Savings and Goals Journal #21

We’ve been having beautiful, sunny days this week. The early mornings are cold, but by mid-day it’s t-shirt weather! The cold days will settle in soon, but I’m enjoying all this sunshine and warmth for now.

*Firepower Nandina* is a small evergreen shrub that provides beautiful fall and winter color in the garden.

In the Kitchen

The grocery sales were great this week. I went to the store very early in the morning to avoid crowds. I was able to purchase chicken breast and ground beef for within my price points for those items. Potatoes were 25 cents for five pounds. I also happened across a table of clearance items where I found brown rice for 50 cents a pound and Rice-a-Roni for 50 cents a box. The expiration dates were for late next year. There was also a special where you could buy pizza dough, pizza sauce, Italian sausage and cheese for $5. I thought it would be fun to let the grandkids make their own pizzas.

My daughter made a meal using the chicken breast and Rice-a-Roni. We had it for two dinners and a lunch (with a bit of supplementing of vegetables). I browned five pounds of ground beef to freeze in portions and use later in recipes. With the second package of ground beef I made three meatloaves. One we cooked the next day in the slow cooker and the two others went into the freezer for easy meals later on.

I finally cooked those last two pumpkins that I’d been moving back and forth from on top of the washing machine to the kitchen counter every day to do laundry. 🙂 They yielded four one-quart bags of pumpkin for the freezer.

We’d been given a couple of bags of potatoes, and then I also had the bag I bought, so I pressure canned potatoes for the first time. I’m hoping they will be good to add to stews, for potato soup and maybe mashed potatoes. We don’t have a good place to keep fresh potatoes for long-term storage.

We’re having simple meals this week since plenty of cooking is going to happen for Thanksgiving. 🙂

This week’s menu plan

Sunday: Leftovers
Monday: Mexican Stroganoff (from freezer), brown rice, mixed veggies
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Baked potato bar, pizza for kiddos
Thursday: Thanksgiving
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday Leftovers

In the Garden

I’ve been taking advantage of the lovely weather to do a bit of cleaning in the yard and garden. I’m collecting leaves I’ve raked up to add to the garden. There are not a lot of deciduous trees on our property, but plenty of leaves blow in from the neighbors’ trees. Any organic matter I can add will help our sandy soil. I love this pop-up container for cleaning up the yard.

My twenty-nine geriatric laying hens have been giving me a total of one to three eggs per day. They always slow down when the days shorten, but they started their vacation earlier this year than in years past. However, they are doing a great job of providing compost for the garden, eating kitchen scraps and helping me clean up the garden area.

Dorothy the chicken, who faithfully lays an egg almost every day in the hay feeder in the goat barn.

Home and Family

Our temporary fix we’d done on the leak under the kitchen sink a while back started leaking again. We visited our local hardware store and bought a fitting so Grampy could cut out the leaky spot and repair the water line. I’m glad we didn’t need a plumber to fix it.

On one of our beautiful sunny days this week, my daughter and I loaded up the grandbabies and the dog and went for a long walk on the trail by the river. There were only two other people walking. There was also a playground so the grandkids had a good time climbing and sliding. It was nice to go somewhere different. There are picnic tables, so next time we are going to bring lunch from home.

Since my older daughter recently moved to the town where my mom lives, we planned a birthday surprise for my mom. Since I couldn’t go and visit, my daughter brought her flowers, her favorite take-out meal and a card. My daughter and I shared the cost. The other option would have been to have flowers delivered from the florist, which would cost a lot more than a small bouquet from the grocery store. My daughter put the flowers she bought in a canning jar and added a ribbon. My mom loved it.

We made a homemade sugar scrub using ingredients we had at home. I like to use it to clean my hands after working in the shop for my dad. My hands are covered in black grease when I am finished working and the sugar scrub gets them very clean and it smells great, too. I think it will also work well after working in the garden.

Have a wonderful week!