Gone For Medical Issues - But Now Back

 

There are times life gets in the way - especially as we get older. I had been not feeling "normal" and was tired, dizzy, headaches, to start, which led to not doing much around here. Cooking and cleaning were total chores. I didn't want to do them, and at times I didn't. I was turning into a couch potato and didn't know why. A fall out of the shower took me to the dr and after a ton of tests, I learned that I had suffered a few strokes, vitamin deficiencies as well as a few other things. After treatment - I'm finally back to normal. I'm cooking and cleaning and doing everything one would expect these days. I'm still not 100% but at least I'm feeling so much better. The dizziness is gone and the tiredness is so much less. 

I have been watching YouTube and saving lots of cooking videos to try. One of my favorite channels to watch is Tales From An Empty Nest. She makes a lot of homemade versions of convenience foods and mixes. Every mix or food I make at home helps save money. I have tried some of her recipes and have been quite pleased with the results. I usually do a single serving first to test and if I like it - I will do a larger batch to put on the shelf. Not only do these save money, but they are also healthier - cutting out some chemical and preservatives that are found in the convenience versions.

I'm looking forward to what I can save with my own versions. I had definitely become lax with meals and my homemade mixes while feeling under the weather. It feels so good to finally experiment with cooking again!

Time to Get Serious

I cannot believe that life has changed so much in the past few years. I look at the world now and I cannot say that I recognize it any more. I imagine that is what my grandmother thought when she was looking at the world when the Great Depression hit. She had 8 children to raise. She was luckier than some, as my grandparents lived on a farm, but still, money and shortages still would have affected them greatly. 

At times, I wish my grandparents and parents were still here. I could definitely use their wise words of wisdom. Yet, I'm also happy they are not here, so they don't have to see the problems the world is facing. They had their trials and hardships and I hope I've paid enough attention to all their stories of those times.

I have to admit, my skills had gotten a bit rusty. The kids grew up and penny-pinching wasn't as necessary, so I got a bit comfortable and didn't mind my pennies as much as I used to. Guess it looks like we'll be going back to that challenge again. I'm not complaining, because I used to really love the challenge of seeing how far my money could stretch. Hubby used to tell everyone that he found someone cheaper than he was and I took that as a great compliment!

All over YouTube, you can find preppers giving their doomsday advice. Some of their videos are downright scary! Should we put things up? Sure - you find something on sale, you buy a few, but ONLY if you used that item. I've seen the lists of things to store and some are really off the wall. If you don't use certain things, don't buy and store it for a time when you think you will need it. Food storage needs to be rotated and used. 

If I find fresh foods like carrots, celery, etc at a great price on sale, I'll buy extra, dehydrate it and put it aside for making my own mixes or for soups, stews, or anything I need to cook awhile that has a water base. I've found times that the grocery store didn't have celery when I needed it, so I turned to the dehydrated jar I had on the shelf. Thank heavens there was some there! I know you can freeze these things, but freezer burn and freezer space can be an issue. Dehydrating is better for me in the long run. I also dehydrate frozen veggies I find on sale. No blanching or prep work - just dump on the racks, rinse and dehydrate. Another way to save money without worrying if you have freezer space!

 I heard people say they couldn't get canning jars or supplies. With dehydrating, you don't need them. Any glass jar that has a lid with a rubber seal (the ones that pop when you open them) will work. For long term storage, you can use a vacuum sealer or oxygen absorbers to give them a decent seal until you are ready to use them.

I have always done this as a way of life - not to prep and not for doomsday. These were the methods I used to save money and get me from sale to sale. I learned to cook from what was on hand and never did a menu when I purchased the items needed for the menu. That's how Mom cooked and I still do it to this day.

I am looking forward to getting down to business again and challenging myself to a tighter budget. Sounds strange as other complain, but challenges keep life interesting!

Pantry Reflections

When it comes to out pantry, I don't stock for doomsday or any great disasters, but instead, I do it for convenience, taste, and knowing what is in the food we eat. I prefer to grow what we need and use, but there are things I can't grow, crop failures, etc. Then I buy from the Farmer's market or from people I know, and sometimes I find great sales at the grocery store that are too irresistible to pass up.

This year was a learning curve for me in many aspects of putting things up. First, there's the issue of age and slowing down. I used to stock up during the canning season - summer and autumn. It was intense and many hours in the kitchen. Notice, I said used to. I followed my mother's example of how and when to can and that model was productive, but exhausting. Now, I work on my pantry all year. Sure, there will be things I won't be able to put up, but many that I can.

One of the things Mom did was freeze and can a LOT. I can't really freeze things because of the lack of freezer space. We have the fridge freezer, and that's it. I've been concentrating more on canning and dehydrating. That's been another learning curve, because freezing was what I thought was the best way to go and the taste was close to fresh. With freezing, there is a downside... freezer burn. That will not only leave your food tasting nasty, but will ruin all your hard work in just a few month's time. A FoodSaver or other method of vacuum packing will fix that, but there's still the issue of storage and the cost of keeping a freezer running. Then there's the issue of a power outage - you can lose everything depending on how long the power is out and what time of year it happens.

So, I've been concentrating on other methods of storage. Dehydrating is one that I find fun and quite amazing. I can dehydrate green beans and they get so much smaller, store for a long time in a vacuum sealed jar, and taste darn near like fresh when re-hydrated. I've been experimenting with drying and cooking quite a few veggies this year and have been quite pleased with the result. So far, I've done:

Potatoes - both sliced and shredded

Green Beans

Mixed Vegetables

Corn
Cabbage
Carrots

Mushrooms

Onions

Bell Peppers - all colors

Celery

Celery Leaves

Peas

Squash

Chives

Spearmint
Apples - both sliced and diced

Bananas

Grapes - red and white seedless

Pineapple
Clementine slices

One of the things that I like doing is buying frozen vegetables on sale. I don't have freezer space for them, but that's ok. I bring them home, open the bag and pour them onto my dehydrator trays, give them a good rinse, drain and then put in the dehydrator. They have already been blanched and cut up, so there's really no work to doing them this way. When done, just put in jars and vacuum seal. They will last for a LONG time on the shelf as long as they stay vacuum sealed.

The list will certainly get longer as I try my hand at more items. I dehydrate all year long and continuously use from my pantry as well. I'm always rotating. Like I said - it's not for stocking for a disaster, but for using and having better quality ingredients.

Is Canning Worth It?

I can't tell you how many times I've been told that canning isn't worth the effort any more. One can go out and buy food cheaper than you can can it, so why put all the time and effort into it?  Why indeed!?!

Let's compare my last canning day. I made 5 pints of Chicken Corn Chowder and 2 pints of canned chicken thigh chunks. First lets look at the cost of ingredients.

chicken thighs - $4.12.
onion - 18 cents
celery - 8 cents
potatoes - 20 cents
corn - 99 cents
chicken broth - 1.99
canning jar lids - 81 cents
for a total of $8.37

If I purchase Campbell's Chunky Soup, they currently run $1.98 a can - 5 cans = $9.90. To be fair, the Chunky are in 18.6 oz cans, so we should be figuring by the ounce. 10.7 cents x 16 ounces = $1.712. That would cost $8.56 for comparison.

I then went looking for canned chicken. If I purchase Swanson Premium Light and Dark Chicken in water, I will pay $1.98 for a 9.75 ounce can. That breaks down to 20.3 cents an ounce. Unfortunately, I cannot find any dark meat only, so this is as close as I can get for comparison. 16 ounces = $3.248. 2 pints = $6.48

With that said, if I purchased the equivalent of what I canned from the store, I would have spent $15.04. My cost was $8.37 for a savings of $6.67. If I had used my own produce out of the garden as well as my own canned broth, I would have been able to save even more.

This isn't the end of the savings though, because the bones I had left from the chicken were frozen  to be used  at a later date. When I get enough, I will make a nice batch of broth to can.

So, is it worth it? In my opinion, yes. I saved money and the flavor is much better. Plus, I know exactly what went into those jars!

It's Bean Time!

I had purchased a lot of dried Roman Beans for 50 cents a pound at one of those outlet stores a couple of months ago. I had no idea what they were, but they were dried, cheap and looked a lot like pinto beans, so they came home with me. I did some research on the net and found that these beans can be used interchangeably with kidney beans, black beans. chili beans and pinto beans. Sounds like I found a goodie!

I decided that it would be a good time to try them, so I soaked 2 pounds to can for soups, etc. and while I was at it, I thought I'd do a pound of baby limas as well. I sat down with the Ball Blue Book and found that for every quart of beans I want, I need 3/4 pound of dried beans. Hmmmm - not enough for a canner load, so I decided to try SB Summer BBQ Beans from SB Canning to make a full load.

I used Garden Gnome's recipe for Home Canned Kidney Beans & Lima Beans as she does her beans just a little different than I normally do. If you haven't been to her website called Mom's Cafe Home Cooking, you really must! She has so many great recipes posted there with a lot of guidance for both the newbie and the experienced cook alike. I love her site!

Well, it appears Ball was quite a bit off the mark on how much I needed. I ended up with 4 pints of Baby Limas, 6 pints of regular Roman Beans and 6 pints of SB Summer BBQ Beans with quite a bit left over!! My All American Pressure Canner only holds 16 pints so I decided to use the leftover in chili for dinner tonight.

The beans cooked up nicely. They were meaty and larger than normal beans and made a delicious chili!

Dinner - a nice bowl of chili on a bed of salad topped with cheddar cheese, sour cream and taco sauce. Oh man! I'm glad there were leftover beans!!!

October's Stock-up, Winter Storage & Frugal Mussings

I requested my RiteAid rebate yesterday, after making sure everything qualified. I always file online, so I know before hand if everything was correct. I have relied on the store's shelf postings in the past, and have found that they are not always accurate. Our grand total on the single check rebates this month is.... $144.22!! That does not include the $21.00 in coupons I used as well, so not only did I get $144.22 worth of items for free, but I was paid $21 to take them!!!! It still blows me away that I actually can end up with items we need and use for free or better than free.

I'm somewhat bummed, as we found our winter vegetable storage had been raided by vermin. Those critters had a great feast on my pumpkins and other veggies that I had put away. Those that weren't touched are now all over my kitchen waiting to be canned or frozen now. I had expected to be able to use fresh into the winter, but now, plans have changed. I have to figure out a better plan for storage for next year.

I've been using my crockpot quite a bit lately. We've been running to appointment after appointment this month, and the crockpot has been so convenient and has saved us a lot of money. We haven't had to eat out, and that has been wonderful! I don't like fast food, and it seems the kids don't like it much either. The other bonus is, according to the First Energy Corp. the crockpot only costs .02/hr. to use! They have a PDF that shows costs of using appliances, etc.
If the information is accurate, it only costs me 20 cents to cook a meal in the crockpot. I wonder how that would compare to our gas stove in cost of energy - especially when we paid $5.10/gal. of propane.

Today is the first day I've had to use the dryer since Mother's Day (May 11th). It's been raining a lot and hubby's clothes just can't hold out until our next nice sunny day. It's almost killing me to put the stuff in the dryer!! I'm still going to hang clothes out as much as possible, but I also know that I'm going to have to use the dryer more. That's going to put a spike in our electric bill. :(

Broccoil Soup

Broccoli crowns are on sale at our local grocery store, so I decided to try the Broccoli Soup recipe in my Fagor "Home Canning Cookbook" to see if it would be something I'd like to stock on the shelves for this winter. I canned my first batch of 4 jars, let it stand for a few days, and then we ate it. The verdict: Everyone really liked it! In fact, the kids LOVED it and have asked for me to put up "tons" of it. LOL It's a really nice recipe, good alone, or if you want broccoli and cheese, just sprinkle some cheddar on it and let it melt - just yummy.

Broccoli Soup

1 1/2 pounds broccoli, whole
1/2 onion, peeled and chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons margarine or vegetable oil (I used butter)
1/4 cup uncooked white rice
5 cups vegetable or chicken broth (this came out to 3 cans 14.5 oz size)
Tabasco sauce to taste
Salt & Pepper to taste

Cut broccoli florets from the stalks. Peel stalks and slice into 1-inch pieces. Saute broccoli, onions, and garlic, in butter. In a large saucepan, combine the sauteed vegetables with the rice and broth. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer gently until vegetables are very soft. Puree soup in blender. (I used my Braun handheld and blended it in the pot). Return to stockpot and add the Tabasco, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Cook for an additional 5 minutes. Ladle into jars, leaving a 1 inch headspace. Cap and seal. Place in pressure canner with 2-3 inches of hot water (or amount recommended for your brand of pressure canner). Process for 40 minutes at 15 pounds (Fagor's HIGH setting).
Please note: There is no conversion for those at higher altitudes in this book. I'm just below 1000 ft. above sea level, so I don't have to worry about it. For those above 1000 ft. above sea level, please contact your local Cooperative Extension Office for advice on safe times and pressure settings.

I'm planning on doing a quadruple batch - possibly 5x. I'm getting 9 pounds of broccoli, so I will definately have enough plus some for eating fresh. Think the kids will be satisfied with a few pounds less than "tons"? LOL

Alien Strawberries

Well, the berries didn't do anything overnight. There was no juice leakage - nothing!! They still are the consistency of leather, so I decided to make strawberry rhubarb jam out of those we didn't freeze. The jam turned out nicely, but thick because of the lack of juice. I've decided to mix the strawberries with other fruits to make jams and other things out of, to hide the lack of taste and juiciness of these pathetic berries. Sigh... I feel like I wasted a lot of time and money with these. There's no good homemade flavor to the strawberry jam - heck it rivals the store stuff. The Strawberry Rhubarb Jam at least has a nice rhubarb flavor to it, so all is not lost, and we really stretched the rhubarb as well.

I hope to find another place with better berries before the season ends.

Strawberry Picking Time!

It has been so very hot and humid here over the last few days, that it was difficult to want to get up this morning and go out to pick strawberries. We decided to leave here at 5:30am to beat the heat. We traveled over 30 miles to get to the berry farm, and we were so looking forward to getting done quickly and back home.

It took us over 2 hours for the three of us to pick 24 quarts of strawberries!! They were already well picked over, and those that were nice and ripe were bug eaten. With three of us picking, it should have been no time to get out of there. When we got home, I started to make jam, but found the berries were unusually hard and not juicy at all. They didn't have the flavor and even after sitting, we ended up with no juice spots. I cut up some berries for tonight's dessert - strawberry shortcake. I sprinkled the berries with sugar to draw the juice and they sat all afternoon. When we pulled them out for dessert, there was NO JUICE!! What is wrong with these berries?!! I've picked and put up berries for years and have never seen anything like these things.

I'll be letting the rest sit until tomorrow. Hopefully they will ripen more and get a bit softer. Right now, they have the feeling of a store bought peach - just plain hard!

My Latest Read

Did you ever buy a book with hopes that you are really going to learn something that will change your life and make it a little better, or a little easier? I came across the book, "How to Survive Without a Salary" by Charles Long, and had some high hopes, especially since DH's job is far from secure at this point. Both DH and I read the book together, and anticipated that we'd soon learn something new: maybe learn something to help with our finances, where we could cut more, and more importantly how to live without a salary... With each page we turned we had hoped for something enlightening to come. It never did.

We didn't find anything new, nor that we haven't tried before. Mind you, if you are starting out on the path to financial freedom, or are looking for ways to cut back, this book has a lot of good ideas and advice. I wouldn't rush out and buy it, though, but would suggest getting it from the library first.

Food Storage

With my searches through youtube, I came across many great places to learn about food storage. The ladies of the Latter Day Saints really have some great systems. I was amazed on how things were put away, and how they organized and kept track of what they had. Their system is something to look into. I have also come across some wonderful information from the Survivalist community as well. Mind you, I'm not saying that I endorse either group. I just find their food storage information very, very useful and enlightening.

One of the things that I had heard on one of the videos that I watched (or maybe it was a radio broadcast) was, if one had stored food back last fall, especially corn, rice and wheat, just look how much money one could be saving now! Yah, I know I'm kicking myself some for that. I put aside looking at how to store the grain for other things, and never got back with it. Now our family is paying dearly for that mistake. We used to pay $6.90 for a 25 pound bag of flour last fall. Now it's over $17 for the same bag from the same supplier.

One Year Supply

When you hear that someone like the LDS ladies has a one year supply, what do you think of? Do you think of groceries? Beans and grains? Maybe all those MRE's that the military uses? For me, I had just figured it was groceries and maybe a few other things. Some of the ladies I saw had a mini store in their basement. I'm not talking about just groceries, either. I mean - everything one would use in a year, it was all there. It was fantastic! Some of the things that they stored, I really didn't know how one could do it. I will definitely be looking more deeply into how they are putting some things up.

My Goal

We have things put up for hard times, but we lack in a lot of areas. My past entries show how we are getting some things for nearly free, free or better than free, and those things are being put away to build up a stock. One example of what has been put away is toothpaste and toothbrushes. I have 10 toothpastes and 9 toothbrushes in a box on the shelf. All were free or better than free. I'm going to try stocking my shelves that way.