Between
- a short jaunt to market ($22 for dairy stuff and sandwich meats),
- the peach-picking and tomato-buying escapade ($86), and
- a grocery store run for shrimp, canning supplies, and ice cream ($79),
we managed to spend $187 on groceries this past week.
The canning supplies -- it floored me that I'd run out. I had oodles of jars left over from last year. I'd gotten more canning jars at yard sales. I'd gotten canning jars as Christmas gifts. I have jars everywhere. But somehow I managed to buy even more food than I had space for in the jars. I'd already put up cherries and some pickled zucchini this summer. With the table chest-high with peaches and tomatoes, I somehow managed to run out of jars. Oh, cripes.
I spent all day Friday and much of Saturday canning and preparing food. It was both exhausting and fulfilling at the same time. Here's a picture of Friday's work: 38 quarts and 24 pints of catsup, tomato juice, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and peaches.
- a short jaunt to market ($22 for dairy stuff and sandwich meats),
- the peach-picking and tomato-buying escapade ($86), and
- a grocery store run for shrimp, canning supplies, and ice cream ($79),
we managed to spend $187 on groceries this past week.
The canning supplies -- it floored me that I'd run out. I had oodles of jars left over from last year. I'd gotten more canning jars at yard sales. I'd gotten canning jars as Christmas gifts. I have jars everywhere. But somehow I managed to buy even more food than I had space for in the jars. I'd already put up cherries and some pickled zucchini this summer. With the table chest-high with peaches and tomatoes, I somehow managed to run out of jars. Oh, cripes.
I spent all day Friday and much of Saturday canning and preparing food. It was both exhausting and fulfilling at the same time. Here's a picture of Friday's work: 38 quarts and 24 pints of catsup, tomato juice, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and peaches.
Saturday saw another 10 quarts of peaches and 16 half-pints of pickled peppers (can I say that again? pints of pickled peppers -- heh). I also made a gallon of shrimp gumbo inspired by the okra that showed up in our CSA basket. Cheap okra leads to expensive shrimp purchases . . . go figure. The gumbo is destined for the freezer, by the way; I'm nervous about canning seafood, plus I'm totally out of jars.
Even with the expensive shrimp, and even with 3 dozen new canning jars, this is not a bad haul for $187, if I do say so myself. The shelves are groaning.
I'm done for now, but I'm not done for good. The garden tomatoes are coming in gang-busters now. Their name is salsa. Apple sauce is in the future. I'll need more jars yet. I've become a canning monster, for sure. I'm loving the chance to buy food in season and to spend my relatively free summers doing cooking, since in the winter I have neither much time nor access to baskets of fresh tomatoes.
Where does this leave us money-wise? The weekly average -- not counting those weird restaurant-intensive weeks -- is $139/week, for a total of 22 weeks. 139 is a prime number (in fact, it's a rare "twin prime", coming as it does on the heels of its prime sister, 137).
No comments:
Post a Comment