Monday Message

"A cardinal principle of the gospel is to prepare for the day of scarcity. Work, industry, frugality are part of the royal order of life." (Bishop Keith B. McMullin)

I have been thinking a lot about frugality this week. You remember I talked about our health insurance cost was going up? Well it has, so I have been thinking of ways to be more frugal to weather that cost.  One way was I went through my recipes and pulled my most frugal recipes, then made my list so that is a good place to start.

Also while looking for frugal recipes, here is one I found to try this week - https://cosmopolitancornbread.com/creamy-chicken-noodle-casserole/

So be looking through your recipes. When the kids were little I only tried one new recipe a week and had to be sure we had other meals we liked on hand in case we did not like it.

I thought I would show you how those strawberry seeds are doing. I was so glad to see it worked. I hope I can keep them alive now. If they grow they will join the few I had that made it in the strawberry bed.

I made salsa from the tomatoes, so far this is my plan for the tomatoes. We are eating them fresh as well.

I put the skins that I remove from the tomatoes in the dehydrator to make tomato powder.

This can be added to any soups or things you make that you would like a little more in.

This means very little waste, kind of like free food if you will.

I am getting ready to do this again. I have some tomatoes I am ripening. To speed the ripening so you have enough at once, I cover them with a dark towel. This helps them ripen faster. If I don't need them for something pending, I just let them do their thing. I find I need to pick the tomatoes when they are just starting to turn. If I don't, the insects will get them as we are so very dry here. Our grass is brown and crunchy. As I walked to the mailbox today, I glanced up and noticed all the yards are brown. I think this is why my garden feels near the end of gardening season.

It is sad to see. It has been a hot and dry year.

I have talked about vacuum sealing before. I use a canister that goes with the vacuum sealer. This makes it so I can use any jar that has a lid with a bit of rubber on the inside of lid. All jars nowadays have this in the lid.

This jar was from salsa. I put the chocolate chips inside, put on the lid, then put it in the canister. The hose that comes out of the vacuum sealer has another end that can go directly into the canister, it can also go into the attachment that fits on canning jars. I just leave my attachment for jars on the end then I take that attachment and set it over the top of canister and lock my machine and press the canister button. You can see in the picture with the canister how I have it set up. When not in use, I store this equipment inside the canister to use the next time I need it.

The vacuum sealer is loud and this is the first time that Tippy Longstockings has heard it.

She was looking at the noise it was making and wondering what that was...too cute :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ67c3Zivq0 - this gal shows how to make undies and offers a free pattern.

Between canning and putting up food, I have been putting my basement back in order. When we had to have our furnace replaced, I had to move food storage, then again when we did the water heater, well last week I put it all back in order. I did a little each day but it was a lot of work.

I am now done with that, it was a huge task.

I also am working on another dress that I can now finish.

Missy says be working on building skills. She said if she only had thumbs she would weave.

Tippy Longstockings says she thinks maybe you don't need thumbs to weave, so if you want to learn a skill jump right in and perhaps you too can make a cat coaster.