February Blooms

Hello, friends.  Hellebore blooms brought some cheer last week.  For Valentine's dinner, J requested pasta.  Sauce was made with a jar of our tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes and cubes of frozen basil, all homegrown except for the pasta.  The juice drained from the tomatoes was saved in a jar, and frozen for soup.  An apple pie was made with canned, homegrown apples.  There was some pastry left over from the pie, so I added some peanut butter to the top, cut it in sections, and baked it with the pie for pup treats.  I made two purchases for our business from amazon, going through The Prudent Homemaker, as a small thank you for such a helpful site.  I forgot to mention last post that I redeemed Swagbucks points for $25 on Paypal.  I was unable to find organic grape tomatoes at the grocery store for several weeks, having checked at least 4 stores.  Organic celery is hit or miss, and organic oranges have been out at Food Lion and Aldi's when I've shopped for a couple of months.  These are interesting times.

Of the five amaryllis bought in early December, all finished blooming weeks ago, except a deep red one that decided to begin blooming on Valentine's Day.  I'm considering it a love letter from creation.  There have been lots of wildlife seen on walks lately, most often deer, but wild turkeys a couple of times.  Frozen pawpaw, figs and strawberries were used in oatmeal, and frozen peppers and lambs quarter were used in breakfast scrambles.   As our potatoes are being used, I'm cutting the eye ends off, and putting them aside for planting.  Several tufts of usnea were added to the glycerite jar, and a jar of astragalus glycerite was started.

The Early Frosty peas arrived, and were planted.  I helped J pull more wire on the solar project.  The panels are now charging with the sun.  There are just a few pieces left to get it connected to the house power.  We're hoping to be connected this coming week.  After two previous cancellations due to snow & ice, I met my sister and SIL for lunch, then we headed to an antique mall, where SIL's friend has a space.  There were lots of beautiful things, as it was a high end establishment, but I didn't find anything I needed there.  While in that town, I stopped by two favorite thrift stores.  I found a king pillowcase I'll alter to fit J's queen pillow for .50, a cashmere sweater for myself for $2.99, and a cute long sleeved top for .50.  At TJ Maxx, I bought some food items, including coconut oil, coconut water, olives and a GF snack.  

A trip late in the week to Food Lion resulted in .99 avocados, organic celery and oranges!  I got a .05 discount for bringing my bags.   With our canned tomatoes, frozen bits and pieces, and some vegetables, vegetable soup was made for a dinner.  I made a batch of MM Snickerdoodle cookies.  Our neighbors lost a son last week, and I made up a small plate of the cookies for J to take when he went by there.  Our diet is so different from most people these days, that was the best I could come up with.  The picket fence that our Seven Sisters rose climbed on was pulled out for the solar battery room.  While I was gone with my sister & SIL, J made a sweet, heart shaped trellis for it.  There was another recipe fail this week, this time for vegan cabbage fritters.  It was almost all vegetables, with very little to hold it all together.  I do love making fritters to use up little dribs and drabs of leftovers, so I'll keep trying.  I'm also going to consider the sourdough starter a fail.  After three weeks,  it never got any further than some bubbles.  It was supposed to double in size after feeding.  If it had increased much at all, I would have tried it in a recipe, but decided I'd already wasted enough flour.  A new salad dressing recipe was tried, and it was a win, so there's that.  Here's hoping the upcoming week brings more successes than failures for us all.