Author: Precious

Categories
Every Day

I Have So Many Things On My Mind

Things that I want to share! So let’s just chat.

Money is a huge thing on my mind the past couple of years. I am sure it is on most of yours too. But lately it has really been on my mind. As I watch our money being depleted because of inflation, I am asking myself all of the time how do I save money doing this or that.

Being retired for 22+ years and knowing that we have lived a good middle income life, times these days are disheartening. In the past 3+ years, all of us have seen prices rising on groceries, gasoline, energy bills, clothing, health insurance, auto and homeowner’s insurances, water rates, garbage collection, etc. Just about everything has rapidly increased. The past few months things have really been on the rise.

Don’t let anyone tell you that inflation is decreasing. Because it is not and will not be anytime soon. The Feds have already said that they will be raising interest rates into 2024.

I believe that the stock market has been held up by the Treasury Bonds(and we all know what our government is worth) and many large companies and the huge profits they have earned during the past year or two. However, people are running out of money to spend so they are not buying as much as they were. People are losing their jobs as companies tighten their belts. Many small businesses which have always been the backbone of our country are now gone. Many more will follow.

Yet with all of this and so many people barely able to buy their food, our government continues to spend money like water. It’s time to turn off the tap! The amount of money that they have spent in just the past few months is ridiculous. They continue to spend our taxpaying money in Ukraine. The amount of money they have given them could help many Americans. What a novel idea to spend money on your own citizens.

The other thing that has bothered me of late is the junk that they are putting in our food and cleaning products. Does anyone really know what GMO means or what it is? I know what the initials stand for but not what they are actually putting in it to engineer it. Cleaning products are full of toxic chemicals.

There are two You Tubers who I have been following for years who are trying to help us with that. One is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zdj5KpgOeo&t=23s . He is starting a grass roots movement to switch our consumer spending back to family owned made in America non toxic products. You can find more information on his webpage: https://switchaway.com/index.php. The other one is: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=poplar+preparedness . He will be working on a website that will show you the American companies where you can buy safe food. That one is just in the beginning stages. He has a Zoom meeting planned soon to discuss that and he wants to hire some of those people who are subscribers to his channel to help work on this project. He will be paying them.

They both want us to buy safe American made products and switch our spending away from these large companies(you know who they are) to help small businesses in our country. I am very interested in this myself. But not enough to work on Poplar Preparedness’s project. I have enough work to do around here. But I will be watching all of this unfold.

The last thing that I want to discuss is food inflation. We all know that food prices are a result of supply and demand. All of the shortages that we have had the past few years is also raising the prices. I hear the media every day tell us how many illegal immigrants are entering our country ( 2000- 4000) most days. But right now there is a huge caravan of Venezuela men traveling to the border. Biden has agreed to let them come in. I have heard a number of 147,000. But then today I heard he is willing to take half a million and give them work visas. I never hear the media mention what that is doing to our food supply, non food supply, and our medicines. All of these trespassers have to eat, have personal care products, medicines, cleaning products, etc. Our government for the most part is paying for that for them. Yes, I know that some of them most likely have jobs. However, the majority do not. Bottom line: They are causing shortages and the prices to go up too. They are also clogging our ER’s. But no one talks about that.

There I have told you what has been on my mind. Now what has been on yours? Feel free to comment.

Also because money is leaving our pockets so rapidly, I will be starting up my weekly posts on What I Did To Save Money very soon.

Categories
Every Day

Yes,You Can Do It!

While I am canning my chicken and doing laundry, I have time to write to you.

So many people have said to me that they wished they knew how to can. Well, I want you to know that I only started canning 3 years ago. And my first time was a real flop. So I quit rather than waste time and food. But I spent the next 2 years learning from two wonderful ladies on you tube. I thoroughly read the Ball canning book and researched every bit of information that I could from reliable sources. Those ladies who follow the rules and give you just a wealth of information are: https://www.youtube.com/@RoseRedHomestead and https://www.youtube.com/@appalachiashomesteadwithpatara .

In the meantime, I was stocking cases of jars. Last year I purchased an Instant Pot Max. However, it only processed 4 pint jars at a time and you needed to constantly be there to watch what was going on. That drove me nuts! I like to be busy not babysitting a machine. But I use my Instant Pot a lot for cooking so it does get used.

I researched to see if there was a better machine. That is how I found my Presto Precise Digital Canner. It is the only one that the USDA has approved for safety. Believe me, I am all about safety. I know it is expensive. It cost me over $300. plus tax. However I saved the money weeks in advance from unspent grocery money. But I have used it so much these past few weeks. It has minimal things that you have to do to use it. It pretty much prompts you for every thing that you have to do by beeping. I can be in another room and I will hear it.

I am loving it and it is saving us a fortune on meat which will pay it off quickly. Have you priced the canned meat on the grocery shelves? Ground beef in a 14.5 oz. can would cost me $ 6.45 a lb. I have been canning fresh for $2.99 lb. Chicken has cost me $ 1.99 – $ 2.99 a lb. but in the 14.5 oz. can, it would be $ 4.90 a lb. Pork would cost me $ 7.45 a lb. if I bought it by the case for 14.5 oz. cans. I can usually buy pork to can for $ 2.49 a lb. Meat is very cost effective to can and is easy to raw pack can. I have purchased Keystone meats back when they were a whole lot cheaper than they are today. Even at those prices, I am still saving money. Since canned meat prices keep going up, I knew that I had to find a cheaper way.

If this very old lady can do it, you can too. I have not had one jar that didn’t seal since I started using my Presto.

I was going to talk about a lot of other things today but time is escaping and I still have another load in the canner. I also have a lot of clean laundry to put away.

So look for my post tomorrow, titled “I Have So Many Things On My Mind” that I want to share.

Do any of you can?

Categories
Every Day

A Little of This and a Little of That

It has been crazy around here but I finally found time to go get this deal at Top’s. I got 17.57 lbs. of chicken breasts for $ 34.96. That was $ 1.99 a lb. and there was a limit of 3 packages. I haven’t seen that price around here in a couple of years. They had plenty so if I have to go anywhere else this week, I will stop and get 3 more.

This week our sprinkler company came and blew out the lines for the winter. Our heating people just came to service the furnace for the winter to make sure that everything is working well. Hubby is keeping him busy while I blog.

In the meantime, I have been organizing pantries. I started cleaning out my chest freezer and then realized that those bins wouldn’t fit because there was too much meat in the freezer. So we are eating out of it every night so that we can get it down to where the bins will work.

Also I canned up a whole bunch of chicken from the freezer the end of last week and put it on the shelf. The chicken I got today I will cut up tonight and can it in the morning.

In case you guys haven’t gotten the word, now there is a shortage of resin. It is used in making Ziploc bags and other food grade bags. So if you are in need, I would grab some now before they disappear and the price skyrockets. This info came from within the largest manufacturing plant of those bags in the U.S. Notice how the media isn’t even mentioning it.

Hubby has been moving our underground sprinkler system in the new garden in the backyard. I helped where I could. The hosing was right where we are having the landscape company move two rose of sharon bushes. They have gotten too big for the gardens they are in. We didn’t want to have a repeat of when the first garden was put in. They cut the sprinkler hose. Now these are safe and out of the way.

Tonight we are having leftover fish that we cooked up last night. Hubby had breaded haddock and I had salmon. We will reheat the leftovers in the air fryer.

Did you get a any good deals this week?

Categories
Every Day

Grocery Shop At Home

Grocery prices are so high that I don’t even want to shop anymore unless I see a remarkable sale. There is one coming this Sunday that I will not miss. Rarely can I say that these days.

Hubby and I were discussing the prices the other day. He has agreed to eat 99% of the time from our pantries, refrigerator, and freezer. Do we go out to eat regularly? Nope. Do we constantly buy fast food? Nope. Once in a rare while, we will get KFC chicken or an Arby’s roast beef and I always use coupons. We do that if we have had a very busy day. In Lent, we will get fish fries from Chiavetta’s. But that is it! It is so much cheaper and healthier to eat our own cooking.

We make all of our pizza using naan bread. We make our own Chinese food. I can’t even remember the last time that we ordered Chinese food. I think it was before Covid. On a rare occasion (maybe twice a year), we will get a sweet at the bakery owned by one of my neighbors. I haven’t even gotten bagels at Panera Bread in a very long time and I still have lots of gift cards. Maybe I will stop and get some next Tuesday for Hubby. He really likes them.

So we are going to eat up what we have here. We may end up having some weird sides when they get low. But we will make the best of it knowing that we are not spending our money and making these large corporations any richer than they already are. We are all getting poorer while they made billions off of us last year and the year before. And it continues and will continue into next year.

Will we ever buy? Yes, of course. Two times come to mind. Fresh produce and dairy products, etc. don’t keep for long. We need eggs, butter, sour cream, cream cheese, cheeses, and cream all of the time. But I will try to buy those only when they are on sale or cheap at Walmart or Aldi’s. I have enough butter to last me until the Thanksgiving sales. While I am thinking about Thanksgiving, I will be buying turkeys and other on sale stuff that is the cheapest during that holiday. I will not pass up a great sale especially on meat. Even though it is harder these days to track prices because they rise so often, I am still doing it. I need to know when I am getting a great deal!

Hubby is the only one eating bread so I will be baking it and freezing it. I can also make him muffins, quick breads, donuts, hamburger and hot dog rolls. He makes pancakes and waffles sometimes for our family Sunday breakfasts. West loves his apple cinnamon waffles.

We are able to make our own salad dressings and sauces when we run out of what we have.

While we are not shopping, I will be putting aside the budgeted money that we are not spending to refill the larders. Things will be expensive to replace but I will carefully watch for sales and cook most everything from just basic foods.

Once my canning jars come today, we should be set for the winter. I hate snow and ice so I will be staying home as much as possible.

The rest of my bins for the freezer came yesterday. So I moved a lot of the vegetables, fruits, shredded cheeses, tortilla wraps, yeast, jam, nuts, etc. to my upstairs freezer. All my meat got moved to the chest freezer.

I plan on sorting all of the meats and fish into the bins today. The things that I want to can today and tomorrow will go in the refrigerator Then I will quickly defrost my chest freezer using my hairdryer and plastic ice scraper. I will show you the results in a later post.

BTW, that piece of meat that I thawed the other day was two filet mignon’s that the butcher had cut and wrapped two together. I found another package just like it yesterday when I was going through my freezer. So Hubby grilled then the other night for dinner. It was a nice surprise.

Are you eating from your pantries and freezers?

Categories
Every Day

Getting Ready for Winter, Etc.

Three of my six bins for the freezer arrived yesterday. They say the rest are arriving today.

This is only part of what I canned on Monday. I cooked up the large pack of ground beef and was able to fill 11 jars. Then I cut up the top round roast and was able to fill 3 more jars. Since my canner does 7 pints at a time, this gave me two full loads. They both process at 75 minutes so it was perfect. I had never done stew beef before so I thought I had filled up the jars but after processing, there was room left in them. So next time, I know to fill them with more meat. I have already put away the other 6 jars but I need to put these in the basement. I am running out of room upstairs.

Yesterday morning, I went up to Home Depot to get 5 more bags of lawn soil. Hubby has been filling in around the edges of the new driveway that was put in last fall with the soil and planting grass. He had already purchased 10 bags but it wasn’t enough. Those bags are heavy. I was lucky to find a young employee who did all the lifting, rung me up, and put them in the car. Hubby finished it yesterday and he had just put the last bit of seed down, when it rained. So we didn’t have to water. That made me happy since we just paid our 3 month $200. water bill.

After bringing the soil home and Hubby unloaded it, I went back to Walmart. I had not been in a Walmart in a long time. I always get delivery. But I am running out of some of the sizes of my canning jars and their site showed they had them. They had not one. But I needed other things that were on my winter list so I did a bit of shopping. I was shocked to see how barely stocked the shelves were. I have never seen a store this low on stock. That Panama Canal slowdown of the ships is really hurting the store inventories. If you need things for the winter, I would suggest getting them sooner rather than later. I don’t know how long supplies will last.

Fortunately, our 240 pounds of water softener salt arrived. We also have enough furnace filters and humidifier pads to get us through the winter. If you are stocking for the winter, they are just a couple of things that you should look at.

I picked up some OTC necessary medicines that we needed, some warm clothing, a bit of food, and warm socks. $178. later I walked out of the store with just 4 bags. Things are getting more expensive. I won’t bore you with the list of items. When I got home, I ordered many cases of pint jars which they are shipping from the warehouse. I don’t want to be short of them while I am doing the freezer.

Hubby and I went through our home over the weekend and made a list of all of the items that we believe will not last us the winter. When I talk about winter, I mean 6 months. We get a lot of snow and cold here and the forecast for the winter here is not good. It looks like it will arrive early and last later than normal. Lots of snow and below average temperatures are coming. I told him that I am not going out of the house this winter to run errands or for anything else. I have actually rescheduled all of my appointments until late spring. When we need fresh produce, dairy or anything else, we have Walmart Delivery and Instacart. So we can get delivery of almost everything. Our drug store will deliver our prescriptions.

Later in the day, a man from the Tree Service we called came to look at our pear tree and our other trees. The pear tree is loosing it’s leaves early and didn’t look good. The man told Hubby it probably was related to the weather this year. No fungus found. He told Hubby to get some Neem (which we already have) and just spray it in the early spring. He says it will come back and be just fine. He is coming back to trim our birch tree and maple tree. He said our cherry tree is just perfect. Our purple plum is on it’s way out. But he said they only last about 15 years anyhow. It is almost 14 years old now. So we will have to think about what we are going to replace it with.

For dinner last night, Hubby grilled the chicken that I purchased last weekend. He used my homemade BBQ sauce. It was so delicious. It is a recipe that carried down over the years from our ancestors. He grilled 4 breasts so there are two left for dinner tonight.

Since our dinner is ready for tonight and I quickly picked up the house, threw a load of laundry in, did the dishes, and cleaned the bathrooms this morning, I can start working on pulling food out of the freezers that I want to can. When it thaws, I will start the canner. Then I can defrost the chest freezer and organize it. This will definitely take me a few days.

Are you stocking up on necessities for the winter?

Categories
Every Day

A Small Meat Haul and What I Plan To Do With It

Since the Buffalo Bills weren’t playing until tonight, I decided to get some of the sale meat items at Top’s yesterday. Figuring that most people would be home watching football, I went once the games started. Oh Boy was I ever wrong. I think every women in my little town had the same idea. It was packed. So I got in and out as quickly as I could.

I snagged a big pack of 80% lean ground beef at $ 2.99 a lb. I will be cooking it and canning it this morning.

Finally, they had split chicken breasts in my store and they were on sale for $ 2.19 a lb. My store has not had them for a couple of years. I am going to ask Hubby to grill them tonight using up the quart of homemade BBQ sauce that I made when my sister- in- law was here . That will give us at least two meals. But they are huge so maybe the meat will give us a couple of brunch meals too.

I also purchased a top round roast for $ 4.99 a lb. This will get cut up for stew and either canned or frozen for a couple of meals. I make my stews in the crockpot so it tenderizes the meat. I can’t buy stew meat for this price.

I decided to start thawing the mystery meat I showed you. I will let you know what it is when it thaws.

Excitement was in the air when I got up and sat down with my coffee this morning. I opened my e-mail to find that my bins to do the freezer are coming tomorrow. I can’t wait. So I may get a head start on organizing it a bit today. At least I can pull out all the rest of the meat that I am going to can up and get it thawing in the refrigerator.

Any veggies, fruits, and cheese that are in the chest freezer will go into the refrigerator freezer. I don’t have too much of that because we eat a lot of fresh. Any meat that is in the that freezer will either get canned or go down to the chest freezer.

It is looking like I will be pretty busy this week. But I can’t wait to see the finished project.

Today, we have 240 lbs. of pellet salt for our water softener being delivered via Fed Ex. I expect that the driver is not going to be a happy camper. I will have to be especially nice to him. They are coming in 40 lb. bags each with a separate tracking number. This is what will get us through the winter. We can’t get them at the store because they are too heavy for us. If we can just get them in the garage, my son and grandson can take them down to the water softener for us the next time they come out.

What are you guys up to today?

Categories
Every Day

A Big Mistake and Changing The Way We Use Our Freezer

Does anyone know what this is? When I was getting something out of my freezer yesterday, I spotted this. It was wrapped in butcher’s paper and this was inside. I made the mistake of not marking what was in it. I don’t even remember buying it at the butcher shop. It looks like it could be ground beef. I guess we will find out when I thaw it. If it is, I will can it.

My chest freezer is out of control! I can’t find anything without unloading many things. I have tried so many ways over the years to keep it neat and sorted and eventually they just frustrate me. I was using reusable bags for a while and that was working but then they started falling apart. The handles would fall off or the bag would rip as I was removing it from the freezer.

I could buy an upright but they are expensive and I don’t want to spend the money on one. Our money is being saved for another goal. So Hubby and I decided to make the chest freezer easier to navigate.

I measured the freezer yesterday and set out to find a way to organize it. We have these on order from The Container Store:

https://www.containerstore.com/s/blue-6-gal.-stackable-recycle-bin-with-white-handle/d?q=stack%20and%20carry%20bins&productId=10032152

I purchased 6 of them. Only 5 will fit in the freezer because it has a built in shelf over the motor. The sixth one I am going to use to carry things from the freezer to my kitchen. I have had this freezer for 13+ years. I always thought it was 7.2 cu. ft. However, when I pulled the information on the freezer out of our file yesterday, I realized that it is actually 8.8 cu. ft.

Realizing that the containers will take up space, I am canning more of my beef and chicken. I have been doing this for a while to get as much meat shelf stable as possible in case of a power outage.

We have also been eating out of the freezer for months. It is still grilling season, so we have been enjoying steak and barbecued chicken using homemade BBQ sauce.

When these bins come, I will rearrange everything. I like to keep my fruits, vegetables, and cheese in the upstairs freezer. The meat goes into the deep freezer. But that has gotten out of control lately too. So there is a lot of organizing to get done.

How do you guys keep your freezers organized? Any tips you would be willing to share?

Categories
Every Day

It Feels Good To Be Back

I am happy to be back blogging. It has been a hectic 5 weeks. I needed the time off to can a lot of meat among other things. My latest was 7 pounds of ground beef. I have many more stored away besides these. Each pint jar will give us 2 meals each.

Hubby helped me to can the peaches. I purchased a 1/2 bushel at Niagara Produce that were ready to be canned. I already had all the canning supplies which I purchased last year. Walmart has the best price on good canned peaches. They are $ 2.44 each. I got my peaches at under $ 1.54 for each jar. Yes, a bit of time was needed to do it. But I actually love canning and so does Hubby. We had a little bit left over that we had cut up and they were so delicious. I ended up with a total of 20 jars. Plus I made 6 jars of freezer jam. I think Hubby has eaten a bit of one of the jams already on bagels.

I also got the ground beef at $ 2.99 a pound. I made a big meatloaf that Hubby and I had for 3 dinners and canned the rest of it. A can of purchased Keystone Ground Beef is going for $ 5.04 a pound. Canning it saves me a lot of money.

My freezers are slowly going down. I have not been doing a lot of shopping the past 5 weeks. Plus I am canning all of the chicken and ground beef in my freezers that I am able to. They are predicting a very cold and snowy winter for us. I do not want a lot of food in my freezers in case we have a power outage.

We had an outage last week but fortunately it only lasted a couple of hours. When the power came back on, we had a communication failure with our alarm system. I was concerned that the system was blown. But after calling our alarm company, they said it was working on their end so we were protected. They gave Hubby directions to clear the panels and waited on the phone till everything was cleared. It is working fine on both their end and ours now.

Right now, I am roasting 2 large roasting chickens in my big turkey roasting pan. They should be done in about 25 minutes. Top’s has rotisserie chickens on sale this week for $ 7.49. But my 2 roasting chickens were purchased at Walmart in the Perdue Twin Pack for $ 1.14 a pound. I got some a few weeks ago and I was surprised that they are still at that price. I paid $ 12.87 this morning for these and they are much bigger than the ones that are already cooked at Top’s. We will have one for dinner tonight and tomorrow night. Then I will take the rest of the meat off that one and the other one and freeze it for many meals. The carcasses will go in the crockpot overnight to make bone broth. That I will can. This saves me from having to buy broth at the store and mine turns out thicker and tastier.

Because food prices are rising so quickly and I believe that the prices will keep going up into 2024, Hubby and I have put a new plan and budget in place for groceries. More about that in another post.

We also had so many doctor appointments and tests that needed to be done this past month. I needed to concentrate on those.

Then the last half of the month, West came to spend a weekend with us.

We also had family on my Hubby’s side come and visit us from Houston,Texas for 5 days. So as you can see we had a very busy last month.

I am actually glad that company is gone and I can get back to what needs to be done around here.

I really hope you are all well and had a wonderful August and Labor Day weekend. I missed you all.

Categories
Every Day

I Wanted To Let You Know

I need to take some more time off. I hope to be back posting after Labor Day.

Categories
Every Day

Run, Don’t Walk To Aldi’s

I don’t have time to do a full grocery blog post right now. I just got back from Aldi’s. I went up for the pound packages of the Organic Ground Beef that is on sale on the front page of their flyer for $ 3.99 a lb. which was a great price.

When I got there, most of their packages expired tomorrow. So I asked at the register if they would reduce the price. I got 6 pounds because that was the limit in the ad. They said yes and I got them all for $ 1.99 each.

The reason I tell you this is that the ground beef comes into the store stamped by the manufacturer with the date so bet is that your stores have that date too.