A Journal of My Days: 9/16/24

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

We're talking gardening, bargain shopping and pantry building and how we utilize all three to keep us fed and cared for without breaking the bank!

In the garden:  I picked up a few pears that had fallen from one of our pear trees and brought them in to dehydrate.  

I have one pumpkin that survived the drought and I'm waiting for it to get ripe.  Believe it or not I'm really excited about this one pumpkin as it is the heirloom 'luxury' variety which means I can save seeds from it for next year's garden.

A friend in the community asked my hubby if we would be interested in having a few cabbage plants and collards plants as soon as they got big enough.  Of course, hubby said yes, so I'm anticipating them arriving on our doorstep soon.   We should be able to grow both outside throughout the winter ... unless we get an ice storm or deep freeze weather for several days in a row.  Typically, it shouldn't be a problem ... but, we'll see as this has been a crazy weather year.

In the kitchen:  In an attempt to use up our apples, I made an apple cobbler.  It was quite yummy!

Thrifting, bargain, and/or loss leader shopping at the grocery store, farmers market, etc:  While traveling we went to an Amish produce auction and my hubby got two boxes of cucumbers for $1.50 each ... the whole box for $1.50. (Each box was the size that holds 10 realms of copy paper.)  Now that was a bargain!  We've shared with others, I've made refrigerator pickles and cucumber salad, and we still have cucumbers left.  I put them in the refrigerator to use with our daily meals and of course to keep our bowl of cucumber salad replenished!

In the Pantry:  This week I added home-canned October beans to our pantry, lima beans to the freezer portion of our pantry and dehydrated apples.  Yes, I have been busy!

In other news:

We arrived home this afternoon from a weekend out of town trip for my hubby's work, to a weather disturbance that dumped about 10 inches of rain in our area, some areas got closer to 20 inches.  Flooding is once again an issue and schools and businesses are shut down.

Speaking of traveling, look at what a friend made for us to bring home with us ... homemade apple pie.  It was delicious and the crust was one of the flakiest I have ever eaten.  The crust was as good as the contents.  Put them together and it was mouthwatering delicious!

We started our Winter Preps Challenge this week by completing a list of things we wanted to have done by November 1st.  The first thing we marked off that list was AAA batteries.  We purchased a new package to have on hand should we lose power for any reason during the winter months.  Some of our small flashlights and head lamps use AAA batteries ... enough said!  We also restocked our self-rising flour!  This week the plan is to start working on herbal cold and flu remedies.  I'm hoping to knock out several of those ... we'll see!

Click HERE to see what I've been up to in the sewing/creating world this week!  There is not much to report other than a finish I completed earlier.

My teaching notes on our next study topic for the young wives and mothers Bible class I teach have been posted.  You can find them HERE.

We have done extensive traveling for my husband's work four of the last five weeks.  We are tired and ready to stay home for a while!  I look forward to getting back to my normal routines of 'keeping my home' and 'keeping my pantry restocked.'  There's just no place like home!

That's it for me 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 

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