing out a mustard jar with vinegar, adding garlic, additional vinegar, oil and salt)

Thursday

Thursday

homemade black-eyed pea, hot dog and vegetable soup

bruschetta toast, using garden tomatoes, garlic and basil, plus cheese on homemade bread

blackberry pie

Other meals

After I baked 3 loaves of toast and sandwich bread on Monday, I baked a batch of blackberry granola. To do this, I mashed a large handful of fresh blackberries and combined with sugar, salt, vegetable oil, and dry oats before baking in a slow oven. My daughter baked 2 blackberry pies this past week. We're trying to use all of those fresh blackberries before the season is over. 

Another breakfast item I baked this week was an apple snack cake. The squirrels had been up to their usual mischief in the apple trees and knocked 4 apples off. I picked those up, washed them, cut off the bruises, and chopped to add to an eggless, milk-less snack cake, roughly following the recipe in this link. I followed the one for the chocolate cake, omitting the cocoa powder, chocolate chips, and vanilla. I added 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, and 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice, then adding in the 4 chopped apples. It's delicious! I would normally bake an apple crisp to use for breakfasts, but my oat allergy is acting up and I wanted to have some of this.

I also finally got to making another batch of yogurt. I needed whole milk for this, so I had to wait until I went to Fred Meyer for the monthly grocery shopping. Breakfasts were some combination of granola, toast, apple snack cake, yogurt, apples, blackberries, orange juice, coffee, tea, milk, eggs, and peanut butter.

For lunches, I showed my daughter how to make sorrel and squash blossom soup one day. She also put together a couple of quick salads for us and we added tomatoes (most often as tomato sandwiches), apples, raisins, bread, cheese, peanut butter, eggs, hot dogs, rice and beans/lentils, lentil sprouts, and various leftovers.

We are still trying to live as much as possible on what we have at home and in the garden. I did go grocery shopping this week. I'll post on that later. But I will say I bought very, very little produce -- 3 bananas and a handful of jalapeños for making salsa. 

The garden is not exactly winding down, it's changing. The produce items that like the heat are winding down, but the cool weather vegetables and fruit are just getting started. The fall raspberries have just begun this week. I have a few plums, apples, crabapples, green figs (unripe figs), and pears to harvest at the end of the month or in very early October. In vegetables, we still have cabbage, kale, Brussel sprouts, turnips, beets, carrots, spinach, mâche, potatoes, onions, pumpkins, radish greens, celery, and Swiss chard for early to mid-fall meals. Oh my goodness. It's been a lot of hard work with this year's garden, as I've tried to grow as much of our food as I could. Some things didn't grow that well, while others surprised me with their bounty. But I kept working at it as best as I could. The bulk of my work in the garden will be behind me after the potatoes and carrots are harvested the first week of October and I finish making pickles, relishes, and salsa. As odd as it sounds, I'm a tiny bit glad this is an off year for plums. Harvesting, pitting, and drying all of those is a week's work in itself.

Anyways, these were our meals this past week. What were the highlights of your week? Have you made candied orange peel before? What did you think of it? Some folks don't care for it. My family seems to like it. Do you ever make jello with fruit or fruit juice and plain gelatin? Amy D. from Tightwad Gazette fame inspired me to make fruit jello with her description of making blackberry jello with puréed fresh blackberries. Her thinking on using fruit to make a jello dessert was that this would be a healthier way to use up blackberries compared to lots of pies or other baked desserts. My family ends up eating these fruit gelatins as servings of fruit with meals. One can only eat so many pies, right?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

A New Path to the Goal of Less Wasted Food

One of the lessons that I've learned from being a mother and a spouse is that when I want to effect a change in behavior in my family members, instead of badgering them constantly, I have much more success if I give that family member some control (and responsibility) for the outcome. I've heard of parents giving the responsibility of paying the water bill to adult kids (with their own money) still living at home, in lieu of paying rent each month. Doing so incentivizes these young adults to get out of the shower faster and not leave the faucet running when brushing their teeth. So when I was handing over some of my smaller regular tasks to my daughters and husband the other week, I was delighted when one of my daughters volunteered to take on managing the leftovers in the fridge. Since (what feels like) forever, managing all things "kitchen" has been my domain, including tracking leftovers.

I say I was delighted because this is an area that both daughters could use a little nudge. This isn't a criticism of either of them. After all, neither of them have experience in tracking the foods that go into the fridge, and thus developing a sort of radar for when to use things up (because they've had me doing just that). But they do generate a lot of leftovers that linger. They're young, and they buy foods they like and think they'll eat, sometimes more stuff than they can realistically eat before spoilage. And they often have evening conflicts, resulting in some or most of their dinner getting put into the fridge. So, although I didn't plan it this way, they or one of them needed to "see" leftovers from the perspective of trying to minimize their build up.

What my daughter has done for us

First, she organized everything in the fridge. It looked great. Of course, within a few days the rest of us have made a quasi-disorganized mess of her hard work already. But she did establish a space for leftovers and bits and bobs that need using up. 

Then she began asking each of us to use these foods or plan future meals around them. She offers suggestions on how these foods can be used. 

Dovetailing with this chore, she also puts together fruit and vegetable items or dishes that we all use in making our own lunches. On days when she's working, she may just tell us what needs using and one of us at home gets these items out at noon. On days when she is at home, she may make a simple soup or pick greens for salad, to which we each add our own sandwich, cheese and crackers, etc. In doing this task, she also checks the shelf in the fridge with items that need using. If someone has leftovers, she's the point person to remind them. 

This has been extremely valuable for our family, not just in making sure we don't waste food, but also in keeping our fridge somewhat organized so we can find things again. And, I've noticed that both of my daughters are using up the foods that they've bought and forgotten about.

Among the items that need using are my many jars of pickle juice, sweet, sour, and some spicy (oops -- guilty as charged). She also found the other jar of dill relish that I couldn't find when we had our Labor Day cook-out. (I opened a second jar because I couldn't find the first.) I was able to finish off the mostly empty dill relish at a cook-out on Tuesday. Also for Tuesday, my daughter had found the chocolate patties leftover from Labor Day. So we made s'mores after the hot dogs.

If I didn't know better, I would say that we generate more food than we can consume, even with me not shopping as often. It takes one person to monitor what is staying in the fridge longer than necessary, or else we end up with a lot of waste.

My daughter's efforts are working with me, too. Earlier this week, I made a teriyaki marinade using sweet watermelon pickle liquid and sour fig pickle liquid. Another day I rinsed 2 caramel sauce bottles out with hot water to add to my afternoon coffee. And today, I rinsed out a near-empty mustard bottle with vinegar and made a bottle of mustard vinaigrette (it dressed tonight's salad). Now, I need to plan a soup that will use up that pasta cooking water from Monday.

Not only have I gained some time for other, beneficial-to-the-family chores, but I can rest assured that the leftovers are being tracked and we're wasting less food.

Wartime Make Do and Mend and Today's Savvy, Frugal Consumer

film: Ministry of Information, Great Britain, c.1943

If you just want to watch a kitchy World War 2 government film on make do and mend, scroll down to the near bottom of this post.

You may be familiar with the term "fast fashion." Fast fashion is cheaply-produced clothing that replicates the look of high-end fashion, bringing it to the masses before the trend has passed. It's often produced by under-paid employees overseas. Because fast fashion is intended to be inexpensive knock-offs of higher end clothing, it is made cheaply -- mass-produced with poorer quality workmanship and lesser quality textiles. My daughter has remarked that her fast fashion purchases typically begin to show significant wear just about the time the trend is passing. Think of cheap knits that pill terribly after a few wearings or seams that are not sewn and reinforced well that burst open far too soon. Fast fashion makes executives rich, but doesn't have the longevity that many of us hope to find in our clothing.

Enter "slow fashion." Slow fashion came about in response to fast fashion. Slow fashion garments and ones that are made well by seamstresses and tailors who are compensated well for their craft. It's typically high quality, most often using natural fibers, and sometimes locally made. Slow fashion pieces are relatively timeless in style and costs more than fast fashion pieces. 

So what does slow fashion have in common with apparel from Great Britain circa 1940?

Fast fashion is a relatively recent development in retail clothing. What most folks owned when the war broke out was comparable in quality to a lot of today's slow fashion. People owned fewer clothing items, but what they did have was made well to begin with. 

When you spend more to get better quality, there's built-in motivation to keep that item in good repair for as long as possible. This was true in the 1940s just as most of us find today. Patching, darning, stitching a small hole closed, restitching seams and hems, and replacing buttons are all easy fixes and can be done with a needle and thread. When fabric does begin to show more wear, slow fashion pieces often have enough good portions left to remake the item into something fresh. Think linen slacks become dressy shorts. Wool midi skirt becomes a just above the knee pencil skirt. Husband's oxford shirt becomes my sleeveless tunic. A favorite cotton summer dress becomes a new apron. We call this up cycling today. During WW2, this was called "make do and mend." 

Clothing was one of several categories of items on ration during the war as fabrics were prioritized for military use. Very little allowance was given for new clothing, often just enough for a new coat or one outfit. Imagine if you didn't have very many clothing items to begin with, and those items were beginning to show wear and tear. Pests like textile moths chewed tiny holes in wool clothing. Regular wear tore holes at pressure or friction points, such as elbows. Women were encouraged to mend holes and add patches to the family's clothing. When even these repairs were no longer enough to make garments look presentable, the government came to the rescue with suggestions on how to recycle clothing items into something new.

For your entertainment, here's a link to a cute film put out by the government of Great Britain in the 1940s on the topic of make do and mend. 

I not only enjoy these films for their place in history, but I also like to think about how they can help the frugal minded among  us today.

A lot of what's for sale at the mall and discount department stores would easily qualify as fast fashion -- trendy, inexpensive, and not exactly top-notch quality. Superior quality clothing is out there. It just has a price tag commensurate with the quality. However, I have found good quality clothing at prices that I'm comfortable with in thrift stores, at estate sales, in consignment shops, and in my own closet (remnants both from my own long-ago period and a  couple of pieces that were my mother's, also long ago). For the most part, these are vintage garments, with vintage or retro styling. Just as in the 1940s film, a little imaginative remake can breathe new life into the garments. 

We often think we're being so clever to up-cycle our old clothes. But the truth is, folks have been doing just this probably since people stepped out of animal skins and into clothing of woven textiles. Good clothing is costly both in time to make and money for materials. It makes very good frugal sense to get as much wear out of our clothes as we can.

I hope you enjoy the film!

Your Thoughts on Gift Cards

Are you like me and have a whole slew of gift cards that have not been used, or do you like to use them as they come in? How do you feel about receiving gift cards as a gift? Are there types of gift cards you prefer over others?

Gift cards are a double-edged sword to me. On the one hand, I appreciate having some spending money to use. On the other hand, I feel guilty when I don't use them.

I have a bunch of GC for a variety of merchants. I have restaurant cards, bookstore cards, multi-purpose online vendor cards, fabric/craft store cards, clothing store cards, thrift store cards, specialty store cards, everything I could imagine. I don't have personal spending money aside from the ad revenue on this site (which covers my cell phone service each month), so I do really appreciate when someone gives me a gift card. Gift cards give me the freedom to spend some money without actually spending money.

Do you keep all of your gift cards in one spot? How do you track digital gift cards?

I keep all of my plastic cards corralled together and I go through them periodically to see if I could pay for an experience or needed item without having to take money out of the family budget. Digital gift cards complicate my GC storage system. The best I've been able to do is keep a list in the notepad on my laptop. But I try to prioritize using the digital cards before the plastic ones, so I don't forget to use them.

Are you practical with gift card use or do you see them as an opportunity for a splurge?

I tend to be practical with my gift card use, but do splurge a little. For experiences or items that others might ordinarily pay out of pocket, I use one of my gift cards. An example, back in 2019, my husband and I took our grown kids out to lunch for a joint celebration of my husband's and my birthdays (1 week apart). We used a gift card to a restaurant given to me as a birthday gift by my stepmom a couple of years prior to cover the cost of all of our meals and the tip. This was a splurge in the sense that we ate in a restaurant when I could have cooked a meal for the family. But we were also very practical and chose to order from a special lunch menu that had lower-priced items, so the GC would cover the entire meal. Another example, we were needing kitchen dish cloths and individual-sized microwaveable dishes. I used a thrift store gift card from my husband Christmas 2019 to purchase those items. Sometimes my use of gift cards falls in between a splurge and practical, such as last week. One daughter had given me a gift card to Five Guys (burger joint) for Christmas 2021. I had asked for time with my daughters as my gift. So my daughter gave me this gift card and she and my other daughter came with me to Five Guys for a lunch out. It's sort of a splurge, as I wouldn't ordinarily buy a meal out. Yet, I'm still practical with the spending. I asked for a cup for water and skipped the fries, just bought the burger so there would be some $$ left on the card for another time.

What do you do when there are just pennies left on a card? Do you try to find something extremely inexpensive? Is using all of each gift card important to you?

I currently have a gift card to an ice cream place that has less than 50 cents on it. It's one of those pricey ice cream shops, so I'd need to spend several dollars just to use those cents. I'm not sure what I'll do with that small balance.

Have you ever sold or regifted a gift card you couldn't use? If you've resold one, what website did you use?

I've looked into selling gift cards, but haven't chosen that route, yet. You lose some of the value and, well, that just bothers me. I have regifted a gift card, though. I received one that I didn't think I would use, but knew my husband would. So I gave it to him as part of his birthday gift one year. I told him it was regifted, but he didn't mind. 

What's been your most appreciated gift card? What kind of gift card would you most want to receive in the future?

I've specifically asked for certain gift cards in the past, based on what I needed at the moment. I have 2 most appreciated gift cards from recent years, one to a thrift store and the other to a grocery store. And I asked for both of these. A thrift store because I like to get a new top or jacket from time to time, or add to kitchen items. And I like that whatever I buy at a thrift store, it won't cost very much. With the grocery store gift card, I wanted to be able to buy myself foods that I specifically wanted without feeling guilty about the added cost.

I think if I had to choose a specific gift card that I would really appreciate receiving in the future, it would be something that would help with vacation costs, like a hotel chain gift card. Our vacations are few and far between. A gift card to a hotel chain that was within our budget would push us to actually plan and take a vacation.

Do you have any other thoughts on gift cards, either receiving or giving?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Week of Labor Day Holiday

I've been feeling very tired the last month or two. Over the weekend, I asked my family members to take on some of my smaller tasks, so I could focus on my main ones. One such task was organizing the kitchen fridge. One daughter went through every container in there, freezing some items, combining same and similar items into a single container, asking family members to eat up their own leftovers, and throwing away a few spoiled foods. She also put foods that should be used up in everyday meals soon in one spot and suggested a plan for using those foods. I didn't take a before photo, but here's the after. It is such an improvement!

This same daughter will be picking vegetables for our lunches each day, too.

My other daughter agreed to bake desserts for us. She picked the blackberries and made a pie for us on Wednesday. This daughter has also said she'll bake cookies for us each week.

My husband has volunteered to clean up the kitchen in the mornings after breakfast for me and tidy up the deck and patio periodically. All of these changes have been making my week a lot less stressful. I was wearing myself out trying to fit everything in each day, Since the changes, I've had more time to make jam, syrup, and blackberry juice, as well as dig all of the garlic, start winter salad seeds, organize all of my saved seeds for next year, and put together all of the food for our Labor Day cook-out.

This year's garlic -- I hope it lasts 9 or 10 months.
I'll be replanting about 70 cloves in October for next year's harvest.

Friday

We actually didn't have a family dinner this night. I was feeling under the weather, so I went to bed early.

Saturday

bean and garden vegetable soup

scratch biscuits

fresh blackberries

Sunday

refried beans

sautéed kale

homemade flour tortillas

fresh blackberries

I was able to use all of this produce in our cook-out on Monday

Monday Cook-out

We invited our son and daughter-in-law over for the afternoon and evening. The two of them picked a couple of quarts of fresh blackberries to take home with them. We cooked out over our patio fire ring and enjoyed conversation and a star-filled sky.

I used what I could from our garden and foraged produce, as my son and daughter-in-law don't have a garden. I like to share the extra good fresh stuff with them when we can. I didn't have chocolate bars for making s'mores, so I melted chocolate chips with a bit of shortening and made semi-sweet chocolate patties on a sheet of foil, then hardened in the fridge for a couple of hours. The blackberry lemonade is juiced blackberries combined with homemade lemonade (bottled lemon juice, sugar, water).

hot dogs in homemade buns

rosemary, garlic, Parmesan and olive oil mashed potatoes

tomato, basil, cucumber, mozzarella salad

kale, apple, celery, raisin, pecan salad

blackberry lemonade

s'mores

Tuesday

ground beef, zucchini, green bean, garlic, onion sauté, served over

brown rice

fresh figs

tomato salad

Wednesday

baked beans (using up 2 almost empty ketchup bottles and some flat cola)

watermelon rind pickles

garden green beans

pasta, garden vegetable and mozzarella salad (using up some cooked pasta)

blackberry pie

Thursday

black-eyed pea, vegetable and hot dog soup

scratch cornbread

tomato and cucumber salad

leftover blackberry pie

the last serving of apple crisp baked with apples that had been knocked off the tree

I baked a double batch of hot dog buns, 2 loaves of sandwich bread, a small batch of blueberry muffins using the last of the garden blueberries, and this apple crisp to use as breakfast 2 days this week. Our breakfasts have consisted of homemade yogurt, blackberries, fresh apples, apple crisp, eggs, toast, biscuits, blueberry muffins, milk, coffee, tea, and juice. I salvaged enough fallen apples over the past month to trim bruises, then chop and fill 3 gallon sized bags of apple pieces to use in crisps this fall. I know many people eat apple crisp as a dessert. In our house, apple crisp is breakfast fare for late summer or early fall mornings. Our lunches used produce from the garden plus bread, cheese, peanut butter, raisins, eggs, rice, and blackberry lemonade.

We are now harvesting tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, zucchini and patty pan squash, green beans (pole, mainly, but a few bush beans too), lettuce, kale, carrots, spinach, nasturtiums, radish greens, garlic, blackberries, apples, figs, blueberries (the tail end), and rhubarb. When I pick celery, we use the entire rib, leaves and stem both. If I only need the stem for a salad, I save the leaves to use in something else, like soup. And I'm only cutting one rib at a time, not the whole plant like what you would buy in the store. I'm hoping to get more celery overall this way. 11 of my celery seedlings made it to the plant stage, and of those 11, only 6 really grew well.  

I hope all of your meals hit the spot this past week. What was on your menu? Do you like crisps and cobblers as breakfast foods, or are they strictly desserts in your household? It's beginning to feel a bit like fall here -- cooler mornings and the aroma of apples baking in my kitchen. Is it feeling like fall there yet?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

A Victim of Credit Card Fraud

Back in June, I got an alert on my credit card that a large purchase was attempted online with my number. The charge was declined (fortunately) and I canceled that card. At that time, we were in physical possession of both cards on that account, at no time previously had our cards been out of our possession, our computers are completely within our own control, we use a locked mailbox and pertinent mail had not gone missing, we had used only cash on our drive down to Arizona and back for gas and incidentals (but used our credit card for hotel stays) and basically could not figure out how someone had our number. This had happened to us about 4 years prior with a smaller charge, resulting in our canceling that number, too. 

Then last week I was going through our statement and found a charge that wasn't ours. I called the merchant and requested the charge be reversed, then called the bank to cancel that card. The charge in question was for Amazon Prime, so no physical address was used. This recent fraud was committed just 2 months after changing our account number. We've been baffled as to how our account could be compromised so quickly, especially since we've used this newest card at only a handful of locations (grocery store, utility bills, our church, 3 different online or payment sites that we've used many, many times in the past). Our bank asked us to remove any credit card information stored on online merchant sites (which we'd already done except one site for my husband). 

Obviously, I want to know how someone could have obtained our numbers. An article on CNBC news site lists the following as possible ways someone's credit card info may have been stolen:

• lost or stolen cards
• skimming card info at point of payment, such as a gas station pay at the pump
• hacking your computer
• calling about fake prizes or wire transfers
• phishing, such as fake emails
• reading the card number over your shoulder at the checkout
• stealing physical mail

None of the above possibilities fits our situation. This has been unsettling to me. It's made me want to cancel our cards and stick with only cash. Our bank has been good about quickly sending out new cards with new numbers. But I'm not sure I want this hassle going forward. It's been a couple of decades since my husband and I were cash-only people. I suppose we could manage without cards. Would you ever consider ditching credit and/or debit cards and using physical currency exclusively? Have you been the victim of credit card fraud? Were you able to pinpoint how the thief got your number?

An Ant or a Grasshopper?

a new tray of radish seeds planted for green next month 

As I was starting a new set of radishes to grow under lights for greens to eat this October and November, I was thinking about the timeless fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. As you probably remember, the ant works all summer to store up food for the winter while the grasshopper enjoys the sunshine and plays. When winter inevitably comes, the ant has plenty to eat, but the grasshopper has nothing. The grasshopper comes begging for food, wanting some of what the ant worked to store away. For modern media consumers, the movie A Bug's Life is this traditional fable retold.

The fable is intended to be a cautionary tale instructing us to be hard workers (ants) and prepare for the winter that we know will soon come. Winter isn't necessarily a literal season. Winter can be a metaphor for any bad time to come or period of setback. The idle and carefree (grasshoppers) among us might just find ourselves lacking when "winter" arrives. 

I think I'm an ant. I literally prepare for the season of winter, putting up food, preparing the fireplace and stacking wood, ensuring we have some candles, working flashlights and matches, and having our furnace serviced. I don't take this as occupying some moral high ground, but I simply don't like the prospect of having to ask for assistance. I also prepare for figurative winters. We live beneath our means and invest the excess. And, we make plans for our future support when our income will be decreased. We can't see what specifically we will face, but we do know that no one is exempt from life's difficulties. We just prepare as broadly as possible.

An interesting thing about the ant -- he's not a lone wolf. He works and lives in a colony. I suppose frugal living blogs, websites, books and magazine articles help create our "ant group". Sharing information and experiences is our way to work together for better individual futures.

2 jumbo bags and 2 extra large bags filled with frozen blackberries

Here's a part of my "ant work" for this past month. Our family has foraged so many blackberries. We are now out of freezer room, so I've moved on to making blackberry jam, blackberry pancake syrup, and blackberry juice for our winter consumption. And in the meantime, while we still have lots of fresh berries to harvest, we're also eating fresh blackberries, blackberry pies and cobblers several times per week.

Just thoughts I was mulling over today.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the End of August Through the First Day of September

Friday

Friday
sausage, mushroom, basil pizza
garden green beans
garden salad
blackberry pie

Our standard homemade pizza for pizza and movie night. We watched My Fair Lady, checked out from the local library.

Saturday

Saturday

garden vegetable and bean soup

homemade tortillas

leftover blackberry pie

My husband made dinner this night. He makes pretty good tortillas, so does them often as a starchy side. The soup used some chicken stock from the freezer, garden vegetables and garlic, canned tomatoes, and a store-purchased onion. It looks like a small dinner, but the slices of pie were huge.

Sunday

Sunday

TVP and garden vegetable teriyaki

tempura celery, zucchini, and green beans

rice

My husband cooked again this night. He loves fried food and I very rarely make anything fried. So he went with tempura. It tasted pretty good and wasn't too greasy.

Monday

Monday

blackberry-cheesecake French toast with blackberry syrup and fresh berries

Have you noticed all of the blackberries in our meals in recent weeks? I made a batch of blackberry syrup this afternoon. I had been thinking about making some French toast for a while as an easy supper dish. I added some freshly picked blackberries and the homemade syrup. Very, very yummy. I could eat this a couple of times a week!

Tuesday

Tuesday

grilled chicken legs

rosemary potatoes

sautéed garden kale

fresh blackberries

One of my daughters made dinner this night. She marinated the chicken legs in a homemade teriyaki sauce, then grilled them. Very delicious! The potatoes are instant mashed with garlic and fresh rosemary mixed in. More kale and blackberries.

Wednesday

Wednesday

scratch refried beans with cheese and salsa

garden green beans

fresh figs

mac and corn

My other daughter cooked fro us on Wednesday. She's very busy these days, so I suggested something on the easy side. I had the cooked pinto beans and corn in the freezer, She had a small container of cooked pasta she wanted to use up. And I picked and rinsed the fig and green beans for her. She added some of our fresh cilantro to the beans and that made them especially tasty.

Thursday

Thursday

meatloaf and gravy

rice

more sautéed garden kale and onions

fresh blackberries

One of my go-to's for using ground beef -- meatloaf. I made the gravy with the drippings from the meatloaf, but it tasted flat. I added salt, pepper, thyme, and chopped canned tomatoes to add some zip to it.

I've been marveling at all of the beautiful colors in the vegetable garden. This is the basket with Thursday's lunch soup ingredients as I rinsed them. There's bright green sorrel on the bottom, orangey-yellow pumpkin and squash blossoms in the middle, and topped with lavender-colored chive blossoms. I made a cream of sorrel soup with these. 

We're making plans for a cook-out on Labor Day. For us, cook-outs mean doing hotdogs over a fire ring in the backyard. I'll make buns, a couple of salads using garden ingredients (one garlicky with tomatoes, cucumbers, and basil, the other sweet and tangy with kale, apples, celery, and pecans with a mayo, lemon juice and jam dressing), a potato dish and s'mores for dessert.

Do you have plans for this upcoming weekend? Any last-of-summer BBQs or cook-outs? Or will this be a low-key weekend?

Wishing you a lovely weekend, whatever is in your plans.

Finding Beauty in the Simple Things

There is this cluster of ripening tomatoes that struck me as beautiful. I was working in the garden on Wednesday and I looked up and saw a trio of tomatoes hanging together, one yellow, one orange, and one green. I just thought this was so beautiful. I do love a nice rose or lily. But who would think that tomatoes could be beautiful in a way that is unrelated to their edible aspect?

When I take a moment and slow down to look around or listen, I often find something extraordinary in the ordinary. Sometimes it's the call of a bird flying high over head. Sometimes it's the fragrance of the lilies in bloom by the small pond. And sometimes it's a pair of tiny green frogs enjoying the sun together on a sorrel leaf in my herb circle.

It's easy to get caught up in the flash and bling that proliferates in our culture. But is there really any superior beauty than that which can be found in a garden, woodland, seaside, mountain top or our own backyard?

Easy Vegetables From Which to Gather Next Year's Seeds

turnip seed pods still on the stem-- each pod contains 8-10 seeds

As summer begins to wane, it is time for me to start gathering next year's seeds. I was thinking about all of the different vegetables that I think are easy for gathering seeds.

• potatoes -- when I harvest this year's potatoes, I set aside seed potatoes for next spring, storing them in the spare fridge in a paper sack until a few weeks before planting out.
• garlic -- like potatoes, when I harvest my garlic, I set aside the largest heads for replanting. I plant garlic here in October, so I don't have long to wait or need to store the garlic.
• shallots -- I wound up using all of my shallots a couple of years ago. However, I treated them like garlic, setting aside the largest bulbs and planting those also in October.
• nasturtiums -- these are super easy flowers/leafy greens to save the seeds from. By simply not getting around to pulling off the spent flower blooms, the seeds develop. They often fall off the plant onto the ground beneath the hanging baskets. I collect them either off the ground or by plucking them from the plants when they look ready.
• radishes -- radishes not only mature quickly, but they also go to seeds quickly for me. I collect seed pods in summer from plants that I began in spring. One radish plant can produce enough seeds inside of pods for the entire next season.
• turnips -- turnips don't grow quite as quickly as radishes, but by summer's end, I can collect seed pods from a single turnip gone to seed, enough for the next season and the one after.
• kale -- kale takes a long time to go to seed in my garden because we have relatively cool summers. However, kale overwinters in my area. In very early spring the kale puts out new leaves, florets, and then seeds by early to mid-summer. I don't have the same luck with other vegetables overwintering so well in my garden. 
• watercress -- although I allow the watercress in my garden to reseed itself wherever it pleases, I also have harvested some of the seed pods for trying indoor cress growing this winter. Cress sets seed pods much like kale, radish and turnip. The pods are easy to break off the stalks in mid to late summer to bring indoors to thoroughly dry.
• tomatoes -- if the tomatoes are not hybrids, you can collect next year's seeds by simply squeezing out a bit of the seedy juice from a vine ripe tomato onto a paper towel. Put this in a dry place indoors with good ventilation. spread the mass out onto the paper to discourage mold growth. Once the seedy mass is thoroughly dry, you can separate out the seeds to be used for starting seedlings the following year. If you home is not dry enough and worry of mold is an issue, place the seeds in front of a small fan.
• peppers -- like tomatoes, the seeds can be collected from the inside of a ripe fruit. Dry these on a paper towel and save until the following season.
• pumpkins and winter squash -- another "very easy" to collect for the next season. When you cut into the squash, save a few seeds, drying first on paper before storing. One caveat -- if you had multiple types of squash or pumpkins growing in an area, you will likely get some cross pollination and the next year's plants may differ from what you harvested the seeds from.
• peas and beans -- I invariably miss a few pods of peas or beans each year. By cutting the vine and drying the pods on the vines indoors over fall, I can usually harvest enough peas or beans for a handful of plants. If I was very interested in saving peas or beans for seeds, I would deliberately leave 3 or 4 plants loaded with pods to ripen on the vines.
• lettuce, spinach and other leafy greens. Spinach matures so quickly that seeds will develop from spring plantings before our rainy season comes in late summer. Lettuce is hit or miss for me. If September is dry, I can get some seeds from lettuce. But if the rains return early, the seed heads mold
• beets and Swiss chard -- both of these plants tale a long time to set seeds in my climate. I currently have both in the process of going to seeds from plants started in early spring. I may or may not be able to collect seeds before the season turns rainy. I have better luck with beets or chard that are overwinter then go to seed in mid-spring, for collection in mid-summer. One problem, if we have a lot of freezing temperatures in winter, the plants will rot before going to seed.
• marigold -- not a vegetable, but a flower grown for appearance (not edible). Marigolds simply go to seed if you don't deadhead them. I collected a bunch of these seeds last fall and planted them this spring. I have lots and lots of pots of marigolds around the yard this year, all for free. They're an easy flower to start from seed, too. 

my container of turnips seed pods -- at the bottom are a bunch of loose seeds,
probably enough for 4 years in this container

Grocery store vegetables from which I've collected my own seeds for planting

• garlic -- I've read that you could potentially introduce viruses to your soil by planting store purchased garlic cloves. My own garlic patch was started from 1 head of garlic bought at the store. I've multiplied this garlic over the years and now harvest 60 heads of garlic each year.
• potatoes -- I've planted both red and russet potatoes from the store. Although commercial potatoes are sprayed with sprout inhibitors, many of them will still sprout in time for planting out in spring. I currently have some of the russets growing in my garden from a store purchased potato from several years ago. (I ate all of the red potatoes one year, so those are not growing in my garden.)
• peppers -- a couple of my pepper plants this year are from seeds collected from a purchased pepper last fall. Easy to collect, dry and save.
• winter squash -- my acorn squash are from a purchased squash from several years ago. One year, we dumped a bunch of homemade compost onto an unplanted spot in the yard. Up sprang about 12 acorn squash plants, yielding about 40 squash for our use that fall and winter. Although you can easily save pumpkin seeds from commercially-grown pumpkins, I don't, as the varieties brought into our area for fall decorating wouldn't grow well in my cool, maritime climate.

Vegetables that take too long to grow to seed stage in my area

• cabbage
• Brussel sprouts
• cucumber
• corn
• zucchini and other summer squash

Some things to think about

You don t' have to collect all of next year's seeds each year. My collected seeds can last for several years. I collect enough seeds for 3 or 4 years of planting. I rotate the plants for seed collection, so I'm only collecting seeds from a few types of plants each year. 

I dry all of the different seed types indoors for at least a month, on paper of some sort and away from damp areas. I then spend an afternoon removing the seeds from dried pods, separating clumps of dried seeds, and packing them up.

Most important -- Seeds should be thoroughly dried, stored in a labeled/dated paper envelope, then inside an airtight plastic or glass container kept in a cool and dry location. I refrigerate my seeds and stick a couple of those silica gel packets that come in vitamin jars. 

Hybrid plants will not produce seeds that are true to the variety. Some folks don't mind this. However, if you have gardening circumstances that are finicky, like short growing season or limited growing space, seeds from a hybrid plant might not work well. An example, I routinely have trouble growing tomatoes. I have found a small handful of varieties that work well for me, some of which are hybrids. Saving seeds from hybrids is a gamble for my conditions.

Growing several varieties of the same vegetable in close proximity to each other can result in cross-pollination of the seeds. This may not matter much or it may matter a lot. It is suggested that if you grow different varieties and plan on saving seeds, to plant them at farthest ends of the garden from each other.

For seeds that develop in pods, like cress, turnips, kale, peas and beans, I let the pods mature as long as possible on the vine/stalk, turning tan in color when ready to pick the whole pods and bring indoors to finish drying out. 

Do you collect any of your own seeds for planting the next year? Have you ever tried planting a vegetable from the grocery store, like garlic or potatoes? What was your experience?

Curried Peanut and Bean Spread

I made this economical bean and peanut spread over the weekend that was well-received in my household. I was looking for something savory and lower in fat than peanut butter, but not terribly bean-y. However, I was open to using some beans as they'd provide protein and reduced fat. I then thought about the tasty combo of curry seasonings and peanuts.

So I decided to try a pinto bean, peanut butter, dried fruit, veg, and curry powder/spice mixture.

I pureed the pinto beans and peanut butter together (about a 3:1 ratio), then added curry powder, ground cloves, and ground ginger plus a bit of salt. I chopped celery and onion and sautéed in a little oil. I also chopped some raisins up (so the bits would be smaller). I stirred the veg and fruit into the seasoned spread and adjusted the taste.

We've mostly had this on bread as open-faced sandwiches and on apple wedges. I'm pleased with the end result -- a savory, reduced fat/high protein spread that goes well with bread, apples, celery sticks, and crackers.

In coming weeks, I'll be experimenting with other flavor combos to mix with pureed beans and peanut butter.