Ms. Marple Goes Grocery Shopping

Produce that has been washed and ready for storage

Oh, I do love grocery shopping day; maybe because I love food, maybe because it is my only day off the farm every week; it's like a field trip in elementary school. 

Have you ever noticed how people grocery shop?  There are so many different ways.  Couponing, using sales ads to base a menu on, bulk purchases, discount stores, cheap food, healthy food, quick food after work.  So many ways.  I think all strategies must adjust throughout different seasons of the year and different seasons of life.

This too is something that I am trying to pin down for our family. 

Looking back, I cannot believe how much food I wasted when I worked outside of the home; some was bought with good intentions of keeping us healthy, some was bought for a specific menu or dinner that didn't happen because of being too tired or nobody was "in the mood" for it.  Also,  I cannot believe how much money I wasted on fast food, both at restaurants and at the grocery stores.
I still have days where I am tired come supper time, but NOW it is my job and so I must persevere and it works out just fine, grumbly-mumbly or not. Oh, but there are days I crave a stupidly expensive meal of my favorite chicken sandwich with that awesome lemonade or those poppy-seed rolls with cinnamon butter followed by way too much calabash chicken or that gourmet hamburger and endless fries-yum!  But do I really want to spend a week's budget on a meal? Let alone the calories and preservatives and other stuff that really makes feel bad about an hour later anyway? (honestly, sometimes...)

I am progressing, learning what shopping and menu planning works best for me and mine.  I started out cooking too much and having tons of leftovers that we ate for multiple days and multiple lunches.  I think I am now catching on to just having enough for lunches, finally, still a few boo-boos here and there.

Right now, my grocery shopping is mostly this: 
Every other Wednesday I put in a Sam's order for Pick 'n Pull, or whatever they call it now, where I put in the order online and hubby goes Thursday after work, grabs the cart they pulled all of our items in, pays, and brings them home for me to process.  (Milk in the freezer, wash produce, divide bulk items like cheese and flour, etc.)
Friday or Saturday is our shopping day with the list.  The usual suspects are Aldi's, Publix and the Dollar Tree.  Sometimes Ingles or Wal-mart.  Lowes and Home Depot often make the cut too.  I have to say since we have quit eating highly processed foods out of boxes, Bi-Lo has fallen off the radar as it seems most of the loss leaders and good priced items are just that.  

This week we stopped at Lowe's to get a file to sharpen the axe, as well as a new well pump pressure switch (that'll be another story!) and some marker tape to start our pasture across from the pond.  We then went to the Dollar Tree to get some canisters and containers to store my Sam's Club bread flour in.  We proceeded to Aldi's where I got some really great deals.  Mushrooms (8 oz.) for $.79, grape tomatoes (1 pint) $.69, avocados $.49, baby carrots (16 oz) $.49, celery $.79, and of course the normally good prices for things like pretzel sticks for lunches, organic spinach, cheese, etc.  We then went to Publix, where I find good deals on BOGOs (buy one get one free). My cart was filled with lots of pairs of items.  I bought Ritz crackers BOGO.  This is not a normal purchase, but I am going to make peanut butter crackers for lunches, as well as have them out for any sporting events that are taking place so it was a fun splurge, pickles and prepared hummus.  Overall I was very happy with my purchases. 

I should admit to you that I didn't just buy one of the produce deals at Aldi's.  I bought 5 packages of mushrooms, 6 avocados ( I wanted 10 but people were eyeing me), 3 bags of carrots, 2 bags of celery, 3 pints of tomatoes.  Wait, did I just talk about wasting food? I only got one head of lettuce...No, I had a plan.  My plan for this huge produce haul??  Again, the Super Bowl will use up carrots, maters, a few mushrooms, and celery, but I am in the process of dehydrating the mushrooms for later use in sauces and soups, and when there only crumbs, for veggie broths.  Once the avocados ripen, I will mash and mix with a little lemon juice and freeze for yummy guacamole and additions to tuna salads, on hamburgers or face cream-face cream, not ice cream, although I have seen recipes for vegan pudding using it. Hmmm?  The celery has been cut up and bagged for lunches and other recipes as needed for the next week or two.  I saved all of the leaves and other parts (minus the root) to throw in a veggie broth or chicken soup or even juice or smoothie. 

Dehydrating mushrooms

To me, planning how to use all the food before it goes bad and ends up as chicken food, dog food or compost is something between a game and serious research that I am writing a thesis on, thus the title of this post; Agatha Christie's Miss Marple is a detective of sorts, and the compilation book is long (over 4000 pages, I believe) as is this blog very lengthy.  I apologize.  Told you I loved grocery shopping!

Spring Bipolarism

The classic January thaw arrived.  The temps here in the upper 60s to low 70s, that warm sunshine unfreezing your cold nose and just a slight breeze to tickle your wishbone about springtime.  The bees come out of their hives and frantically check for food sources.  A plant may be misled into thinking it is time to wake up, but most are privy to the game. 

For me, it is deeper than spring fever.  It is spring frenzy. A season of bipolar tendencies.   I want to be outside and get this done and that done.  I enlist help much to the chagrin of the family. There is so much that we need to do before the summer season is upon us, especially now that we are going to be quite dependent on the garden. Let's go, go, go!  And seeds.  How do the seed catalogs know to get their product in the mail during such a time?  Yes, I have to try something new and yes, I still have those, but I am running low and don't want to run out.  So that order gets mailed.  Yes, I could order online but why waste such a gorgeous day not walking to the mailbox a half-mile a way. 

So during this two-day frenzy state, we accomplished: one oak tree cut down, cut up, split, moved by wheelbarrowfuls back up to the house (about 1/4 of a mile trek two ways, about 12 trips-too much like a story problem from school, nevermind, okay about 6 miles with the wheelbarrow, can't just leave it hanging out there), and stacked for next winter.  We cleaned out the goat barn, the chicken coop, made a new spring compost pile and filled that with our barn refuse and leaves that I raked off of the garden.  We mulched the blueberries with pine needles we raked up from the back woods.  And I got a few clothes on line of course, ready to reduce that dryer usage.

As with any good "frenzy" there is regret.  My regret is starting those said seeds a bit too early.  Some are okay, and I do have to admit that I have shown great restraint in only sowing a few tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage and brussels sprouts.  And mistakenly okra that is already germinated...yeah, about that... I have many more seeds to start, but am painstakingly waiting at least a couple of weeks before doing succession seeding.  Oh the agony!

Yes, I have this massive, commercial sized greenhouse that came with the farm, and I have used it in the past, but right now, I want to take a step back and learn lessons in smaller, cheaper quantities.  So, along with a cheap little 4-rack greenhouse at the local farm store, one of the projects that had to be done was making a light box for the seedlings once they sprouted.  I watched a few YouTube videos and decided on one I thought we could do.  We used an old tote that was just sitting out by the tool shed, foil, duct tape and a brooder lamp.  We tried to find the right light bulb.  So many kelvins, lumens, watts, etc.  So far, so good.  My wee ones are doing pretty good.  I put them in the tote just after packing lunches at 5:30 am until after supper cleanup around 7:30 pm.  If they look a little dry, I add just a bit of water to the trays in the morning. I do not want to make the mistake I made last year: keeping them too wet and too dark, the horror of damping off.disease!  So, now I wait for the other seeds to sprout up and join their fellow seedlings in the box.  I am waiting patiently for their true leaves to appear and then a couple more so they can move to the little greenhouse shelves for a few weeks until we move that little greenhouse onto the deck during the day and gradually harden them off or get them in the ground...sorry, I had to clap my hands with joy just thinking about it.  What?  Today is January what??  *sigh*  And the bipolar cycle is complete...CRASH!

Adjusting Animal Chores

Since being home, I am working on streamlining the daily chores.  There is so much cleaning up and organizing to do it could drive a person batty.  It seems that most of my time is spent maintaining what I did yesterday and very little time progressing on to the next task.  The weekends are busy cooking and prepping for the week, such as grocery shopping, cooking, food prep and just cleaning up after cooking.  I feel guilty if I open a jar of Alfredo sauce for spaghetti dinner, like that is cheating...I am going to have to get over that.  So, I try different strategies on everything I do:  folding the clothes on the dryer, on the bed, on the couch watching Kelly and Michael (take it from me, you don't do that, it is not time effective), straight from the line (I have only had two chances for this in January, but yay!),  drying dishes with a towel, air-dry (no dishwasher, soooo).  I want to be ready for this summer when the garden is the main priority.

 So far the only definite strategy that I have found I liked is how I feed the animals.  I know, you pour the feed in a bowl, water in a bowl and voila.  Well, sort of. 
First, one must don their new Christmas Muck boots (love you, Mom).  I grab my 5-gallon Home Depot bucket that has an old Maxwell house coffee canister in it and three rabbit water bottles.  The fit perfectly in the bottom of the bucket.  I also grab the compost pot if it is at least 1/3 of the way full.  I fill the water bottles at the kitchen sink and then traipse out to the shed where the feed bags line the entrance.  It is a disorganized mess of a shed that will be put on a project list, but for now the animals must be fed and watered.  In the can in the bucket, I pour the chicken mix.  I have pellets (accidentally grabbed that bag), crumbles, sunflower seeds, cracked corn, and scratch grain, as well as anything I would like to give them from our leftovers or scraps.  I give them a dip of this and a dip of that.  Next I grab the coffee canister that came with the farm (since I rarely drink coffee, let alone buy it) and fill that one with rabbit feed and 3 hay cubes.  I grab the goat scoop and throw in some goat chow, sweet feed, sunflower seeds and sometimes a handful of mineral mix and hang that scoop on the edge of the bucket.  I fill one more can with hay cubes and take that to the fence to fill a hanging bucket for the goats.  They run to the fence when they hear the cubes hit the bottom.





I shut the door and grab my bucket and off we go.  I have to put the bucket down to close the gate, and the goats run to get a fresh nibble of the goat scoop and they can reach the rabbit pellets too, but not the chicken.  They don't get much before I have to pull their heads out of their respective cans and head to the backside of the barn / coop.  I pour the goats' food first and hang the scoop over the fence as I open up the chicken gate. 
 I remove the rabbit feed and put it on the ground for Roger and Thumper, my free range rabbits to go ahead and start on if they want.  I feed the chickens, check for the eggs, which we are only getting one every other day or so at this point,put it in my coat pocket,  and then move on to the rabbits.  I have a bowl by the chicken food that I fill with rabbit food for Rog and Thump, even though they prefer chicken food.

 I have three in hanging cages that I feed and water.  I have duplicate food bowls for each cage.  I grab the extra one I put on top of the cage fill it up, open the cage and switch the new one for the empty one, which I place back on top of the cage for tomorrow.  I find this the easiest for me since I don't have to fight with them as they try to stay with the bowl in the cage or fall out of the cage, which has happened.  I give them a hay cube, new water bottle and repeat and repeat.

By now Mollie has been butted away from the food and checked out the scoop hanging on the fence and tried to open the chicken coop gate that I have placed a cinder block in front of.  So she goes back and waits for greedy little Brie to finish.  I double check the chicken water, dumping it if it is dirty. 

After all the cans and empty water bottles are back in my orange bucket, I move the block and head back out of the coop to the water spigot, leaving my bucket in the path for any curious goat.  I fill the chicken and goat water pans as needed.




Then I grab my bucket and head back to the main gate to exit quietly on most days, throw my empty cans less one back in the shed and take my bucket inside.  I will feed the cat and dog, refill my bird feeder as needed and 'tis done! Seriously,i t took me a week of different ways before I found a system that worked.  You wouldn't think it would be that hard, but the goats can get out of the main gate, in the chicken coop and then you are chasing two goats and knocking over feed, trying to get them away from the feed, and muttering words that are ugly!  I am glad that goats can't talk like parrots!  Oh and don't get me started when they go through the chicken door-a little door that we open so the chickens can go out into the yard and get some fresh grass and bugs, even mice!!  That's a whole different, disgusting story.

But if I can conquer that "simple" chore, I can conquer anything!