Hi Everyone!
How was your week? Mine was busy! But I still managed to get a few things done around here! I am sure I did more than this--at least, I was super busy the whole week--but the following is what I got written down:
*I picked collards from our garden. While my garden is basically long past producing, the one exception is my collards! During the summer, the cabbage moths devoured my collards (this is probably why those moths grow healthy and strong--they are eating MY collards and kale!). They also ate my kale all up leaving basically nothing left for me. But once the cool weather came, the moths left and the collards started growing new leaves. :) The kale also started growing back new leaves, but I have had far fewer kale come back than I have the collards, so from now on I am going to definitely concentrate more of my garden space to collards, as they just seemed to recover from the moth plague better! I had planned on picking collards and using them in a recipe this past week, but life got in the way and that recipe never got made, so I simply washed and chopped and put several quart size freezer bags of collards in my upright freezer. I can use them later in soups, and I still have a lot in the garden growing fresh, so will try and do the recipe I had planned on making some time soon.
*I baked and froze sweet potatoes that I had bought previously on clearance. A few weeks ago, our Aldi's had 3 pound bags of sweet potatoes on sale for just .49 cents a bag! Now, my family is not huge fans of sweet potatoes, but they DO like them in certain ways. I bought probably six bags of the sweet potatoes--maybe more, I cannot remember. At that time, I first made a huge batch of baked sweet potato French fries--yummy! We ALL like sweet potatoes prepared as French fries! Then this week, I baked some and used them in a recipe I have for Sweet Potato Sweet Rolls. You cannot taste the sweet potatoes in the recipe at all, but they do help make the sweet rolls much more nutritious, and I think a bit on the moist side. They also give a hue of orange to the rolls!
After making the sweet rolls, I baked almost all of the remaining sweet potatoes, mashed them up, and froze them in 2 cup portions so they will be ready to use for future sweet roll making. :)
*I attended a meeting at my husband’s university, and my ticket was drawn for a $25 gift card to a local vegetarian grocery store. Yay! Free food! Since I am covered under my hubby's health insurance, whenever his university has a health-related event, I am welcome to attend. The healthier I stay, the less money they end up paying out on the health insurance. I try to attend whatever events I can, that I am interested in.
*I tried out a new recipe for black bean “Meat balls.” They held together very well, and smelled delicious! I cannot report yet on how they tasted, because I took them with us when we visited our college son, and gave them to him for his freezer. That way he will have something quick to grab and roll into a tortilla, add with pasta, or just plain eat! He is single, so is on his own for making food. He also has a disability (cerebral palsy), so food making is not the easiest for him. He does well, and I am very proud of him, but I do try and either take him some food to leave with him when we visit, or send him back with food when he comes home to visit us.
*I made a double batch of home made granola--one batch stayed here, and the second batch went with us for the weekend and I left it with our son.
*I brought all our food for the weekend when we visited our son. He doesn't have time to be cooking for us, as a busy graduate student, and lives on a stipend so finances are tight. We like to go visit him, but do not want our visit to be a burden on him. So when we go, we take our own sheets, towels, and blankets, so we are not leaving him with extra laundry that he has to pay to wash in the apartment machines. I bring food for all of us to enjoy over the weekend, and then extra to leave with him to help him out a bit.
*We visited the state botanical garden when we were with our son.
Well, that was our week! What did YOU do to save money and bless your family or others this week? Please share, as I love to learn from others and gain new ideas!
~Susan
2 comments:
How lovely to visit the botanical gardens! That would be a pleasant reminder of nicer seasons to come at this time of year:) I read in a gardening book that fall/winter gardening with greens and plants in the cabbage family tends to fare better due to lower amounts of insects so I hope to have a fall garden in this next fall. Our week was lovely, quiet and thrifty:
*I enjoyed getting to select the first round of books from other libraries in our state through our local tiny library. That will be so fun and a bit money saving since I will be able to give up the annual paid membership at the larger library.
*My husband turned a free pallet into a compost bin so I can start building compost for our raised beds.
*I’ve been doing some of the usual things like trying to stick to the budget to get money into savings, using pet food and packaging bags in place of trashbags, wasting as little as possible both in food and just in general daily living, and staying home a lot.
*More on my blog! https://www.cozyhomemaking.com/frugal-fun-homemaking-for-january-26-february-8-2020/
Great deal on sweet potatoes and a great idea of how to get the most use out of them. I had not thought about freezing thenm before. I sure will now, thanks to you! Lisa :)
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