... the rising cost of produce

Hello everybody,

My dear sister-in-law Mary and I were discussing the recent drastic hike in the cost of produce here where we live in eastern Ontario.

When I was last in a grocery store they actually had signs all through the produce department apologizing for the prices. They blamed it on growing conditions and the drop in the Canadian dollar.

Some of the prices were completely insane. A bunch of celery was $4.99, cauliflower was $7.99 a head and broccoli was $4.45. 

Now, we eat a lot of vegetables here in our house. We are also on a very strict grocery budget. I cannot afford these kinds of prices.

Thankfully we had a fairly decent year in the garden and I have a good bit of veg set aside. There is about 35 pounds of green and yellow beans in the freezer and about 100+ pounds of squash tucked away. We can manage. I will only buy fresh veg when I see something that is not a horrible price and we will make sure that we eat every single speck of it. Fruit is the same. The prices are through the roof. We must have some fruit but we will not be eating as much as we normally would. And again, we certainly will not waste a single piece of it.

I have a horrible suspicion that this is just the thin edge of the wedge. This is what we can now look forward to in the future. Climate change is a very real thing despite the nay sayers. All you have to do is look at what is happening all over the world to realize that our dear old earth is in trouble.

So what can we do about it? You do not need me to preach at your about using less fossil fuels and trying to reduce your carbon footprint. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you probably already do all these things.

I am thinking more about the immediate problem of providing food for the table.

I recently read an article about growing some veg in your house over the winter months. I am going to give it a try. I was thinking about something like swiss chard or spinach. I will let you know what happens in a future post.

In the meantime I think that we will all need to tighten our belts a bit. Perhaps frozen or canned food will be the answer in the meantime until we can get back into our gardens. I think that having a productive garden will be extremely important in the coming years. Perhaps we need to take the approach that England took during WWII. Everyone was encouraged to plant a garden and grow as much as they could so the country would not starve. 

I know that this has been a doom and gloom post with no pretty pictures but the costs simply shocked me so much I had to say something. Happier posts will be forthcoming.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to us all. Cheers.

     Melanie

... greetings

Hello everybody,

I am sorry to have been absent for so long. Alas, I have been in hospital having surgery and will not be blogging for a few weeks while I recover.

I appreciate your understanding and I will be back at it as soon as possible.

On a more cheerful note, I do hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and for those of you who celebrate it, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

2016 will be upon us before we know it and may it be a happy and healthy New Year for us all, one full of exciting challenges and adventures.

Thank you for visiting. Cheers.

... root crop harvest

Hello everybody,

We have enjoyed an unusually mild autumn this year in eastern Ontario. So much so that I was actually able to leave all our root crops, namely carrots, parsnips and beets, in the ground until now. The weather has become seasonably chilly so it was time to haul them out.

I had filled one 3 foot by 15 foot bed with the aforementioned veggies. They all did quite well and we have been eating from the bed all during the autumn. What ever was remaining needed to be pulled and stored.

Now, I wish I could say that I have some sort of wonderful root cellar to keep them in, but alas, I do not. I do have a plan in the back of my mind for next year but the question remained of what to do with them this year.

I decided to dig them up, leave the soil attached to them, put them into a large Rubbermaid Rough Tote and leave them in our boot room, or mud room if you prefer to call it that. It is the coolest room in the house. There is no heat in there and it is on the north wall. Average winter temperature is about 50F. Not ideal, but the best I can do right now.

We weighed the tote full of the veg and it came to an impressive 86.6 pounds. Pretty good from one bed.

I have tucked the tote in beside our freezer and all the squash and pumpkins are piled up around it. 

I will be keeping a close eye on it to see if any of the veg begins to rot and of course moving some of it to the refrigerator for weekly meals.

Another job done and now time for a well deserved cup of tea. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Cheers.

... how to never waste bacon

Good evening everybody,

How often have you purchased a package of bacon, used up some of it and then forgotten all about it only to find the last few slices have turned into something truly horrible in the back of your refrigerator.

That used to happen to us as we do not really eat a lot of bacon, much as we both love it.

In an effort to stop the madness we now deal with the bacon in a different way. 

As soon as we open the package we take out the amount that we need for that first meal and then all the rest of it gets laid out on a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet and goes into the freezer. As soon as it is frozen, the wax paper is wrapped around the bacon and it goes into a zip top bag, appropriately labelled "Bacon", and back into the freezer it goes.

Whenever you want one slice or six slices simply remove what you want from the bag and cook it from frozen. It will defrost in the pan almost immediately.

No more wasted bacon and if you happen to need to slice it for a recipe it is much easier to slice frozen bacon than fresh.

Well that is all from me for tonight. Have a great evening. Cheers.

... meal planning

Greetings everybody,

If you have read my blog for any length of time you already know how I feel about wasting food!

I really believe that the more organized that you can be in your kitchen, the less food you will waste. I also think that you need to eat down your pantry and your freezer to use what you have already purchased and not just keep on buying more and more food.

I have a system to do just that.

To start with, I have a freezer log. I will make that the subject of a separate post but for today, it is enough to know that I have one.

I also have this nifty little pad that I purchased at Michaels craft stores years ago. It is divided up by days and each sheet shows one full week and I believe the pad contains 52 sheets, so enough for a full year. The best part was it was a whopping $1.50! There is also room on the side to note things like groceries needed, etc. This pad lives on the front of my refrigerator. Now, this is a personal thing, but I am not a fan of having a fridge covered in stuff. I know that most people put all sorts of things on their fridge doors but it is just not for me. I have two things on the door .... my menu pad and a magnet I recently purchased at a wonderful little store in a town close to me. Again, for myself, I am not a fan of fridge magnets but I do keep one of them there to hold my grocery list since I add to it throughout the week before I shop. When I saw this one, I simply could not resist. :)

Now, back to the menu pad. It really does not matter if you use a menu pad or a simple piece of paper, the principle is the same.

If you keep a freezer log, have a look at it to see what you have in there. If you do not, then just open up the door and look inside. Then decide what you are going to have each day. I really enjoy this particular task because I absolutely love to cook. I make up my menus on Sundays for the coming week. Once you have decided on the protein part (chicken, fish, etc.), then go into your larder or pantry and refrigerator and have a good look at what you have in there. Is there veg that needs eating up? Do you have a bag of potatoes on the verge of sprouting? You get the idea.

I make a note on each day of what the recipe is that I am using and where to find it. I read through the recipe carefully and look to see if I have everything needed and make a note on the grocery list for any missing ingredients. I very often will substitute ingredients if I have something on hand that I want to use up.

When I have finished with the weeks menus I will also have a start of the grocery list for the week. That gets stuck on the fridge under my one cutie magnet. :)   As the week progresses, I will add things to the list as needed. My aim is to only have to shop once during the week as I live almost a half hour from a grocery store. The last thing I do before shopping is to have a look at the grocery store flyer to see if I want anything else that is hopefully on sale.  :)

The huge benefit of making up your weekly menus is in the morning I simply have a quick glance at the list and take out of the freezer whatever is called for on that day. There is never the "oh my, what are we going to eat for dinner tonight?" panic that can often occur. This is especially true for those whose job has them getting home late and then they still have to scramble to get dinner on the table. 

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. Thanks a lot for visiting today. Cheers.

... planting garlic

Greetings everybody,

It is that time of year again. Autumn. And that means it is time to plant garlic.

We only plant Hardneck garlic and the variety we plant is called "Music". Hardneck garlic has a good keeping quality and it has the bonus of getting those wonderful garlic scapes which we love as they are so delicious.

Here is my method for planting garlic. It is really very simple.

You need to start with a bed that is completely free of weeds. Garlic absolutely hates to grow with any weed competition so this is a very important step. We are planting into brand new raised beds but I still filled them and let them sit for a while so I could clean off any weeds that did germinate. Rake the bed nice and smooth.

I plant my garlic in rows which are 10" apart. I find that this allows me to get in there with a hoe to get at whatever weeds appear. I simply mark those rows down the length of the bed making sure the spacing remains correct. I use a piece of an old shovel handle that had broken off to quickly push through the soil to make the shallow furrow but of course you can use whatever you have handy.

Next is to separate all the cloves from the heads. I purchase certified garlic from a grower that I trust. In my case that happens to be Vesey's from P.E.I. 
I have never been disappointed with my purchases from them and they absolutely stand behind their products.

I plant the cloves 6" apart and simply use an old yardstick to measure and keep them the correct distance. 

Once they are all sitting in the correct spots, I simply poke them down into the soil. They should be approximately 2" down. Do not plant them too deeply.

After they are all planted and the surface soil is smoothed again I cover the entire bed with straw for winter protection. The soil in your beds should not be left uncovered to be exposed to the elements over the winter. You can choose any number of things to cover them but I often use straw.

So there you have it. Your garlic is all tucked away in the garden ready to burst into growth in the spring. I planted 3 pounds of garlic which translated into 210 individual cloves. With the correct spacing, that required 2 1/3 of my raised beds. Although the garlic will stay in these beds for a large part of the growing season I will still be able to get a quick crop in there after they are harvested.

That is all from me for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. Enjoy your day. Cheers.

... autumn broccoli

Hello there everybody,

After all the excitement of the weekend I spent a good part of the day yesterday in the garden.

A while ago I had cleaned out the bed that had previously grown such a wonderful crop of beans and replanted it with some autumn broccoli, kohlrabi and some lettuce.

We have been eating the lettuce and the kohlrabi and I decided it was time to get in whatever broccoli had managed to grow. We have had a couple nights with a hard frost and although the broccoli is somewhat cold tolerant there was no point in leaving it there.

A couple of the plants only managed to produce a small head but a few of them did grow out a really decent size head of broccoli. 

I have cut them all and after sorting them, we will get three nice meals from this lovely little pile I have here.

When you are gardening in a climate such as ours where it is not a very long growing season you need to take advantage of succession planting. We only had in about 10 plants but at least they managed to produce a small crop. Of course next year will be different as the beds are already constructed so the plants will go in earlier and that will make a big difference.

Thanks for stopping by. Next discussion will be on planting garlic. Cheers.