Frugal Accomplishments

I'm joining in with Brandy for last week's frugal accomplishments.  I harvested passion fruit, raspberries, pears, tomatoes, okra, & persimmons; decanted pineapple vinegar & started another batch; juiced some grapes we were given, and froze them for future use; made pumpkin pie using homegrown pumpkin and eggs from our chickens; made a quinoa dish, using yellow squash, onion & parsley from the garden.

At the discount grocery store, favorite finds were jasmine rice @ .60/# (best by 3/16; compared to sale price 1.50/# this wk at Lowes) bought 15#, OG raisins 1.25/#, Annie's Organic mac & cheese .50 ea, kalamata olives 1.25 a jar,  Seventh Generation dishwashing liquid @ .70, and maple syrup 4.00/ 8 oz (sale price this wk 4.99 @ Lowes). I see more maple lattes in my future!

I froze yogurt and made a batch of yogurt.  A few times a year, I buy a small cup of plain yogurt, to start fresh with.  After a few months, I know that stray bacteria gets in a batch, so I like to begin with new yogurt again.  I usually forget to freeze the remainder of storebought yogurt, but remembered this time.  It seems in years past, the frozen yogurt did not perform well, but reading about all the other people that do it made me want to give it another try.  I made batches of kefir.

I made tomato rice loaf using the above jasmine rice, and tomatoes, basil, onion, garlic, kefir and breadcrumbs from here; froze sweet red peppers & dehydrated hot peppers, dill and basil from the garden; made balsamic vinaigrette - the recipe is here. The lettuce in the coldframe is growing nicely.  Looking forward to having some homegrown salads in the not too distant future.

I cut up a Cheese Wheel pumpkin & Hopi Gray squash that the borers had gotten to.  The pumpkin was in great shape, with only exterior damage.  The Hopi Gray was in bad shape, so the chickens got it, along with our last 2 watermelons.  Pumpkin soup was made with the pumpkin.

Froze celery for the first time.  My Mom had been freezing hers, and I've been meaning to do it for months, as I only use celery in small quantities, for waldorf salad, and a couple of cooked dishes, and end up throwing most of it into the compost.  While this won't work for the waldorf salad, it will for the cooked dishes.  And when I need raw celery, I have some in the coldframe, from planted celery bottoms.  I have planted celery bottoms several times, and have gotten some nice celery from it, but it has always rotted after a time. In looking at the link again for this post, I realized I was not totally covering it with soil, which allows rain to settle in the bottom, making it more likely to rot.  After I took this photo, I covered my celery bottoms with soil, to see if I can keep these going all winter.  If you use celery, try this... it works amazingly well!  If you use Pinterest, there are tutorials on regrowing all sorts of vegi's from scraps.  Celery is the only one I've tried.  Well, except for an avocado pit, but I don't expect to get actual avocadoes here in NC.  I also started lemons from seeds last winter, which are doing well.  This was another Pinterest idea.  It would be lovely to eventually get lemons.  I remember a neighbor girl who used to come to my door, when I lived in Los Angeles, selling lemons and avocadoes from their trees for a dime each.  I, of course, always bought some from her.  Have a good week, friends!