Last Major Grocery Shop Before We Start Our No-Spend Challenge

We're gearing up to start our no-spend challenge tomorrow. This means that we will not be doing any major grocery shops for several months. We will need to utilize what we have on hand. It will force me, eventually, to get quite creative in the kitchen.

Here is a quick walk through of most of what I have to work with. Not pictured are the storage cabinets under our dining nook. I'm not getting down on the floor to take pictures. I apologize for some of the blurry photos, as well. Bob wasn't too impressed that I wanted him to lift up the bed so I could simply take a picture. There were 2 cats lounging on there and Rose thought she needed to join the fun.

Here are my 3 deep freezers. We have 2 smaller chest freezerz and an upright.

A lot of stuff I have frozen is from recipes that I didn't cut in half. I made the full amount and I froze the leftovers. I like to do that with things like Calico or Charro Beans.

Some of the contents are some of the stuff we grew last year, like strawberries. I see some trout that I traded my sister for. They love to go fishing, crabbing and clam digging. I trade her garden produce. It works out well for both of us.

More leftovers that we didn't feel like eating right away and didn't want to waste.

Peas from the garden from last year.

Yes, I have a lot of butter. We don't use margarine in this household.

The other thing we use a lot of is ground beef. When Safeway had it on sale for $2.97 per pound, if you bought 3 pounds or more, we wound up buying a couple of cases of it.

Yep. My upright freezer is ridiculously full. That ham will be for Easter dinner. While I don't really celebrate holidays, Bob does. I cook for him. In the bottom of the new chest freezer, I have 2 whole turkeys and a turkey breast. I think I have a turkey breast in the other chest freezer, too.

This is our new chest freezer. It was Bob's idea to buy the pre-sweetened, sliced strawberries today. We've not been having the greatest luck with strawberries from the store. They taste pretty disgusting. I'm not going to use the strawberries that we grew because those are for jam.

The older chest freezer. I see some kielbasa, pork ribs, etc. in there.

We have things stashed here and there. This is our outdoor kitchen cabinet.

The beers are for either beer batter or beer cheese soup.

Our outside refrigerator. This is where we keep our pickled stuff, extra milk and half & half and stuff like that.

Bob's carrots for the wild rabbits and deer. I use these, too. We do not refrigerate these because it's plenty cold enough outside to keep them pretty fresh.

I apologize for the blur on this photo. This is our under the bed storage. This is where I put my home-canned goods and, when I buy cases of stuff, like tomatoes or beans, we put those under the bed, too. It's quite cool under there and it's dark. It is the perfect place to store stuff.

It's getting to be that time when I need to go through my cabinets again and organize things. The reality of the situation is that I have a working pantry and things happen and it ends up looking like this.

This side is much more organized.

The extra dining bench is where we store our potatoes, citrus fruits, etc. I also use it to put my KitchenAid stand mixer, crockpot, yogurt maker, etc. Those big white bags are oatmeal and dried beans. I have a food grade bucket, underneath, that holds some extra stuff in it.

So, today, we went to Winco for our last major grocery shop before we start this challenge. Here is my receipt.



We're all set to get this ball rolling. I'll be blogging about this as I go along and I'm expecting this project to last 4-6 months, at least. I'd love to go a year, but I'm not sure if that's going to be possible.

 This was Bob's last chance for candy. It was my last chance to pick up a couple of Russian kielbasas. Those are my favorite! Actually, kielbasa is one of my most favorite things, right behind razor clams. We picked up a couple of packs of bulk breakfast sausage and, since I plan on making Moussaka tonight, we picked up a couple of eggplant.
On this no spend challenge, we will be able to purchase fresh produce and fruit (until the garden starts producing), Bob's coffee creamer (I cannot find a recipe that he likes and he's not putting Irish cream into his coffee) and milk products (limited to milk, half & half and heavy cream). We will still buy my club soda and Bob will be able to buy his soda. Other than that, we either make it or we don't eat it.

Wish us luck!

Waiting For Spring & Prepping For Our No Spend Challenge

We're just in a holding pattern here. I'm going to be starting tomato, eggplant and pepper seeds in a few days. I still have not gotten my list finalized as to what I'm going to grow out. We need to get over to either Tractor Supply or to Wilco and get some more T-posts so we can get our other chain length fence panels up and secured for trellising the tomatoes. We need to get a load of compost hauled up here. We need to get some of the recycled cannabis soil hauled up here and put on the beds. There's so much work to do. Bob still needs to get the second greenhouse framed out, as well. He opted to move a few raised beds and we're going to have them in line with each other, so I'll have 40 feet of greenhouses all in a row.

I did take some pictures of my seeds. I know I have a ridiculous amount of seeds, but I also live on 50 acres, so if I want to plant everything, I have the room to do so. I don't plan on doing that, however. I do want to scatter out some of my wildflower seeds. There's only a few varieties of flowers that I don't want to grow wild and those are my calendula, nasturtium, bachelor buttons, chamomile and spilanthes (toothache ache plant).

I can't say that I will grow out every variety of squash that I have, but I will plant out several of them. I want to put them onto one of  my fence panel trellises. I think I now have zucchini seeds in every color that there is plus round ones.

I want to triple the amount of peas that I grow. I bought several varieties of bush peas so that I don't have to trellis them.

I'm a greens fanatic. I love greens. Swiss chard, spinach, orach, arugula, cress, sorrel, doesn't matter. I love them all!

Here's one of those cool bean varieties that I'm super excited to grow out this year. I'll be planting these out and growing them in one of the greenhouses. I need to get some poles to make a tipi for them. These are called Ping Tung and I bought these seeds from Russ Crow.

I'm most proud, I think, of my collection of heirloom beans. Beans and peas are my favorite things to grow in the garden, particularly bush bean varieties.

Even all those drawers cannot hold my collection of seeds. I'd need to have about 9 more drawers for everything.

I'm trying to figure out a decent system so I know where things are. So far, this is the best I can come up with and it's not a very good, clear or concise system.

I have lots of flowers to get out there into the soil.

My tomato drawer. I have close to 500 heirloom/OP tomato varieties.

I think I'll work on getting my list narrowed down today. I'll probably turn to my tomato group for help on this matter.

We've had clear and quite cold temperatures around here lately. We got a bare dusting of snow here when the country went through that cold snap. We got down there, in temp, at night, but we didn't get the snow. It's so weird how western Washington weather works. We are at 260 feet in elevation, south of Kelso. Just 5 miles down the road, in Kalama, they got 8 inches of snow. In Camas, they got like 14 inches of snow. We got just enough to turn things white. That's it.

I'm not complaining, either.

Some of our friends showed up. << this one is a young buck with his >> young doe.

It was super cold out, I was shivering, so I apologize for the blur.

The lady in the house tosses apples out there for them. We give them carrots. They know that they are safe up here.

 Here's the doe eating an apple.

So, to be quite honest, there are days that I don't even get dressed and we have to fight the dogs for a heater vent up here.

Starting on March 1st, we will start our No Spend project. I have no set timeline for it. We are going to do this for as long as we can stand it. The only things we will allow ourselves to buy in the grocery store are produce, milk products (limited to only milk, 1/2 & 1/2 or heavy cream, nothing else because we can make it) and eggs because until our chickens get going, we'll need to buy eggs. As the garden comes on, I'm hoping we can drop buying most of the produce and limit ourselves to fresh fruit. I do have fruit bushes and we do have blackberries, but we will need to vitamins that come from citrus fruit and I cannot grow bananas here. Also, my grape vines are nowhere close to being able to produce for us.

So, that is my update as to what has been going on here lately. As soon as I finalize my tomato, pepper and eggplant grow lists, I'll write a blog post about those.

Until then, stay warm!

Creamy Chicken Orzo

 It's been snowing off and on all day today. We wanted some serious carby comfort food. Bob took out a chicken breast for dinner. Normally, I'd cut it up and marinate it in yogurt and make some Indian inspired dish with a side of rice, but I didn't want that today. I wanted pure comfort food. I found this recipe online and used it for inspiration. Click here to view. I reworked the recipe.

This recipe starts out with me poaching the chicken breast in some chardonnay, water, salt, peppercorns and 4 cloves of garlic that I put through my garlic press. I let it cook and I diced it up.

Then I diced up celery, onion and carrots.

I minced up a few cloves of garlic. I didn't put these through the press because I didn't want that heavy of a garlic flavor.

Gather the rest of your ingredients.

Saute the vegetables in some olive oil in a pot with a heavy bottom. I use my enameled cast iron Dutch oven.

Cook for about 5-7 minutes and then add the garlic, broth and orzo pasta.

Stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer for about 20 minutes or until the liquid is mostly absorbed by the pasta.

Just as it is finishing up, add in 1/4 cup of heavy cream and mix it in.


Creamy Chicken Orzo
4 servings
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups chicken stock
1-2 cups shredded cooked chicken
1/2 pound orzo
1 teaspoon dried parsley
Salt & pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 cup heavy cream

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Add the onion, celery, and carrots and cook until the onion is translucent, about 7 minutes. Add garlic and cook about 1 minute longer
Add the chicken stock, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil.
Once the stock is boiling, stir in the chicken and orzo. Reduce the heat to medium and add the parsley, salt, thyme, and pepper.
Simmer until the veggies are tender, the orzo is creamy and amost of the liquid has been absorbed, about 20 minutes. Add heavy cream and mix to combine.

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Hawaiian Loco Moco

 I hadn't heard of Hawaiian Loco Moco until recently. I'm not sure why that is and I'm not sure why I waited over 50 years to taste it, but this recipe will be going into our regular rotation. There are 4 components: the base of steamed rice, the burger patty, the gravy and the sunny side egg that goes on the top. It's delicious! It's economical. It's very filling and, the best part is that you only need 1/2 pound of ground beef for 2 servings.

I did serve this with Hawaiian Mac Salad.

 Very quickly, the the ingredients for this salad are:
Salad macaroni
Grated carrot
Minced onion
Finely diced red bell pepper
Cubed cheddar cheese

The dressing is:
Mayonnaise
Milk
Apple Cider Vinegar
Sugar
Salt & pepper, to taste

It's very simple. I can't give you measurements because I don't measure.

Now, back to the scheduled program of Loco Moco.

This is absolutely delicious! You have to put a crispy edged sunny side up egg on the top. The yolk mixes with the gravy on the ground beef patty and makes this delectable, silky sauce.

Hawaiian Loco Moco
2 servings

Prepare 1 cup of rice. You can use jasmine, basmati or just regular white rice. It's up to you. Rice is cooked using a 2:1 ratio. That means for every 1 cup of rice, use 2 cups of water. You don't even need a measuring cup. You can use whatever vessel you have on hand. Just use 2 water to every 1 rice. Rice cooks, covered for 20 minutes.

1/2 pound 93% lean ground beef
2 or 3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder


Mix together in a bowl and form into 2 patties. Cook in a heavy bottomed skillet (we used cast iron) until desired internal temperature is reached. I prefer my burgers to have no pink. Remove from the skillet, tent with foil to keep warm, and set aside.
In the meantime, make the gravy.

For the gravy:

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 medium onion, diced
1-2 mushrooms, sliced (I diced mine as my husband has difficulties eating some food unless it's finely diced)
3/4 cup beef broth
2 teaspoons shoyu soy sauce (use regular if you don't have shoyu, it's perfectly fine)
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon ketchup
2-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch mixed with a bit of water to make a slurry

Cook the onions and mushrooms, in the butter,  in the same skillet that you cooked the burgers in, making sure to scrape up the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Once everything is cooked down, about 5 minutes or so over medium heat, add the rest of the ingredients except the cornstarch. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer 3-5 minutes. Add the cornstarch slurry, bring back to a boil, whisking continually, until thickened. Remove from heat, cover and let set for a few minutes while you make 2 sunny side up eggs.

You will also want to slice up a green onion to use as garnish.

On a plate, add a mound of steamed rice, top with a burger patty, top that with gravy, top all with a sunny side up egg and garnish with green onions.

Enjoy!