Frugal Friday

As we head into the later part of the year, our income declines and we usually watch our savings dwindle. This year I entered our lean season with a "food storage" in place. I'm proud of it; buckets of potatoes, apples, flour, rice, some sugar. Jars of honey, fruit, jams, and tomatoes all home canned. Another shelf is filled with the extra cans and jars of peanut butter, cooking oil, tuna, soup, broth, ketchup, syrup and a few veggies. I have stashed cans of coffee, boxes of pasta, containers of apple juice, bottles of lemon juice, some chocolate chips , peanuts and almonds. Another area has laundry detergent, dish soap,bleach, yeast, baking soda, paper towels and toilet paper. It's much more than I had a year ago and yet, if faced with the challenge of living out my store. I wonder how long we could do it. My ultimate goal was a 3 month storage (for starters) and to store what we eat and eat what we store and to be able to serve a variety of nutritious, delicious meals.

Friday Dinner

I bought 5 pieces of split chicken breast (2.5 whole breast) - 1 pice per person @ 99 cents per lb.). Instead of baking as I usually do, I simmered chicken in a pot of water, then I lifted out each piece , deboned it ( leaving generous bits of meat on the bones). These were brushed with BBq sauce and broiled till crisp, served with mashed potatoes, beans from the garden and mandarin orange sections I canned in the winter.

Here's the cool part, the bones were retuned to the pot of broth and simmered some more. Then meat picked off the bones. Now I have a jar of broth and meat for a pot of soup on Saturday... a meal for free. There were 2 servings of leftover mashed potatoes. This was mixed with water, flour, yeast ,salt and a little butter now rising into several loafs of potato bread.

Saturday

After a hearty breakfast of oatmeal, I took a jar of my home canned sweet potatoes. I mashed up the potatoes, mixed in sugar, pumpkin pie spices sugar , eggs, orange juice, flour and yeast and made a large double batch of ... doughnuts.