Sorry that I have been missing in action again. But my husband had a heart attack last Sunday night about midnight. I have been rather busy since then. He came home from the hospital after a few days but we have not seen his cardiologist yet. So we don’t know what he can do or not do. He is feeling so much better. I am so thankful to all of the people that prayed for his recovery.
I am thankful to my son for getting me to the hospital in the night. I don’t drive at night anymore. We stayed all through the night until 11am the next day. Then we came home for some much needed sleep. But I couldn’t sleep so I went back to the hospital.
I am thankful for my new neighbor who knew how tired I was and without even being asked offered to drive me to the hospital the next day. I accepted because I was so tired. After we visited him for about 4-5 hours, she took me to eat and then home. I had not been eating and I was so hungry. She also cleaned my wound in my back and rebandaged it. She is such a great friend.
Lastly, I am thankful to my next door neighbors who without being asked offered to drive me to the hospital, feed Eloise, look for packages that I had coming, and mow our lawn that really needed it. He did that today and he did a terrific job.
I have my hands full right now. I also have my minor surgery on Monday that hopefully will take care of this wound once and for all.
So I do not know when I will be back blogging until we each see our medical doctors this week. I am hoping by the end of the week.
These are the ingredients for our homemade chicken soup that I made yesterday. I made a pan that was equal to about 3 quart jars. We ate 1 quart with crackers on the side last night. We will eat another quart tonight. The 3rd quart is in the freezer for another meal. I did not have any homemade chicken broth left so I pulled a carton of chicken stock from my shelves. I use about a tablespoon of the better than bouillon to flavor the stock because it is not strong enough for us. I used about 1 cup of rice, 1/2 can of corn, and just 1 and 1/2 quarts of my pressure cooked chicken and juice canned in 2023 from my stockpile. I thought I would need another jar but I didn’t. There was more than plenty in what I did use. I diced up the carrots and celery. The other 1/2 of the canned corn I froze in a baggie for the next time I make soup. I was craving chicken soup since I haven’t felt well. I don’t normally make soup in the summer but it only took aboit 30 minutes to cook. Here is our meal from last night:
I had to pick up a prescription for myself at Walmart. It was $10. for 90 pills. I used a $10. giftcard that I got from Fetch to pay for it.
I made out a $10. rebate form for liquor that we bought to stock up for company this month and next. I will mail it tomorrow.
Energy is lacking these days with this infection. It is slowly getting better but I haven’t gotten a lot done this weekend. I did clean our master bedroom and replaced an LED bulb that wasn’t bright enough for me to read in there.
Our gas tank is just about empty. I only have $ .10 off per gallon in Top’s gas points. The price there is $ 4.25 a gallon. My cash station is $ 3.99. It’s a no brainer to fill up at the cash station tomorrow morning.
Tonight I will be making out a very small Top’s list. They do have a super coupon for a large package of BS chicken breasts for $2.18 a lb. with a limit of 1.
Tomorrow, I will go to Top’s and then to Niagara Produce. I need some fresh peaches and Sure Jell to make Hubby’s peach freezer jam for the next year. He is just finishing up the last jar I made last year. Peaches and Sure Jell are very expensive this year but this low sugar jam I make he really likes. So he is definitely worth it.
What have you been doing this weekend to save a bit of money?
I am hoping for good money saving days again this week. It has started off well. I just received confirmation of a $200. cash rebate that will be applied to my next bill from credit card rewards. I also was able to get $ 1.50 cash back on my Walmart household and medical order yesterday. Every little bit helps.
I needed toilet bowl cleaner. I purchased 4 from Amazon and after a subscribe and save coupon and some reward points, I paid $2.20 including tax for all 4. I do not pay much for stuff that goes down the toilet.
Last night we had an easy dinner. I had ham and turkey slices in the freezer. So we had sandwiches. Hubby used some of the meats that I got at the meat market last week along with the ham, provolone cheese and tomato slices on his. We are only buying locally grown produce. I made a turkey, cheese and tomato sandwich. We had a handful of chips and some pickle slices. I had no sesame rolls but did have hamburger buns so that is what we used. We have not done this in a while and it tasted so good. Bonus: no heating up the kitchen.
I will take the time today to food saver some of the pepperoni, salami, and prosciutto and put it in the freezer. We do not want it to be wasted.
Hubby has turned off the A/C. It is cooler here now: low 80’s and high 70’s. So we will see how long we can keep the A/C off. We are also saving on water this summer. We have had so much rain that we have only had to use the sprinkler system about 6 times all summer.
Well the A/C didn’t stay off for long. The day after we turned it off it got hot and very humid again. So on it went.
Hubby has been the best caregiver. He continues to wash my wound with warm water and hydrogen peroxide using a soft gauze pad twice a day. The wound is still oozing infection but it is becoming less and less. I keep praying that it goes away soon. His sister is coming to visit for 5 days in less than 2 weeks. I am really not up to it so unless Hubby cleans the house it won’t get done. I really don’t care. For a change I will put myself first!
I did have a burst of energy yesterday for the first time in a long time. So I did two loads of wash that had been piling up. I hung them in the house to dry and then they got folded and put away before I went to bed last night. As usual I used cold water to wash them. I also picked up two rooms of the house. Today I am going to have Hubby change the sheets on our beds so that I can wash those. They will go in the dryer. Right now, having clean sheets is so comforting to me.
Brunch was eggs and some turkey on the side for me. Hubby ate that last serving of sweet and sour pork. We had a pepperoni pizza in the freezer so we had that for dinner one night. I added more pepperoni to it. They never put enough on. I used up some of the local lettuce that I had to make a salad to go with it. Hubby wanted dessert so I gave him a chocolate chip cookie.
Tonight I am cooking up Bubba Burgers. We will have them on hamburg rolls with cheese, sauteed onions, and a tomato slice. I will also use the air fryer to cook some crispy crowns. Every bit of food I mention here has come from my stockpile.
What have you been doing to save some money this week?
So many people are having a hard time affording groceries in this economy. So I have decided to show how I am cutting costs every day by eating what we have in our home. Even if you don’t have a well stocked pantry, I would bet that you can make some meals with what you all ready have on hand. You paid for these items and if you don’t use them it is wasted money.
How many of us have purchased a food item that we have never used before and then just let it linger in our fridges, freezer, or pantry? You see it everytime you open those doors. But you ignore it. I know I have.
Today, I want you to go get one of those items. Then go to https://www.allrecipes.com/ . Plug that ingredient into the search bar and get a recipe to use it up. You don’t have to choose a complicated recipe. Choose a recipe with just a few ingredients that you already have in your home. Or make up your own recipe from your years of experience cooking.
Stay out of the grocery store or at least make a small list of necessities and only buy those. Sure those chips, soda, snacks and sweets are so tempting but they are empty calories that cost a fortune. I started keeping track a year ago of how much of those items were costing us every week. I was shocked to find that it was 25-30% of our grocery budget. I would rather use that money for real food like meat, veggies, and fruits. Do I never buy those treats now? No, once in a while, I will buy a bag of chips or tortilla chips. But that is about it. I did buy chocolates last week but they will keep a long time. The dark chocolate orange ones have been saved to put in cookies. Hubby is savoring the chocolate covered raisins. Do we buy chocolate all the time? Absoutely not! I have a stash of baking chips so if we need something sweet, I can make homemade cookies, cupcakes, or muffins with them. We also eat a lot of SF pudding or jello. It is cheap and satisfies our sweet tooths. Our favorite snack is popcorn. We have a popcorn popper so we buy kernels and pop them. They are cheaper than microwave popcorn. If you don’t have a popper, you can do it in a fry pan or pot. That is how my grandmother and mother made it.
This is the fourth week in a row that I have not shopped Top’s. The sales have been dismal so the ads get thrown out. I only try to buy when things are on a great sale. It is also one the most expensive stores in my area. So I try not to buy regular priced items there. My Walmart and Aldi’s are way cheaper.
I have had some items shipped to me using my Walmart + but they were not food. Because of my back issue, we are going through a lot of large bandages and hydrogen peroxide. The bandages have to be changed twice a day. I also have to take probiotics with my antibiotics so I ordered Florastor. The antibiotics were not working that they ordered me from the hospital. I saw my doctor yesterday and he ordered me a high dose one three times a day for 10 days. If that doesn’t work, I will need to go in the hospital to get them through an IV. I am praying they work. Sorry I didn’t mean to get off topic.
I did do a meat shop at Pelicano’s Market a week ago today when I went there with my friend. But the majority of the items were on sale. I did my research before I went and made a list from their store ad of the meats that I was low on. I kept mostly to the list. I did buy a 5 lb. bag of white meat chicken patties to try theirs on my friend’s recommendation. We like these for quick meals. We just pop them in the air fryer and then make a sandwich with them. I also used them to make a quick chicken parmigiana one day last week. It was so good.
All of the meals I talk about today came from our stockpile which is how we are and have been eating. A few days ago, I thawed the pork you see pictured above. It was 1.2 lbs. and said it was 5 servings. I bought 2 of them a while ago on a B1G1F sale at Top’s. I paid $ 9.99 for both or about $5.00 each. I purchased the brussel sprouts at Walmart for $ 1.16. They were 4 servings. The fried apples were purchased almost 2 years ago for $.59 at Aldi’s. There are 3 servings.
I roasted the pork, microwaved the brussel sprouts, and heated the apple slices. I am showing my plate but I forgot to take the picture until I had started eating. So add 1 brussel sprout and one apple piece to my plate. These were the proper portions. Yes, we are rationing our portions so that we don’t overeat and to make our stockpile last as long as possible.
Each brunch I have been eating three eggs($ .25 for all 3) and a serving of brussel sprouts. Hubby makes his own breakfast of either than omelet, sauteed corned beef hash, a bowl of cereal, or my homemade peach jam on toast, an English muffin or a bagel.
The day after I made this, I turned the pork into sweet and sour pork. Recipe is here: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/86402/sweet-and-sour-pork/ . I tweaked the recipe a bit though to use what we had. I used less oil because I only cooked 1 carrot and about 1 pepper. Hubby isn’t crazy about carrots but I love them. We hate green peppers so I thawed an orange one from the freezer. It was pretty orange looking when it was done between the carrot and the pepper but you go with what you have on hand. I diced all of the pork. Since the meat was cooked, I put the soy sauce with cornstarch together but didn’t throw it into the pan until last minute. The meat was so tender so I did not want to overcook it. I threw the sweet and sour sauce in. I thought I had brought up a can of pineapple chunks but it was a can of slices. No problem because I just took three slices and chunked them up. The other slices have been frozen for other meals. I saved the pineapple juice in the fridge in a canning jar. I will use it in quick bread or muffins. Waste not, want not! Hubby was going to make some rice in the rice cooker but I have these microwaveable rices to use up first.
This was so delicious and we had enough for dinner last night and a brunch for one of us this week. So we got 5 servings out of that pork like they said we would. That cost us $ 1.00 per serving. The apples will be used up tonight along with the last serving of brussel sprouts. The sprouts are giving us 4 servings so $ .29 each serving. The apples will give us 3 servings after they get used tonight. Our first dinner for 2 people cost us $2.00 for the pork, $.29 for the brussel sprouts and about $ .20 for the apples. So a total of $ 2.49 or $ 1.25 each. You can’t beat that for a meal with meat.
The second meal cost a bit more but we got 2 servings from it with a serving leftover for one of us for brunch. It will get eaten. We do not waste food.
Our brunches are cheap! Eggs are cheap now people. Take advantage of that. Serve breakfast for dinner once a week. Hard boil some eggs to eat for a snack or to make egg salad.
We will continue to eat from our stockpile. I will only buy necessities when needed at rock bottom price. Don’t run out to the store to get an ingredient at full price. Wait to use that recipe with that ingredient until you see a good sale for it. I will show you what I purchase when I do it. I have no plans to go our to the market this week. I will be placing an order to get more bandages, some shampoo, deodorant for Hubby, etc. today. But that all comes out of our medical and our personal care budget.
Food is just way too expensive to just give our dollars over to these corporations without a plan. Think before you buy. USE UP THAT FOOD IN YOUR HOME!
Sorry this is so long but there is a lot I wanted to pack into it. I hope it has helped someone. I know a few people who can use the advice.
I had every intention of writing this on Thursday. However, I ended up in the hospital getting emergency surgery to remove an infection in my back. I have to go back tomorrow to get the drain removed. That can’t come fast enough for me. It is still oozing blood so when I am not laying down, I am in old clothes that I can just throw out when they get messed up. I am sitting here pretty uncomfortable while typing this. Fortunately Eloise seems to know that I don’t feel well. So instead of sitting on my lap, she is sleeping next to my feet.
Anyhow let’s talk about Tuesday. It was the best “girl’s” day out with my new friend and neighbor. I had not had a girl’s day out in over 26 years except with family. She knows other towns in our area that I do not and she took me on quite an excursion.
We started out from here at 9am. After Hubby got my Yeti cooler and grocery bags in her car, I grabbed my umbrella and we were on our way. First she took me to see the house she lived in before moving here. The neighborhood was very nice and reminded me of the one we lived in for 24 years when we raised our boys.
Next we went to Olympia Greek Restaurant in North Tonawanda for a nice breakfast. Their portions were huge so I could eat less than half. I had a steak omelet, home fries, and toast. It was very good! I would go back there again.
After leaving there we went to https://pellicanosmarketplace.com/ . That is why I needed the cooler. I got pastrami, pepperoni, and salami so that Hubby could make himself an Italian salad for dinner that night. I froze about half of the meats because every once in while that is what he wants for dinner. I also picked up a large package of ground beef so that Hubby can make a big pot of chili when it cools off in September. I purchased a couple of beefsteak tomatoes, a few packages of their made on site Italian sausage patties and a 5 lb. bag of breaded white meat chicken patties on my friends recommendation. Her Hubby uses these to make chicken parm. So I tried his recipe for dinner the next night. It was so delicious and so easy. Hubby loved it. I will have to go back there and bring Hubby because he would like a lot the things that they have including the olives. My last purchase was a bag of ice to throw in the cooler along with the food.
Then we went to thehttps://www.facebook.com/people/Tattered-Tulip/100064759474267/ . It was huge and had such beautiful home decor. Not wanting to bring anything into my home that wasn’t a necessity, I just purchased four beautiful dish towels in my color scheme to replace some that were old and frayed.
Next we went to https://www.platterschocolates.com/ . After walking around the home decor store for a long time, my back was killing me and I needed to sit down. So we got ice cream and sat for a while in Platter’s. Then we went and looked at all of the chocolates and of course I brought home 4 boxes of them.
Our last stop before we went home was here: https://arrowheadspringvineyards.com/ . We enjoyed a glass of wine and purchased some bottles of wine to bring home.
The best part of the day was chatting with my new friend. We seem to like the same things and we get along so well. She is so sweet. She had as good a time as I did because she wants to do another “girl’s day” out this month. I am game! I am getting to know her and different areas around me that I have never been to. It is such fun! So a huge thanks to her for taking me!
Was the day frugal? Nope! But it was worth every penny!
I know I promised to tell you today what I did yesterday. I will do that another time. I went to sleep last night watching this You Tube video and it was very disturbing. So I want to talk about this. Here is the video if you want to watch it: People Have Stopped Paying Their Bills… And It’s Worse Than Many Realize
Who raised these people to be so irresponsible? I was just aghast that people don’t care if they pay any of their bills back. Do they have any morals? I am not sure they do. Do they realize that will damage their lives forever by this kind of behavior?
What is truly troubling is that they use every excuse for not being able to pay their bills except blaming themselves. They took the loans, they ran up their credit cards, they took the mortgages, or they rented an apartment they cannot afford. They purchased the car they can’t afford. But they do not want to change their lifestyles to be able to pay them off. Some even want to bankrupt the country by trying to convince others to not pay their bills back.
Don’t get me going on how so many people are putting groceries on credit cards. Give up something else to pay for food. Cut back to basic food: some kind of protein, veggies/or fruit is all you really need. Stop buying snacks, sodas and sweets if you can’t afford them. I will talk about this in another post or this one will be 10 pages long.
So many of them are complaining it is because everything is going up. We have been in so many situations like this in all of our decades. About every 10 years we have had some kind of recession. But people cut back on what they spent to survive. They didn’t spend a fortune on cellphones, eating out, picking up coffee, so many clothes that they can’t wear them all, streaming services they can’t afford, and the list goes on and on. When gas got expensive, they car pooled, stayed home except to go to work. They combined a ride home from work with running errands. They did not use their car otherwise. How many of them today are doing that? I would bet not many! They are still going out to meet up with friends or using gasoline for other things that are not a true necessity.
Do you think that our bills have not gone up? Of course they have just like everyone elses. We will be retired 25 years next month. The money that we had to spend during retirement has been devalued by inflation over those 25 years. Since the month we retired until now, our money today needs to be 1.88 times what it was when we retired. We stayed frugal our entire life knowing this would happen and we saved every month. Do I like that our bills have gone up so much over the past 7 years? No of course not and I do complain about them especially the electric and gas bill. But I meet those increases head on. I consider it a challenge on every thing.
I have posted so much content over the years on my blog trying to help other people and I know that many of my readers have been helped. But there are others who do nothing to help themselves. It falls on deaf ears. They do not listen so I have stopped trying. They got themselves into their own messes and they can get themselves out.
That said, I will again do a series on how to cut back and survive these times.
My son, DIL, and grandson returned last Thursday from a 3 week vacation in France. They even took the train to Switzerland on their anniversary to eat at a steak house. They came yesterday to visit so I made French toast, eggs, and sausage for breakfast. I did not want to waste time going out to breakfast. We just wanted to hear all about their trip and see all the pictures. And get plenty of hugs! What a beautiful country France is. While they were there they spent a couple of days seeing the 2 Disney parks in Paris. They have now been to every park that Disney has worldwide. So that was the highlight of our day yesterday.
My son did alot of things for us while he was here. It had been 4 weeks since they had come. The wind blew one of our outside cameras off kilter and it needed a battery. He fixed that. The painters had taken down all of our beautiful things from the top’s of the cupboards in the kitchen when they painted the ceilings. He put all of those back up in the exact spots where they had been. Hubby had taken pictures before the painters took them down. Lastly, he put brighter lights in our dining room light over the table. We have never had this much light. I am loving it. I am grateful for everything he and my grandson do for us. Hubby and I do not want to climb ladders at our “young age”.
Our friend who is our neighbor brought over 4 of the largest muffins I have ever seen that she baked. They were blueberry and the large berries reminded me of the Maine blueberries that we used to grow in our yard when we lived in the eastern part of our state. I have to get this recipe from her. They were so delicious.
Let’s now talk about our electric and gas bill that came last week. We have been trying our hardest to keep the bill down. The bill was for 33 days and was $213.97. We used 696 kwh’s and 4 ccf’s of natural gas for cooking and heating water.
Last year’s bill(same period) was also for 33 days. It was $ 214.22. We used 774 kwh’s and 3 ccf’s of natural gas.
So we used 78 less kwh of electricity and 1 more ccf of gas this year. However the bill was only $ .25 less than last year’s. The bill probably would have been more if the oil prices hadn’t gone down. I expect that with oil back up that the next few bills will be outrageous.
So we are trying hard to think about what we are doing when we use kwh’s or ccf’s. We have an oversupply of paper plates that we purchased prior to 2021 when they were cheap. So we use them sometimes. That lets us only run the dishwasher once a week. If we have company, then I have to run it more. Recently, I purchased 8 place settings of silverware. Our old ones were pitted and very old! I quickly realized that I needed 8 more place settings so that I don’t have to run that dishwasher often especially when we have other people here. They are being delivered today. I got them on a great sale and with $7.00 off coupons. We love the ones we picked out.
Our new freezer is supposed to only use $47. of electricity a year. Time will tell. Since it is an upright, when you open it the cold air falls out. So since we only stock beef and butter in it, we don’t open it as often as the chest freezer. We only eat beef about once a week and I have no problem keeping 3 weeks worth of beef at a time in our upstairs freezer on our refrigerator.
I only do 2 loads of laundry a week most of the time. If I am doing spring or fall cleaning then I do more. We hang as much as we can indoors which cuts down on the dryer use.
Most lights are kept off in the daytime unless it is dark out. I do follow the sun around the house pulling the shades and putting down the blinds to keep the heat out of our home.
Since it is not as humid as it had been, we have turned off our dehumidifier in our basement. If the humidity comes back then we will turn it back on.
We are having Chinese food that we purchased yesterday from our local take out place. They give you so much food that we have enough for tonight. So 2 meals for each of us for about $23.+ tax is not bad.
Tomorrow, I am doing something for the day that I haven’t done in over 26 years and I am so looking forward to it. I will tell you all about it either tomorrow when I get home or the next day if I am worn out from it.
I have had a few people e-mail me and ask where I have been. So here is the explanation.
Since 2007 when I first started blogging, I don’t think that I have taken more than a week’s time off in any given year for a vacation. That hasn’t happened in a while now. We don’t travel anymore. So we decided to take a week off for a staycation last week. However that did not work out because we had severe smoke here in our area coming from the wildfires in Canada. So we stayed home except for medical appointments. But I used that time to do some cleaning and work on my freezers. I am also reorganizing my big pantry.
We were going to take this week off but yesterday and today did not start out well. The smoke is here again. I am going to hope that the smoke gets better and that we will be able to get outside and do some things this week. If not, I still need a break from blogging. So I will continue reorganizing my basement and do some other household things. I am hoping to be back next week.
I hope you are enjoying your summer and not putting up with this smoke.
I have been wanting a second freezer for a few years now. I have been tracking prices and looking at different models for years. During the evening on Sunday, I saw this upright that I have been eyeing on sale for 54% off. It had thousands of great reviews. It is not a full size upright but it is perfect for what I wanted to use it for. I showed Hubby and told him it would be my beef freezer. He said if you want it order it. I did and it was delivered yesterday. It was taken to my basement by a very nice man. Hubby unpacked all of the styrofoam and cardboard that it came in that very night while I chatted with my sister. Today I cleaned up the packing materials. Then I removed half of the items in our chest freezer so that Hubby and I could move it and we could put the new one to the right of it. Hubby installed automatic lighting for me when he did the pantry. It comes on when I open the pantry door. However if we left the new one to the left of the chest freezer, it blocked the light. After we moved it, I then put everything back into the chest freezer.
After the new one had cooled to the proper temperature, I took everything back out of the chest freezer. I sorted it into these blue bins that I had purchased on Amazon a long time ago:
I sorted by type of meat: pork, chicken, fish and seafood, and beef. All of the beef items went into the new freezer. It took up almost three shelves. I used another shelf for my 21 lbs. of butter.
All of the vegetables and fruits have been put in one bin. We eat a lot of fresh vegetables in the summer so I don’t keep many frozen ones. Another bin has yeast, nuts and bread products.
I do have 3 turkeys in the bottom of the freezer along with 2 lbs. of ground turkey. I like to keep the same meats sorted together so that I can find them when needed.
Everything was counted and inventoried while I did it. I purchased two magnetic white boards on Amazon. One for each freezer. They are here:
Later today or tomorrow, I will write a map for each freezer and put the inventory for each item on there also. That way I can just erase and change it easily when I use something up or add something I have purchased.
If anyone is interested in buying this one, it was on sale at Walmart for $218. They also have a chest freezer on sale if you are need in of one for $205.
Hubby was quite impressed with the new one when it came. He didn’t expect it to be as nice as it is. I am thrilled. It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy.
We were invited to a July 4th party and I was making a fruit bowl in a watermelon shell to bring. Trying to find fruit that was decent was not easy. I went to Niagara Produce and got the watermelon for $7.99. I also purchased seedless green grapes for $8.37, blueberries for $3.99, and 4 dozen XL eggs that I needed for $ .99 each. That came to $ 24.30. Their strawberries were small and not in vey good condition.
Then I went to Top’s and got cherries(I pitted them all) for $8.42, more blueberries for $6.99 and cantaloupe for $ 14.97(I had to buy precut because I could not find a whole cantaloupe in the store.). I hate doing that but Hubby really wanted cantaloupe in the fruit bowl. Top’s strawberries were really orange. There was not a red strawberry in the store. They were far from ripe.
So on Friday morning I went to Walmart to pick up a prescription for Hubby. While I was there, I looked at their strawberries. I was shocked to see that they had perfect strawberries. So I purchased 4 small containers for a total of $ 10.32. They are not in the picture. I was so happy that they had them because if they didn’t I was going to head to the next town to go to Wegman’s or B.J.’s.
This was a large party with lots of kids, I brought over a much bigger half of the watermelon filled with fruit. I made this extra one in case it was needed and put it in my refrigerator. I also had a bag of fruit leftover for us to munch on the next few days.
I didn’t find out that the fruit had run out until after everyone had eaten. The hosts of the party said it was gone by the time they dished up their meal. If I had known, I would have gotten this other one in the refrigerator. Looks like everyone was loving it. So yesterday, I brought over this half of the watermelon of fruit to the hosts for them and their 2 boys to enjoy. Lesson learned: Bring double next year and put it in a big bowl.
One of their fathers makes the burgers every year for them to grill. He is a hunter and got a deer this past season. They are the best burgers I have ever had. He makes them out of venison and ground pork and I don’t know what kind of spices he uses. So when I brought the fruit over, they gave me 4 of the burgers that were leftover and not cooked yet. We each had one for dinner last night. The other two I have frozen for another meal. I have always hated venison because it tastes gamey to me. Not these burgers. They were so yummy!
There were so many fireworks in our neighborhood on July 4th night that I could not get to sleep until after 11am. So I was dragging yesterday. However last night, I had to do some work in the basement to make room for a purchase that is coming today.
But now I am rested. I have a very busy day. I have an appointment in the next town and then have to run some errands near me. Then I have more work in the basement to do.
