My Tireless Retirement – Week 126

 

I was a super busy girl this past week and I got a ton accomplished!  It always feels so good to make progress and cross “to do” items off of your list and I was able to do exactly that.  I worked hard each day and slept like a rock each night.  It was amazing!

 

My canning projects continued throughout the week.  I even made ketchup, something I’ve never done before, and it actually tasted like ketchup.  Once it has sat for a couple of weeks I’ll taste it and report back on what I think.

 

My next door neighbor’s row of ten foot hedges were encroaching on the driveway once again so trimming those back and closer to the property line was on my list, but I needed cooler weather in order to safely get this accomplished.  Fortunately the cooler temperatures last week allowed me to get this done.  Finally!

 

Along with trimming hedges I was able to get outside and do some yard work.  I picked loads of tomatoes and pears.  I even shared some of my homegrown produce with my neighbors.  The hot weather this summer had littered the yard with leaves, twigs, sticks and debris so I worked on cleaning that up.  I even called an arborist to come out and evaluate my big trees and give me an estimate on some pruning and possibly removing a couple that aren’t doing too well.

 

Meals I Prepared: 

I made a small pan of enchiladas which provided me with four meals last week.  I also took some odds and ends of leftovers – black beans, rice and some salsa – and made burrito bowls.  Green salad was my side dish of choice.  I opened a small can of deviled ham and made ham salad for a couple of sandwiches.

 

I pulled the other loaf of raisin nut loaf out of the freezer to slice and enjoy with fresh fruit and my coffee for quick brunches before I headed out the door to work.  I also enjoyed the homemade yogurt I made the previous week.

 

On the way to work one day I stopped off at the hazardous waste drop off site and unloaded that box of paints I had decluttered from my garage a couple weeks ago.  I also dropped off the glass recycling into the large collection bin at the same site while I was at it.  It felt really good to get rid of that stuff.

 

I started another project, but I’m going to wait until I get it all finished and then I will share it with you in next week’s post.  I’m super excited about getting this one done and how much it will make my life better on a daily basis.

 

I hope you had a great week and I wish you all the best.  Anyone have big plans for this three day Labor Day weekend?  I do!

 

This Month's 2024 Extreme Budget Grocery Spending – August

 

This month I was all about stocking up for winter and filling in any gaps I might have in my pantry as well as my long term food storage.  With the deep freezer pretty much stocked up I was able to focus my grocery budget dollars on canned and dry goods along with some fresh produce for the new refrigerator.  After my very successful July pantry challenge I was nearly ready to restock the crisper drawer with some fresh goodies.

 

I divided up the frozen veggies and vacuum sealed them for the freezer

I began the month at Costco and picked up some goodies for the LTFS including a four pack of jarred peaches.  I decided not to can my own this year since I do not eat a lot of fruit and it doesn’t seem it would be worth the trouble and expense, to be honest.  Yes, these peaches may be a bit on the pricey side, but I remember my mom telling me years ago that after all of us kids had flown the coop this was one of those items she regularly picked up for my dad because he felt he’d earned a better quality of canned fruit and he loves canned peaches.  I decided now that I am an empty nester too, so do I!  I used the remainder of a gift card to cover the bulk of this shopping trip.

 

A second trip to Costco left me with more peaches, some salsa and dill pickles as well as a ten pound bag of sugar for the LTFS.  I picked up croissants, which I ended up putting most of them away in the freezer and another rotisserie chicken that I pieced out into several meals and froze.  I used the chicken carcass and the one from a prior shop along with some veggie scraps I’d been collecting in a bag in the freezer to make a delicious stock that I ended up canning.

 

A few pantry items I was low on

My next shopping trip was to Winco to pick up some pantry items and fill in a few gaps.  I added pickled beets, which I love on a salad, as well as some chiles, ketchup and lemon juice to the LTFS shelves.  I also picked up sour cream and cream cheese since I was completely out of both after the pantry challenge in July.  A quick stop into Fred Meyer to pick up a couple pounds of butter replaced what I have used so far this spring and summer.

 

I was gifted these two lovelies 😀  

The crisper drawer in my refrigerator was getting pretty low on produce by the end of July, however I still had a few things left in it as well as a lot of frozen vegetables and some berries I wanted to work on before I brought home anything new.  I began the month of August with 6.25# of potatoes, three carrots and three heads of romaine lettuce plus a nice handful of tomatoes I’d picked from my garden.  After canning some sweet relish I had a large onion, half of a large green bell pepper and about a third of a large red bell pepper to add back to the drawer.  Plenty of veggies for me to make quite a few salads and even a stir fry.

 

After challenging myself to use up every bit of fresh produce and even some of the frozen stuff I finished off the month and headed back to the store for some fresh produce.  At Winco I picked up a package of salad mix, green onions, apples and bananas as well as onions and peppers for another canning project.  I also added yogurt and cottage cheese to the cart.

 

A couple days later I stopped into Albertson’s to pick up some colored bell peppers and an English cucumber they had on sale along with a half gallon of organic milk.  Low and behold, I found a nearly eight pound pork butt on markdown in the meat department which I quickly snapped up.  I grabbed and onion from the produce section and then headed straight home to make a batch of pork verde and check that roast off my “wishlist”.  I was so happy!

 

This turned out to be a beautiful roast

It was a lot of shopping at various stores this month and I did make multiple trips.  It helped that most of this shopping was completed on my way home from work so I didn’t waste fuel in the truck and it made better use of my time as well.  Amazingly, I managed to get a huge list of items, carefully using digital coupons and sales prices as well as some gift cards to help me shave off the prices and help to keep me on track.  Even more amazing, I stayed well within my budget!

 

My list was so long I had to break it up into two pics!

I am super thrilled this month!

There were no nonfood expenditures this month so all of my shopping and spending was geared solely toward food.  At the beginning of the month, after the July pantry challenge, I had $60.42 to rollover and add to my $50 August budget.  I spent a total, after gift cards, of $97.35 of my allotted grocery budget with a remaining balance left of $13.07.  I will roll that amount over and add it to my September $50 budget and once again I will be off and running.  Can you believe I was able to buy all of this, do a ton of home canning and stock my LTFS shelves for winter and still have money leftover?  I’m just absolutely thrilled!

 

Summer 2024 Food Preservation Projects

 

In preparation of the upcoming winter I did A LOT to get ready and I’m absolutely thrilled with all that I was able to accomplish and all while I’m doing an extreme grocery budget challenge this year too.  I’m really quite surprised in fact that I have been able to do all that I have and still stay within budget.  It has definitely tested my creativity and resourcefulness, but that was part of the fun of the challenge!

 

I divided a 5# bag of veggies into vacuum sealed packages

Vacuum sealed chicken breast packets

This summer I’ve done quite a bit of canning and freezing.  I already shared with you how I put together some chicken packets and squirreled them away in the deep freezer.  I purchased ground beef on sale and with a digital coupon, then divided it up and put it away in vacuum sealed packages.

 

Split pea soup & pork verde

Chicken stock

A couple pot roasts ended up canned in au jus and a large pork butt was turned into pork verde and canned as well.  I canned a lot of soups too – taco soup, split pea with ham, chicken fajita and Italian black bean.  Chicken carcasses and vegetable scraps became stock and the ham bone from the ham I got at Christmastime was made into broth and all the meat removed from the bone.  That meat and most of the broth ended up in the split pea soup. 

 

Taco soup

An assortment of various beans

I canned a variety of dry beans so I’d have easy and quick options to add to meals.  It makes it very nice to grab a jar of black beans and pinto beans and use those for a quick batch of refried beans.  I also made a huge batch of chili con carne and canned that as well.  A last minute decision added nine pints of black bean corn salsa to the shelves.

 

Tomato sauce

As the tomatoes come in from my garden I add them to a bag I keep in the freezer until I have enough to make into sauce.  This year I decided to can both pints and half pints so I can have smaller jars to make soup or pizza sauce whenever I want.  Having two different sizes makes it extra convenient.

 

Plenty to enjoy and share with friends & family

I’ve restocked pantry staples, vegetables and fruit in cans as well as frozen which I vacuumed sealed.  I added some condiments, mainly mayonnaise and mustard, as well as olives and pickles to replace what I have used this year.  I also made a big batch of sweet zucchini relish and added that to my shelves.

 

Additionally, any rendered fats were skimmed and saved in jars, frozen and will be used for cooking.  Vegetable scraps went into the gallon Ziploc bag I keep in the freezer for a future pot of broth.  Other scraps went to the kitties or the chickens and even the bunny got a few vegetable bits too.  Everyone was happy, especially me as nothing went to waste.

 

Bread & Butter Pickles

Feeding people is my love language

I absolutely LOVE home canning and preserving.  I eagerly look forward to this time of year every year, so much so that I typically continue to can and preserve year round although the bulk of what I do gets done during the summer and fall.  Looking at all those beautiful jars on the shelves as well as my fully stocked freezer is to me a thing of beauty.  Enjoying the things I’ve created and put up to eat this winter will bring me a lot of joy.

Vintage Cookery - Tomato Sauce

 

About a week ago I filled up my largest slow cooker with whole roma tomatoes from my garden.  I decided to try a recipe from my vintage WWII cookbook.  It turned out pretty darn good and I will likely be using this recipe from now on whenever I make my and can tomato sauce.

 

It is simple and perfect for small batch canning like I prefer to do.  Plus by adding a lemon juice to each of my canning jars I can use my water bath canner to process the jars.  You could also just freeze this sauce in plastic containers.

 

I used my immersion blender to make
the tomatoes into a smooth sauce

I processed my sauce in both pint and half pint sized jars because I like to have both sizes on hand depending on what I am making.  I find the half pint jars especially useful for making sauce for pizza, tomato soup and adding into recipes that use a small can of sauce.

 

With the rising prices of tomato products these days I find making my own not only allows me to save money, but I know exactly what is inside my jars.  No preservatives, additives or any other unnatural things I don’t want added to my food.

My Tireless Retirement – Week 125

 

Hello!  The karate instructor where I work veggie bombed me with a very full grocery bag of pickling cucumbers.  It’s crazy, but the two things I was hoping to grow this summer, cucumbers and zucchini, were eaten down to the ground by grasshoppers and yet I’ve been gifted both of those things in the past month.  Lucky me!

 

I decided to turn most of those cucumbers into bread and butter pickles and was able to put up seven pints.  Fortunately I had everything I needed already on hand to make the pickles so I didn’t need to make any special trip to the store for ingredients.  After discovering how much my co-workers love bread and butter pickles I will be sharing four pints with them, two went on the shelf in my LTFS and one into my regular rotation.  In two weeks the pickles should be ready to eat.  I love that I was blessed and in turn I can bless others.  It makes my heart happy.

 

I ran out of canning jars, which surprised the heck out of me.  I thought I had plenty, but I’ve done a lot of canning this year.  I needed to go to Wal-Mart to pick up more, but I was dreading going.  They aren’t that close to my home so it’s a bit of a jaunt, I don’t particularly care for shopping at Wal-Mart and it was the final days leading up to going back to school so I knew it would be a zoo in there.  I decided to go ahead and just place an online order and had it delivered with FREE shipping since my order was over $35.  I had to wait an extra day, but I was fine with that and it worked out perfectly.  Now that I’m stocked back up I can proceed.

 

My tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters.  I had gathered up enough for my first round of canning from my garden and I made tomato sauce.  I wanted to can it in pints and half pints this year.  The half pint sizes will be perfect for making my tomato soup and pizza sauce or any other recipe that doesn’t use a full size can.  This time I tried a new vintage recipe from one of my WWII cookbooks and I’ll be sure to share that with you soon.  It looked really good and it tasted pretty good too.  I thought it would be a nice change from doing just plain old sauce.

 

After all of this canning I had been doing I took some of the fresh produce leftover in my crisper drawer and prepped it for future use and recipes.  I chopped up peppers, onions and celery, put it into bags, labeled them and placed them into the bin I keep my frozen vegetables in the freezer.  I love having my own pre-prepared vegetables at the ready for cooking and it is a good way to make sure nothing goes to waste while also saving money.  Once again veggies scraps went to the bunny, the chickens and into the bag I keep in the freezer for broth – everybody wins!

 

Just watching people on the rides was enough to make me queasy 😳

On Tuesday I treated myself to a trip to the Western Idaho Fair.  The last time I went to the fair was in 2022 right after I had first retired and it was so HOT that day.  This year it was much, much better weather wise.  It was $2 Tuesday meaning that they had reduced the fair admission as well as many of the rides and food items available so I was glad about that.  I still passed on the $8 corn dogs.

 

Once again I got to test my bus driver skills on Wednesday and took another group of seniors back out to the orchard to pick fruit – peaches, nectarines and the biggest blackberries I’ve ever seen.  Snacking was encouraged and it was a really good time, tasty too. 

 

Meals I Prepared: 

I finished up leftovers from the week before and then opened up a jar of pork verde to make tacos for a few meals last week.  I thawed some rotisserie chicken I had put away in the freezer and enjoyed that with a green salad one day.  A quick pasta supper was made using spaghetti noodles from the pantry as well as a home canned jar of sauce with Italian sausage in it.

 

I made a couple of brunches too – poached eggs on toast and oatmeal with sliced peaches.  It had been a very long time since I’d made oatmeal and boy did it ever taste good.  I also enjoyed a jar of home canned black bean soup that I had made last week along with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.  All in all, pretty darn good meals.

 

Thursday morning I put another batch of tomatoes into my largest slow cooker to make enchilada sauce and something I’ve never made before – ketchup.  While the tomatoes were stewing away I made a batch of homemade yogurt.  You just can’t beat your own yogurt and topped with some fresh fruit or berries.  Yum!

 

Throughout the week I’ve been doing some more ancestry work as the tentacles of my family tree have really spread and grown.  I’ve always been fascinated with history, especially American history, and as things have progressed I’ve had some BIG surprises, but they’ve all been very pleasant surprises.  I’ve always known my family was a very strong military family, but I had no idea to the extent in which we were involved.  Let me know if you want to hear more about this because, if so, I’d love to start sharing.  I am just amazed!  I’ve long known I qualified as a Daughter of The American Revolution, but I had no idea just how much I qualified.  Can anyone say “founding fathers”?

 

I’ve decided to start a new “album” of sorts, by compiling historical information about certain family members.  I’m super excited to start this project, not only for myself, but also future generations.  It excites me to do the research and find out all the little bits of information I am able to glean.  I’m actually contemplating doing some travel to visit the places that are relevant to my research.  A trip to Virginia and Washington DC just may be in my future.  Not in November though, that could be dicey.

 

That pretty much summed up my week.  How was yours?