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.

Winter Thoughts for Independence Beginners

We didn't have all these jars in April. We didn't even have that
cupboard. Or the homegrown onions in the fruit basket.

Judy over at My Freezer is Full was on Week 3 of the Independence Days Challenge, and felt a little unproductive. I've been doing that challenge for something like 8 months, and boy, does that sound familiar!

She felt better once the Holiday Spirit took hold a bit. I feel better, too, after having the funeral of an old friend put me in a funk for a few days. But I got to thinking about how it would be to start this Challenge in the winter. So, I am directing this post to anyone that is just getting started.

I started the Challenge in April, and Sharon recently encouraged newer readers to join in, to get more folks to prepare for the bumpy economic times ahead for many of us. I think it is harder to do this "independence stuff" around the holidays, especially if you just started tracking it. It would be easy to feel discouraged. I found it much easier to get started in April, when local lettuce was appearing in markets, nurseries were setting out veggie plants, and the stores were stocked with seeds and canning jars. On the other hand, I very much felt the pressure to learn to can, and to store bulk food, and to expand my garden, and to transition to new energy use patterns. That's just crazy-making.

After 8 months, I am not an expert about anything. But we have made good progress, and I had a few very energetic months. I am still a beginner in my first year, and I know what that feels like, which might not be the case for someone that is a 5th-generation farmer and canner.

I have begun to wrap my head around food storage ideas - the annual cycle, the establishment of new routines, the re-organizing of the kitchen and pantry. I've found a lot of recipes that work for us, and found local sources of much of what we buy. We are working on a pattern of reasonable eating from stored food. We've made a lot of changes, as a family.

Just the other day, my DH was going out to run errands and I gave him a list of things to buy on sale. He looked at the list and raised his eyebrows, "Frozen orange juice? Really?" Puzzled, I said, "Yeah, it's good in marinades and other recipes. Why?" "Oh, I just thought you might be growing orange trees and squeezing them yourself, instead of using something as convenient as frozen concentrate!" We all laughed - even the kids got the joke. Notice, we have all come to expect that we will examine almost everything we buy, eat, and do, to see if it still makes sense from our new perspective.

But in the beginning, it all seemed so urgent, and there was so much to learn that I felt like I was not finishing any one task. It was overwhelming. You simply cannot do everything you want, not all at once. I still can't seem to bake bread that replaces all of our purchased bread. But instead of commercial brands, we now buy bread from an Amish family at the market and from local bakeries, instead of brand-name bread at supermarkets. DD12, who once thought she wanted to bake bread, now doesn't, and has a lot of trouble adjusting to the new bread regime. But that's OK for now. Not every one will adjust at the same pace.

DD12 responding to changes in our family food habits.
We call this her "angry guinea pig" look. She is normally cuter.
(She edited the photo using the tools at Picknik.)

We still eat some prepared food, and we don't have a local source for unprocessed milk, yet. We still buy too much industrial food, because local organic is often expensive and hard to find. We even eat fast food once in a while. But, we eat more local non-industrial food, make more of our own from scratch, buy less plastic packaging, and use less energy than we did 8 months ago.

What counts is that we got started on something, and are methodically taking steps in a new direction. You may change directions once in a while, but if you keep moving, you can't help but make progress. It's hard to not to compare yourself to other people, but don't. Compare yourself to who you were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. I guarantee you will feel good about the progress.

The whole thing is about taking baby steps, one day at time. Figuring out how it will work for your own family. Whether you are involved in Riot4Austerity, a garden project, a local food challenge, retrofitting your house, or reducing your plastic output - it's all about breaking things down into small steps and making small changes your family can handle. None of the popular bloggers were where they are now, in the beginning. Fake Plastic Fish, a blog about reducing plastic waste, has been doing it for over 2 years. Over at 'Safely Gathered In,' they blog about Mormon/LDS food storage practices encouraged by church leadership. They live in a culture where food storage is expected and homes are built for it - but a recent post talked about low-income families saving rice by the handful. Even Sharon might seem like she has always been living the life she has today, but she simply started sooner than most of us. Tiny changes add up. You don't go from Chicken McNuggets to raising your own chickens overnight.

Expect to hit walls and enjoy turning points. I was very frustrated a few weeks into the Challenge. DH was not completely on board, and he was the major breadwinner. I made some headway with him by talking about buying bulk to save money, and by cooking tasty meals. Everyone likes to save money and eat well. It took a conversation with one of his family members - who wants to start keeping chickens - for him to have a real change of attitude. Hmm, maybe I wasn't such a nutty doomer building a basement bunker, after all. He agreed to buy a freezer and allocate $1000 to buying a 3-month supply of food. I was ready - I had been biding my time by looking for local sources of cheap food. Now, with the economy clearly in big trouble, he is fully on board, even if he does not think it will get as bad as I think it might. He even reads Sharon's blog, even if he doesn't always agree with her.

After I started seriously storing food, I hit several walls. One turning point for me was the realization that I had to completely re-organize my kitchen and cellar pantry to accommodate new cooking styles, new food preparation processes, and the transfer of smaller amounts of food for immediate use from my bulk stores. My kitchen had become a confusing mess. I emptied and re-organized all my cabinets, and added a lot more shelving, bins, and buckets to my cellar. I no longer needed cupboard space for prepared food, but I needed a lot more room for seasonings and the raw materials of cooking. Consider flour alone - I now use four kinds regularly: bread flour, white whole wheat, unbleached all-purpose, and local spelt. Plus, I have oatmeal, flaxseed, and wheat germ I add to things. I used to have just one flour canister.

And the labeling! You don't need to label when everything comes in a package. But when everything is in a glass jar, and the house has multiple cooks, you have to make sure no one confuses salt with sugar, and that anyone can find the chicken thighs in the freezer. I now have a little bucket with label paper, packing tape, markers and dedicated scissors, so I can label at will. (Do scissors "walk off" in your house, too?)

Another turning point came from reading Morman food storage blogs. They have a recommended minimum structure for storage: 72-hour emergency kits (which we call "bug-out bags"), 3-months of family food storage, and one-year of stored bulk staples like rice, wheat, and oats. For some reason, I suddenly felt like I understood better what I needed to buy for storage. I had been just buying a lot of whatever I found on sale. Once I had my 3-month supply, I just replace what we use, and then buy a big bag of one of the staples for longer-term storage. I can see that the next leap I want to take (storing 6 months of food) will require me to do more about air-tight storage than I do now. Lesson: You don't have to mimic the Mormons, but you need a structure and plan for your buying and storing.

At first, it seemed like I was reading a lot of conflicting advice from various sources. What to eat, how to cook, how to heat my house, how panicked I should be, whether I should plan on being able to send my kids to college - on and on. Many years ago, when I was in Al-Anon meetings after I left my alcoholic ex, they had a saying, "Take what you need, and leave the rest." It's been a useful philosophy ever since. I may not be a Mormon, but I can still admire their community systems and supports. I may not live in a refugee camp, but I can learn how they produce safe drinking water. I'm not a vegetarian, but I have gotten a lot of great frugal recipes from vegetarian sources. I am not stocking ammo and living in a bunker, but I can think about who I want in my "community" when there are challenges to face. Lesson: Don't ignore sources of info that don't completely jive with your worldview. Cherry-pick the stuff you can use, and plug it into the structure of your own plan.

If you are starting a food storage challenge now, keep in mind is that this is winter. I am already feeling a definite annual cycle in food storage. Spring is about planting, and being creative with the last of the winter food stores. Summer and fall is building your stores through preserving and canning as different crops become locally seasonal (read: cheap in bulk). Winter's focus is on cooking out of storage, managing your stores, taking advantage of sales on spices and staples at stores, and resting.

When nature rests and recharges for the next growing season, so I think it is important for me to do the same. I am not trying to store food at the same pace I was this summer. I am paying more attention to establishing family patterns, reading more, doing more relationship-building in my food community, planning for the next growing season. Sometimes I read a news article that makes me feel anxious, and I want to run out and get more food. Right now! But I try to resist the urge to buy out of season and break our budget.

Don't forget that the accumulation of knowledge - whether through research, taking classes, talking to people, reading books, or as lessons learned the hard way - all counts. In fact, since you've started in the winter, you have the luxury of working on the knowledge end of things without the spring and summer pressures of planting, harvesting, and preserving. I am planning to go to my state's Farm Show, a state Sustainable Agriculture conference, and start a food discussion group at my church.

I don't feel the depth of winter at the same level as someone that suffers from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Some people think that SAD maybe an adaptation to winter, a natural urge to sleep away the dark days. But I have never liked winter in the Northeast US. It means shoveling, heating bills, dry skin. My joints ache, and I have a strong fear falling on icy pavement and getting hurt. The new bifocals I got this summer don't help at all - they make my vision blurry at the edges. My thyroid problem makes me more sensitive to cold. Seriously, I would stay indoors all winter, if I could, only going outside if the temperature was over 40F. I'd be reading, writing, cooking, sewing, taking online classes, watching movies, planning my gardening year, working on scrapbooks and art projects. I'd need some kind of indoor gym and room to do tai chi. I really envy all the bloggers that are posting about wood stoves, as I huddle around my oil-filled radiator. I used to dream of being a snow bird - leaving the Northeast for some temperate place in December and coming back at the end of March. I have books about retiring to Belize.

But the economic future makes this region look better to me, now. Whether climate change makes my region a little colder or a little hotter, both are workable. Water is good here. We are in the middle of a rail, road, and water nexuus. My particular town is surrounded by rich farmland full of frugal, practical Pennsylvania German farmers and Hispanic immigrants with good, simple food traditions. Instead of wishing I was someplace else, I'd better start thinking of winter as a welcome break from frantic food storage. I better switch to dreams of wood stoves, instead of tropical beaches. Most of the Independence Challenge seems to be in my head, not my pantry.

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?

What's in YOUR fridge?

Meadowlark posted pix of her fridge, so of course, I had to post mine, too. Come on, everybody can play! If you post yours, put the link in the comments. No fair cleaning it first! I'd love to see a post from someone with a non-traditional cold storage, like a spring house or ice box.

I can't back up far enough in my small kitchen to take a photo of the whole thing at once so I'll do bits and pieces. The fridge is somewhat empty. I am actually cooking stuff right now to put in there, so I made room for yogurt, apple butter, brewed ice tea, and chicken stock.

The top shelf is jars of pickles and jam, milk, bags of spelt and WW flour, and ricotta cheese stockpiled back in the corner. There is a bottle of red cooking wine hiding out behind the chocolate syrup. A pile of spinach, cabbage, and parsley, crowned by a takeout box of leftover homefries. Middle shelf has a barely-visible basket of tortillas and cheese for DD12 to make pizza, and then a lot of stuff in containers: carrots for munching, bacon fat, sour cream, leftover potato soup, cooked sweet potato, miso, lard, yogurt, lebne, etc. Oh, let's not forget the not-quite-rotten bananas I keep saying I am baking into bread. The bottom (dirty) shelf is currently dominated by leeks, a bowl of over-ripe pears, and thawing chicken, but I just made room for a large container of chicken stock to congeal overnight, so I can skim it. DD12's yogurt is down there - she won't eat my homemade, yet.


I am SO happy I recently cleaned these drawers. The left one is the egg and pork-product drawer. I don't like the foam egg cartons, but they get recycled constantly to my organic egg lady. I see DD12's organic hot dogs, kielbasi, a package of cheddar, and my just-arrived Bacon of the Month package. The drawer on the right is just carrots, apples, and celery. I stopped putting leafy greens down there - I forget them and they liquefy in unappetizing ways. Note the lovely vintage 70's harvest gold vinyl flooring - Mmmmm!

Fridge and freezer doors. The top freezer door shelf guardrail is missing, so we don't use it for much beyond freezer packs. On the door are bags of odds and ends like frozen lemon juice cubes and pesto lumps. The fridge door is butter and cream cheese, yeast in the "garage," mayo and Miracle Whip (no judging!), assorted jam, relish and mustard, leftover partial bags of chocolate chips, pickle jars, and a bunch of seldom-used dressing bottles on the bottom. Why can't I throw those away? Hopefully, you can't see the mold in the door gasket, which I can't ever seem to scrub out completely.


You would never know I organized this freezer about 2 weeks ago. People just *root* in here. Visible are DD12's frozen yogurts, back-up butter, a strip of slab bacon, bags of broccoli, beans, and peaches. The box holds things that fall out, like quart bags of stock and rolls of ground turkey. There is a 3-lb bag of shrimp I intend to portion into pounds, a beef bone for stock, DH's "hidden" cookie stash, and the ice cream maker freezer-thingee. I think the blue bag in the bag corner with the clothespin is corn niblets. The string at the top is attached to a glowstick that DD12 is trying to cryosave from Halloween.

The freezer in the basement is new, so it's cleaner, but no better organized. I filled it so fast that I lost track of what is in there. Inventory is an up-coming project. Visible on top: pork chili, ham-n-bean soup, blueberries, tortellini, pork chops, bacon. Pork was the last thing I bought, so all the chicken is on the bottom, another reason I need to re-organize. The basket has assorted sausage and brats.

So... what's in your fridge?

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.

Independence Challenge - Week 22

My preciousssss....

I got my freezer Tuesday! DD15 and I picked it up at Sears, and then I carefully drove down the unpaved back alley. DH and DD15 wrestled it out of the Cherokee, through the yard, and out of its box. That was the easy part.

I opened the cellar doors for the first time in 5 years, and had to do a lot of spiderweb clearing in order for either DD15 or DH to agree to go further. Getting it the last few feet down the cellar stairs and through the door required removing some door trim and a little bit of knuckle skin. The ceiling is very low and DH whacked his poor head several times. But we saved the $65 delivery charge.

Came down these steps and through a low, narrow door we never use.

I let it sit overnight to settle the coolant, and plugged it in this morning. I've put in all my oats and rice to freeze any bug eggs they might be harboring, and I will do all the flour next. There is lots of meat on sale right now, and the holidays will bring sales on butter, nuts, and spices. I need to do some research on how I can stock up on cheese. Oooo, I am so excited.

Planted: Frost is on the horizon, so I took more cuttings to root over the winter: coleus, begonias, false indigo, salvia.

Harvested: Only some peppers, cabbage and broccoli are left and not quite ready. Not much harvesting will happen from now on, aside from the winter-hardy thyme I use in making stock. I still visit farmers and markets for local produce.

Preserved: Tried drying a few sweet peppers on a tray, but they got moldy. Better use the dehydrator next time. I would help if I stopped piling things on top of it.

Bought 10 pounds of Gala apples, part to dry and part to try storing in the basement. I plan to get some other varieties to try storing. I want to buy local, but the prices are 3x the supermarket price for Washington State apples. Even u-pick costs more. I need the volume right now. I've been trying to accumulate 10-15# of dried fruit, but the kids don't like raisins much. I have raisins, prunes, apricots, currants, and craisins. I need to flesh that out with dried bananas and apples.

Cooked: Shrimp curry and some pasta dishes came completely from storage. All of our baking does, too. We still need to shop for meat, eggs, and dairy, but more meals are coming from storage. Need to work harder on having "stuff" in the fridge for casual eating, without someone needing to cook a whole meal. Reheatables, and things for sandwiches and munching.

Not quite cooking, but we used some gourds to make Gourd Birds with black-eyed peas for eyes. I might put some skewer legs on them and put a few out front.


Stored: Starting to store tap water in recycled milk jugs. Six gallons, so far (plus the 45 gallons always in the water heater). I am planning to salvage jugs at church. They empty a few jugs of tea or punch every week at coffee hour. DD15 will also bring home the ones she empties and washes at her coffee shop job.

I studied the grocery store ads carefully, and shopped the sales from a list on Friday. Not a lot of extra driving. I mostly avoided impulse buying - just a bag of grapes, a big Rubbermaid canister for bread flour, a bag of my fav Goya soup bean mix, and a can of white hominy to try.

Redner's: whole chickens .68/lb, 2lb blocks of cheddar for 2.98/lb, Italian sausage for 2.18, and a pkg of beef shin to make stock. We ate some stuff from the little freezer, so I had room to cram in the chickens and meat.

Giant: 6 bags of pot pie noodles, 6 boxes of cake mix for doctoring up, 2 bottles of Hershey's syrup, 10# of unbleached flour, 4 boxes of Red Zinger tea (triple coupons), 6 jars of peanut butter, 10# apples, 2 quarts shampoo and 4 of conditioner, 4 boxes of jar lids.

Save-a-Lot: 5lb bags of white potatoes for $1, along with bananas at 3#/$1. Twenty pounds of taters for $4 is a good price to see how long they last in my cellar. Also got 6 cans of pineapple, bleach, band-aids, dandruff shampoo, garlic, 4# of brown sugar.

Found 2 large canisters of Sunmaid raisins for $5, at Rite-Aid. Drug store food is usually over-priced, but when they want to move old stock, they really mark it down. I had to go to Wal-mart to pick up a $4 Rx, so I snagged some ibuprofen, more allergy meds, and some toothbrushes.

Prepped: Installed bamboo pole to dry clothes, and bought more plastic hangers. Washed BR windows to prepare for bubble wrap and insulating curtains later this month. Heart-breakingly, the bamboo pole did not hold up under use. Back to the drawing board. I am going to try huge drywall screws right into joists.

This week's rummage sale loot included a roasting rack, 2 pair of gloves, three glass measuring cups, some sweaters for DD15, a few books. I've told each kid to expect the winter to be long and cold. They need to start doing their own rummaging for warm clothes at sales. Sweatshirts, bathrobes, socks and gloves, etc. Socks are often only a dime at sales - people think that "used" socks are icky, but I often find like-new socks for almost nothing. If nothing else, they make good dust cloths.

Got two unappealing paintings via Freecycle, so we can reuse the canvas. My kids are both good artists, and canvas is expensive. A few months ago, I was talking to an artist that went to the local Disney store when they had a going-out-of-business sale. He bought a huge number of printed canvas Disney poster for $1 each, to reuse the canvas. I have been keeping that in mind ever since.

Managed: Continued to re-organize the kitchen, now that so much food moved downstairs. Put away lots of pots, and jarred up the nuts and dried fruit. Still no good place for the stack of cast iron. I want a pot rack pretty badly, but I am afraid of damaging the (rental house) acoustic tile ceiling while poking around for a joist, and then being charged for damage when we leave.

I asked about 5-gal buckets at the Giant bakery department. They said they no longer save them for anyone, because it is too hard to manage with 3 shifts of bakery workers that don't communicate well. Apparently there was drama. I don't see how that stopped her from giving the empties immediately on hand to someone standing right in front of her, but it did. I will try some other stores.

Reduced Reused, Recycled: We had already replaced most of our incandescent light bulbs, but not the ones in our ceiling fan fixtures, which require a different shape. We found 5-packs of them at BJ's for $15 each. Pretty expensive for 10 light bulbs, when I can buy 40-watt chandelier bulbs for $2/6-pack. I hope to make up the difference in fewer bulbs and less energy used. We used to have to replace the bulbs pretty frequently, although we don't use those lights very often. The three fans (BR, LR, and kitchen) are in rooms that all have other light sources. I only turn them on to clean, when I want to see all the dirt. (No one wants to see it otherwise!) The new bulbs have a 2 year warranty, so I taped the receipt to the empty package and stashed it.

-->> Isn't it ironic that CFL bulbs come in huge hard plastic packages that cannot be recycled, and the old-fashioned bulbs come in recyclable paper and cardboard?

Got some free pallets from the playground construction project up the street. I am going to see what else I can scavenge. Posted a curb-alert to Freecycle so other people can get pallets. It so pays to have a sturdy teenager to haul your pallets down the block.

Local/Family: Getting ready to start a major effort at my Mom's house. I want to pack up the front and back porches, the living room, the kitchen and the hall. I hope to put a lot of it in the dining room, in numbered inventoried stacks of boxes, donating the tired old furniture. My goals are to make the outside of the house look tidy and to make room for a plumber to fix her pipes and fixtures. All of her bath/kitchen fixtures and hot water heater need replacing, along with the kitchen counter top. Long-dead washer and dryer need to be removed.

I dread it. There is so much stuff, and each item has emotional significance. Each piece of paper represents something she meant to do. It's like ripping off band-aid after band-aid. Getting rid of some moldering item she saved for 15 years represents a failure to keep something from the landfill, a failure to carry out a plan, and an acknowledgment that she has simply run out of time. I am getting professional support for her, but it will still be very upsetting. There is no choice - no matter how the future pans out for her, she needs to be able to tap the value of her house in order to live.

Learned: Signed up for a free self-study course online, about canning, through the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. I want to start pressure canning soup and other non-acid food, and I want to make sure not to poison us all.

Library: Found Tarot Made Easy at a sale. Thought it might be fun over the winter. We have a tarot deck in a drawer somewhere.

Independence Challenge - Week 21

My new cellar shelving and bins.

This was a big stock-up week for us. Last weekend, we went to Washington DC for a family party. The party itself was very lovely and delicious, but the most significant thing for me was that DH's family patriarch started a discussion about keeping chickens in his urban Philly backyard. Apparently he has also been stocking up. That got me massive street cred with DH - if his godfather is doing it, I no longer look like a survivalist whacko. :-)

So, DH agreed that we should spend some of our savings on 3 months of stored food. Instead of buying bits and pieces from our regular food budget, I now have a stock-up budget, and funding to purchase a freezer. I feel so much better - like when you are in labor and they finally say you can start pushing; the hard work is not over, but you are finally doing something besides moaning and complaining.

Planted: Brought some herbs indoors to start getting used to being indoors: fine-leaf basil, rosemary, two kinds of sage, garlic chives. I put a plastic tray on top of a filing cabinet in one of our only two south-facing windows. Took some coleus cuttings to root over the winter. Working up another order of seeds for spring.

Harvested: Cherry tomatoes, mint. Cut some grass to dry for mulching, but got rained out of the rest of my grass harvesting plan.

Preserved: Roasted tomatoes, peppers, basil, and onions as a sauce base for freezing. Dried yet more mint.

This loaf from the old machine was like a brick doorstop. The baking bucket didn't stay locked in.

Cooked: The newer bread machine produced a nice loaf, so I think we are finding our groove with that. I'm having trouble keeping up with yogurt-making. Every time I think of making it, the milk is almost out. Too much going on lately. Made a new cauliflower soup, and found I had everything I needed on hand.

Stored: I focused on dry goods this week, filling out the supplies I already had. Next week, expect to see veggies for cellaring, and after the freezer arrives there will be meat, lard, butter, and whole wheat flour.

A lot of people order bulk food online, but I've heard a lot of stories about slow delivery, so I decided to shop locally for now. I want to establish local sources for our food. I went to a warehouse grocery, a wholesale club, and an independent grocer with a can sale, so far. I still have to visit a Mennonite bulk store, the grocery liquidator, and a flour mill (pastry flour). I do plan to order powdered eggs and high-quality dry milk online. Bought this week:

Cases: evaporated milk, corn, refried beans, canola oil, crushed tomatoes, whole grain pasta, macaroni, Spaghetti-O's (DD11's request), paper towels (DH's request)

Bulk: 20# bread flour, 15# rolled oats, 10# red lentils, 5# cornmeal, 10# split peas, 30# basmati rice, 25# sugar, 4# brown sugar, 6# honey, olive oil, 16# of cat food

Essentials: a brick of yeast, cider vinegar, some spices, hot chocolate mix, bouillon cubes, dried apricots, sunflower seeds, walnuts, pistachios

Prepared: Ordered a 7.2 cubic foot freezer from Sears, on sale for $195. I did extensive checking, and they had best price per cubic foot. But they were sold out at that store, and there were none in the regional distribution center, either, so it is being shipped from another region for Oct 7 delivery. That seems ominous, Sears selling out of freezers in the Northeast.

We got the equipment for making hard cider. Did some research on an email list, and found a home-brew shop in our area: Universal Carbonics, at 614 Gregg Ave (turn back Noble St from Lancaster Ave), where the Reading Draft Birch Beer factory is located. Martin Radovanyi is the proprietor and is very knowledgeable. He helped me pick out a 6 Gal fermenting bucket, airlock, siphon, tubing, and yeast - came to less than $30 and all is reusable. We still need a large glass carboy to rack the cider ($20-40), some bottles (recycled), and a capper ($13). Hard cider is not exactly an essential, but it will be fun, and tasting will be a good excuse to have a party.

Jar, coffee press, and mill from church sale.

Bought a better bread machine at Goodwill for $5, along with some winter fiction. Got another 27 canning jars via Craigslist, mostly quarts. Went to a good church sale and found books, games, a big glass jar, some greeting cards, 18 canning jars, and a shelving unit. DD15 bought a French coffee press, a small electric coffee mill (for spice grinding), and a sewing machine for $10. I am researching the Singer model # to find the right bobbins.

Managed: Cleaned and reorganized the cellar. The kids were an enormous help with unloading the car, hauling stuff to the basement, helping to assemble the shelves, and making labels for the bins.

Couldn't find the shop-vac hose, so I had to buy a new one ($18). Found a spot where there was likely a freezer belonging to the previous tenant. There is a raised concrete slab of the right size, and a heavy-duty electrical outlet. We think the new freezer will just fit down the cellar stairs.

The niche behind the shelves will be for appliance boxes we are saving for moving.

Found a large set of wood utility shelves at that church rummage for $20, and they just fit in our low headroom cellar, in front of the furnace we no longer use. Just what I needed! And Boscov's had a sale on 20-gal lidded storage totes for $3.97. I got 8, and may go back for more. I don't think you can have too many bins. I sorted our food reserves: cans and jars on the shelves, boxes and bags into the bins. Put a temporary shelf on top of the furnace intake, since we are not using it. I have four old milk crates that hold 6 gallons each, so they will store 24 gallons of water in gallon jugs. People say the jugs may leak over time, but the cellar has a sump pump, and we will try to get in the habit of rotating them. I'll look for other water storage containers.

Sorted my dry beans to figure out what else to buy. I have enough split peas, lentils, rice, and pintos. Probably need another 20 pounds of other types, like garbanzos, cannellini, black beans, and soup bean mix.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Gave away all our old Christmas lights via Freecycle. We will get a few strings of LED lights. Researched ways to reuse more of our empty food containers.

Doesn't this deli container already look like a seed-starter?

Local/Family: The Neighbor Club is hard to get going. People have different schedules, and are not used to asking each other for help. We also never all have money at the same time, to buy things together. One neighbor was carless and walked to a store a few miles away with a limping push cart. I scolded her for not telling me she needed a ride. I am going to have to figure out how to check in more routinely, to watch for opportunities to collaborate.

I did give a pan of warm apple bread pudding to the pregnant neighbor before we went to DC. I had baked it for breakfast and we didn't have time to eat it. I plan to bake on Monday. Our surly male neighbor just had hip replacement, and I will see if some banana bread will sweeten his disposition. Newsflash: Pregnant Neighbor had her baby Saturday night, a healthy 8.5 pound boy. Better bake some cookies for her other three kids.

Learning: I am signing up for gardening classes given by the Berks Master Gardeners at the GoggleWorks art center. I am not a beginner, but 9 hours with the attention of a Master Gardener is not a bad deal for $25. The three Tuesday night sessions that don't conflict with soccer practice. These classes are poorly advertised. If I hadn't caught the newspaper article in my feedreader, I would not have known. And I am looking for these things. It wasn't included in the regular Cooperative Extension packet, or in the GoggleWorks mailings. I am going to mention that to the people that teach the classes, and make some suggestions

Library: I ordered 4 new books: Coleman's Four Season Harvest, Ashworth's Seed to Seed, Bubel's Root Cellaring, and Katz' Wild Fermentation. I've wanted these, and the used price is almost the same as new - I saved money buy ordering new at a discount and getting free shipping from Amazon.

At the Goodwill, I found a cute little 1955 cookbook, Potluck Cookery, that has a lot of recipes for leftovers. The church sale had some interesting titles: The Cake Mix Doctor, American Wholefoods Cuisine (1983), and Cooking from the Cupboard. Gotta love a 25-cent book.

To my digital library, I added Pat Meadows' beginning vegetable garden plan. She developed it for her daughter (who happens to live in my 6B frost zone), but it has good advice for any new gardener. Pat's site has lots of other good info, and she runs a number of email lists for no-nonsense gardening and cooking.

Independence Challenge - Week 19

An awful lot of gourds from one volunteer vine.

Went to Baltimore this past weekend, to one of my daughter's regional youth meetings the weekend of the 13th-14th, so my Independence post timing will be wacky. This Week 19 post is for last week.

Planted: Nothing. Too busy with other stuff, and too confused about when first frost will happen. It was down in the 40's at night last week, and this weekend it hit 90.

Missing pumpkin on August 19th, not yet orange.

Harvested: Peppers, tomatoes, gourds. Someone stole my bigpumpkin at the back fence. It was just barely all-the-way orange. Next time, I'm carving a symbol on the bottom of the baby pumpkin, so it grows in with scar tissue, and I can identify a stolen pumpkin I find on someone else's porch.

Preserved: Attempted to dehydrate banana chips, which went oh-so-badly. Saved seeds from Brandywine tomatoes, black-eyed peas, Siberian Iris, bearded iris, false indigo, and an Asian tiger melon from the market.

Cooked: I borrowed an idle bread machine from Neighbor M - the "rent" will be paid in cinnamon-raisin bread. Turns out I have a manual for it, from a similar Welbilt machine I used to have. DD11 and I immediately made a loaf of white bread to get started. DH sounded interested in trying it out. Worked great, and she popped in a second loaf to give Neighbor M the next day. It really was fast to throw the stuff in the machine. There should be no reason we can't bake every day.

Found a great resource: The King Arthur flour website has a chart that lists the weight of common baking ingredients, so you can measure accurately.

We are making an effort to cook more collaboratively. DH made an herb-crusted pork roast, DD15 made cheesy-pesto penne, and DD11 made bread in the bread machine. I made a spiced peach sauce/butter that was good on the bread. Nothing was really new, but the meal came together easily, even in our teeny kitchen. It helped that bread gets started 3 hours in advance.

Stored: 5 lb cornmeal mix, 10 lb White Lily pastry flour (for biscuits), 5 lbs of whole grain pasta, 24 rolls toilet paper, Grey Poupon mustard, Miracle Whip (don't judge me!), fennel seeds (to make sausage), and marshmellows. All this stuff came from the BRL grocery liquidator in Blandon, and cost less than $20.

We joined the local BJ's Wholesale Club ($45/yr) and I wrote down a lot of prices to compare to other sources of shipped and local bulk goods. The selection is limited, and not everything is cheaper than a good grocery store sale, once you figure out the comparison between the huge wholesale size and regular store quantities. If you buy name brands, this is great deal. But we buy a lot of generics, so I will have to watch closely. I do like their chewy store-baked bagels, 9 large for $3.49 - I will get bunch when we have a freezer. They also have good prices on car batteries and tires.

Prepped/Managed: Following up on my September grain storage goal, I posted a lot of questions to my food storage lists, asking what proportions of grains to store, how to manage buckets, and what kind of equipment I might want to acquire.

I decided to continue using the big Rubbermaid lidded bins under my tables for short-term storage - a pantry. I will store bulk grain, beans, legumes, sugar, and salt in 5-gallon buckets with oxygen absorbers in the basement, on pallets. Here is the projected storage list for 3 months:

50 pounds of soft wheat berries (local)
50 pounds of bread flour
30 pounds of pastry flour (local)
20 pounds of spelt flour (local)
50 pounds of rolled oats (maybe local)
50 pounds of rice
20 pounds of whole spelt (local)
30 pounds of cornmeal (local)
50 pounds of dent corn (local)
20 pounds of cane sugar

We won't know for 3 months if that is a good guess for our needs - we just started baking bread. But, if I use 2 cups of flour per day, and there are about 4 cups in a pound of flour, we will go through about 45 pounds in 90 days by baking a daily loaf.

Local/Family: Woo-hoo! I found something that DH wants to do: make hard cider. We hardly ever drink, but when we do go out we tend to order Woodchuck hard cider. The equipment and supplies are cheap, and we can have a tasting party when it's ready. Found a long fascinating article about the history of hard cider in America, and a scanned copy of a 1871 Harper's article about Johnny Appleseed. I've also seen mention of a pear cider called "perry," which sounds delicious.

Had a porch meeting with the Neighbor Club. I made a list of info for us to work on exchanging - cell phones, emergency contact info, things we could use help finding or doing. Neighbor M remarked that her relatives could help find stolen car parts, and one has a port-a-potty biz in New Jersey, if we need any poop. We made a couple of loose plans. Neighbor M and I will try to drive up to a u-pick farm near Fleetwood, and stop at BRL, the grocery liquidator in Blandon. She lent me the bread machine.

Neighbor M wants to make granola. and so do I. Must research recipes and look for deals on bulk ingredients. DD11 wants yogurt and chewy granola bars for breakfast. I bought 3 kinds at the store to compare. I like Trail Mix types, like Nature Valley or Kashi. DD likes Fibre One Oats & Peanut Butter, which lists chicory root extract as its first ingredient. What the heck is that? A fiber additive that is supposed to be full of the soluable fiber inulin. Huh. I woulda thought granola had enough fiber on its own.

Neighbor V is hugely pregnant - 3 weeks to the delivery of her fourth child, and my kids will help entertain hers so she can get some naps. Her husband works at a Pepperidge Farm bakery, and can get bread and other products at cost. We seldom use packaged stuff - croutons, crackers, goldfish crackers, cookies - and we just started baking bread. I think I will get some bread when we have a freezer, as back-up. Cartons of goldfish crackers would be good to give to the church preschool for Sunday snacks. Who can pass on Mint Milano cookies? I'll hide some away for a day when everyone is tired of eating healthy.

Learned: How to get rid of suburban groundhogs. Mom has a den under the decorative boulder in her front yard. They ate all the sweet potatoes - they must go. I learned I can bait a trap with apples, and if I take them more than mile away, they will not find their way back. I don't want to use poison in our yard. I could shoot them - but that's not allowed in the suburbs. (Come on - they ate the sweet potatoes.) I am going to wait for Mom to come home from California. I want someone to keep an eye on the trap once it is set up.

Posted about my banana chip woes on a food preserving list, and got some good advice. I will get back on that horse next week. Did a lot of price-checking on new chest freezers. I was surprised to find that Sears genreally has the best prices, among the big box stores and chains. I will watch some local appliance dealers for sales, to see if anyone beats Sears.

Library: Nothing new, but did some big bookcase reorganization. I have more reference books to shelve. We sorted the homeschooling books into those we will keep for permanent reference, and those that can be donated. I made a pile of some to sell online, but most don't bring enough to make them worth shipping. I will give some to a 2nd grade teacher I know, and see if DD11's 6th grade teacher can use some of the rest, since there is a wide range of reading level in her classroom. We boxed up a lot of fiction that we'd already read, to get back out one day in a bigger house.

Skill building vs. store building

I want to share something from a food storage list that I read, with the permission of the writer. I thought it was very valuable advice.

On the list, I posted about the frustration of trying to build up our food reserves as we simultaneous eat everything I store. I said, "It's awkward and lumpy to change your whole food life," and others chimed in with feelings of burnout. Oregon's Chris Musser responded with this wisdom:

This has been an interesting thread, in part because I've been there/am there and in part because I'm considering launching a small cooking school at home, to help people learn to cook from scratch, bake bread, make ferments, preserve food, etc., and I'm curious to know what challenges people have as they strive to change their way of buying, storing, and preparing food.

While I'm still not satisfied with our food storage situation, I am fairly pleased with where we're at in terms of what we're eating day-to-day. It's taken about three years to get to this point, though, and I know if I'd tried to make all the changes we've made in six months, I'd have driven myself crazy. My advice: slow down and take baby steps. Instead of storing lots of food you aren't prepared to use yet...like wheat when you don't bake bread or own a grain mill...start off by building a skill: add bread baking to your weekly cooking repertoire.

For me, baking bread was the first big step away from the grocery store. Once I had that down, I only need to shop weekly for dairy products. Now I get raw milk through buying club and make our cream cheeses, yogurt, buttermilk, etc., from that...another new skill set I developed. Meat is all in the freezer, bought farm-direct. Eggs I currently get from a friend with backyard chickens, but we just got three pullets a couple weeks ago and should have our own eggs by early next year. I order the rest of our groceries through Azure Standard once a month and am building our food storage that way. Fresh produce is the only thing I buy weekly, and that's at a farmers market or farm stand. Except for picking up cream and a couple hard-to-find items at the co-op twice a month, I haven't stepped into a grocery store in months. Now that I've come to appreciate how nice it is not to grocery shop, cooking from my pantry is more of a reward than a "should." I spend more time in the kitchen, but because I'm often learning something new, practicing a recently acquired technique or refining an old one, I find my kitchen time quite interesting. Going to my pantry is like visiting my own personal grocery store, except it only has food my family likes and no check-out lines, wonky carts, or mad dashes in the rain through crowded parking lots. Glory!

Different methods are going to work at different times of life, too. When I was pregnant with my second, I learned a lot about cooking for the freezer. By the time my son arrived, we had three months' worth of food that could just be popped in the oven or reheated on the stove stored away in our deep freeze. Now, my kids are old enough to give me time to experiment with low-energy food preservation and play around with making fun stuff like ginger beer and kombucha.

Things are not perfect--I have health issues that really wear me down and so there are days when I send my husband out for burritos or pizza, even though we have a house full of food. My point is that learning the skills and developing a kitchen rhythm that works for you and your family most of the time is more important than filling your pantry. In an emergency, you will need those skills as much as you need the food.