Back on Solar

Hello, friends.  I hope you're finding some time to enjoy these days.  Our new American made inverter arrived, and Joseph had us up and running on solar again mid-week.  Hallelujah!  Last week, I pulled black bean burgers from the freezer for a dinner, along with home fries and salad.  A new recipe for a potato tomato bake was tried another night.  It was quite bland, so I'm pondering ways to jazz it up if I try it again.  Though I've rarely been finding good deals at the grocery store, I found several on Wednesday.   At the first stop, we picked up our dog food for $6 off.  On markdown, we found two cans of organic chickpeas for .42, bags of dried baby limas and navy beans for .57/#, and a package of cotton facial pads for .62.  J found some paper goods on sale, which his Mom requested he bring to a gathering there.  Getting the paper goods and the cotton pads meant we could skip the trip to Dollar Tree we'd planned.  Also on sale was asparagus for $1.49/#, mandarins for $2.99/3#, and roasted almond tins  2/$5.  At the next stop, I found tins of local peanuts on sale for gifts 2/$6, and marked down dried organic garbanzo beans for $1.97/#.  I recently looked for them at another store, where they were $6.99/#!  I'm so glad I waited, and got 8 bags for the pantry, which I'll can up when things slow down.  I heard a few days ago that there may be a shortage of them, which would be a real shame.  We love hummus, and I also use them in a lot of vegan dishes.  A frugal fail is I missed their $10 off $50 deal by a day, but this was the day we were in town.

A pot of large sweet potatoes was put on the woodstove, to boil for pies.  Books were requested from the library, and picked up when in town for groceries.  A local orchard had marked their Christmas trees 1/2 price.  All they had left were 8' and larger, so we got an 8' fraser fir for $44, and cut it down to fit our room.  There was too much on our plates to do it this week, but we'll decorate it next week.  I've enjoyed listening to Christmas music free on Pandora.  Amazon digital credits of $13 were used to buy a book that has been on my list, making my OOP $1.  For a lunch, I defrosted a container of soup I'd frozen.  I wrapped all the presents for my extended family, with the supplies on hand from previous years, including some bags and ribbons that were reused.  I'm pretty sure all of it was bought at after Christmas sales, and a few things at thrift stores.  The garbanzo beans were all placed in glass jars to store until canning.  We received a letter from our internet provider saying they were lowering our bill, which explains the credit on the last bill.  The bill is lowering $5/mo., at the same time they're increasing internet speed from 100 to 300.  I really appreciate belonging to this telephone cooperative, who provides our service.  It was most welcome to receive this message during these times.  Happy Holidays, friends!