Won't Be Long Now!

We've been on a weather rollercoaster this winter! January saw highs of  15 C  one week and overnight lows of minus 21 c the next. Three days ago we were hit with that big snow storm which dumped a good 40 cm in my neighbourhood and it's almost all gone now thanks to pouring rain overnight and high of 6 today. It makes it a little challenging to know what to wear when you go but at least it's not boring outside!

The same can not be said for inside. With both of us underemployed, there's a been a whole lot of lazy days and nights and while it's a good kind of boredom, lots catching up on reading and movie watching, too much of anything wears after a while. Which is why I thought it would be fun to take on the $10 grocery challenge to add a little interest to January. I have to say that while it made good sense for the wallets, by the end it did not help with my mood at all. I love to cook and try new things and that means lots of variety. Unlike the Russian who could happily eat chicken soup for every meal, I get very cranky when faced with the same food on repeat. By the last week of the month we still had a fair bit of food in the house but it was a lot of the same stuff and under the guidelines of the challenge I couldn't just nip out and buy that one or two items to switch up the menu.We did managed to keep to the budget (except for the previously mentioned spontaneous dinner party) but I was ever so glad to see the back end of January!

The arrival of February  immediately brightened my mood and not just because I could buy groceries! The Toronto Beekeeper's Co-op held a one day workshop on Urban Beekeeping on Feb 2 and it was a great success, full of all kinds of bee enthusiasts and a lovely marketplace selling sweet smelling and tasting goodies. I picked up these beautiful eggs from one of the vendors and I swear the colour alone made me happy!

Now that we've made it to almost mid February it's time to start thinking of gardening again! I haven't started any seedlings yet but already the days are long enough to want to try and as usual, a few things have started without me. My brown fig broke dormancy earlier than I  would have liked but it seems to be thriving even when it's clearly not time yet.

 

All the indoor plants I cut back in the fall are sending out new leaves and the crazy onions I overwintered in a pot are providing me with much appreciated fresh salad greens!
So it's time look at  seeds, lay out plans and dream of hot summer days in the garden.

Can't come soon enough!

$10 Challenge Week 3

I had to think twice about which week this was, since I've only started posting about this challenge last week, but it's actually the end of the third week. Of course, looking at the calendar, there's still two weeks of January left and that seems decidedly unfair, and not only because I'm trying to stretch our groceries. January always seems terminally long; without a single thing to break up the monotony. I know for some February is the worst month because everyone is entirely sick of winter and cold but at least there's things like Groundhog Day, Lunar New Year, and Valentines Day going on so that every day isn't exactly the same as the one before. As you can tell I've been deep in the January doldrums: the lazy post holiday hibernation mode has evaporated and even reading seed catalogs doesn't help. The only good news looking at the calendar brought was the realization that I could totally spend another $10 for that last week of January.

So it's probably a good thing that I signed up for the challenge- at least it gives me something to think about and plan meals around. (It also gives me an excuse not to venture out into the cold to pick up ingredients!) We started off this week by cooking up the turkey I bought last week. I invited my sisters for dinner but only one, along with her partner, were able to join us. It still made for a nice evening; we drank some of my homemade mead, they brought dessert- a lovely foamy champagne cream with  raspberry pureé- and we played Mexican Train and Yatzee! Turkey leftovers featured in most of the meals this week- turkey in gravy on potato pancakes made from leftover mashed, a big pot of turkey soup and there was still enough left for turkey pot pie. When we weren't eating turkey I did up a couple of pasta dishes with ground beef (bought with the remain $5, so no eggs sadly) and another night we had bbq style pork riblets with potatoes and frozen beans from last summer's garden. There were three good size riblets in the package so I sauteéd them all with onions and garlic and touch of maple syrup. The extra riblet I cut in pieces and threw into a pot of dried beans I'd soaked all day to make a nice pork and bean soup, which we had for lunch on Friday.

The other good thing about the challenge is that it encourages me to be more creative and adventurous. I'm not normally much of a baker since I associate baking primarily with dessert which we don't normally eat.  One of the things I've always meant to try but never get around to is bread making. On Thurs I decided to make the turkey pot pie and since the oven was going to be on anyway, I decided to have go at making my own bread. I used a very basic recipe and a package of dried yeast, substituted a bit of honey for the sugar and was delighted with the results. My bread was still pretty dense and slightly sweet ( I'd use less honey next time) but very tasty and not bad for a first attempt. While the bread was rising I made pastry for the pot pie and since there was lots left over (I doubled the recipe to make sure) I also baked a cherry pie with cherries canned last summer. Lots of good smells in the kitchen that day!

So we were doing  well within the boundaries of the challenge and then yesterday we derailed completely. It started out innocently enough; we were both off today so I suggested we invite a friend for dinner,  It had been a nice warm day so someone suggested barbecuing, and somehow one guest became two and then four and then suddenly we had 8 people coming by expecting to be fed! Well of course we didn't have anything in the house to feed that many people, so an emergency trip to the yellow store became necessary. We were fortunate to find an absolutely fantastic price on pork shoulder and bought what looked like almost a whole leg for $8! I also picked up some Chinese greens, button mushrooms, a couple sweet peppers -from Mexico of course but very inexpensive for this time of year. I had rice noodles and other veg at home so we had a lovely meal of barbecued pork with stir fried veggies and noodles in oyster sauce, with cherry pie for dessert- all for about $15! It was wonderful to have a houseful of guests, eating and laughing!


So the bad news is that we completely blew the $10/week budget this week. And it was worth every penny.

$10 Grocery Challenge

Farmgal over at Just Another Day on the Farm came up with this challenge last year and it's pretty much like it sounds; for the month of January we'll try to spend only $10/wk on groceries. Canadian Doomer is in, as well as a few other folks. Two years ago, many of us participated in a Pantry Challenge in which we bought no groceries at all in the month of March and lived on only what we had in the house. March probably wasn't the best month to attempt that since a lot of the food I preserved from the previous summer was already long gone but it was a good test to see how long we could last with food we had on hand. By comparison, the $10/week challenge feels like it will be a breeze and it's good time for us to think lean because we've both been on extended (unpaid) holidays. I'd been putting aside a lot of staples while I had a regular paycheque and we've only just started to dip into last summer' s preserved bounty. I currently have about 50 lbs of potatoes stashed in the greenhouse at work, lots of home canned stuff, and the pantry and the freezer are still pretty full. If there's a weak spot, it's in meat/proteins and fresh veg.With that in mind I went shopping at the nearest cheap chain grocery store this week and blew pretty much the whole month's budget in one shot. The veggies were the easy part - Ontario onions, carrots and cabbage are still readily available so I grabbed a 3 lb bag of each of the former and a large cabbage. Meat is always little more challenging- buying from a chain store means not knowing where the meat comes from and without a doubt it's mainly factory farmed. But when utility turkeys are on sale for $.87/lb it's hard to say no. I picked up a just under 10 lb bird for $7.67 and that will feed us for many meals. I also picked up some pork ribs and tenderloin on sale, a 10lb of unbleached flour, a block of cheddar and some canned chickpeas. The total came to just under $35 which leaves me just $5 for the remainder of the month. Just enough to choose between free range eggs or a couple lbs of ground beef from the local halal butcher but not both. These are the times I am envious of all the bloggers on my reading list who have chickens and dairy animals, who raise goats, lambs and rabbits for meat. I would love to be making my own cheese this winter but whole organic milk is too dear to purchase in the quantity needed to make cheese and raising my own meat animals is not even a possibility even if I wanted to.


So what to do when the best resource you have is time? Make pierogies! I made up a big batch of filling using potatoes, cheddar, bacon, sauteéd onions and leeks, and roasted garlic. Then I made an even bigger batch of pierogie dough. I did up about 5 dozen pierogies and froze them, then used the rest of the dough to make squash ravioli with some leftover butternut squash. If I have any pork leftovers I may make a batch of potstickers as well. Everything tastes good in dumpling form!

Now if only I could make my own sour cream...