The Ways of My Household: 9/17/2019

I am in full canning and food preserving mode!

I canned beets and pickled beets.  You can read about it HERE!

I dried some fresh lavender.  You can read about it HERE!

I made applesauce and dried apples.  You can read about it HERE!

I harvested our sweet potatoes and was very happy with what we were able to grow in raised beds and containers.  The picture on the right is a sampling of what I've dug so far which is about a 5 gallon bucket full.  I still have a couple of raised beds to harvest!

As soon as the sweet potatoes were harvested, I amended the soil and planted cabbage collards back in the same containers.  Thus far I’ve planted 19 plants.

My husband found a 55-gallon barrel lying on the side of the road a while back.  He brought it home and set it aside telling me it would make a good strawberry growing barrel.  This week he cleaned it up and turned it into our second strawberry growing barrel.  There were enough runners from the plants on the first barrel to plant and fill up each opening in the second barrel.  In fact, we double planted each opening.    We feel truly blessed to be able to add this second barrel to our strawberry growing area without having to purchase anything additional.  We filled it with some of the garden soil we got on clearance at Sam’s Club several weeks ago.

Guess what … my hubby found another 55-gallon barrel, only this time he didn’t find it lying on the side of the road, he found it in some of the stuff we have stored.  (We stored ALL of our belongings in storage when we started renovating our house.)  He has worked diligently to turn it into another strawberry barrel and now we have 3.  I’m feeling pretty blessed!

Remember my Danny Corn saga; I harvested the 3 ears of corn from it this week with the intention of saving them for seeds.  One ear was ruined but the other two were in fairly good condition so into the green house they went to finish drying out.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to have enough seeds to start over next year.

I harvested the rest of our butternut squash, we love it cubed and roasted in the oven.

I started harvesting okra seeds, this is the time of year that a lot of seed harvesting is taking place.

I got stung by a wasp on one of my hands and instead of stopping and treating the sting immediately, like I should have, I waited for some 2 hours.   I really wanted to finish the task I was working on so put off doing what I should have done, what a mistake that was!  My whole hand, fingers and up to within 2 inches of my elbow swelled up really large (The knuckles on my hand disappeared in the swelling!).  It was hot to the touch, itched and hurt.  I had what is known as a large topical reaction and let me just say it was very painful.  I could not use the hand and kept it held in an up position as much as possible because letting it down made it hurt that much worse.  If I had done what I should have done, then I wouldn’t have had to suffer those painful consequences.  Lesson learned, no matter what I’m doing, the next time I get stung I’m going inside and treat it immediately!  (It’s still not back to its normal size, but at least I’m beginning to be able to use it again.)  Here's what I should have stopped and used ... and the next time I will as I keep this on hand all the time.

Here are a couple of meals we had from our pantry last week:

(1) Meatloaf made from scratch, home-canned potatoes and purple hull peas

(2) Philly cheese steak meatloaf (using the leftover meatloaf from the above meal), mac-n-cheese and leftover brown beans

That’s it for this edition of The Ways of My Household, what did you do this week to save, live frugally, build up your pantry or 'look well to the ways of your household?'

patsi

A Working Pantry

She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27

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Meals from My Pantry: Remaking Leftover Meatloaf

First, let me say that I got the idea for making this dish using leftover meatloaf from a video from Noreen's Kitchen.  Here's my version of her dish ...

Weekly Goals: 9/15/2019

It’s the beginning of a new week and time for our Just One Goal check-in … 

What was your 'one' goal for last week?  

Did you meet it? Tell us if you did or didn't, we get encouragement both ways.

What is your 'one' goal for this week? 

Last time my goal was to preserve apples and I did it … only I didn't get them all done!  I dried some and made applesauce out of some.

$5 or Less Pantry Building Challenge: 9/14/2019

It's time to share how we're building our pantries with $5 or less.

Remember, this $5 is not part of the weekly groceries budget. It is set aside to be used just for stocking up in any area of our pantries.   

Here's what I added to my pantry this week …

Summer Series 2019: Week 9

It's time to get back to our summer series ...

This week’s question is a bit different, but very pertinent to our pantry building …

I would like to see you address current anti preparedness trends like Marie Kondo? etc. They are actively teaching people to un prepare, shop for food daily and it is a social trend now. Personally I think all this is part of a bigger picture... make people dependent on the government and unable to defend themselves as we are seeing this in Australia. In Europe they have changed the language ie if you have a pantry or financial savings you are a hoarder. Yes that includes money in the bank... interesting! So there is a lot of active work going on to discourage people from building up a pantry. 

30 Day Preserving Challenge: Day 30 ... Apples

Here we are at day 30 of my 30 Day Preserving Challenge Series and it's all about apples!

We brought back 2 varieties of apples from our travels, Crispin (pictured) and  I don't know what the other variety is!

It's good that apples hold well because I've been working on preserving these for a few days already!

30 Day Preserving Challenge: Day 29 ... Lavender

We stopped at a privately owned Mennonite produce store recently on our travels and I found fresh lavender!  I couldn't believe it!  My lavender didn't make it this year so I was on the lookout for some to purchase; I thought I would have to settle for already dried, if I could find that!  So, imagine my delight when I found a 1 gallon size ice cream tub with 6 freshly cut bundles in it!!!

I looked at the price … $1 per bunch … what!!!  I couldn't believe the low price!  I snatched up 5 of the bundles, I confess that I wish I had snatched up all 6 of them!  I made my way to the area where they had dried herbs and found dried lavender bundles for $2.50 each.  You will be happy to know that I left those on the shelf for someone else to purchase!

Now, I had a dilemma, I was 12 hours from home with 5 bundles of fresh lavender and several more days of traveling ahead of us.  What was I going to do, I was determined to get my prized lavender home in good condition!

I knew that I needed to dry it so off I went to the Dollar Tree where I purchased this basket …

Gardening Journal: 9/10/2019

I went out this morning to 'do the next thing' in my garden and started with a bit of weeding … there is always weeding to do!  Then I came to the containers that had our spent and dead tomato plants in them with the plan of cleaning out one each morning until I had them all cleaned out … it's still very hot here!  I got one done, and then two and then three … how did that happen!!!  I was working up a sweat and knew I had better knock it off for the day (outside that is) but I wanted to get these three containers plus the one I cleaned out yesterday amended and a cabbage collard planted in them.

I rolled my wheel barrow over to the bags of garden soil we purchased a few weeks ago on clearance and loaded a bag up.  Back to my container garden I came and distributed it among the 4 'cleaned-out' containers.  I looked at my comfrey, which really grew a lot while we were away, and started cutting and chopping and adding it to the containers mixing it in with the soil (comfrey is a great natural fertilizer).  Next, I planted the collard plants that I had pulled moments before (we grew our own plants this year), one to each container!  

30 Day Preserving Challenge: Day 28 ... Beets

One of the things we came away with from the Mennonite produce auction we attended was beets.  We love beets and my pantry was completely out of them so when I saw beets at the auction, I requested my husband bid on them.  

He got the bid and the beets came home with us!

Just Do The Next Thing!

I'm so far behind it feels like I will never get caught up!"  Those were my thoughts this morning as I surveyed my garden area.  With traveling and hurricane Dorian taking up the last 3 weeks, I was feeling stressed … then these roses greeted me and these garlic chives gave a little wave in my direction and my thoughts started settling down.  It's as if they were saying, 'you got this … take a deep breath and just do the next thing."  That's what gardening does for me, it settles my soul!"