Monday Ramblings

I wrote a while back how I was going to try root cellaring in our apartment basement. This is the second time I tried and the second time I've failed due to unseasonably warm weather. I live on the south western tip of Nova Scotia, Canada and although it has been snowing in other parts of our province, it has been rather warm here. The basement is retaining a lot of heat.

Because of this, things are rotting and fast! Our carrots turned to mush in a few days (I have completely given up on them as I bought more to try again and they went bad right away), our squash is rotting faster than we can keep up with it and everything else is just going. Sigh. It was a noble attempt but I guess you can't fight mother nature. I hope to go to the valley soon to get more cheap squash and keeping it under the deck in a large tote. We love squash and I'd hoped it would at least last until Christmas. I will probably have to bake it all and try to cram it in our overstuffed freezer!

Well it is a new month and a new try for the Monday Market Report starting today! I didn't keep tally last week. I am fighting a bit of depression related shopping lately and I seem to spend more than I planned. I did stock up on butter on sale for $2.88 a pound (we must have about 20lbs floating around between the freezer and fridge!), 3 bags of 1.5kg (roughly 6lbs) local frozen wild blueberries for $5.99 each, eggs $1.88 a dozen (of course after I bought them, I read Joel Salatin describe store bought eggs in his "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal") and some other things that aren't coming to mind. The kids and I went to the Farmers Market on Saturday but all I bought were a big bag of organic leeks I plan to dehydrate ($2.50) and a bag of organic beet greens ($2). I only had $5 otherwise I would of bought more.

I struggle a lot between what we can afford and what is optimal. We have no options at all for local butter or grass fed and raw dairy is totally out of the question (we have no where to pasture a cow!). Organic is shipped in from far away but what we do buy is produced rather locally (within province). Eggs are impossible to find locally lately. I know (now) they are a seasonal food and while the eggs are from within my province, they are still factory eggs and I don't know if the conditions are better than what I see are going on in the United States.

Milk, well my whole family agrees that the local dairy tastes better. The last few cartons of organic milk I bought were terrible and I'll never buy it again. Truly disgusting. I don't know what they did to it but it used to taste fresh and delicious but the last few times, it tasted burnt and old. The organic chocolate milk is always curdled and after throwing away a couple of cartons, I said no more. We do sometimes buy it from another dairy from the province, but I always feel guilty that I do it to save some money (local milk doesn't go on sale but milk shipped in from other parts of NS does).

I sometimes drive myself crazy trying to be food aware. Once you start, it's hard to stop. I want to know where everything comes from and from under what conditions. We are what we eat and I don't want to be an amalgamation of chemicals and artificial junk.

I am seeing how Halloween candy is affecting my kids and I have been pointing it out to them. Hyperactivity, sensitivity, melt downs, ect... Halloween managed to be stretched over a week because everyone felt bad we weren't Trick or Treating due to the Sabbath. Well, the kids made up for treats in spades. I struggle because the kids don't want to give up their treats and I don't expect them to. I know what it's like to be a kid and have lots of goodies. They are good and ask before they eat though. They ask to do everything anyway and while it sometimes drives me crazy, I also appreciate they are respectful enough to ask, even if they are cranky when I say no, lol! No need to eat junk right before a meal.

Well, those are some of my ramblings. It is 2am and I couldn't get back to bed so I thought I'd write. Last week I wrote up a bunch of posts and scheduled them so I wouldn't have to write every day. I'm glad I did. I will probably do this until I get through all the things I wanted to post, even though I'll have to start coming up with more new recipes soon!

Butter Bell Tutorial

I love picture tutorials. I love finding them in blogs. So I decided to do one for a butter bell. Actually it's not a real butter bell, but more of a butter crock. I found it at Dollarama and it's a great way to keep butter fresh and spreadable on the counter. They always have plenty and I would not of known what it was if I hadn't seen it online somewhere. If you use margarine, I'm sure it would also work well, but margarine is easier and cheaper to find in spreadable form than butter is.

First, make sure your crock is nice and clean. Then take the amount of butter you want to use and put it in the top half. It is better to use salted as it seems to keep longer. Oh and don't mind the crumbs as I had just cut bread and banana bread for the kids to put in the toaster while I prepped the butter:


Then you spread it out so that it's somewhat smooth and packed in (maybe do a better job than I did, lol! I didn't let it soften before spreading it out. I also stuck the pack of butter there so you could see that it really was butter). Fill the bottom half about 1/2 to 3/4 full of cold water. Tap water cold is fine.


Then put the top over the bottom. Yes, the butter is upside down but it will not fall down unless it's not packed in very well. It will form a seal keeping the butter fresh. Change the water every few days. Enjoy nice, spreadable butter! Especially on toast right out of the toaster, mmmm! I'm not sure how long it will last as ours usually doesn't last longer than a week since I don't put much, but I have heard that it should keep up to a month.