I have quite a weekend coming up. On Saturday night, Dmitry Orlov is coming to speak at our church. I love his blog. Club Orlov is well written and often quite funny. I consider it fertilizer for my brain. It always makes me think. It’s also our first Main Street Honey Festival. I made a batch of honey/blueberry jam to sell along with the honey, cremed honey and candles. I might make a couple of loaves of honey/whole wheat bread too.
I returned home yesterday to find that my potatoes had been delivered. It was a happy/sad moment. The spuds are beautiful but it feels terrible to have had to purchase them. My harvest was terrible. If we had needed it to get through the year we would have been mighty hungry by Christmas. I bought enough to get through the year plus some to share and some for seed.
This is time to buy those winter vegetables if you were not able to grow them. The prices are low and the selection good. If you have a root cellar, you can fill it for a hundred dollars. That’s a pretty cheap insurance policy. Given how bad the jobs situation is, make sure you have food. If you’re really in tough financial shape, check out places for gleaning. Ask at your local food pantry. A lot of people won’t take things like squash, carrots, turnips and beets or even potatoes because they don’t cook. You might be able to take some that would otherwise get tossed out. It’s also a good time to check out dried beans. If you have 4 or 5 good dried bean recipes you can turn to, you can feed a hungry family for pennies rather than dollars. I just bought a giant jar of taco seasoning mix because we like black beans, corn, tomatoes and cheese stuffed tacos. I grow the tomatoes, the corn and the beans so this a really cheap and healthy meal but even if I purchased everything, it’s a bargain meal.
I’m going apple picking today. We need to press cider. I can’t believe we are this late in the season with no cider put up yet. It happens. Things just get away from me sometimes.
October 8, 2010 at 9:16 am
Oh Kathy! I wish I could fill up a root cellar for $100! In Portland, OR, where I am located the farmers know exactly how much their produce is worth–and rightly so, I might add. What farmers do is awfully hard work and they take huge risks. But even using tricks like going to the market at the end of the day, taking blemished items, and buying in bulk won’t keep me at $100. Any other suggestions to lower my bill?
October 8, 2010 at 9:44 am
That was probably a silly thing to write. Of course, $100.00 won’t do it. My potatoes were $.50 a pound. I will confess to not knowing the prices for things I don’t buy and it does matter a lot that farmers make a living wage. Gleaning can help if you can find a place. Don’t be too quick to dismiss your local supermarket. They often carry local produce but at good prices because of volume discounts. I am just watching a piece on food prices. One can pretty much bet that things won’t get any less expensive.
October 8, 2010 at 4:35 pm
no cider here either – the apple harvest was poor this year. I don’t have my own trees (well I do but they are too young still) but usually I advertise my press and people bring their apples to press. This year no takers. I did buy 40 lbs of Jonagolds for the cellar (good storage variety) but I can’t afford to buy enough apples to press for cider.
$100 won’t fill the cellar, but I bet I could easily get 2 months worth of food for that. I paid $20 for the apples. I can get 15# bags of potatoes for $5 on sale. Green cabbage is cheap, as are onions and garlic. Winter squash is not cheap, but for $20 I can get four of five good sized butternuts. This is all at my local supermarket. The farmer’s markets are more expensive, but if you know a farmer personally ask if he/she will give you a good deal to go glean in his/her field. Last year I got all the roma tomatoes I could pick for $10 this way.
October 8, 2010 at 10:01 pm
I’m so glad you mentioned that people need to know how to cook in order to eat as cheaply as possible (and still healthily). I write CookCheap.org to try to help people cook actual food. Beans and squash are so cheap and so nutritious. And so many people don’t know how to cook them at all.