Monday Cooking Day

This quiche turned out particularly well.

I seem to be developing a pattern of going to market on Saturdays and doing weekly cooking on Mondays. Our weekends are often busy, moreso now that spring soccer started for DD12, so Monday seems to work as a day that I can hop back and forth from working at the computer to tending things in the kitchen.

This afternoon I baked off sweet potatoes to puree, white taters for home fries, and one of the last butternut squashes from the basement. I made pumpkin streusel muffins with the squash. I made bread pudding with stale rolls I got for $1 at the market. I also cooked off some bulk sausage and bacon ends, to use in quiche. I zested lemons, made fresh lemon juice, made hummus. I am thinking about try to make my own pita bread or some other flatbread. The recipes don't look too hard.


The muffins were from a super-healthy recipe with whole grain flour, egg whites, no fat, and skim milk. Kinda scary, so I used whole milk and whole eggs. They next batch needs more streusel, too. But DH and I thought they were pretty good! Especially with a dab of cream cheese. (I suck at fat-free.) I am eager to see how well they keep, and freeze.

I put the muffins in a Tupperware thing I got at a yard sale last summer, for the freezer, so we can just take out a few each day. I have a lot of ripe pears to use up, so ginger-pear bran muffins are next. I took a family survey about muffins, to see what everyone would eat. Everyone can agree on blueberry, and fortunately I have some summer-picked blueberries in the freezer. DH likes plain bran muffins, like his father made, so I need to do some experimenting with recipes. I hate scrubbing muffin pans. I want to use paper liners, but it seems wasteful to create that trash. Must be why I normally like making quiche bread loaves - loaf pans are easy to wash.

I didn't get apples peeled for sauce today, so that means we will all be peeling in front of the TV some other night this week. I think I have enough apples for 4 quarts this time.

I inventoried the leftovers in the fridge - DD15 is leaving a lot of half-eaten veggies in there. She is doing pretty well with her "no meat for Lent" commitment. I am not doing as well. I keep forgetting - I made rice with stock instead of water, so she couldn't use the same rice. I mixed the refried beans with the turkey taco meat, instead of keeping the the beans separate to share with her. Is it some sort of passive-aggressive resistance to vegetarianism? Hmm.

In other food news, DD12 is Eating Better, making progress like I haven't seen in years. I don't know if she had some sort of personal epiphany, or if a couple years if watching us eat has produced a change, but things are happening. Bread, for instance. For years, she would only eat commercial Italian style bread and the cheapest hot dog buns. Then we introduced her to a local Italian bakery, and she expanded into fresh Italian bread and Kaiser rolls. Never would she touch a whole grain bread product. But suddenly she asked to try a loaf of whole wheat Italian. Still commercial bread, but she crossed the whole grain Rubicon. She does also eat whole grain waffles we make ourselves, so I am feeling much better about her fiber intake.

She is also eating a lot of my homemade applesauce with, drinking Concord grape juice, and accepting chicken in more variety. She used to live on chicken nuggets, and likes the fried chicken legs at the farmer's market - but she will now also eat plain baked chicken.

Whew. She was so inflexible about what she would eat, down to specific brands. I was really worried she would have trouble as an adult. People have been saying, "She'll outgrow it" since she was 5, but she is heading for 13 now! Long ago, I said "I am not running a diner" and made her start to cook her own food, so I was neither forcing her to eat our food, nor "caving in" and making two different meals. I'm trying not to do the forced-eating stuff that my parents did, and which resulted in my own weird food dislikes. (The thought of green beans makes me queasy.)

But finally she seems to allowing herself to try some new stuff again, for whatever reason. Yay!

Winter Comforts

Fresh applesauce, Sunshine Jam, and a Faschnacht with molasses to dip it. What's a Faschnacht? It's a Pennsylvania Dutch potato donut, made for Shrove Tuesday. They call it Donut Day in some places, and local fire company Ladies Auxiliaries make huge batches that the volunteer firemen hawk at stop lights as fundraisers. My mother brought us a dozen today, apparently so we can pratice for Tuesday.

Y'know, even 'tho things are a little crappy lately, I am finding comfort in our new food routines. I wondered if we would want to stray back to packaged convenience when stressed, but it looks like the new patterns are really becoming set.

I indulged in a carrot muffin at a Wawa convenience store the other day when I filled the gas tank. I didn't like it. It was too sweet, too oily, and didn't have raisins or nuts or good spices. The fake cream cheese icing was heart-burn sweet. Bland. I've done nothing but think about good carrot cake muffins ever since. Today I peeled and grated the last of the fall carrots, and I'll make muffins tomorrow. I also made pear butter, applesauce, and Sunshine Jam today.

I can't wait for spring, but I really have been enjoying the winter food.

We are now good at making yogurt, stock, pizza and pasta sauce. We make a weekly pot of bean soup, and we are eating more cabbage and potatoes. I've added a weekly batch of applesauce, and a batch of sweet potato puree to have on hand for biscuits. I keep meaning to try other biscuit recipes, but the sweet potato biscuits are so good, and we get extra beta-carotene, too.

I find I am finally getting into the swing of putting together routine meals that come mostly from staples in our pantry. We make a weekly trip to the farmer's market for milk, pasture-fed eggs, cheese, apples, and greens. We hit a grocery store to stock up on a few loss-leaders every other week or so. I have a good idea of what I need to can/plant/store more of for next winter.

The supply of squash and sweet potatoes (all local) have held up well in the cellar this winter, and we still have a few left. The carrots, parsnips, and cabbage did well in the fridge (also local, but now gone). The white potatoes did not do well. There are a few sprouting ones I will plant. I ended up buying 10# bags of taters every few weeks. I didn't grow even a fraction of our onions, and none of the garlic, nor did I find local sources for those.

I have been making 2 quarts of applesauce almost every week. We've used massive amounts of eating and cooking apples this year. I guess that means I would have to make 100 quarts for a year for my pantry, if I went strictly with local apples in the fall, in addition to eating apples. The local ones I bought got eaten before we could test their cellar storage longevity.

But, there is this thing at the market. I've been going on Saturdays and asking one of the produce vendors if there are apple seconds. He usually gives me a box of bruised apples and pears for a few dollars. This week, I got about 10# of apples and 5# of Bosc pears for only ONE dollar! I have discovered that I need to go right home and make applesauce and pear butter, or the fruit flies go nuts. I brought fruit flies home on a pineapple, and they found the worm composting bin, and we have had trouble keeping them down ever since. I've been freezing the peels in a bucket out back instead of composting them, until we get the flies under control. When the ground thaws, I will trench-compost the thawed peelings.

(I found a recipe for apple jelly that boils the peels to
make a pretty rose-colored jelly. I also want to try
making my own vinegar. Then I would *really* be
getting all I can out of an apple.)

These apples and pears are mostly not local, a mix of whatever gets culled each week, many from Washington State, a mere 2500 miles away. But they would be discarded if I didn't use them, I think. So, on one hand, I am not buying local, but on the other, I am reducing waste while saving loads of money.

I think the middle ground might be to make some local applesauce in the fall, and supplement it with the weekly throw-away apples. At least until that time in the future when shipping becomes so expensive that Washington apples don't come here anymore.

Anyone have arguments for a different solution? I do buy local produce regularly, and devote part of my grocery budget to doing so every week, directly from producers whenever I can. Should I be turning down produce from afar, as a point of principle? The dollar-stretcher in me would have trouble walking away from this apple deal.

Best New Pantry Recipes

In 2008, I entered over 500 recipes into my collection at WeGottaEat.com. Many of them were my own tattered recipe cards, or recipes I had tested from my cookbook collection. But many were also new entries from TV shows, blogs, cooking websites, and email lists. I haven't even tried all of them yet. Among those that were new to us, some have become family favorites. Each one of these introduced us to a new pantry staple:

Slow Cooker Pinto Beans - This one came from Paula Deen, at the suggestion of a listmate on the HealthyCheapCooking list on Yahoo Groups. The butchers up North don't have streak o' lean, so I use other smoked pork goodness - ham shanks are my favorite, but I also also get smoked ham ends and smoked sausage. We've eaten it as a main dish, and as a side with other meals. It really expanded the use of pinto beans for me - I had only really used them for refried beans until I tried this. I live in a city with a big Hispanic population, so I can get large bags of dry pintos inexpensively.

Cheese Grits - It was about this time last year that I watched Alton Brown cook grits on the Food Network, and decided to give it a try. Until then, the only grits I'd eaten were tasteless gruel at diners. But these were to-die-for. DD15 didn't like them at first, but has now become a grits machine, especially with her sage-flavored peppery milk gravy. I store supermarket grits now, but I'm looking for artisan stone-ground grits to try.

(Ignore those crumbs under the toaster over.)

Sweet Potato Biscuits - These were my first scratch biscuits, and I was so happy with them, especially with pineapple jam. This recipe gave us both a new bread product and another way to use leftover sweet potatoes. Now I keep a jar of sweet potato puree in the fridge. I found several sources of local sweet potatoes this year.


Green Tomato Chutney - My new favorite condiment. I only just started canning jam this summer, and I'd never ever eaten chutney before, but I saw the recipe on a blog around the time that a neighbor pruned a lot of green tomatoes from her plants. I love it with roast meat or poultry. I'm very happy with the jam, chutney, and pickles I made this summer, and I plan to do a lot more canning next summer.


Parsnip Spice Cake - I've taken this to several potlucks with good reviews. I like the versatility of adding whatever dried fruit or nuts I want. I'd never tried parsnips before, but now I regularly buy and use them to flavor stock and make this coffee cake. When I don't like a vegetable on its own, I tend to turn it into a quick bread. I like that I can grow parsnips and store them in the ground all winter. I can't recall where this recipe came from, but I want to make it whenever I see parsnips.

Cuban Inspired Pork Chili - Hominy was another first for us. I store it dried and canned. The local Hispanic grocery stores always stock it. I like chili, but not as hot as DH does - and he doesn't like beans in it. But this chili comes across more like a pork stew, and it gives me a good place to use more black beans, and fresh or frozen corn. I found this recipe at the cooking blog Coconut & Lime, and substituted regular tomatoes and cheap country-style pork ribs for the fancier ingredients.

Spelt Waffles - DD12 used to be addicted to Eggo toaster waffles. We got her a waffle iron for Christmas 2007, and tried a few recipes with all-purpose flour. But when I found a local source for spelt flour, I went looking for a waffle recipe. DD12 likes to whip up the egg whites for this one. We double the recipe, so there are lots of leftovers to freeze for reheating in the toaster. I like to dip pieces of waffle in fruity yogurt or homemade applesauce.


Yogurt - Not so much a recipe as a technique. I heat two quarts of milk and 1/2 cup non-fat dry milk to about 190F. Then I let it cool to 120F, whisk in a half-pint of yogurt I set aside from the previous batch, and pour it into quart containers. I bundle it into an insulated lunch bag with a hot water bottle, and it's lovely by morning. I haven't purchased yogurt since June. I love it in oatmeal with a dab of honey or homemade jam. When I first thought about making yogurt, I thought I needed a yogurt maker, but when I advertised for one on the local Freecycle list, a Lebanese woman answered me with instructions to make it in a blanket-wrapped crockpot liner. I adapted that to my insulated lunch bag.

So, have any of you found recipes that have become new favorites at your house?

Offbeat Storage Item: Mincemeat

We like these easy mincemeat cookies, which store well in a canister.
In our small kitchen, the cooling rack fits over the dish rack.

I store something you don't see mentioned often: mincemeat. None Such is the only commercial brand I am familiar with. It comes in condensed boxes or ready-to-use jars. The manufacturer says it has a shelf-life of 3-4 years, but I have kept it much longer. The boxes cost $3-4 dollars, and the jars cost $7-9 at full retail. You can buy them by the case through the Smuckers website, too, but I never pay retail for this.

The condensed block is sealed in plastic inside a
cardboard sleeve in a wax-sealed foil label.

It's a seasonal item that is only stocked during the holidays, so this is the time to find it on clearance sale. I live near a grocery liquidator that buys seasonal leftovers from grocery stores in bulk. By spring, I will be able to get the little boxes for 35 cents, and the jars for 75 cents - a 90% discount.

What is mincemeat? It's an old-fashioned 15th century British pie and pastry filling made with chopped fruit and spices, with a bit of beef suet, preserved in sugar. The commercial kind is not for vegetarians, but there are recipes for green tomato mincemeat and other meatless versions. The label on the condensed box has straight-forward ingredients: raisins, brown sugar, dried apples, dextrose, water, salt, beef, dried citrus peel, apple concentrate, spices, distilled vinegar.

The cookies do not taste like beef in any way!
See my new silicon baking mats? I love them.

Mincemeat is high in carbs calories, but not fat, and it has fiber. Besides, we don't store treats for their nutritional value, we store them for their emotional value. If I were living through a difficult time with monotonous food choices, I would like being able to occasionally open up a box of this and rehydrate it for a pastry treat, or make cookies using the crumbled dehydrated block. We like the recipe for Prize Cookies on the side of the box. Everything in the recipe can come from pantry storage if you store powdered eggs. There are lots more recipes on the None Such website, but I have not tried most.

If the beef turns you off, there are recipes for green tomato mincemeat, and you could can your own, but I think that kind is more like a chutney, and less like the dense, sweet traditional British mincemeat. It will take a lot of dried fruit and sugar, which is why I like buying the deeply-discounted clearance product.

Independence Challenge - Week 30

Cider jugs lined up and waiting for us to sanitize the "primary fermentation" bucket. Note the elegant metal computer desk that has become a kitchen storage fixture. I hope to find a small corner cupboard or utility cupboard to replace that. I'd love to have storage for small appliances and the cast iron collection.

I got a cold the day after Thanksgiving, so I have not accomplished as much as I hoped over the holiday break. I have not met my goal of being ready to have my mom move in by the end of this month. Hopefully, by Christmas. It's hard to re-organize your whole house, while still carrying on the regular daily stuff.

We did have a nice holiday of cooking, visiting with family and friends, watching films, and relaxing at home. And we did mop up a couple of half-done projects. It's December 1st, so the kids will want to start our paper Christmas tree project this evening. It's kind of a reverse advent calendar; we add something every day until the star goes on top on Christmas Eve. I'll take photos as that develops.

Planted: Nothing.

Harvested: Cabbage and lemon thyme.

Preserved: Started a bucket of hard cider fermenting. I'll make a separate post about that with photos. The apples are not organic, but Weaver's uses an Integrated Pest Management program that minimizes spraying, and their cider is UV pasteurized, not heated, so it should be good for making hard cider.

I jarred up horseradish I grated from a root. Peeled it, grated and ground it in the food processor with some white vinegar. It made about a pint. DH leaned over and took a big whiff while it was still in the food processor - really cleared his stuffy nose! People say it will only keep its heat for a few months in the fridge. I want to plant some, and make it part of our late fall routine.

I made my own cranberry sauce. It was so easy; just a cup each of water and sugar, simmered with a bag of berries. It made about 2/3 of a quart jar that I am keeping in the fridge. Next time, I will jar it in pints and water-process it. Found a new cranberry sauce-filled muffin recipe to try this week.

I made a big mistake that cost me 3 quarts of really good chicken stock. I had once accidentally frozen a quart of stock in a jar, and it didn't break. So I thought, "Hmm, why not use my reusable jars, instead of plastic bags? I can just move jars right from freezer to fridge as needed." Wrong! All three were broken the third day, I guess after freezing really solidly. Wasted jars and stock. I made 6 quarts of new turkey stock. In quart freezer ziplocks, thank you.

Cooked: Wednesday night there was an interfaith Thanksgiving service, hosted this year at our church. There were Muslim, Buddhist, Baha'i, Hindu, Christian and Jewish guests. I baked a Parsnip Spice Cake. I know a bit about kosher cooking, but I know almost nothing about the Halal dietary laws that Muslims observe. Just enough not to use lard or alcohol-based vanilla extract. I made a label for the plate on the refreshment table, listing the ingredients - so, whether the guests were vegan, vegetarian, Jewish, or Muslim, they could decide for themselves whether to eat it.

It's not a new recipe, but I took an all-local Cornbread Pudding to the family Thanksgiving feast in Philadelphia. When you are not the host, you don't get leftovers, so on Sunday night I roasted some turkey parts and made some pie, so I could have leftover turkey sandwiches and pie. And I had more pie and turkey sandwiches today. :-)

DH caught me roasting a butternut. 'What's that?" "Pumpkin," I said. 'No it's not. It's squash! I don't like squash." "You like pumpkin pie, and pumpkin is a squash, and most pie pumpkins look more like this than jack-o-lanterns - you just never see pumpkin except out of a can." "Still. Not eating it." Which is how I ended up baking sweet potato pie. I'll make pumpkin muffins with the other orange stuff. ~sigh~

Stocked: Hair conditioner, copy paper, packing tape. Parsnips and unshelled walnuts.

I got sucked into Wal-Mart, originally in search of a $13.95 haircut. I already go there once a month to get a $4 prescription refill. But once you are in, the prices are mesmerizing, and you end up buying conditioner, copy paper, and tape. They had sweet potatoes for $.38/lb, green beans for .99/lb, and .68 sleeves of celery. I see how people end up shopping there, even as they mutter, "I hate Wal-Mart." You hate that you want to buy things. I'm so torn - Wal-mart is our nation's largest retailer, and they are making an effort to sell local and organic products. Shouldn't I try to support that? But the organization as a whole is the most non-local thing in the world. When I get a new Rx, I will switch to Target, who I hear has a similar $4 program. If I don't go in there, I won't have to deal with the ethical conflicts.

Friday, I bought almost nothing on "Buy Nothing Day." Just two matinee film tickets and a bag of Swedish Fish, for my mother and I to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Holocaust-themed film are never feel-good, and this one was immediately followed by a ladies' rest room full of weepiness, but it was good to go to the movies with her.

On Saturday, a friend of DD15's came to visit for the afternoon. They live in Maryland, but were doing a holiday road trip in our area, and the kids wanted to go to a movie and hang out. It was all arranged via text message and Facebook. I had never met his mother, but I couldn't just let her wander around unhosted, so DH and I took her to lunch, and then she came with me to Weaver's Orchard. I bought half a bushel of our favorite Honeycrisp apples for eating and 7 gallons of cider (5 for the bucket and 2 for drinking), as well as Crispins and McIntoshes to make applesauce, and some other fresh veggies. My new friend also bought apples and veg. Her son has a severe peanut allergy, so she is very mindful about food. When we came back to Reading, we toured the GoggleWorks art center while we waited for the kids. Then we showed them the nightime view from the Pagoda. She told me about a big book sale event in Annapolis, and I told her about our AAUW book sale. I don't know if DD15 and this boy will date, but at least I made a new mom-friend!

Prepped: DH got space blankets for the bug-out bags; they came in box of 12. He also bought forearm lifting straps for our general equipment supply. These straps allow you to use the leverage of your whole forearm to lift things, instead of relying on your hand strength to grasp. That's a great tool for people with hand disabilities like my arthritis. He also bought us a boning knife and a new pepper grinder - I looked for used items, but these are really essential cooking equipment for us, and it was worth buying new to get exactly what we needed. The knife really made a huge difference in meat carving.

He also got four packages of military-style emergency rations for our bug-out bags. They have a five-year shelf life, so I have to figure out how to remember to rotate those. Ugh - we may have to eat them in five years. Each vacuum-sealed brick has six 400-calorie portions of "pleasant lemon vanilla flavor" stuff. Maybe I could put cubes of it on the coffee hour snack table at church - hee hee!

Managed: The sweet potatoes in the cellar are getting shriveled. I have not been using them fast enough. I think I better roast them all and freeze chunks or puree. The squash look fine. I just roasted the first one. The white potatoes are slightly shriveled, but not bad, and we use them regularly. The onions look good. I have not gotten the cellar thermometers I meant to get, and we have been using the clothes dryer for towels, sheets, and jeans - bottom line, I think the cellar has not been as cold and damp as needed for good root storage. The local harvest comes in long before the cellar is chilly enough.

I've been eating the little bits out of the freezer - four pierogies, a lone burrito, that kind of thing that accumulates in the upstairs freezer. I must find time to really re-organize it this week. The stuff in the front comes and goes briskly, but I can't remember what is in the back.

Funny how many things get done here by people wearing
pajama pants. I don't think the worms noticed.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: We finally got the worm bin started. I will make a separate blog post for that. The poor worms hibernated in the fridge for more than a month. They were still alive, and I hope they warm up and start making little worms very quickly.

Family/Local: Doing some research to prepare for the food security seminar for youth, and the food discussion group at our church, both of which will start in January. People are definitely interested. Heard about a Three-Bowl Ritual that focuses on food waste awareness - might be good for a group activity.

Learned: Signed up for a December 2nd webinar about Small Farm Incubators. It will be good for me to better understand the obstacles to small farm operations, if I eventually want to build a buying co-op with local suppliers.

Library: I'll put this in the "library" section since it contributes to our journaling and documenting. DH got a fancy new Canon camera. His aunts wanted to give him a graduation gift in May, and they finally agreed on a camera. DH is a writer, and might be able to sell more freelance work if he can also supply photos. Our older Kodak EasyShare DX7590 camera now officially becomes "mine" and I plan to find a macro lens for it on eBay. It's hard to take garden and food pix without a close-up lens.

Weekly Menu Review

I really need to do better at organizing the freezer. Who knows what
is in the back? I added 3 quarts of stock, 2 pints of pizza sauce, butter,
half&half, pork bones for stock, and a bag of DD12's potato smiles
since last week. Making waffles to freeze this weekend.

UPDATE: Alert! Do NOT try freezing stock in jars.
I did one jar that did not break, but when I did these three,
they all broke on about the 3rd day, wasting both jars and lovely stock.

Time to see how well I did with the new menu plan. I know this seems silly to people that have used a menu plan for years, but writing it down helps me think about cooking from storage. For years, I just knew what to cook, and bought it weekly at the store, according to what was on sale. Now, I am trying to coordinate using my stored food, eat locally and seasonally, and watch the sales to replenish my long- and short-term storage.

This was the plan:

Mon - Shrimp Fried Rice
Tue - Bangers and Mash with White Pepper Gravy
Wed - Chicken and Spinach Lasagna
Thu - Red Beans & Rice with Chicken
Fri - Hawaiian Pizza

Monday went OK, except that I didn't get dinner done until 9:30 PM. I took DD15 to work at 4, and did grocery shopping until she was done at 6:15 PM. All I had to do was go home and cook, right? Ha. Got sidetracked by a business emergency as soon as I walked in. But we did have Shrimp Fried Rice, by gum! With broccoli from our garden, bacon from the Bacon Club, local eggs, and basmati rice.

Tuesday's plan to make roast chicken for lunch was derailed - it takes longer than I thought to thaw a whole frozen chicken. Oops. But I didn't need the chicken to be cooked until Wednesday night, so that was OK. Tuna sandwiches for lunch. Baked cookies. Tuesday dinner was the "locavore" version of Bangers and Mash, which I posted for the Dark Days local eating challenge.

By Wednesday lunch, the chicken was still not fully thawed. DD15 made her own shrimp curry for lunch to take to work, and I asked her to make enough for both of us. Really busy day, and dinner was suddenly a struggle. There was a storm front moving through, and both DH and I got sinus headaches. We ended up declaring an "on your own" night - everyone forages for themselves. Gotta use that canned soup in the cellar sometime, right? DD15 made us look bad by making herself rice with beans, peppers, and shreds of chicken she picked from the bones leftover from stock-making.

Thursday we finally had chicken! But for dinner - DD15 and DH were both out in the afternoon. I put the chicken in before I got DD15 from work. DH made experimental Sausage & Sage Dressing to go with it, using a bag of stale rolls I bought from the discount rack. I made gravy using both sausage and chicken pan juices, with fresh chicken stock. Scorecard: gravy needed more kick, maybe mustard or more pepper. Chicken was predictably good. Dressing was like a savory bread pudding - I really liked it.

OK, so now it's Friday. But, there is not enough leftover chicken for lasagna. A 5-pound chicken doesn't go as far as I thought for 4 people. I have only managed to make 2 out of 5 planned dinners. Am I maybe planning too much food? Maybe only four large meals per week, and more homemade "quick food" ready in the fridge. People keep wandering into the kitchen looking for something to eat, and not finding something easy to put together.

Cleaned and inventoried the fridge this morning, to see what needs attention. Emptied a few containers from the back - mostly leftover sauces made by DD15. Things that need using: 4 leeks, a quarter pound of bleu cheese, cooked sweet potato, some carrots getting limp, three stale rolls, a pineapple (now on counter).

Top shelf: Uh oh- out of milk! Have pickles, chocolate syrup, red cooking wine, spelt and WW flour, wheat germ, flax meal, buttermilk, half&half, red miso, homemade yogurt, duck sauce, ginger plum sauce, 2 qts ricotta, 3# mozzarella, lemon juice, salsa, pizza sauce, sour cream, bacon fat.

Middle Shelf: Plastic basket of tortillas and assorted cheese, bag of dried beef, 2 quarts of chicken stock, containers of carrots and cooked sweet potato, piece of scrapple, 2 yogurts for DD12, jar of maraschino cherries, lard, tomato sauce, DH's beverage.

Bottom Shelf: Leftover chicken, leftover cooked rice, leftover dressing and gravy, 2 cartons of live red worms for compost bin, bag of spinach, 4 leeks.

Drawers (not seen): 3 dozen eggs (making pasta) 1/4lb bacon, 1/2 lb keilbasi, bags of carrots, half sleeve celery, 2 apples, small cabbage head, celeriac.

Today, I am making Celeriac-Leek Soup and Sweet Potato Cornbread. Making a little apple bread pudding from the rest of the stale rolls. Cutting up that pineapple. We have a busy weekend ahead, and we need to have some easy fridge pickings.

Next week is Thanksgiving Week. We will have dinner at DH's large (40-50 people) family gathering in Philadelphia, so I get out of cooking a big meal. But I need to take a dish for the buffet. I am a relative newcomer to this event, and most of the attendees staked out a niche on the buffet table years ago. First time, I took a nice ginger applesauce cake from a premium bakery. Last year, DH took his blonde brownies, having reconstructed his late father's recipe (a sentimental hit). This year, DH will make his luscious sweet potato pie (the secret is Cream of Coconut). And I need to produce something fabulous, that does not complete with another guest's traditional contribution. The dessert table is packed, so no more of that. I better call the hostess and consult before taking a side dish - maybe I can make something she can check off her list.

We'll eat heavily on Thursday, so I we'll eat lightly the rest of the week, with easy cooking. Apples, clementines, muffins for snacking. I'll leave next Friday completely unplanned, to take advantage of yummy leftovers.

Monday: Chicken Corn Noodle Soup
Tuesday: Turkey Burritos with Refried Beans
Wednesday: Spinach Salad with Blue Cheese Crumbles
Thursday: Bagels and honey lebne w/fruit (breakfast)

Dinner Prep: Thaw a pack of chicken thighs and a roll of ground turkey. Thaw dried beef to make Creamed Chipped Beef for a lunch.

Regular Weekly Prep: Make bread, yogurt, lebne, freezer waffles, carrot muffins and/or parsnip coffee cake.

Shopping: Get tortillas, ginger root, horseradish root, semolina flour, bananas. 15# basmati rice and 25# sugar for storage. Swiss cheese, milk, half & half, eggs.

So, now I am going to the farmer's market, list in hand, to try to stick to the menu plan. It's hard, when there is so much holiday food on display, not to come home with more produce than we can use before it spoils. Produce is my biggest food-wasting area, and I am trying to stop wasting ANY food.

New Menu Planning

When I started Sharon's Independence Challenge six months ago, she quoted someone talking about an annual cycle of three activities. You plant like crazy in the spring, you preserve like crazy all summer, and then you spend the winter getting the most out of the stored food. I can really feel that shift right now. I'm not focused on stocking up any more - I'm figuring out how to cook it all now. It's not as easy as I thought.

I was reading someone's blog (wish I could remember who) and she talked about her mother having a 6-week rotation of dinners, with certain things made special for holidays, and new recipes slotted in occasionally. She listed some things she considers go-to meals, the building blocks of her menu planning.

That got me to thinking that I have left behind a lot of my go-to meals, and I need to make a new list. One of DD15's old favorite meals was chicken and sauce over rice, made with canned Cream of Chicken Soup. But now, she knows how to make her own sauces from scratch. I used to love Kraft Mac-n-cheese, and now I make macaroni with pesto and parmesan, or DH makes his heirloom baked mac-n-cheese. Our old eating style had more prepared food and meat in it. Dinner went together fast, unless we wanted it slow on purpose. We bought meat each week, and then decided what to have with it. I went to the store at least twice a week, and we were usually out of something.

We eat better now, but we have new problems. When it's time for dinner, we often discover that nothing is thawed, or some key component isn't ready. More prepping ahead is required, and actual menu planning. Especially since I plan to do the Dark Days Challenge, which asks me to try to produce one all-local meal each week from November 15 to March 15. Whew!

We do have daytime go-to meals. Breakfast is oatmeal and fruit (me), or eggs with grits and gravy (DD15), or quick bread and spread. The kids still like cereal a lot. Lunch is homemade soup, or sandwiches made of leftovers, or DD15 makes stir-fry or curry.

We already decided to have meals planned around staples instead of meat. I took a stab at a basic list for each category, and I want to try that method of having a rotation of menus. I'm going for 6 simple dishes in each category (with the other two nights being leftovers or new recipes), and then I can vary the preparation of the basic dish.

Rice: Fried Rice, Cheese Rice, Curry, Dal and Rice, Paella, Jambalaya

Potatoes: Mashed, Latkes, Potato Filling, Baked Potatoes, Colcannon

Pasta: Lasagna, Pesto Mac, Pasta and Sauce, Filled Pasta, Baked Ziti, Asian Dumplings

Beans: Rice and Beans, Pork and Beans, Pea Soup, Refried Beans, Chili, Bean Soup

Bread: Pizza, Quiche, Waffles, Stromboli, Savory Bread Pudding

So, after looking at my fridge and freezer, this is next week's menu:

Mon - Shrimp Fried Rice (needs bacon, eggs, broccoli)
Tue - Bangers and Mash with DD15's White Pepper Gravy
Wed - Chicken and Spinach Lasagna (makes leftovers)
Thu - Red Beans & Rice with Chicken
Fri - Hawaiian Pizza

The all-local meal will be Tuesday - I got the apple sausage, potatoes, and milk locally, and grew the cabbage.

Dinner Prep: Thaw a whole chicken, a pound of sausage, a small bag of broccoli. Make sauce for lasagna, doctor up some for pizza. Roast chicken Tues at lunch, then pick carcass and peel potatoes. Make braised cabbage with sausage. Make lasagna in advance of baking. Make pizza dough.

Regular Weekly Prep: Make bread, yogurt, lebne, quick bread. Cut up pineapple. Brew herbal tea. Make soup (potato leek). Bake a dessert (Jewish Apple Cake).

Shopping: Replenish instant yeast, milk, chili powder, hominy, clementines, celeriac. Take advantage of Thanksgiving sales on turkey (.47/lb Weis). Buy dried apricots on sale, and turkey backs at market to freeze for stock later (.10/lb last year). Giant has BOGO pork roast, butter for $1.99, and 2/$1 tomato paste. Long-term storage: buy rice, salt, and 25# sugar. Look for local organic bulk potatoes.

Sounds tidy. But, can I stick with planning that is so detailed? We'll see, won't we?

Independence Challenge - Week 27

Pickled Pineapple, with dried cranberries and mint.

I saw a fox! It was at dusk, up on the mountain on the way to the soccer field. It ran/floated across the road in front of our car, and DD15 and I both yelled, "That's a fox!" as it disappeared into the underbrush. I know there are wild turkeys and pheasants up there, and the usual skunks, raccoons, groundhogs, possums. We see deer all the time. But I've never seen a live fox before. It was cool.

Fairly short update this week; really busy week.

Planted: Nothing, but I ordered some veggie seeds from an end-of-year sale.

Harvested: The last bits of mint tea and basil. Rose hips. Walnut husks for dye. Went to the second-to-last local market for the season, and got more sweet potatoes, more #10 apples, eggs, and a few springs of oregano.

Preserved: Pickled Pineapple, using our mint and a fresh pineapple I got on sale. It's a refrigerator pickle, so no two-part lid. My mom and I tasted it after a few days, and it was really good. Hope it doesn't get over-pickled for Thanksgiving. Does that happen? Checked on my sauerkraut, which smells OK so far. We compared the canned pickles I made earlier this summer with a recipe that calls for liming, with the refrigerator pickle recipe I made a few weeks ago. Both are bread-n-butter style. DH and I liked the crisper ones, my mom liked the fridge recipe. I think it pays to make a bunch of different kinds.

Cooked: DH surprised me with a 4-lb pot roast. With it, I made a new recipe for a potato and rice cake made in a skillet. Good with the gravy DD15 made from the beef drippings. "Oh, you found another vehicle for gravy, I see!" said smart-ass DH. We are still eating the leftover beef in sandwiches.

A big ham shank I got for only $2.

I tend to have a day of the week when I get in the mood to cook a lot. On Halloween Morning, I made yogurt and bread, the pickled pineapple, put Ham and 16-Bean Soup in the crockpot, and made Apple Coffee Cake. None of that was much work, scattered among other tasks, but I would not be able to get that done if I didn't work from home. DH liked waking up to the smell of bread, and DD15 was inspired to come down and make cheese grits, sage-onion gravy, and scrambled eggs that got done as the bread came out. All of the ingredients came from storage or the yard, except fresh milk, eggs, and the pineapple.

Drained some yogurt to make lebne, yogurt cheese, which I sweetened up with some plum preserves to make something like plum cream cheese. I tried it on the waffles and on a bagel. Yowsa!


Stocked: Wow. For the first time in months, I stored nothing this week. It was a busy week, with Halloween, the election, soccer, food bank, and getting ready for another youth conference this weekend in Annapolis.


Prepped: I found Tupperware Heaven! Actually, it was a yard sale. But I got a lot of nice big containers, and some smaller ones for the fridge. I like the flat square one for freezing a batch up muffins for short-term eating. I also got a 5-foot tower of 12x12x12 plastic drawers for the cellar, making more clean storage for craft and fabric stuff I drag out of the attic. ALL for $5. And a free half-pint jar. I just love yard sales like that.

At another sale, D12 found a great pair of soccer shinguards to replace her hand-me-downs. DD15 found a large plastic sewing box full of notions, including cute sew-in tags that say, "Made with Love by Nana." We'll do good things with that grandma's stuff. That's one of the things I like about sales - you don't just get stuff, you get ghosts tagging along, at no extra charge.

Managed: Checked all the "cellared" vegetables in the cellar and found three giant carrots in a plastic bag that had slipped behind something else. One carrot was in the process of liquifying, but the other two are still good. Would have lost those other two carrots if I hadn't done a good check. See how well this Independence Challenge works? If I hadn't needed something to write in this category, would I have checked the veg? I don't think so.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled - It usually doesn't get cold until mid-November. I don't think I turned on any heat until almost Thanksgiving last year. But the almanac and the forecasters are saying that early winter will be colder and snowier than usual. Mid-winter is supposed to be milder, and then a bad March. It doesn't help that the past winters few have been mild, with few big storms - it will make this one seem all the worse.

Our days are still variable - some days we turn on a space heater, some days not. I patrolled the house, looking for airleaks. Kinda futile - it's 100 years old, and it all leaks. Even the baseboards leak, since there are spaces between the wood, the plaster walls, the wood floor boards, and the exterior brick. I did recaulk the front door trim. The terrible aluminum storm windows rattle, and the curtains move with the windows closed. But some days it is too hot to have the quilts hung, so I am not worried until we have the heat on all the time.

In past years, the attic has been unheated storage space, with a door tightly closed at the bottom of the atttic stairs. We tried putting one of the girls up there a few years ago, but the first cold month cost us $100 in electric heat. I plan to have this insulated by the end of the month, and covered with inexpensive paneling. Paneling is ugly, to my taste, but this is a rental house, and the landlord refused to contribute. I just want it functionally warm, since it only needs to make it through this winter. I'm nailing a power strip to the rafter next to the only outlet, so we can plug in lights, space heater, and clock radio for the girls when they move up there.

Local/Family: DD15 and I volunteered at our church's monthly food bank distribution yesterday. We had a longer line than ever, and less canned goods to give out. Short on canned vegetables, cereal, bread. We did have cases of celery and jars of peanut butter to give out. One of the volunteers is going to the regional food bank meeting to see what we can expect in the next few months. We will have to also do an internal food drive.

Library: Found a copy of The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, a reproduction of a 1742 recipe collection, or "Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion." I don't find colonial recipes to be very followable, and it's annoying when all the S's look like F's, but reading them always makes me feel humbly grateful for the invention of the stove.

I also found Volume 5 of Olive Miller's BookHouse series of children's literature anthologies, from 1921, From the Tower Window. It is beautifully illustrated. Might be fun to read from some winter evening. From an Amazon description:

In March 1919, Olive Beaupre Miller and her husband Harry started a book publishing company to sell Olive's compilation of children's literature known as, "The Book House for Children." Using an all female sales staff, their employees went door to door selling subscriptions to the six volume set. Much in the way that encyclopedias were also sold. The series was an immediate success and was continually republished until the 1970's. If you were a middle class parent in the 1930's through 1950's, this was the set of books to purchase for your children. Millions of Americans grew up reading these well written tales of virtue and morality. Over the decades, Olive produced many other books that were to become classics of the genre.

Fascinating. My mother, a generation of childrearing later, had a shelf of the 1954 Childcraft series of literature - still on the bookcase behind her front door, next to the 1960's World Book Encyclopedia. I was born in 1961, and my brother in 1964. I recall a series of endless grade-school reports on states, faithfully paraphrased from these volumes, and typed on our violent electric typewriter. It would move the whole dining room table when I hit the return.

Independence Challenge - Week 25

Witchhazel blooming along a road on the

wooded mountain above our city neighborhood.

I'm feeling good, at least about food storage. I'm not done, but I have a really healthy supply now. Crowded shelves and a nearly-full freezer. Some odds and ends left to get, and I need to organize a re-stocking routine. Water storage still needs more work. We'll have more time to catch up after soccer season ends in November, and we have the attic insulated.

I like the LDS/Mormon-style preparedness plan I've been reading about, where families have a 72-hour kit for bugging out, then a 3-month food supply for immediate use, then a year of long-term storage of major staples like wheat, beans, oats, and rice. I have most of the bug-out bags, and the 3-month supply. I found a local wheat source, but I need to find more barrels and buckets before I start on the long-term stuff. I may not subscribe to the LDS religious beliefs, but I surely do believe in their food storage plan.

Planted: Nothing new, but we are planning to finish a spinach cold frame and a worm composting farm next week. My ginger root is sprouting - does that count?


Harvested: We had our first freeze predicted Tuesday night, so I harvested everything tender from the yard - 10 green peppers I laid out to ripen, three heads of celery, two parsley plants. Also picked a small head of cabbage. The outside leaves were pretty chewed up by beetles, but the inside was lovely.

Preserved: Dried lots of celery and minced parsley. I use celery almost exclusively for stock-making, so I dry the whole stalk and all the leaves in hanging bunches. My home-grown celery stalks are much thinner and leafier than grocery-store celery, but it's the taste I am after anyway. I also dried celeriac leaves, which taste like celery.



Made a pint of sauerkraut with the little head of cabbage. Used my vintage potato chip slicer, since it was such a small head. Packed the salted cabbage in a quart mason jar - my favorite old cast iron potato masher fits in there perfectly to squoosh it down. It juiced right up. I cut a circle out of a plastic lid and put a bottle of juice inside the jar to weigh it all down, I put it on a shelf over the cellar steps, to wait out the 2 weeks of initial fermentation. I set an email reminder, so I don't forget to check it every few days.

I have about 8 more small heads of cabbage still out in the garden, so if this works out nicely, I will make more. DH and my mother are our only kraut-eaters, so I don't want to get carried away.

Blanched and froze another 2 giants heads each of cauliflower and broccoli - about 10 meal-sized quart bags. One of the cauliflowers was deep purple - turns a pretty lavender color when you blanch it. I hope it doesn't lose much more color when I cook it later - it would turn gray, which is unappetizing.
The last pint of bread-n-butter pickles from the summer got opened, and I found Kirby cukes on sale, so it was pretty quick to slice them and boil some syrup for 2 quarts of refrigerator pickles.

Cooked: Made a huge batch of broccoli-cauliflower-cheddar soup, and froze a quart before the ravening hordes sucked down the rest. Made the first parsnip cake of the season -I love that stuff, this time with craisins and walnuts.

Grilled the corn from the market, and cut off the kernels, then made corn cob stock from the cobs. The corn went into a Cuban-Inspired Pork Chili I tried for the first time. The stock went into a new cornbread recipe. Then the cobs went to compost bucket for the worms. I used the hell out of those last four ears of fresh corn!

I'm getting better with the seasonal cooking from the pantry. Now, if only I could stay in the bread-making groove. I just keep forgetting to put it in.

Managed: Found a big popcorn tin for all my baking chocolate. Mom says she has more tins for other things that come in soft packaging. Tins are really common at yard sales, too, but I usuallly ignore them. I labeled the storage jars I've added lately - DH notices if I don't and asks what is in every jar. Updated the list of what's in the freezer.

Checked the potatoes and squash I stored a few weeks ago, and everything looks okay. It hasn't been really chilly in the cellar yet, so I am a little worried things will start to spoil. I still need to get more onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, but I don't think the cellar is cold enough yet.

We have hard water that leaves soap scum and lime scale in the tub and toilet. I've tried all the combos of vinegar, salt, and baking soda cleanser that I can stand, and I am going back to chemicals for now, until we are out of this rented hovel, with its bathroom mold problem. The scum and scale provide a foothold for the mold that regularly creeps out from behind the poorly-intalled plastic shower walls to climb the walls and climbs the shower curtain. I feel guilty about the chemicals, but I can't stand the mold. I hate when people visit and have to see our bathroom. Ugh.

Prepped: At the Goodwill, I found a large black metal picture frame that gave me a holiday gift idea. Found a package of Graco stroller netting intended to protect babies in strollers from mosquitoes, but I am going to use it to protect containerized plants from bugs next summer.


Fabulous Freecycle Find: I got a very large cast iron griddle. The brand is Texsport, and appears to sell online for $35-40. I've wanted a griddle for a long time. This one is 24" deep, almost 27" with the handles, and is actually too big for my current stove. It would be great on a commercial stove with cast iron burners. It would also work ourdoors over a fire or a charcoal grill. I'm dying to be able to make more than one pancake at a time. The flip side has a ridged grilling surface.

Stored: DH brought home 4 cartons of grits (6#). When I looked surprised, he said, "I don't know why you are always so surprised when you ask me to get something and I actually come home with it." He's right; I don't give him credit for being a good shopper. And he really is 100% behind our efforts to stock up, even if he and I disagree on where the economic crisis will ultimately take us. He also brought two big boxes of decaf tea bags and two canisters of hot cocoa mix when he saw them listed on our shopping white board.

Made a last large food run (about $250), shopping the sales at various places. I remember a line from someone's blog, something like this: "I never need anything from the store. I shop to restock, taking a advantage of loss-leader sales. If you don't need something, you can always wait for the best price." That's my goal, and I am almost there. I only need milk, eggs, cheese, a little produce (like bananas), a few bread and cracker products. I am not making enough bread and rolls yet. We also buy a few treats, but not from need.

Redner's had a 40% off sale on store-brand fresh chicken, so I bought about $20 worth and froze 10 meal-sized packages: 4 bags chicken breast, 2 bags boneless thighs, 2 bags whole thighs, 2 bags drumsticks. Also got 4 canisters of bread crumbs, and 4# of margarine for baking, to freeze.

Price-Rite was good for 12 assorted cans of beans, 10 cans of albacore tuna, a gallon of white vinegar, 2# of brown sugar, cat litter, boullion cubes, pound bags of candied ginger and dried pineapple (only $1.49!), 4# box of dry milk, and pork ribs for the chili. For the freezer, I got 3# of shrimp, 3# of hot dogs, a pound of bacon, two bags of bagels, 2# of meatloaf mix, and 2 pints of heavy cream. They also had cheap garlic and kirby pickles. It's a great place to buy Hispanic seasonings, and I got dried chipotle peppers that I jarred up.

Big Lots did not impress me. Their prices on odd lots of canned goods are not much better than regular grocery sales. I like the Buy-Rite liquidator much more. I did buy 15 cans of Campbell's soup, a 7oz bottle of vanilla extract, a 2# can of peanuts (for granola), 3# of whole grain pasta, and 3 canisters of raisins. Cleaning products were cheap, so I got steel wool, cleanser, toilet cleaner for hard water, and citrus cleaner.

I cherry-picked the Giant specials: 30# of King Arthur white whole wheat flour for $3.20 per 5# bag (regularly 4.49) was my favorite deal. Lots of Buy-One-Get-One-Free: kielbasi, bacon, split chicken breast, frozen ravioli, Bagel Bites for DD12. Half price center-cut pork chops. Good sale on ricotta and mozzarella - can't freeze them, but they will stay good unopened in the fridge for several months. Also picked up some Fels Naptha soap, washing soda, baby wipes, natural dish soap.

Aldi rounded out the freezer: Bratwurst, chicken nuggets, five 1# rolls of frozen ground turkey, a 12# ham, and 4# of butter. Also got more dandruff shampoo, oats, ziplock bags, lemon juice, chunk light tuna, sugar, peanut butter, pancake syrup, rice crispies, saltines, a stash of fig newtons, and extra toothbrushes.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Still haven't turned on any heat. The residual daytime heat is still enough carry us through the night, even when it hits freezing. It's about 64-67 in here during the day, a little warmer near one of the two south-facing windows. Sweatshirts and slipper-socks are enough to be warm, with lap blankets when we sit still. We closed the storm windows throughout the house. DH needs to get another blanket on his side of the bed; his feather comforter is getting old and a little thin. We each have our own layer of bedcovers to roll up in, allowing each of us the right coverage for our own internal thermostats. Like two giant larvae snuggled together.

We are doing badly at not using the dryer. I haven't found a masonry nail that will hold up the clothes rod, and we run out of indoor clothesline fast. The windy weather has landed some laundry in the neighbor's muddy yard, and that wastes water on rewashing. I need to do some exploring of laundry aids at Home Depot or maybe Tractor Supply.

Local/Family: I bought local produce at the West Reading market: celeriac, baby bok choy, apples, carrots, eggs, 4 ears of the last sweet corn of the season, and 2 pecks of organic sweet potatoes to store. Some of what I bought at the more commercial Fairgrounds market was from a 100-mile radius. Erica from the B&H organic farm gave me a sample of the hard red wheat they have siloed; I plan to buy 50# from her, and encouraged her to grow spelt again, too.

Spent last weekend with DD15 at a youth retreat in Towson, Maryland. There is another in November in Annapolis, and I am scheduled for youth leader training in Philadelphia. Note to self: figure out how to tie the youth stuff into the food security stuff. Maybe develop an awareness workshop that presents basic info and makes suggestions for action - sorta like An Inconvenient Truth, but for food.

Learned: Checked with my chef-friend Rosella, who used to own a fresh pasta business. I wanted recommendations for a pasta machine. She said that most of the all-metal manual pasta makers are fine and cost less than $20 on eBay. That was a relief, after pricing water filters and grain mills that run $250-300, and the $200 Squeezo fruit mill. I will ask Rosella for a pasta-making lesson for the girls and I. We can also try making crackers.

DH found a great article at PlanetGreen about Green Sex. We both thought the bamboo sheets sounded good. Lots of resources listed there, as well as discussion about phthalates in sex toys and condoms. You'd think sex was already a pretty green activity, wouldn't you?

Library: Stopped at a used book store in Maryland last weekend, and bought some fiction. Looked at the garden and food books, but didn't find anything I really wanted. The gardening books were almost all about ornamentals, which once would have made me happy. Now, I want books about growing and preserving food.

DH and I each have a large collection of winter reading - I suspect we will run out of winter before we run out of books. I can't begin to express how much I love having a reading partner, after several oldbad relationships with people who were jealous of the booktime. DH and I even often like the same stuff; we've expanded each other's reading horizons. I can face any apocalypse, if I just have enough books and right person with whom to share them.

Independence Challenge - Week 23

Sorry - no photos this week - having trouble with the stupid
camera battery. And the stupid printer. Stupid technology. Grrr.

Another big week in food storage. Good news: I think I could comfortably feed us for three months on what I have now. Some stuff will last a year; some things still need more stocking. I feel much more secure, foodwise.

Made a fascinating trip to the Kutztown Produce Auction on Thursday. It's a big pavilion out in the middle of the corn fields, with a parking lot full of farm trucks and buggies. Mennonite owned, it is has been in operation since around 1950 when a group of Old Order farm families bought farms near Fleetwood. I saw an egg auction, nursery stock auction, a lot of produce (local and not), and tons of potted fall mums. Most things come in very large lots - like 6 bushels of green peppers that might go for $4/box, but you have to take all 6. But some lots are smaller. I can see this being a fabulous resource when I am set up to do some serious canning, or to supply a community co-op or event cooking project. Most of the bidders appeared to own restaurants, farm stands, garden centers, large institutions, or food processors. It runs Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of every week, year-round. Saturday sales include straw and hay (by the ton), and firewood.

DD15 was with me. "OMG, Mom! You brought me out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of corn, to watch old men sell vegetables for hours, and my cell phone is running out of charge, so I can't even text people. I'll be in the car reading if you want me to load anything you buy." Maybe she isn't quite ready for grid-crash, eh?

I spent most of my time watching and listening to three simultaneous auctioneers. I saw squash I couldn't even identify, gorgeous Chinese cabbages, tons of hot and sweet peppers, and cauliflower bigger than basketballs. Watched Macoun apples go up to $24/bushel in hot bidding, when other varieties were going for $8-10/bu. Eventually, I registered for a number and bought two boxes of those pluots I like so much. That was 56 pounds of pluots - for $9. They take cash, checks, debit and credit cards, and provide a computer print-out of your purchases.

I plan to go back at least once this fall, to buy apples, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and root veggies. I wonder if they auction cider.

Although this would be a fabulous place for corner stores and large families to buy produce, I noticed there was not a single non-white face at the auction. DD15 said she saw one man that looked Hispanic helping load a truck. More than 40,000 Hispanic people living 30 minutes away, many working in nearby Blandon mushroom houses, and none of them buying deeply discounted bulk food. The only people not speaking English were speaking Pennsylvania Dutch.

Planted: Planted spinach in three fish boxes, to try making a cold frame for it through the winter.

Harvested: A single Black Beauty eggplant, the whole summer's harvest from that single plant. The "Little Fingers" plant did only slightly better, and I pulled it up weeks ago. Last year was a great eggplant year; I was giving them away right and left. This year, not.

Saved seeds from garlic chives, cinnamon basil, stella d'oro lilies, snapdragon. I'm going to participate in a round robin seed swap, so I need to get them cleaned, bagged up and labeled properly.

On Craigslist, I found a family that had a yard full of fallen black walnuts. We gathered four big plastic shopping bags full, and they still had lots more. I have only ever used these to dye fabric or to antique wood, not to shell them for eating. Hulling and shelling them looks like it will be an adventure, and may require finding some new equipment, like a 4" bench vise. Came home to find a squirrel eating them off our porch, so now they are in a galvanized wash tub covered with a board, until I get time to hull them.

Preserved: I took another stab at banana chips , following instructions from a woman that sells them for school snacks. I had high hopes that thicker slices dipped in pineapple juice would be the charm, and I did better at rotating the trays. But I think my cheap single-temperature dehydrator is too hot. The finished product was still unpleasant and over-cooked. I've lived my life so far without banana slices, so I think I will just give up and keep eating fresh bananas. I can always mash and freeze them for baking.

I got frustrated and told DH I was throwing away my $3 yard sale dehydrator. I said we had lived without home-dried food all this time, and would survive without it. He surprised me by saying he thought I was giving up too easily. I didn't think he would do more than give me a glazed-over look. I don't give him enough credit for paying attention to my food storage efforts.

He did agree to stop with the bananas! But he is right about not giving up on dehydrating. I had slipped in a tray of apple slices dipped in the pineapple juice, with the banana experiment. The apples came out OK. I will try the old-fashioned method of hanging them on a string, for comparison. The apple season has only just begun to rock, so I have plenty of time to experiment with apples.

Made 7 half-pints of plum jam with no pectin and reduced sugar. Nice balance of sweet and tart. Since I had 20+ pounds of pluots to use, I experimented and made 2 pints of plum-ginger jam by cooking in a cup of diced candied ginger. Yummy! Then I made "plum butter" in the crockpot.

Froze 3 bags of cauliflower in soup-recipe-sized portions. These heads had partly frozen in my fridge, which got turned up too high. Then I froze 2 half-head bags of blanched cauliflower for meals, along with 4 bags of blanched broccoli. And 2 half-pound bags of blanched green beans.

Cooked: Another episode in the search for perfect Banana Bread. I tried a recipe from the new whole grain cookbook I got last week, and I like it, even though I slightly under-baked it. Not too sweet, nice chewy texture from the whole wheat flour and wheat germ. Lots of banana, easy to make. Good with butter, cream cheese, peanut butter, or alone. I think we have a strong contender! It would be perfect if DD15 liked it - she wanted it a bit sweeter. She and I are the only ones that eat it.

I got some Asian pears and Macoun apples to try at the Sunday grower market. Also got the usual eggs, three bunches of carrots, a white eggplant, a celeriac, the season's last basil, and another butternut squash. Got a pound bag of homegrown kidney beans from the Reigel family stand - the first time I have seen dried beans at a market stand. All that is for immediate use, not preserving.

The four of us discussed a Family Eating Plan to develop our eating-from-storage skills. We'll see how that goes when we start "walking the talk."

Mom stopped by last night, and I fed her homemade soup, toast with some of the new plum jam, and an Asian pear. I gave her a ripe Bartlett pear to take home for her oatmeal in the morning. It's kind of like feeding a stray cat. Eventually, she will learn to come here for food, and then stay for the winter. LOL

Stored: Time to start working on buying meat. We tend to eat chicken, turkey, and pork. We like various sausages, bacon, and a little scrapple. Our beef tends to be the occasional pot roast and some burgers. We seldom eat steak, since we can't afford anything worth eating. I buy cheap beef cuts like shin to make stock. I'll have to look for some meatloaf mix (beef, pork, and lamb). The holidays are coming up, so I expect to see some good sales. This is also butchering season, so there should be a lot of choice out there. I hope to find a good deal on shrimp, and some fish for DD15 and I. The only finfish that DH eats is albacore tuna, and I have a can/week laid in for him (more would be a mercury risk).

Shopped at the Fairgrounds Market with an eye to freezing recipe-sized meat portions. Bought 2 pieces of smoked ham end, a big smoked ham shank, and a pound of smoked sausage. Can you tell I like me some smoked pork in my bean soup? This market has an on-site smoker that is hard to resist. I also got 3 kinds of fresh sausage, 18 big chicken thighs bagged in sixes for soup, a few beef short ribs, and some turkey thighs. That's about 8 weeks of soup and sauce meat.

Went to a farm stand and bought giant heads of broccoli and cauliflower, three large butternut squash, two other winter squash, about 8 large sweet potatoes, and a couple pounds of green beans.

DH bought huge bottles of 750 ibuprofen and 500 multi-vitamins at BJs. I also sent him to get a case of canned chicken noodle soup for DD12, 6 jugs of laundry detergent, 3 canisters of grated parmesan cheese, two 10-gallon totes to make a worm farm, and a 32-gal trash barrel for storing clothing. I have been under-using him as a shopper - he is very efficient at shopping from a list, not straying off into impulse buying or letting the kids wheedle things out of him.

Made another trip to the BRL grocery liquidator. Got another 48 double rolls of toilet paper for less than $20. I want to start using some cloth wipes, but we just aren't there yet. Some of my other good deals: 40-oz cans of black beans for .49, bags of Nestle chocolate chips for .65, 3-oz of whole allspice for under $2, Barilla whole grain spaghetti for .50/box. Weird stuff: a food service-sized bag of country gravy mix that makes a whole gallon of gravy with just hot water, for $1.49 - I'll re-portion that. Also bought: granola bars, chai tea mix, boxed whole grain cereal (like Total) for the people that won't eat oatmeal like I do, band-aides, canned soup, baking chocolate, ramen, pectin, pasta.

Scored 30# of Gold Medal stoneground whole wheat flour for .75 per 5-lb bag, and it wasn't expired yet. Popped it right into the freezer to make sure it is free of bugs. I love my freezer so much!

We now have enough canned tomato products to make 24 meals worth of pasta sauce, with the average large can costing less than 50 cents. I can make a pasta dinner for four, with garlic bread, for under $1.50 - at that rate, I can afford to put meat in that sauce. :-)

Now, I mostly watching for deals on dry milk, powdered eggs, canned tuna, and butter.

Prepped: Got a big basket at the Goodwill, to use for squash storage. Three large skeins of rusty-red yarn at the Salvation Army store, along with a couple of canning jars.

Did well at the yard sales last weekend, including a wrought iron pot rack, a new Foodsaver for only $10, and a nice set of flannel sheets.

Managed: Stored the squash and sweet potatoes in the cellar, in big baskets I got at the Goodwill. Laid out the 20# of potatoes in one layer on newspaper in a big shallow oak drawer I use for drying things. Rotated the oats and rice out of the freezer after 3 days, and most of the flour into it. Sorted things left in the small freezer over the fridge, and gave it a good scrubbing.

Did more thinking about how manage to manage our water needs. Sticking with the slow recycled milk jug storage for now: 8 gallons stored. Our monthly water bill dropped from $98 to $77 last month. Not sure if that is just seasonal, or because we are being more careful.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Helped out at the church's fall work day, and trash-picked the discard pile. Got a quarter sheet of nice thin plywood, and two large pieces of foil-backed insulation that I can use to seal off the back cellar door. Also took a discarded play kitchen and put it out at our curb - it was adopted to a new home in less than an hour.

Replaced the power strip in the kitchen with one that has a shut-off switch, so we can turn off all the power-vampire chargers. Harbor Freight has a sale on 4-outlet surge protectors for $2.99.

I have been using a lot of gasoline on these wild stock-up trips. Happily, gas fell to $2.99/gal this week. I know it won't stay there, but I'm glad it fell while I have to use it. Once I get the basic stock-up done, I will develop a more moderate pattern of driving for food. I can say that I have not wasted the miles - I always come back with a loaded car.

Bought $8.58 worth of red wiggler worms at Petsmart (about 100 worms). They sell them for lizard food. I have not been able to find them at bait stores, and I didn't want to spend shipping money online. I will just start slowly until they reproduce. I hope to have worm composting news and photos blogged later this week. DH is a little squicked by the worm containers in the fridge.

Local/Family: All those pluots I bought? I gave a whole 28# box away in bagfuls to neighbors and friends. One had given me iris plants, and another gave me a big bag of cookies - "seconds" from the Pepperidge Farm factory where her husband works. One bag to a lady across the street that just always waves at me.

A woman at church has a family cow that produces more milk than they drink. We might talk about setting up a very small cow share. I am doing some research about how to set that up.

Most of the talk at the church work day was talking about food and recipes. It's time to start some kind of food group there. Part of me wants to share all this local food knowledge I'm gathering, but part of me doesn't want so many people to know I store food. And I am not sure I want everyone competing with my foraging. I am sure that's part of what's wrong with the world - we fear that someone will take our stuff, so we don't collaborate. My blog is pretty anonymous - my church is not.

DH has asked the girls and I not to tell people we store food, because he also envisions people knocking and asking. There would need to be a big pay-off for him to change his mind, not just the warm fuzziness of helping other people prepare. Maybe a co-op buying would do it. Bulk buying is not working with the Neighbor Club - everyone has different cash-flow patterns, and few of them use what I would buy. Some depend on food stamps, some get paychecks.

Learned: Researched a bunch of things: cowshare management, bokashi buckets, worm farms, black walnut harvesting, and the many things to make out of too-many-plums.

Library: Found copy of the Audubon Society's Eastern Forests guide for 99 cents at the Goodwill. Nice bark and leaf ID photos for trees. Ordered McMahon's American Gardener, a reproduction of a 19th-century garden guide, at the recommendation of a listmate from one of my discussion groups.