Save Your Mayo Lids, Save Your Ruined Jam, Save Your Dry Cake

My public announcements for the day: Mayonnaise jar lids fit on canning jars.

If you make a batch of jam, and don't believe the people who say you can NEVER double a batch of jam, and your jam doesn't set...congratulations, you've made strawberry syrup. Put it in your milk, on your ice cream, and maybe even on your sandwiches. It's just like the squeezable jam I've seen at the grocery store!

If you make a loaf cake, and it's a few days old, you can always stick a slice in the toaster, top with a dollop of Samoa Cookie ice cream, and douse it in strawberry syrup. It will cheer you up, I promise!

Gonna eat me a lot of peaches...

"Moving to the country,
gonna eat me a lot of peaches...

Peaches come from a can,
they were put there by a man,
in a factory downtown.

If I had my little way,
I'd eat peaches every day...

Millions of peaches,
Peaches for me
Millions of peaches'
Peaches for free"

--Presidents of the United States, "Peaches"

So how'd I do on those lyrics? I can probably gurantee (yes, with one exception Aunt LoLo) that my middle school staff lounge was cooler than YOUR middle school staff lounge. We had copy machines. We had mondo rolls of colored butcher paper. We had....A Presidents' poster hanging on the wall. That's the kind of art work you choose when the drummer's mother is the school secretary!

Aunt LoLo and I were considered "hall passes" in school- if the hall pass was already taken, you could grab one of us to get through the school corridors without getting in trouble. We spent lots of time in the staff lounge running copies for teachers and the yearbook staff :) (Oh man. I'm getting nostalgic! Our high school reunion is this weekend...more on that later!)

So, in spite of the fact that I spent yesterday morning running around town trying to get an ultrasound, and the rest of the morning curled up in a ball of agony and defeat on Aunt LoLo's couch, using up every tissue I could find, drinking all kinds of hot liquids, and moaning quietly to myself whenever I thought they'd forgotten just.how.sick.I.was (because this head cold....it's a bad one), after the kids had taken their (puny! 1 hour!) naps, we threw everyone in my monster of a car and hit the road. We had peaches to buy, first off, and left that fruit stand a hundred pounds heavier than we came. Twenty pound boxes of Eastern Washington peaches for $11...that's a steal, right?

The rest of the trip...well, we hit 2 thrift stores, watched a shoplifter get wrassled down and handcuffed by 3 employees before the police showed up, and made a tour of the nearest asian market we could find. Dinner was so late that the girls went straight to bedtime routines after we cleared the dishes!

Aunt LoLo told the kids we had to get back in the car when we realized what was happening outside the store- she then told the kids that there was a cranky man. Yeah, and when the police showed up, we said the cranky man needed a time out. In jail.

8:00 this morning found us all together again, staring down 2 hot water canners, and 60 pounds of peaches ready for duty!

We ended up with:
26 quarts of peach quarters in light syrup
4 pints of peach jam
3 pints of peach butter
8 and 1/2 pounds of peach quarters in baggies to be frozen (we can make jam later, or just smoothies...or pie...or.... yum!)

About 20 pounds of too-green peaches are waiting for us to work on next week, and we're expecting an order of 40 pounds of apples to come in soon for apple sauce and apple butter. Then we're wondering, should we get in on a bulk order of tomatoes for canning?

September is for CANNERS!

Finding our Marbles

I found a bag of floral marbles at the thrift store last time we were there, and brought them home with no real plan in mind. With two little girls in the house, I didn't need a plan- I knew they'd come in handy!

We played a little game with them, to get the girls aquainted with our stash. They had fun transferring the marbles from one bowl another. Ernie was pretty good with the tweezers and the spoon- I was impressed. Mimi favored the grab-and-dump method.

Now the marbles, and these two salad bowls, are sitting on my night stand to help us remember to be nice. If anyone in the family sees another family member do something nice, say something kind, be helpful, etc. that person will run and put a marble in the second bowl. When all the marbles are in the second bowl, we'll have a party!

I'm looking forward to this- I don't like introducing merit systems with punishments built in, so there is no threat of "knock that off or you'll lose a marble." Only positives in this game!

It's been cute. This morning after breakfast I told Ernie "I noticed you made your bed and got dressed without being asked. And thank you for playing nicely with your sister! I put marbles in the bowl."

Ernie thought that was pretty swell, so a few minutes later she came up and sweetly said "Mommy? Thank you for getting dressed!" and ran to put a marble in the bowl.

Just in case you had too high an opinion of me...

Oh yes, I did. And she did.

I'm telling you- you don't want to tell me that you're bored.

Oh and yes I paid her and yes she enjoyed herself. She didn't like the vacuuming so much, though...

What kind of mom are you? *grin*

Food Storage

The kitchen pantry

I've had food on my mind a LOT the last little bit.

The larger kitchen pantry

In the past week I've purchased:
25 pounds white sugar
75 pounds white flour
1 pound baking powder
36 cans vegetables
10 cans spaghetti sauce
25 pounds Krusteaz (umm...I grind my own wheat for goodness sake. Why do I purchase pancake mix??)
6 cans coconut milk
1/2 pound curry powder
16 pounds spaghetti
25 pounds jasmine rice

Bulk sugar and flour for immediate use, and long-term storage hard red winter wheat, canned

I received a challenge recently to write down 10 meals my family likes, and make sure I have the ingredients to make each meal THREE times. Then...BOOM. You have have a month's worth of food stored in your pantry! A few people scoff- "I only eat fresh food." Yes, that's very true. And it's very good for you, and probably the best thing you could do.

Last summer's canning, plus a few extras: rasberry jam, cantaloupe preserves, marmalade, mint jelly, strawberry jam, chokecherry syrup, apple butter, chow chow, apple sauce, and apple pie filling

But what do you plan to do if the grocery store has no fresh food, or you have no power and can't store it in the refrigerator? We know grocery stores only stock so much, and they depend on trucks coming through every day or so, and they depend on electricity flowing to their coolers.

Well, they WERE on sale...

We sat down to write our meals as a family tonight (well, Ernie just wanted chicken nuggets and rice for the rest of her life) and were surprised we could only come up with 5 meals I make on a regular basis. But you know what, we're OK with that.

Our meals:
pinto beans and rice (a nice, complete protein)
chili and rice (again, a complete protein. If we have company, I throw in half pound ground beef)
spaghetti with meatballs and homemade french bread
quesadillas
coconut curry (we've used prawns, but this could be combined with chicken, or even lentils) and rice

The best way to store things short-long-term: free buckets from the grocery bakery, plus a gamma seal lid.
This is the bulk wheat we use to make our bread, I fill a smaller kitchen container from here every two weeks.

So this week I'll be checking our pantry, making sure we have enough on hand to make each meal 6 times, along with enough to make our daily bread (wheat, naan, corn bread, biscuits, french bread) and breakfast foods like oats, cold cereal, and grits.

Oh dear- our stash of "prepared foods" plus quart-sized Ziplocs. I use SO MANY of those to freeze fresh produce during the summer.

Eventually, the goal is to have three months' worth of food stored in our cupboards, and a years' supply to long-term storage food. Did you know, properly stored, that wheat, rice, oatmeal, powdered milk, sugar, and beans can last over 30 years? At least well enough to sustain life?

We go through about 25 pounds of flour every month- I'm the family baker. We normally make two loaves per batch (about 3 batches a week), and one loaf goes out the door from each batch. I LOVE it! What good is baking if no one will eat it?? We go through 6 cups of wheat, and roughly 10 cups of white flour every week

What does your family eat? What do you store? Do you plan on storing more?