A Journal of My Days 2024: 2/26

The theme for this year is “Laser focused, hunkered down and spending as little money as possible.” 

Let’s see how we did this week …

(picture:  One of our roosters was cutting loose in a hearty cock-a-doodle-do!!!)

In the Vegetable Garden:  We got our potatoes (Red Pontiac) planted!!!  I also planted some peas (Little Marvel), leeks, beets and staked my claim on a row in the row garden for flowers.  A row of flowers in the vegetable garden will help bring in pollinators, supply us with cut flowers and just simply add beauty to the garden area.

In the Kitchen:   I made more sourdough crackers, hoagie style buns and regular hamburger buns out of my old-fashioned sourdough starter.  I seasoned the crackers with sage and garlic this time and hubby said he really liked the taste of them.  Next week I'll have to make a bigger batch!  We had meatball subs over the weekend with the hoagie style buns.  I individually
wrapped and froze the hamburger buns for future use.  (Pictured are the buns that I froze.)

Hubby mentioned to me that a partial jug of milk we had in the refrigerator was beginning to taste old.  I was not about to let that milk go to ruin, so I pulled some frozen bananas out of the freezer and baked up a couple of loaves of banana bread followed by a large squash casserole.  With both of these I used up the milk in question and got ahead with some weekend cooking as well.

I have to admit that intentionally staying out of the grocery store has sparked a streak of creativity in me, I'm eager to see what I can make with what I have on hand!

In the Pantry:  I harvested young, fresh spring parsley on Monday of this week and after chopping and giving it a good wash, I laid it out on a pan by the wood stove and let the heat from it dry it naturally.  Once it was dried, I crumbled it with my hands and jarred it.  This is the second herb I’ve been able to start harvesting and preserving this year.

Also, this week I decided to start focusing on what was in the freezer part of our pantry that needed to be used and or rotated out making room for this year's harvest.  The first thing I spotted was unsweetened frozen crushed strawberries from last year.  Strawberry season will be upon on in just a few weeks (they're already blooming ... the saying around here is, 30 days from bloom to strawberry) so I need to get what's left of last year's berries used and rotated out.  I started with using some of the berries in the kefir smoothie I have daily.  Over the next several weeks and until this year's berries are ready for harvesting, I'll be pouring over 'strawberry' recipes to find more ways to use them up.  I'm thinking a strawberry bundt cake individually sliced and wrapped in the freezer would be really good to have on hand when gardening season gets in full swing for those times when we want a sweet treat but don't have time to stop and cook one.

That's another thing I want to do is to get ahead with some freezer meals or components of meals for the busy gardening, harvesting and preserving season that's in the not-too-distant future for us!

Health/Fitness:  I'm looking forward to the first day of March when I'll do an overall assessment of where I'm at in my fitness and health journey.  As you know if you've been following along for any length of time, this month I transitioned from counting calories to full on intermittent fasting.  I had to go slow with the transition as I've been counting calories for almost 4 years.  I lost close to 70 pounds counting calories, so I didn't take changing what was working for me lightly.   My monthly overall assessment of where I'm at in my health and fitness journey will tell me what tweaking needs to be done, if any and if I'm on the right track.  Any fitness and or health journey is a lifelong one that has lots of twists and turns.  My change from counting calories to intermittent fasting is one of those turns for me.

Bargain and/or Loss Leader Shopping:  No shopping again this week!  We're on a roll!

From my Sewing Nook:   I took a fall Sunday night at church and have been on light restrictions this week, which meant I had time to sew!  I worked on stitching up some cloth jar covers and got a bit more done on the Log Cabind Christmas quilt my sister and I have been working on long distance via technology for several weeks.  (Our well saga put me behind, my sister has finished all her blocks and is putting her top together.  I'll get caught up though, I made some nice progress this week!   LOL, slow and steady seems to be my mantra so far this year!)

What I’m Reading:  I started two new books this week.  One a friend let me borrow, The Englisch Daughter by Cindy Woodsmall and one from the reading app Libby titled Homegrown Herbs by Tammi Hartung.    Homegrown Herbs has such good information in it that I'll probably be adding it to our library sometime in the future.

Bible Study:  I completed and posted lesson 19 in our ladies Bible study on Esther.  It can be found HERE.

Continuing Education and Skills:  my skill focus this month has been all things sourdough (the old-fashioned method and potato flake method) and I've learned a lot!  I'm really starting to feel comfortable with both methods which was the goal.

In the Herb Garden:  last week I shared that I had gotten my herbs seeds out and was making a plan for what to plant.  In that planning, I asked myself the following questions: (1) what health issues do I want to address with herbs, (2) what spice mixes do I want to make, and (3) what culinary herbs do I need for cooking purposes?  After having answered all three of these questions, here is a partial list of herbs I've decided I'll be planting this year … as of right now:

calendula (the heat from previous years finally wiped out my calendula so I'm starting over again with this herb.)

self-heal (this is a new one for me)

hops (this is another new one for me)

(I already have several herbs growing, so won’t list those.  This list is of the ones I'm in the process of starting seeds for or will be direct sowing as soon as it’s time.)

In the Flower Garden:  I started gathering all my flower seeds together to see what I have to work with.  I'm also looking through books and rose catalogs for inspiration and ideas for planting.  This book by Mary Alice Yoder is just lovely for that purpose.  I purchased it at a Mennonite store a while back and it's my go to for flower planting inspiration. 

We’re going to start ending each week with a frugal quote to hopefully help us in our ‘hunkering down, laser-focused’ frugal journey, here’s this week’s … make it a goal/challenge to see how little money you can spend and still meet your needs.

That’s it for this week, what has your week looked like?

until next time,

mrs. patsi @ A Working Pantry

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

Sharing 44 years' experience of frugal, prudent living and pantry building 

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