Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

We did some moving of stuff to storage today. We ended up emptying our 2nd unit at the one place. We got a bigger 2nd unit elsewhere for about $20 cheaper. I would like to change out our bigger unit, too, in time because we could save quite a bit on it at the new place. The only real difference between places is one is outside the city limits. So it's two miles further away, but that is worth it for that much less money. They also do not require extra insurance. Since our homeowners policy has a rider for storage items, this is a savings of $15 a month.

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The man who was supposed to come out and check the house for painting and estimate on the door repairs called to say his daughter had been hurt and rescheduled for Wednesday. *sighs* Will we ever get this done?

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I picked 2 pints of blackberries today. I have enough to make jam. Speaking of jam we finished off the first jar of strawberry jam and opened up the first jar of apricot jelly. It definitely is not jam like, but jelly like. It was so good. Everybody loves it. And it was perfect even without pectin.

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Those green onion bottoms that I planted have started sending up shoots. I count 3 so far. It worked!

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I did not make pot roast today as I had some food that needed using up so instead I made chicken/turkey noodle soup today for dinner. Well, yesterday before we went to the farm I threw 4 turkey legs and a bunch of chicken wings that were just starting to get freezer burn in the crockpot with 2 cups of water. I let it cook all day on low and last night I picked all the meat off the bones and returned it to the crockpot. I added all of the onion skins, carrot peels, garlic skins, bits of green onion that hadn't gone bad but no longer looked its best that I have saved in the freezer and the four chicken carcasses that I have saved in the freezer.

I chopped up half a bunch of fresh parsley, smashed five garlic cloves, chopped up one and a half onions (along with their skins), some celery leaves, and chopped two carrots. I added 1 tbsp of white peppercorns (what I had on hand) and 1 tsp of fresh sea salt. I filled up the crock to the top with water and let it go all night and until 5 o'clock tonight.

Then we put it through a collander, put the broth in a stock pot, and tossed the remains in the crock into the compost (we have a heavy duty rubbermaid plastic compost bin so the animals can't get into it. I usually don't compost bones but in this case I will). The broth was a rich brownish gold color (turkey makes it light brown).

I washed and peeled one onion and three carrots, saving the peels and skins in a new stock bag. I chopped them up and sauteed them in olive oil for about 15 minutes to make them soft. Meanwhile I boiled half a pound of egg noodles in the broth. After fifteen minutes I added the carrots and onions (I was out of celery or it would have been in there, too,) to the broth and then added 3 cups of the cooked chicken and turkey meat and let it warm through, about 3 minutes.

After that I adjusted the seasonings, adding about 1 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of sea salt, 1/4 tsp of ground celery seed, 1/4 tsp of onion powder, 1 tsp of thyme leaves and 1/4 tsp of garlic powder. We also added salt and pepper to taste at the table. Some of us like a bit more pepper than others of us.

I ended up with enough soup to feed the five of us 7 big bowlfuls (DH and DD had seconds) and I have a quart and a half leftover in the fridge. I think I am going to do up the rest of the chicken wings over the next couple of days. The bag was originally 10 pounds and there are about 7 pounds left so I think I will do it in two batches and make up more stock and then just pressure can the stock in pint jars so we have it on hand. I'd really like to do that. I had planned on it before but plans fell through. I would net about 8 pints of broth this way, I think, and that's about a canner level full.

Most of the things I put into the soup were foods that were looking worse for wear, too, especially the carrots and onions, but you couldn't even tell in the finished product. I'd say the expensive of it was in the fresh parsley and the meat itself.

Altogether the cost to me was about $6 for 5 quarts of soup. That's 10 pints, which is equivalent to ten cans of a big-noodled, chunky-style soup in the 16 ounce can. One with all organic ingredients is $2.99 at the cheapest place. So for an equivalent amount of organic soup I would have paid $29.90. That's a cost savings of $23.90. My son will eat a can of soup a day and he is happy to eat this instead.

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I also made two loaves of bread today. We ate over half a loaf with our soup with strawberry jam and apricot jelly. So very good. I will have to make more bread tomorrow. My neice is spending Monday night as we are taking her with us to the science center on Tuesday to see the King Tut exhibit as her birthday present. We will be taking sandwiches down with us so will need plenty of bread, but we will also be making French toast for breakfast that morning for her, DS, and DH. We will also have sausage and bacon and eggs and cucumber slices for those of us who low carb at breakfast. They can have jam if they want it on the French toast.

I am really looking forward to seeing the exhibit. I saw it when it came through when I was a little kid in the 1970's, but I really want to see it again as an adult. This is part of our "vacation" this summer, since we aren't having a real one.

So we spent $253 on beef, pork, and whole chickens at

www.skagitriverranch.com today. That is approximately a four week supply of protein, though we do get about another $50 worth of ham, seafood, ground sausage, cheese, milk, sour cream, chicken thighs and legs at the food co-op.

We also picked up $18 worth of flour and $50 worth of produce for the week at the food co-op, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi!!!!, cabbage, radishes, 4 nectarines, 1/2 pound of black cherries, onions, and some garlic. We have plenty of berries still. Oh, and I got about four more pounds of apricots to make jam with. The first kind I got were pence apricots. These ones are sundrop apricots. They were really inexpensive because they were in season. $1.29 a pound, and I spent $5.44 and they were part of that $50 of produce. They should make at least 6 or 7 pints of jam.

I need to buy another 25 pound bag of sugar. I am down to 25 pounds and I will go through that fast this week canning jams of apricots, blackberries and blueberries. Possibly even more raspberries.

I went down to the ranch with $300 and only spent $253, so the extra $47 is going into the Freezer Fund. I'll do an update on the Freezer Fund tomorrow. It's a couple updates behind. Now, to bed. It's already well past my bed time.

So last night and this morning I got quite a lot accomplished. This:



and this:



The first is apricot jam and I totally used the blender to liquify it (so it's probably more like jelly than jam. It is such a gorgeous color. I made this one without pectin. I really don't like working with pectin and much prefer doing it without if the fruit has enough natural pectin in it and this did. The recipe was supposed to make 4 pints but barely made 3. It is very labor intensive (until I get a food mill) because you have to peel the skins off, half and pit, then quarter each half and even with blanching for 2 minutes not all the skins want to come off. I ended up using a potato peeler. (The chickens, by the way, love apricot skins.) Next time I will make the kids help me.

I spent $5 for 2.5 pounds of organic pence apricots and used $4 worth of sugar, so $9 total for 3 pints. A half-pint jar of organic apricot preserves is $7, so $42 worth of jam for $9 or a savings of $33 over store-bought preserves.

Then I finally made raspberry jam. Much, much easier. I thawed the berries out in the microwave, which made a little juice, so it was easy for the blender to get going. I got 8 8 ounce containers (or 4 pints) of jam. I made them in smaller containers because I am going to give some away as gifts.

The raspberry jam is just the cost of the sugar, since the organic berries are free from the yard, so about $5 to make. 1 8 ounce container of raspberry organic jam runs at $6, so $48 worth of jam for $5 or a savings of $43. Not bad at all.

This is my home canned food stash so far minus the raspberry jam which is still cooling:



The yellow stuff up in the corner is my canned homemade mustard.

I also have 3.5 quarts of refrigerator pickles which are good until December and lots of frozen berries. Doing pretty well on that front. I will be making blueberry jelly and blackberry jam soon and then I'll have a real pallete of colors on the shelf.

Tonight's dinner was fantastic. I absolutely love it when a super easy meal comes together so superbly. Grilled pork chops, corn on the cob, drop biscuits with homemade jam, just a few blackberries from the garden and broccoli/cauliflower/yellow summer squash. And freshly squeezed lemonade from scratch. I had originally planned to make daikon medallions for the low carb veg, but the daikon was extraordinarily limp when I went shopping and I wasn't going to buy it when it was not firm and crisp. Fortunately there was plenty of broccoli and cauliflower on hand.

There was just so much flavor in the meal that everyone was more than satisfied and we just kept saying things like MMMmmm and that was good, etc., during the whole meal. Not bad for boiling a couple of things and throwing something else on the George Foreman grill. The most complicated thing was making the biscuits and that's just four ingredients. Takes me less than five minutes to mix it and drop them onto the cookie sheet.

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I picked two pints of blackberries today. In two or three more days I should have enough in the freezer to make jam.

DH has been home since midnight on Tuesday and let's just say the strawberry jam level is getting very low. The pint was almost full when he got home. To be fair he is not the only one eating it, but it is less than 1/4 full now. Good thing I have several more jars, but I need to make some other flavors quick before he plows through it all.

I still haven't made my apricot jam, but I plan to do that soon. Maybe tonight.

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I don't think I am going to get as many tomatoes as I had hoped for by the end of the season, but there is a sustainable farm that grows really good ones in my county and I think it might be well worth it to buy a couple of bushels from them if I need to.

Since the heat wave was pretty hard on my lettuces and they are close to bolting and starting to taste a tiny bit bitter, I picked up some new lettuce starts from the food co-op. I spent $3 for 8 organic lettuce starts. They are really pretty. Instead of going with a red and a green this time I went with a green with red spots. Pretty, isn't it?



We've spent some time clearing some space for a late fall/winter garden. It will mostly be brassicas like cabbage, broccoli, and kale, but we also will be putting in garlic and onion sets in the fall. In doing so we pulled up some potato volunteers:



And we finally had some green beans ready for picking today. It was a massive crop:



But they were really getting too big to leave on the vine. I will probably just eat them raw.

And we found where Queen has been hiding her eggs. We gave them the sink/float test to make sure they were all okay. They are. I think she is broody.



Now that we've found her nest she won't lay there again. She'll find a new place. She's not going to be very happy when she finds them gone, but it's not like she can hatch them anyway. We have no rooster.

We got our last tomato plant and our pepper plant transplanted the other night and they seem to be thriving in their new locations. There are three fruits on the pepper plant and they are starting to size up and about ten fruits on the tomato plant. The squash and zucchini plants are thriving and flowering like crazy now. Two blossoms were open today and they were almost as big as my hands.

I'm going to poke some more green bean seeds into the soil and hope for the best. If we have a mild enough fall they'll grow and if not, it's only about 25 cents worth of seeds.

I still want to pick up more kohlrabi starts. They will go well into fall and it is one of my favorite low carb veggies for raw eating. I am starting to see some kohlrabi at the farm stand but it is so tiny. I think they are selling them more for the greens than the vegetable. The greens are okay, but I really like the vegetable part of it. They will size up in another couple weeks. I just hate waiting once I see it available.

I picked 3 pints of raspberries today and a pint of blueberries and a handful of blackberries. There will be a lot of blackberries in two days or so. I could have picked more blueberries today, but I was really tired. I think there is at least another pint ripe.

...but I won't be giving them to the birds and bees. I harvested another pint of blackberries today. I now have a pint and a half of them in the freezer and there are tons more that will be ripe in about two more days.

The raspberries will need picking tomorrow and I'll get at least 7 or 8 pints. The blueberries will also be ready for picking tomorrow and I should get about 2 pints.

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Speaking of things that are free, I signed up for the free store card at the place where we bought my son's very expensive but only shoes that would fit. Not everything in the store is expensive. There are quiet a few reasonably priced items. That card came in the mail today with six cards for free items. Of course the trick is that each free item is only good for a month, so they want to get you in the store once a month for six months. But you do not need to fall for that trick.

The first month is a free t-shirt, the second free shipping if you get something off their website (I'll skip that one), the third month is a free 3-pk of socks but only if you spend $25 that month. Well, that month is September in which I will be buying my daughter new shoes, so I can put up with that one not being "entirely" free. But she had wanted to buy shoes there anyway, so it works to my advantage.

Month four is a free pair of shoelaces, no strings attached (ha ha). Month 5 is a free shoe cleaner, again with a $25 purchase. I figure that one I can skip unless DH is needing shoes that month. But the last month, the one for December is a $20 gift card (with some exclusions).

At the very least I will get a free t-shirt and a free pair of shoelaces. Pretty good for making no purchases.

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The massage therapist who works on my leg on occasion so I can continue walking normally moved offices recently and had two really nice computer chairs she was getting rid of. I took them both. One to replace a ratty old chair my son has been using and the other I gave to my mother to use since her chair was falling apart.

I think I'm doing pretty well with the free business lately.

I forgot to post my meal-planning for the week. Things got a little topsy-turvy anyway on Sunday because I forgot to put the roast in the crockpot so we ended up having roast chicken on Sunday and pot roast tonight. But I really ought to post the rest of my meal plan for the week because I find without the accountability it is far too easy to go "Screw it, let's go out." And I figure tomorrow especially since I will be canning all day I don't want to go without a plan. So...

Tuesday--
Bacon cheeseburgers
Homemade french fries
Coleslaw
Blackberries and blueberries

Wednesday--
Porkchops
Daikon Medallions
Corn on the cob
Drop biscuits with homemade apricot jam

Thursday--
Carne Asada (from this recipe:

www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/carne_asada/ but I add a peeled, mashed kiwi to the marinade)
Mexican Rice (from this recipe: http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2011/05/mexican-rice.html
Coleslaw

Friday--
Oven baked chicken
Baked potatoes
Broccoli/Cauliflower
Drop biscuits wtih homemade strawberry jam

Saturday--
Nachos (tortilla chips, taco meat, cheese, salsa)
Salad
Cantaloupe

Sunday--
Beef chuck pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Berries

I spent a good hour harvesting berries today. I am having to pick about every 2 days so that nothing goes to waste.

Today's bounty:



Yes, that's 7 pints of raspberries, 1 pint of blackberries, and 1 pint of blueberries with at least another 1/2 pint in the Ziploc baggy. And that doesn't show the half a pint of blackberries I picked and ate for my lone high carb of the day. And there are enough blackberries out there to fill another pint container, but I had filled up all of my containers and once I had them inside didn't want to go back out and pick anymore. I'll get them tomorrow. I will freeze what I pick tomorrow so I won't eat them all and will eventually have enough to make jam by saving them over the next week or so. Plus hopefully enough to freeze some extra for the year as well. It's a small stand of blackberries, about 4 feet wide by 8 feet long so it may not produce enough. The blackberries I picked today are for tomorrow's fresh eating. They are so delicious.

We were inventorying the freezers and we found about three gallons of blueberries (from our yard, so organic) from last year and some sugared strawberries (not organic) so I think I'll be making blueberry jam this week, too and Mom will be adding the frozen strawberries to her smoothies.

I wonder if there is something like freecycle (maybe tradecycle or something) where you could barter your fresh fruit you don't want more of, like extra raspberries for the fresh fruit you do want, like blackberries. Or maybe I could give away raspberry jam in exchange for fresh blackberries. I do intend to give away quite a bit of the raspberry jam I make anyway. If I can get enough blackberries I will make brambleberry jam, too, which I like an awful lot more than straight raspberries and that will help use some of them up.

I now have 1 full gallon of raspberries frozen, plus enough in another gallon baggy to make jam tomorrow. I was going to do it earlier in the week but it was just too hot. The weather has broken now, though.

We will not have to buy jam this year at all. We won't have to buy any berries for eating as we will have plenty frozen.

Yesterday we put in more romanesco broccoli on the cool side of the house, which we fenced because the chickens were trying to eat the greens before we even got them in the ground, some more yellow zucchini squash, some green pole beans that may or may not make it, but I can put some bean seeds in under their foliage to protect them from the chickens, and some green bunching onions. I have some new lettuce starts to plant in the windowboxes as those lettuces are bolting fast. The chickens will appreciate those when I pull them.

I have a large pepper plant and a large tomato plant that I rescued very cheaply from a store that was clearancing them. I think I am just going to cut the ends off the plastic pots, dig a bit down in the soil and sort of just set them in and put the dirt back around the bases. Root shocking them at this point might do more harm than good, especially since they have fruits of decent size on them.

I have broken even on what I've paid out for gardening this season if I include the fruits and pretty close even if I don't.

I am buying very little in the way of fruit at the grocery store. I did buy a Washington organic nectarine and some Washington organic pence apricots, but I will be canning apricot jam and one batch of that is enough. I have been tempted by the melons, especially the canteloupe and also the kiwis and pineapples. I hate buying outside of my foodshed but some things just don't grow in my state. Or not well. I swear I am going to buy a hardy kiwi first thing after we move and plant it, weather permitting.

Anyway, now that harvest is in full swing on the berries, I can cut about $100 out of my food budget that was going to buying fresh fruit and put it in the Freezer Fund instead. I know I will have enough berries to get me through a year by the time I am done. I know we will want other fruit throughout the year, oranges, bananas and lemons come to mind, but those will be supplemental fruits along with what I can (like Italian prunes and pears, and apple sauce). It should still cut by 3/4 my fruit portion of the food budget this year.

I would eventually like to get my fruit portion of the food budget to where we only have to buy 10% of it and the rest is all free from what we grow. I want to do that on a permanent basis, but I will have to start all over with berry canes and bushes. Oh, I can still harvest at Mom's, but I want to be self-sufficient in this area. I should probably take some cuttings now from her blueberry bushes and start rooting them. I can get a piece of willow bark or birch bark from the neighbor to make a rooting solution. Her blueberry bushes are 75 years old and are the best tasting ones out there, so I want to have those same types when we move again.

I will, however, order organic thornless blackberries from a catalogue. And plenty of them. I'm not sure I'll bother with more than transplanting a few canes of raspberries for DH. The kids don't like those ones enough to care. To them raspberries are only good for filling out smoothies when there isn't enough of the other things. And then of course I'll buy strawberry plants but that is all way in the future. I want to find out what type it is that the guy from Fir Island was growing. Those were the best I've tasted in a long time.

After my fruit is up to speed I want to start planting in sufficient quantities to get my veggies to where I can freeze and can a lot of them and root cellar the rest and make it last a year. I know that's a way's off. I don't have the soil for it here and I'd bring in good soil if needed when we move. If I am very lucky I will get my tomato supply up to where I need it with what I am growing. If not I will get a couple of bushels from one of the local organic farms. Much cheaper than buying organic sauce.

We'll see how it goes. All it takes is one more health crisis for me and my gardening goes right out the window. So let's hope that doesn't happen.

I added $8.02 to the coin jar today. It's ultimate destination is the freezer fund.

I think the freezer under our fridge is either going out or either needs new...um...weather stripping. I forget the actual word for it, but the rubber that helps make it seal. Is that a gasket or something else? Anyway, lately whenever I open that up it's like being greeted with a little bit of snow.

It doesn't seem to be harming the food any, but I'm not sure if that is a repair you can make yourself or if you need to hire someone to come do it. I don't even remember where we bought the fridge. I'm thinking a local, family-owned place in Lynden, who does do house calls way, way, way faster than Sears, and I'm pretty sure I was boycotting Sears appliances by that time anyway because of getting repair people out to fix their stuff taking so long.

I think I'm going to stop putting money into the vacation fund starting next month and take that $100 a month and put it into the Freezer Fund instead. I have enough in the vacation fund now to pay for our planned trips to the science center, to the zoo, and to the county fair. I'm also going to stop contributing to the Mac Book fund for right now. DD knows that she won't be getting it until senior year anyway, so there will be enough time to make up for that.

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Went swimming again yesterday with the kids. Did 26 laps, or half a mile again. A little sore but not after last time. My clothes are getting pretty loose. I have some smaller shirts that I am going to have to break out soon because the formerly tight shirts are starting to swim on me. I don't want to buy new summer stuff, though. It'll be fall soon and I have some fall clothes that are smaller and will fit. Will probably have to buy 2 pairs of jeans though. All of my old Disneyland shirts are fitting now, no more snugness at all. I love that, because I had a lot of t-shirt souvenirs. And it means I shouldn't have to buy new shirts for a while. Maybe a nice blouse I can wear for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but not much else.

After having to come up with $500 unexpectedly for my son's medical treatment at the end of last month, it meant that after paying all bills we had $450 left to get through the next two weeks. Well, today is the last day of that two weeks. Tomorrow is payday. It was harder than I thought it would be, because I have gotten used to the ability to buy little things pretty much when we want them. Big things we save up for of course, but if I wanted to buy a bushel of organic apricots, normally I would have been able to just go and do that. If I wanted to go and purchase a couple extra garden stakes, I could do it. With that extra $500 missing from the budget, there was no way.

I had to really remember how we used to do things back when things were super tight, but fortunately it's not been that long ago. So we all did some belt-tightening and we've made it through. And with $49 still in the checking account, so clearly it's doable. The kids had a few cases of the "I wants" but I just kept reminding them of the medical bills. We don't believe in hiding the truth about finances from our kids. They are old enough to get it and we want them to live in the real world and not understand the truth about money, budgets and bills. This month I have budgeted for the extra medical and although it will still be a little tight, it won't be so much of a challenge as being blind-sided by it.

It has shown me though that there are places I could tighten the budget so we could pay off a little bit more or save a little bit more, so I think I am going to keep that in mind for the future.

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Tonight for dinner we had roast chicken. There was a lot left over (I got a five pound organic bird). We will be eating it for lunch for the next couple days in one form or another. I picked all the meat off the bones and I've finally got enough to make stock. So tonight before bed I am going to throw the chicken carcasses I have been saving in the freezer and all the onion skins and tops and bottoms, garlic skins, and carrot peels that I have been saving along with a whole fresh onion, some carrots that are getting to the end of their life, a bunch of celery leaves and the innermost stalks no one likes to eat, some crushed garlic, peppercorns, turmeric, marjoram, sage, sea salt, basil, thyme and parsley into the crockpot and cover it with water. I am going for some major flavor. I will let it cook on low overnight and in the morning I will have beautiful chicken stock.

Then I will strain it, pour it back into the crockpot, saute fresh carrots, onion, and celery and cook them until they are soft. I will add some of the chicken and then I will pour it all into quart jars and pressure can it. The recipe I saw recommended you put your chicken and vegetables into the jars first so that it fills them about 2/3 of the way and then add your hot broth. This way makes sure that the heat penetrates all the way to the center of the jar, very important in canning. I might do 2 pint jars of just broth, too.

We will then have homemade shelf-stable chicken soup and broth ready on the shelf. All I will have to do in the future will be to heat it, add some noodles if I want them, simmer until they are soft and there you go. Homemade, healthy, organic soup and you can bet it won't cost what it does in the store, especially when half the ingredients in the stock are things you would have thrown away or composted anyway.

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I picked three more pints of raspberries today, another quarter pint of blueberries and 10 blackberries. In a few more days I think the blueberries will be in serious business and another week and it will be the blackberries turn to explode.

And I'm pretty sure we're going to have grapes this year. I just am not sure when. Does anyone know when grapes get ripe in the Pacific Northwest? They are Concords.

Looking Forward wanted my recipe for this so here it is. I find stir-fries to be relatively frugal, especially since you can always add more veggies to stretch it if you need to.

Tropical Chicken Stir-Fry

Ingredients:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup water
4 tablespoons minced onion (I use the white parts from green onions, but any onion is fine)
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
4 large, fresh garlic cloves, minced (don’t cheat and use the jarred stuff, it’s worth using fresh)
1 inch fresh grated ginger (or 1 tsp ground)
1/16 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 pound boneless skinless chicken (I use thighs) cut into strips

1 pound (or more) of stir-fry veggies of your choice. I usually use snow peas, carrots, celery, bok choi, broccoli and cauliflower.

Oil for cooking. I use peanut oil if I have it, but canola oil works, too. Olive oil changes the taste so I would not recommend it.

Directions:
To make marinade, mix the first 10 ingredients. Set aside 1/3 cup marinade. Place chicken strips in ziptop plastic bag or marinating dish and pour in marinade.

Cover chicken (if using dish) and refrigerate for most of the day or overnight, turning once or twice if you can to thoroughly coat chicken.

Discard used marinade. Heat oil in the bottom of a wok or large sauté pan. Stir-fry chicken on medium high until cooked through, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove chicken from pan and add vegetables. Cook until vegetables are tender crisp. I usually cook the broccoli and cauliflower for about 2 minutes and then add the other veggies and cook another 3 minutes. Add the chicken back in and the reserved marinade. Cook until chicken is warmed through and marinade is hot.

Note: I usually use the juice from canned pineapple for the marinade. If you don't have canned pineapple or pineapple juice, but can get a hold of fresh, just add a half cup of small pineapple chunks in when you put the chicken and reserved marinade back in the pan for the same flavor.

This is Patches (so named because of how his feathers came in). He of the wonky wing. You can see the dark green mottling on his neck here. The newbies are getting more and more used to me now and finally letting me get near enough to take some decent close ups.



I can't believe how much the cauliflower has grown in the last few days.



One of the brandywine tomatoes. This is the biggest.



The blackberries are not going to wait until the end of August. Most of them look like this, but I did see a couple that were black.



And...one of these things is not like the other.



Three more pints of raspberries and a quarter of a pint of the first blueberries.

In June I never thought summer would get here. It rained almost the whole month. July is making up for that for sure.

At least if it works, and if not, I'm not out anything. I remembered reading once that you can replant the bottoms of green onions if they have a root still on them. I use two to three batches of green onions a week between breakfast omelettes and low carb meatloaves I make for lunches so I always have that last half inch or so that goes into the soup stock bag in the freezer or the compost bin depending on the condition.

So I decided to try planting them in the garden. If they do grow I'll start to see them within a week. And if not, it'll help fertilize the soil by trench composting.

It would be nice if it works as I buy these a lot. I was dinking around online today and also saw that you can replant regular onion bottoms, too. A bit more to it than what I did with the green onion bottoms, but it can be done. I don't know if they grow into full onions if you just get the greens, but either way, it'd be worth it, so the next time I use a full-sized onion I am going to try it. I had planned on planting onion sets with my garlic bulbs this fall anyway, so this might just give me a head start.

Yesterday the kids and I went to look at an open house. It is about four blocks from my mother's house. It is 1611 square feet and a very nice house. 3 bedroom, 1.5 baths. It has a very large concrete pad patio in the back yard. I mean it is big enough to set up one of those giant swimming pools like they sell in Costco, a barbecue, a picnic table, and still have room on it. The back yard otherwise was a small strip of grass, about ten feet wide, a small storage shed and a line of scraggly cedar trees against the back fence. The grass strip got a lot of sun, though so would be a good spot for a vegetable garden.

The front yard was bigger and could easily accommodate blueberry bushes and an Itlalian prune tree and the empty front flowerbeds could accommodate strawberry plants. There is also a strip down the side of the house that could be a garden area as well.

The house is in an ideal neighborhood for us. It is in the right school districts. And it is going for $224,900 which is at the low end of our price range and we could actually make the payments right now before we sell the other house. It is a two or three block walk to the grocery store.

It has been completely remodeled, but was built in 1920 and has a lot of that old house charm, but with new windows, siding and roof. I did notice a week spot in the walk in closet upstairs. I noticed it because I walked across it, but other than that I did not notice anything wrong with the house. It was very clean and did not smell of animals despite having had a cat there formerly (it was in the online photos, but the house is empty now). The carpet was very comfortable to walk on in bare feet.

It had a nice kitchen for cooking, and neither stove or the dishwasher were next to the fridge (bad to have heat users next to a cold maker for electricity costs). Not as big as I'd like for storage space, but the laundry room was so large you could put a king size bed in it and still have space for the washer/dryer and a path to walk. So I think shelving in there would expand the pantry just fine and there is space for a chest freezer. We would have to keep our table pushed against the kitchen wall when we weren't using it or find a smaller table at Goodwill or something. There is no seperate dining area.

I don't know. I'm waffling because it doesn't have a garage. DH has always wanted shop space. Yet at the same time a garage makes things cost $40,000 more. There is not enough space to build a garage one day , either.

The master bedroom was as big as the one I am in now. The whole house felt very airy and open. Maybe that is because we are used to living in 1000 square feet right now. All things being equal, I think I could be happy there. I'd certainly be happy with a lower mortgage.

There is another house I want to look at, too. We've driven by it before but never seen the inside. It is $209,000, has more space, and a bigger yard with raised beds and room to build a shop. It also has an unfinished basement. It is in the right school districts, but is not as ideally located. Well, it is walking distance to the mall, but not really to any grocery store. And it's about 2 miles from my Mom's house so not really walking distance for the kids. Not that two miles is too far, but part of the walk would be on a busy five lane road.

It has hardwood floors and a bigger kitchen plus dining room. The only thing I would worry about is the basement flooding. It is very wet here nine months out of the year and basements in older homes flood a lot because inadequate drainage was put in when they were built. I grew up having to turn on the sump pump every time it rained too hard and that is not something we want to deal with at all. So I want to look at it for water damage.

The best choice is to just keep saving our money and work on getting our house on the market and not move forward too quickly, especially with DS's new medical expenses. But it is nice to know that there are options out there that we can afford right now if we needed to. I just don't think I'm quite ready to get serious. But it is nice to look.

We've made it through all of the potatoes we dug up when starting the garden, so I will have to stop by the store to buy those and corn on the cob today and I will need more milk around Thursday, otherwise I am set for food for the week. I do need to make buns and bread tonight for future meals this week, too. Anyway, here is my meal plan for the week. Doing this every week again is really helping me stick to my food budget while still purchasing mostly organic fruits and veggies, and pasture raised, sustainable protein.

Monday--
Pork chops
Corn on the cob
Broccoli/Cauliflower
Drop biscuits with homemade strawberry jam

Tuesday--
Bacon cheese burgers
Fried potatoes
Green beans
Cherries

Wednesday--
Spaghetti
Garlic cheese meatballs
Texas toast
Cherries

Thursday--
Roast chicken
Baked potatoes
Broccoli/cauliflower
Cloverleaf rolls with homemade strawberry jam

Friday--
Homemade Pizza with uncured pepperoni, homemade sausage, uncured Canadian bacon, onions and red bell peppers
Coleslaw
Cherries

Saturday--
Tropical Island Chicken Stir-fry

Sunday--
Beef chuck pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Drop biscuits with homemade strawberry jam

Alternate meal in case I am too tired to do the planned meal--
Pancakes, ham, and scrambled eggs. I did this one day this past week instead of my planned meal because I was really tired. It was nice to have it as a backup plan and really easy to fix.

I don't watch the news, but I do realize the middle of the country is probably far hotter than us right now. However, it got up to 80 today, very hot for the rainy PNW coast. And the extended forecast shows more of the same for the next ten days. We are definitely going swimming tomorrow.

I decided not to make jam today after all and threw the raspberries in the freezer to wait for a cooler day. I really don't need to be heating the house up during the hottest part of the day. So hopefully I can make them in the cooler part of the morning tomorrow or the next day. This will be my cheapest batch of jam yet, with me only having to pay for sugar and pectin. Any further raspberries I pick will just be frozen for future use in smoothies or whatever. It will be nice to have free fruit in the freezer.

I noticed when I was out putting away the chickens and ducks tonight that there are a few ripe blueberries on the bushes. We rarely get ripe blueberries before August, but this heat wave is pushing everything forward, I guess. So where I thought I'd have almost a month before worrying about harvesting those, I think it's going to be closer to a week. I'll have to take a look at the blackberries, too. They may have moved up their production date as well.

Also while herding the ducks I saw that two of the younger apple trees that have never had fruit on them before are loaded down with apples. I usually don't have to go back that far, but they were in the furthest corner of the property. I knew the old one was full up, but these ones are Golden Delicious and Macintosh and we've been looking forward to those since they were planted as little more than sticks with a couple of buds on them five or six years ago.

I really wish I liked apple sauce or apple pie. I've never been one for cooked apples, though. I do like raw apple pie filling (just apples, cinnamon, and sugar) or apples with peanut butter, but mostly I like eating apples out of hand. I don't know if either of those are good keeping apples, but I should get a few weeks out of them at the very least. I will can sauce in pint jars and a couple of pies for DH though. The big jars at the store are too much for just him to finish and the little plastic cups of sauce taste nasty, plus they're plastic and we're trying to get away from that. And he and my mom both love apple pies so the least I can do this season is make one or two. Me, I'll take chocolate pie or key lime pie or even lemon meringue, but chocolate, lemons and limes don't grow free on trees here. Such a shame.

It's been so hot these last few days that my tomato plants have really shot up. Well, four of them have. What I'm really excited about though is that the second plant has fruit on it now, little ones about the size of nickel. And the other two big ones are really blossoming like crazy. The two little tomato plants are just not seeming to do well. They are getting just as much sun as they other four. The only difference is that those two are determinate and the other four are indeterminate.

I am thinking about digging up the two small ones and planting them in some large buckets with half compost/ half potting soil and putting them where they will get even more sun and seeing if that doesn't make any difference. You would think ten hours of sun would be enough for those two, but it doesn't appear to be.

The cauliflower is making little heads. I was surprised because the leaves are not as big as I expected them to be when they started making heads. Not seeing that yet on the broccoli, but they are younger than the cauliflower. The kohlrabi are just starting to swell. The green beans are working their way up their poles. The pickling cucumbers are doing good, the English ones are starting to recover from the slug attacks when the weather was bad.

I picked another quart of raspberries today so this afternoon I am making a batch of raspberry jam up.

My nephew and his wife stopped by with the new baby and the toddler. Both are extremely adorable children, but the toddler is super high energy. The baby isn't quite 5 weeks yet. There is nothing like baby snuggles, but I tell you, I am so glad those years are well behind me and I can give the youngsters back when I'm done! Not that having teens is easy, either, but they are preferrable at my stage of life.

I am very pleased with how the mustard turned out. I ended up combining a few different recipes to make one that I thought would appeal to me best. I don't know why so many recipes call for cayenne in ordinary yellow mustard. I didn't use it and mine has enough kick without it. It's probably around the range of French's yellow mustard, not super spicy, but definitely a bit of heat. I love French's mustard for flavor, but the yellow # 5 I can do without.

I have always been a pretty loyal French's mustard girl, but I think this actually tastes just as good, maybe even a little better. It seems mild at first, but then it gives a little kick.



Here's the recipe I ended up concocting:

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup of mustard powder (I used yellow, but brown is fine if you want brown mustard, I wanted yellow)
2 tsp kosher sea salt (ordinary salt is fine)
1 tsp flour (I just used white all purpose)
1 tsp turmeric (makes it more yellow and gives a little kick)
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp onion powder

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup water
3/4 cup white vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Mix together all of the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Add to sauce pan. Mix water and vinegar. Add to sauce pan. Stir until combined and you can see no lumps. If there are any lumps squash them against the side of the pan until the powder comes free and mix it in.

Turn on heat and bring it to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes while stirring. I stirred it pretty constantly because otherwise it would try to splatter out of the pan. I kept it on a low boil because a high boil was too messy.

Now most of the recipes I saw said to put it in a blender at this point to make it smoother, but it looked plenty smooth to me and I didn't want to cool the mustard down since I was going to be canning it and I didn't want to lose part of it to the sides of the blender container either. If I had a handheld blender I might have done it right there on the stove, but like I said, it didn't seem grainy at all so I skipped that step.

At this point I turned off the heat and I stirred in the lemon juice until it was absorbed. I then poured it into my hot, sterilized half-pint jars, leaving one inch of head space, that is one inch from the top of the jar. The mustard will expand during processing so don't overfill. I then thumped the mustard down into the jars to get rid of any air pockets. I put on my lids and rings and put the jars into my boiling water bath, then I processed for 15 minutes.

I actually had enough for 2 half-pint jars with a little less than a quarter cup left over so I put the extra into a clean jar and put it into the fridge. The jars sealed up just fine, pinging within minutes of taking them out.

I bought the organic mustard powder in bulk from the food co-op. Everything else I had on hand (and was also organic, except the vinegar). A cup of mustard powder cost me $2.00. I can estimate that the rest of the ingredients might have been .50 worth, so about 20 ounces of mustard with no additives for $2.50. About what I'd pay for regular storebought mustard, and less than I'd pay for organic storebought mustard. I'm considering this organic because for it to qualify as an organic processed food in the industry, 80% of it must come from organic sources and this does.

I'll make this again later this summer, but right now I've got some raspberry canes calling my name. I think jam is in my near future.

So tomorrow guess what I am going to make and can? Nothing to do with fruit, so if you guessed jam or jelly, nope. Instead I am going to make something relatively quick, fast and easy, but something I have never even thought about making before. My one big problem with buying this storebought is that it uses yellow number five. And also, I don't ever go through it fast enough. And it doesn't come in small enough containers and is really hard to find in a glass jar, without it costing an arm and a leg. It's something that only I eat in my household, although DS says he might try it since it will be homemade.

Have you given up? It's ordinary yellow mustard. I found a recipe online that I liked the look of that will be very easy to make. It will make two cups worth and I want to can it in half pints. I will only end up processing one jar and using the other one straight away, but if it turns out tasting good, I will make a bunch more and probably branch out into deli-style mustard, Dijon, Chinese hot mustard, and honey mustard. Shelf stable homemade mustard with no gunge in it will make me very happy.

I like all of the ingredients in the recipe, but I will leave out the optional 1 tsp of cayenne. I don't want my mustard to be as hot as cayenne makes things. Even when I just use 1/8 tsp of cayenne in my sausage recipe, my eyes still water a bit and my kids prefer it when I just use 1/16th tsp. The paprika and turmeric will be enough spice for me. I will post the recipe if I like how it turns out.

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I have to take the van back on Tuesday. There is a small leak in the oil pan. A valve needs to be replaced. It will take them 3 hours, but it is covered by warranty. I will go without the kids. 4 hours (including the travel time) without them will be nice after two weeks with no school. I love them to death, but they are driving me a little crazy.

I have the car scheduled for an oil change this afternoon. I'm not sure how much it runs anymore, but it's under $40. They will also wash the car, which could use it, though by the time I drive it back home again it probably won't be clean anymore. There's a lot of dust on the freeway right now for some reason.

The last few days in the 70's have been very nice. This house doesn't have AC, but we can still keep it pretty cool. We keep the windows closed and blinds on the sunny side of the house drawn in the morning and then as soon as it passes over the house around eleven we open all of those windows on the now shaded side and close the ones on the other side of the house. Once the sun goes behind the trees around 8 p.m. then everything is flung open. It keeps things comfortable.

My garden is starting to take off with the heat and I can see the tomato plants visibly jumping in size from day to day. So are the brassicas. I have moved my lettuce more into the shade to try to prevent bolting. They have more than paid for themselves, but I'd like to keep them going as long as possible.

The corn Mom planted is halfway up my thigh. The yarn in our part of the country is that corn has to be "knee high by the 4th of July" if it is going to make it before the cold sets in, so I think we're set on that. She planted it in the middle of her flower garden. It looks very pretty there and not at all out of place. Hopefully there won't be any neighbors in a tizzy over vegetables growing in the flower beds. Our near neighbors don't give a hoot, but it seems there is always someone. Fortunately there is no HOA here and Mom has never been one to care what other people think anyway.

The kids and I are going swimming this evening. I am really looking forward to it. My body is really stiff after picking up all the fireworks debris off the ground (there was a lot that came in from other people's stuff landing in our yard and driveway) and swimming always helps with that.

Speaking of fireworks, or firework debris, I'm just leaving a note here to remind me that War Chest was the best firework we purchased and not to buy the Corruptor again because it was disappointing. Also, no more Mad Dog fountains and only one Purple Rain from now on and to get the big one. Flak Fire and Blue Craze were fun. Old Glory is a nice, low key fountain with lots of color that I liked, but the kids weren't very impressed. No more strobes, too many in a box and no one cares much after the first one. No more turtles. Ground flower types are still a hit after all these years. And no matter how old they get the kids will still want to do pop-its.

I added .92 to the coin jar. And I think that is about it.

My Mom's handyman is interested in our old car. The other people who had expressed an interest in it have been trying to "come up with" the money for months. The handyman, who is a painter by trade, but far more than that by knowledge and experience (knows construction and electrician stuff), is ammenable to painting the entire inside of our old house in exchange for the car. I don't know if anything will actually come of this or not, but I definitely think it is a fair trade and certainly better than waiting on someone to have money they might never have to buy it. There was never any deal made that we would wait on selling the car for the other people, just the interest was expressed and price given.

You hear about good barter situations like this, but I never expected one to fall in my lap. He still wants to check out a couple of things about the car first before committing, but I feel he is far more likely to carry through than these other people.

You know how I said I thought I'd have a week before having to make jam again? Umm... Today I picked these and there's a lot more ripening:



That's about 3.5 pints and that's after just 2 full days of sun. And the next 9 days are supposed to be just as sunny and in the 70's. Which will be great for my tomatoes, but the raspberries will explode. I think by Friday I'll have to pick again and will have enough to make jam by then. We have about 30 feet of raspberry canes so you can imagine how many berries that is going to be.

I froze 1 quart of what I picked since they will go bad fast just in the fridge, gave 1 pint to Mom for fresh eating, and DS is eating the rest. When I have 4 quarts I will make jam and then anything left after that I will just freeze for smoothies. When I make raspberry jam I will make it in half-pints as it doesn't get eaten as fast as the other jams. Plus they are a better size for giving away at Christmas time.

After picking I sat on the old swing for a while. The view over my head:



Those Italian prunes were just on one teeny tiny section of one branch (I zoomed in). That whole big branch easily held about 50 fruits.

And the view before me, Patricia, out for a stroll:



The chickens and ducks are not liking the firecrackers. They will be in the chicken coop and the duck den tonight before it gets really bad. We will be letting some off ourselves, as far from them as we can get on the property, but not until they are safely in for the night.

I hoed the weeds up in the garden and got rid of some of the straw mulch. I will water tonight from the rain barrels when it's a bit cooler and the water won't evaporate so fast. Most of the broccoli has survived. I lost two plants, one just didn't have enough roots, and the other I accidentally hacked through with the hoe when I was uprooting some tansy. The cauliflower the slugs were eating on is coming back. I found a very natural remedy for the slugs...feeding them to the ducks.

After that I harvested some lettuce. I picked about $6 worth of organic lettuce (enough for the week) so that brings my costs down to $37.06 left to break even on what I've spent on gardening this year. I suppose I could add in the cost of the berries which sell for around $5 for a half pint for the organic ones, which would put me on a $0 footing. But since I didn't pay for those plants (they originally came free from my Mom's sister who had too many about twenty years ago) and I wouldn't actually ever buy raspberries from the store except once in a while in the dead of winter if my kids begged hard enough, I don't think that counts.

Still, at the rate I am going I think I will have met my costs by mid-August. Maybe sooner. The green beans are starting to climb the poles now. We might have some actual green beans before then, especially if this weather keeps up all month.

Wednesday--
Ribeye steaks
Broccoli/Cauliflower
Corn on the Cob
Nectarines

Thursday--
Toasted Ham and Cheese Sandwiches
Chili or Soup
Cole slaw
French Fries (Homemade)
Pineapple

Friday--
Homemade pizza
Cole slaw
Salad
Cherries

Saturday--
Chicken
Baked potatoes
Broccoli/Cauliflower

Sunday--
Beef Chuck Pot Roast
Drop biscuits with jam of choice
Green beans
Mashed potatoes and gravy

I think I have jam coming out of my ears, but I'm done. I processed 4 more pints and 1 more 12 ounce jar of strawberry jam today and I am finally out of berries. It is interesting how the same amount of ingredients do not always produce the same amount of jam. I've been at it for four days now, but it is totally worth it and my half a pantry shelf of gorgeous jam and jelly is beautifully jewel-toned, but did I mention that canning is hot, sweaty work? Because if I didn't it is hot. And sweaty. And work. But I should not have to make jam again for a week.

One batch of raspberries will be enough (most will be Christmas gifts) and if the chickens eat the rest, well, I won't tell anyone. And then after that no more jam until mid-August when the blackberries and blueberries are ripe. And then that shelf will be completely full of jam, jelly, and home-canned fruit. And maybe the next one, too.

I will love this in the late fall and winter when local, organic fruit isn't readily available. I am really trying to reduce most of our food needs to the 100 mile food-shed (well 50 miles for most of it). Except citrus and seafood. I will allow California for oranges and anything West coast for wild fish. And Hawaii for pineapples and sugar, because I mean come on.

I have been reading a farm blog that has a climate very similar to ours and she has a big garden and overwinters cabbage and kale. Some of the outer leaves get damaged but the inside ball of cabbage makes it just fine year after year. We have kale growing but I wasn't going to plant cabbage being as it is so inexpensive (even organically), but the idea of fresh as opposed to stored cabbage in the winter really appeals. The types she uses are Melissa and January King so I am going to see if I can't get ahold of some seeds from one or the other. It's a late start but they are late season crops so I might be able to pull it off and if not, well a couple seed packets are not that much. If I can't find them now I'll just wait and try to pull it off next year.

I am also reading Joel Salatin's book Folks, This Ain't Normal. He has a lot of interesting things to say about commercial farming and what it is doing to the planet and the nutrition of the food and the animals. I don't agree with all of his ideas, a few are just highly impractical or would violate health codes, but the vast majority of what he says and does is good, common sense logic in regards to farming, gardening, and growing animals. The one I like the best though is simply not allowing any biological matter into landfills. If it can rot and break down it should be allowed to do that not in a landfill. Anyway, it's interesting and informative reading.

Yesterday I canned 5 more pints of organic strawberry jam. We got an even better deal on the strawberries this time because we bought day old berries for jam making instead of fresh. So I spent $10 for all of the ingredients in 5 pints. Not bad.

Then I canned 9 12 ounce jars of organic grape jelly. Since it is nigh on impossible to find organic grape jelly anywhere, and it is completely impossible to find grape jelly without corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup in it, I am very pleased with myself. I won't make any more grape jelly this year, I don't think. I am the only one who eats it, so those 9 jars should last me about 2 years, since I eat other kinds like strawberry, blackberry, brambleberry, apricot, blueberry, and huckleberry, too. Grape is just my favorite.

In doing the math I figured that I paid $19.90 for the grape jelly ingredients, and since I can't compare it to what isn't actually made, I compared it to the average price of a half pint of organic jelly of any flavor which would be $6. So the same amount would be $84, so a savings of $64.10 over purchasing something similar.

I probably won't make too much raspberry jam. Maybe one batch. I don't like raspberries. I mean, I will eat them if they are mixed in with other berries, but I won't seek them out. Shame, too, since we have so many growing in the back yard. DH likes raspberries, but not raspberry jam, so a few jars for the kids and maybe a couple to give away at Christmas should suffice. I will save some though in the freezer though to make brambleberry jam, as the blackberries override the flavor of the raspberries, and that everyone likes.

So plans for future canning, one batch of raspberry jam, one batch of brambleberry jam, 3 batches of blackberry jam, 5 batches of blueberry jam (and lots and lots of frozen blueberries) and if the grape vines produce this year, I might actually make more grape jelly after all. They have blossoms on them so it is possible they might make enough for jam, but I have a feeling it will be just enough for table grapes. I also plan to make Italian prune jelly as well as canning and possibly drying Italian prunes. Nothing tastes like them and the tree is loaded for bear.

Somewhere during blueberry and prune season I should have a boatload of tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, and green beans to can. I want to put up enough green beans for the year since my favorite brand has started using BPA in their can liners. Plus they have just gotten really expensive. $1 a jar, sometimes .75 on sale. If I grow enough to can what I want, it would be 104 quarts or 208 pints, since we eat them at least twice a week. I also am hoping that my tomato plants will produce enough to make sauce for the entire year. There I will need about 75 quarts of sauce or 150 pints and then also about 30 pints of diced tomatoes. I don't know if the weather is going to be good enough for me to grow that much this year. In the past Mom has grown tomatoes like that, but it was a hot sunny summer and that is not what we have been getting this year. I may have to purchase some from one of the sustainable, organic farms in our county that grows them, but it would still be worth it to do.

Then there will be a batch or two of applesauce in half-pint jars for DH who is the only one who eats it. DD and I don't like the texture and DS is allergic to apples. The apple tree at the old house is loaded. I haven't been into the back yard at the old house to check, but if we have pears I will put up pears as well and maybe some pear sauce, DS likes that, and definitely a couple of pear pies. And I'd like to can some nectarines, but only if I can find a not too expensive organic source. They spray stone fruit like crazy, so organic is a must. I need about 20 pounds to make it worth my effort.

I am really, really glad my mother has a ton of empty jars in her basement. I've already cleaned out Goodwill of canning jars and a couple of garage sales. There are three more thrift shops I want to check, too. Otherwise it's $10 for a set of 12 jars with lids and rings. I don't need anymore rings and lids you can easily buy on their own, so if I can find quality jars for .20 each, that's what I'm going to do. Canning shouldn't be expensive (except the lids, and even those are fairly reasonable). I need to keep an eye out for estate sales, too. You can often get boxes of jars there. I'm not picky, Ball, Kerr, Mason, I'll take them all.

Looking Forward--Since posting URLs is what apparently is making my blogs and comments not post, there is a website called Simply Canning that is really helpful for learning how to can. She gives a lot of good information and makes it less intimidating.

Jeffrey, I don't know if my PM's made it through to you or not (I sent one 36 hours ago and one about 12 hours ago) and I don't even know if this is going to post, but my blog is not letting me post 9 times out of 10 and if I try to edit something that does post, it erases the whole post. It is also telling me I am not allowed to make comments either on my own blog or other people's blogs. Hopefully this one will manage to get through.

I tried to post last night but it wouldn't let me. It also wouldn't allow me to comment on my own blog or anyone else's despite being logged in. I even tried logging out and logging back in. So this is just a test post to see if the problem is over.

I can. Or rather I can can. My first jam experience since I was a kid went great. I canned 5 pints. Usually I buy organic strawberry jelly or jam in the 1/2 pint jars for $6 each. 10 jars worth would be $60. I used $14 worth of organic strawberries and about $2 worth of sugar to make a comparable amount. $16 bucks vs $60? Even taking out 1.5 hours for my time, that is well worth it. And I was also reading for part of the time while I stirred or talking to DH and my daughter and I were chatting while we hulled and cleaned the berries so it wasn't like it wasn't multi-tasking.

Here is the result of my work, some gorgeous, dark red jam:



I have enough strawberries to make another 5 pints of jam and I also want to get to making the grape jelly I've been planning on making for a while. I am hoping to do it today, but it might not get done until tomorrow for the strawberries and Tuesday for the grape jelly. It depends on what the handyman is doing in the kitchen today. If he gets done quickly enough I can do it. If not, it waits.

DS finally got a hold of Silver, the most elusive, but prettiest feathered chicken and made her pose for a photo.



DS is doing much better, by the way. His concussion continues to improve.

We went to the ranch this afternoon and purchased our beef and pork. They were having a sale on the pork chops, which made me happy. I had $60 left of my beef money so that will go into the freezer fund.

While we were down there we saw a sign for organic strawberries at a farm stand so I stopped and got 2 half flats for $12 each. I will be making jelly with that. I was excited because it is super hard to find a good source of organic strawberries around here. You can get a pint or a quart at the store, but anything bigger than that is not organic. Raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, yes, but not strawberries which get sprayed a ton. For my fellow NW Washingtonians, they come from Fir Island in Skagit County.

Of course all the other berries all grow in our yard so I know they are organic and don't need to track down a source. Now I have one I'll go back next year. When we move I will be planting strawberries. I thought about planting them here, but waited too long. I could probably still get a hold of some everbearing, but I find the Junebearing ones taste better to me.

I also added $8.59 to the coin jar. The eight ones went into the freezer fund envelope and on Monday I will deposit everything in that, along with whatever ones DH has left before he leaves. I also dumped all the coins out of DH's wallet and added that to the coin jar, $3.11. I am not adding leftover change and ones to the emergency fund again until I hit my freezer fund goal, which is $900. That should cover tax as well.

Or maybe it's just been the roughest week in a while. DS is finally improving with the concussion, but he has also been diagnosed with forward head posture which was aggravated by, but not caused by, the same thing that caused the concussion. His head isn't seated properly on the neck. It can cause many of the things we have been seeing in DS including a decreased lung capacity (by 30%) making it difficult for him to have any stamina while running in PE. It pinches the brain stem and can cause irritibility, sleep problems, quickness to anger, digestive issues, etc. It is treatable though.

He has to do these special treatments that are going to cost $2500, $500 a month. Treatment may run longer, but that is the full cost even if it goes on all year. I have made the first payment, so just 4 more months worth to come up with. We probably won't be reimbursed for this from insurance since it is an out of network doctor and it is alternative medicine, but it's not like there is an in network doctor that isn't too far away to drive to this often. Because there is one though, it looks unlikely they'll let us have it. If I hadn't seen the improvement already I'd be very wary of the whole thing, but it really is helping. He has to wear a one pound weight band on his head as well for 20 minutes every morning and night to help correct it.

We will not be able to get a half a sustainable, organic beef in December like we were planning because of this expense, but we should be able to get one in the spring. We will still be able to buy some each month out of our grocery budget though as we've been doing. Tomorrow we are going to the ranch to buy some beef and pork. My plans are for 4 beef chuck roasts, 12 pounds of hamburger, 2 pounds of bacon, 1 package of sausages and 8 pork chops.

I am not going to buy anymore of their chickens though. They are only 3.5 pounds which makes the pieces very small, and I prefer to have a 4 to 5 pound chicken so I can have some leftovers for making another meal. Well, I had a bit of leftovers (one back portion and one leg), but not nearly enough to make another meal for four with. And they aren't nearly as flavorful as the beef and pork. I am going to try one of the local chickens that they have for sale at Terra Organica (they are bigger) and if I like the flavor, I will purchase several from the farm. I have the money for the chickens set aside.

We had the last ranch chicken for dinner tonight. I cut it up successfully by myself without Mom hovering by. I've got it down now and I think I can do it with no problems from now on. I think I will invest in a pair of poultry sheers though. It would make cutting between the back and the breast easier. Mine are buried somewhere in storage and weren't the best pair anyway, so a really good new one is in my future. Maybe that'll be my Christmas present this year. We also had potatoes from the garden, lettuce from the window boxes, and some organic nectarines.

When I was out in the garden today I noticed the raspberries are ripening. In a week I should be able to make jam. There might even be some for picking tomorrow. I also checked out our blueberry bushes (which are now taller than me) and they are so loaded with green berries, I know there's going to be a lot of picking this August. I think we will probably get at least 5 gallons per bush and I might be estimating on the low side, so lots for the freezer and plenty for jelly.

The Italian prune tree is loaded this year. Last year we didn't have too much as there was a bad windstorm at the wrong time of year and most of the blossoms got knocked off before pollination. This year will make up for it. There will be plenty for canning. The blackberries are also loaded with blossoms and I think I will get enough to make a batch or two of jam this August.

I'm going to get a couple of flats of strawberries tomorrow, too, so I can make jelly this week. I'll be making grape jelly (from pure grape juice) while I am at it. Might as well only get the kitchen hot and sweaty once.

The grapes are doing pretty well this year. I saw some blossoms. If they produce, it will be the first year they have. There may be a few bunches for eating, but I doubt there will be enough for jelly. Still, if there is, I will make some. It is hard to find good-tasting organic grapes that are reasonably priced.

The compost bin is off to a really good start. Adding in the chicken bedding is going to make it really fertile. DS loves to take the vegetable and fruit scraps out to the bin. It might be a boy thing, but he likes to see the stuff break down and rot. It seems to be his favorite chore and it is one he can do right now as opposed to mowing the lawn. He can't operate machinery until four weeks post concussion.

Today was payday. I haven't done a payday post in forever, but I have been keeping all of my spreadsheets updated and my checkbook balanced. All the bills are paid until the middle of July so it's going to be pretty much automatic pilot on that until the next payday in two weeks.

We did get accepted for the 0% for a year Chase VISA card I talked about a while back. We have received the cards but are still waiting for them to do the transfer from the BoA card. The next payment isn't due until the 21st so I am hoping they will do it before then. It has been pending for a while now. Banks sure can move fast when they want to, when it benefits them, but they sure drag their feet when you want them to move quickly.