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!

Super Bowl Grub

 I roasted a chicken last night for dinner. Bob wanted it and I told him that I had no problem with it but we were going to use the leftovers to make his Super Bowl dinner. I'm not a football fan. I don't watch the game at all. I wouldn't know a quarterback from a linebacker, nor do I care to. I do like to make Bob a good dinner, though, and I'll use anything as an excuse to do so.

I got online and did a Google search and found a collection of like 125 recipes that use leftover chicken. I found one for Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese. It sounded good. I had everything on hand to make it. I did cut the recipe in half because, as written, it just made way too much for the two of us.
I also found a recipe for Mexican Street Corn Casserole. Again, I had all the ingredients on hand and it sounded good and I've been meaning to make some Mexican street corn and haven't quite gotten around to it yet. So, I figured tonight would be the night to do that.

Any good mac & cheese recipe starts out with a boatload of shredded cheese. This one is no different. Do yourself a favor and do not buy pre-shredded cheese. This is extra sharp cheddar and mozzarella. I froze the leftover cheese for another time.

It's amazing, to me, that I had some fresh cilantro on hand. I chopped this up for the corn recipe.

The mac and cheese starts out with the typical roux. The different thing about this recipe is that the macaroni noodles are cooked in the sauce rather than cooked separately in salted, boiling water.

The sauce for the mac and cheese has all the components as buffalo chicken: buffalo sauce and ranch dressing.

This Mexican Street Corn Casserole was delicious. There's no two ways about it. I did add a can of rinsed black beans to it because I thought they would taste good. It didn't disappoint. I'll make this recipe in the future.

What I like about the Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese is that it's a one -pot, stove top recipe. It worked out well because I had the corn casserole in the oven while I was making this recipe on the stove.

Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese. I'll make this recipe again, with some tweaks. First, I'll leave out the cream cheese. It wasn't needed, in my opinion. I'll cook the noodles separately, as well. I'll cut back the cheese to 1 cup total. I'll up the blue cheese (I used gorganzola) to 1 cup and I'll melt that into the sauce that coats the noodles. I'll also leave out the bacon. It wasn't needed. As written, the recipe is roughly 3.2 stars out of 5. I made this recipe exactly as written except I cut it in half.

Mexican Street Corn Casserole. This is going into my regular recipe rotation. I like my addition of black beans. I'll leave that in there. This recipe was 4.1 stars out of 5.

Here is a photo of our Super Bowl dinner tonight.
Bob said he hopes the Eagles win. Me? I don't really care, but I'll say the Eagles, too, because we're going to see the band The Eagles in a week. The tickets were our Christmas present to ourselves. I'm super excited about that.

Is Walmart Being Shady With Their Customers?

 I wanted to get a small Walmart order since Bob said he was low on milk. I'm not a milk drinker, so he has to tell me when it's time to buy some. I figured I would take advantage of their lower prices and get a bunch of yogurts as we've been eating those at night to appease our cravings for something sweet. Walmart also tends to offer the lowest cost eggs in town, so I added a dozen to the cart.
I set pickup for the next morning and went off to bed.
I got a text from them the next morning stating that one of the things that I ordered was not in stock and did I want a substitution for it? I didn't, so I clicked that option and sent it back to them. We headed over that way to pick up our order.

This is what I looked at when I ordered eggs.

I went with the $2.28 dozen, of course.

Where I take issue is when the clerk put our groceries into the car, she informed us that the eggs were not available. I took note that she did not say in stock. I asked her, specifically, if I went into the store, would I be able to buy them. She said yes. She then went on with some weird explanation that the cheaper eggs were in a styrofoam container and styrofoam wouldn't scan into their system with grocery pickup. That's odd to me because all 3 of those options are in styrofoam. So, going off of what that clerk told me, none of these options would be available to me for grocery pickup even though they specifically state that they are.
The other odd thing is that I've purchased these exact eggs in the past with absolutely zero issues as evident with what I circled in orange. 

So, going through all the options, Walmart has these that, according to the clerk, will scan in their system.

I don't know about you all, but I'm not going to be forced into either #1: having to trek through Walmart in order to get a dozen eggs at a reasonable price or #2: have to purchase an option at double or more the cost.
This is a deal breaker for me with Walmart. I will be buying eggs at a bit of a higher cost from another store from here on out.
I realize that it's a small amount of money, but if you multiply that by every single other person that is getting this exact same song and dance, it adds up to a lot of money.
In my opinion, it's a scam.
I left feedback for them and I don't know what will come of that, but don't state that something is available for pickup on your website and then tell customers that it's actually not available unless you're willing to wade through their very crowded store. I'm not into it.

More Pantry/Freezer Stock Up

 I did a bit more stocking up because I didn't use all of my $100 weekly budget yesterday at Safeway. I decided to order grocery pickup from Fred Meyer last night. I get loyalty reward coupons from Fred Meyer each month and I really try to utilize them to get the most for my money. I knew that I only had a $20 budget to work with.

Bob and I enjoy having a couple of hot dogs for lunch and Fred Meyer had the Bar S brand 10 for $10. I bought 5 packs. They freeze well and we can simply pull out a pack and that should last us a week. If we get ambitious, we can get our tripod cooking grate and put it out over the fire pit and cook them on there. I don't care how old I get, I still love to have a couple of hot dogs with mustard.
I stocked up on a bottle of chocolate syrup for Bob. He's a chocoholic. He loves chocolate. I have a hard time eating chocolate as it gives me horrid acid reflux, even after taking a antacid. I tend to avoid it.
I bought the mandarin oranges for me. Those are my chocolate.

One of my loyalty coupons was for a free jar of Kraft mayonnaise. I like the stuff made with olive oil. The puddings are for Bob. The chocolate chips are to make chocolate chip cookies with and I actually got 3 green peppers, not 1. I'm going to slice them up and freeze them.

I wanted the red potatoes to make a specific recipe with and I held onto the salsa coupon from last month.

So I was still able to bring this small grocery haul in under my $20 budget and we have several more meals in the freezer for our no spend challenge.

Let me know in the comments if you like seeing these types of posts. If you do, I'll continue to post them.

Stocking Up & A Week's Worth Of Groceries

 We're getting ready to do a no spend challenge coming up starting in March. When I say no spend, I mean that we will eat what we have stocked up in our freezers, in our refrigerators and what we have stored up as far as canned and dry goods. The only things we will buy will be milk products, and those will be limited to milk, half & half and heavy cream. I will not be buying yogurt because I'll simply make my own. We won't be buying cheese because I can make yogurt cheese and farmers cheese from milk. We will be able to buy produce, as well. Some produce I can grow in my Aerogarden or I can start it out in one of my raised beds, like lettuce, chard, peas and spinach.

Anyhow, I've allotted us a $400 grocery budget to get by for February and I'll also use that to stock up stuff that we use regularly, like coffee, flour, etc.
I'm challenging myself to see exactly how far we can go, spending as little as possible. I know we can do this.

Now, onto my grocery haul this morning. I shopped at our local Safeway. I saved 64% off of my total. By carefully planning my trip and allowing for a few impulse purchases, I was able to save $20 off of my total. I will use that $20 at another store to stock up on some other items that are way cheaper there than at Safeway. Whenever I shop, I have 4 tabs open on my laptop. I have Amazon, Safeway, Fred Meyer and Walmart pulled up. I go between those 4 stores. I find that Walmart and Amazon usually have about the prices on many things. Fred Meyer is a bit more than Walmart and Safeway usually has the highest prices of all unless you shop the sales, like I do.

My total, before discounts and coupons, was around $140. Safeway has a deal this week, if you buy 3 or more pounds of 93% lean ground beef, it costs $2.97 per pound. I decided to completely top off our chest freezer with ground beef and I bought 12 pounds. If it wasn't on sale and, if I didn't have a Safeway Just For U account, it would have cost me $101.88. I paid $36.64 for 12 pounds.
In the produce depart, they had fresh sage, in a clamshell, for $1. We decided to roast a chicken this coming week. The juicing carrots are Bob's big expense that he feeds to our wild rabbit population. The deer eat them, too. By feeding them in areas away from the garden, they stay out of it because they know they will get a carrot if they do.

I added coupons on Just For U for $10 off $50, $20 off $100, $5 off $5 or more produce and 10% off the entire purchase if it was over $50. Just with those 4 coupons, I saved over $40. I also got a free yogurt, 50-cents off of Yoplait yogurts, which were on sale for 24-cents each, limit of 12. The Noosa yogurts were $1.49 each, which is a fantastic price. These are delicious and they are usually quite expensive. I bought 8 of those at that price.

Here are my total savings. Saving 64% is nothing to sneeze about. 24 meals of ground beef for just over $36 is a phenomenal price. I also got quadruple the reward points (for gas discounts) for buying over $20 worth of produce.