Monday Market Report November 8th

Well, I don't have pictures and I don't have a total accounting of what I spent and what I bought.  I am trying to set some real food goals and this month I wanted it to be to buy nothing with any more than 5 ingredients.  I failed with tomato soup.  It is so hard to find things the kids will eat in their lunches and they always eat tomato soup, but, of course, there are more than 5 ingredients (8 to be exact).  In the mornings it is so rushed and I like putting something hot in their lunch so they usually have it two or three times a week.  I am not going to beat myself up over it as overall I'm doing much better.

At the market, I bought a large lovely leek, a big bunch of green onions, a bag of zesty salad greens, a bag of sweet potatoes, 4 of the most delicious red delicious apples I have ever had, a big bag of cranberries and something else that is not coming to mind.

At the grocery store, I loaded up on marble cheese (for the kids lunches), bought some eggs, milk, raisins, natural cheezies, chips, and french fries,  Gah!  I get in the store and I am totally like the girl from "Confession of a Shopaholic" (I am currently reading the whole series and I can totally relate to her, except for me it's food shopping).  It is crazy.

I really want to get into meal planning.  It is FlyLady's habit of the month.  I hate to say it but we waste a lot of food because either I forget we have it or I poorly plan our meals around what we have on hand.

Today I spent around $60 grocery shopping, but $30 of that was for boots for Shaylee and a notebook and pens that I bought (half my shopping trouble is you can buy everything you need at the grocery store!) and $10 for boxes of  Pot of Gold chocolate for Christmas.  I am going to try not to buy any thing else this week, even though it will be haaaaaarrrrrd!  I will have to force myself to use up what we have on hand.

(clipart from http://www2.free-clipart.net/ )

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!

100th Post!

Wow, 100 posts in this blog. Yay me!

I do not have a Monday Market Report today because I haven't been keeping track. Bad me. I didn't go to the farmers market and I have been trying to only buy necessities (eggs, milk, salad/veggies). I will not be buying much this week either as we will be away for the weekend.

For my 100th post, I have a very yummy meal to share. There is a little story behind it. I was making banana bread for the kids lunches so I thought I would use the extra space in the oven to bake some buttercup squash that was starting to get some bad spots. I then decided to make some curried drummies for snacks (the drummies from turkey wings baked with curry powder) and a small pork roast. When the squash was done, I was thinking of all the yummy pumpkin pie recipes I have been reading lately and since the banana bread wasn't quite done, I made a pumpkin custard, but with buttercup squash instead. The roast got overcooked and I had to do something with it. I was thinking of when we were at Acadian Maple, how all the maple seasonings were just maple sugar, salt and something else, either pepper, chili powder, ect...

The result for supper was maple pepper pork with buttercup squash custard! It was sooo good. The pork got really crispy and tasty without being overly sweet. Mark really liked the custard because I didn't make it very spicy (I prefer spicy personally). It worked well as a side dish and would be wonderful as a dessert with a dollop of whipped cream!

Maple Pepper Pork

1 small tenderloin pork roast (already cooked) or 2 cups of leftover pork

2 tablespoons of butter

salt to taste

generous shake of pepper

1-2 teaspoons maple sugar

Cut the pork into bite sized pieces or shred. Melt the butter in the frying pan over medium-high heat (not too hot though) then add the pork. Cook for a few minutes until heated through, turning once or twice. Add the seasonings and maple sugar. Cook for a few minutes more until the pork is well coated and crispy.

Buttercup Squash Custard

1/2 medium sized buttercup squash, roasted (baked in moderate oven until tender. You may also substitute other kinds of squash or use pumpkin. I didn't measure but I weighed the squash and it was 300g after I scooped it out of the shell)

1 can coconut milk (the full fat kind)

4 eggs

1/3 cup honey (local raw)

1/3 cup maple syrup (b-grade)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. all spice

pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mash the squash then add the remaining ingredients. Mix well. Pour into a casserole dish (I used a bundt pan) and bake for about 30 minutes, until it is set but still jiggles a little bit. May be served warm or cool.

Part of Pennywise Platter at The Nourishing Gourmet!

Monday Market Report October 12th

I am terrible. I have not been keeping track of what we have been spending. Part of the reason is the huge guilt I have over all the boxes of cookies we bought this weekend. GUILT GUILT! Pure junk. I feel terrible. The worst part is, I have probably eaten more than anyone. Yes, I have a problem.

Other than the junk, this is a basic rundown of what we've spent:
$350 side of beef! Whoo hoo!
about $20-25 at Bulk Barn for grains, spices, raisins, almonds and other bulk goodies.

$13 on milk (4x 2L, or two gallons in US$; it was on sale!)

$25 for 10lbs of butter, super sale! It's $4.29 regular price.

approx. $10 on produce (greens, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, ect..)
$20 today at Superstore (liver, cauliflower, more broccoli, gouda cheese, montery jack cheese, frozen smiles, locally made plum sauce, ham slices, corned beef slices, chick peas, ect..)

$10 on misc. stuff. and about $25 on junky cookies, crackers and ice cream :(

It is really hard to stay on the real food track when the kids are so picky. It's a vicious cycle. I need to stop buying it. Looking at ingredients will stop me most of the time, but Mark likes junk too. I told him if he wants it, he can buy it when he works since he works at a grocery store and it is there. It can be dangerous for me to go into a grocery store.

Monday Market Report October 4th

I think this is my favorite market report ever! I had so much fun shopping this week :). I didn't report what I got at Bulk Barn because I decided that from October on, I would be accountable for all the groceries that I buy, not just what I buy at the farmers market. I am trying to build up our storage with healthy food and hopefully posting it all will give me motivation to stay on track.

Good news! This week we are getting our quarter of grass fed and finished beef! It was the last one and I almost didn't get it. I feel it was a great blessing that it was freed up for us, with God knowing how important it was to me and our health to buy it. It is going to the butcher on Thursday so it should be interesting to see how much it is and how I handle placing the cut order (I never know how to do it!).

This is what our kitchen looked like when we got home late Friday night. It was a full day of shopping and buying lots of yummy vegetables (and other things). (don't mind the mess; things just kind of got thrown around and I've been slack in the housekeeping department lately :) ).

I was so happy to go to Meadowbrook meat market. They were having a sale of buy two get one free shoulder bacon and frozen sausages. We got 6 packs of the shoulder bacon and 6 sausages. 3 packs of sausages were breakfast sausages and the others were donair, maple and honey garlic. We also bought a slab of salt pork (Mark loves this fried up but it's also good on bacon and rappie pie), a couple packages of back bacon plus a little pack of goats milk Parmesan cheese. Now I really don't care much for goat milk products so I'm taking a leap here trying the cheese. I think it will be interesting. I don't want to break down the cost of each item but all this plus a $2.50 bag of ice to keep it cold was $49. We've had some of the bacon and a pack of breakfast sausages and it is really good!

I love Forsythe's Farm Market but didn't get much. At this point we already had most of our produce (even though carrots were $3 cheaper a bushel here but we didn't know). 2 spaghetti squash $2.50 and two zucchini for $1.50. Total: $4. They had 2 liter jugs of real maple syrup for $27-something so I may get that our next time through. They only take cash and I didn't have that much on hand.

Here are our Foote Family Farm findings, a gallon of unpastureized honey and a gallon of fresh pressed cider (we had to have some before we got home, lol! It's the one in the red cap ;) ). $26; $5 for the cider and $21 for 12 lbs of honey.

The next two pictures are from Gouchers Farm Market. I wanted to go back and get more! So much wonderful food at great prices. The acorn and butternut squash were 49 cents a pound and I wish I had bought more! 50lbs buttercup squash $15, 4 acorn squash $2.11, 2 organic garlic $2.17 ($10 a pound), 1 butternut squash $1.79, 2 sweet dumpling squash $1.50, 2 pie pumpkins $2 for both, big bag of dulse $1o, 5 cucumbers $1, 3 bunches of green onions at 69 cents each, mushrooms $1.99, romaine lettuce 89 cents, red onions 50 cents a pound (my favorite and usuall $2 a pound! 2.25lbs so $2.25 for onions), bunch of bananas for $1.10 and we each got an ice cream that were $1 each, cheapest around for real local ice cream (Mark and I had Oxford blueberries and cream, so divine on such a hot day!)

This was from a neat farm. The farmer was old, probably in his 80's. He looked like what you expect an old time farmer to look like. I wanted to buy everything he had as his prices were very reasonable and he was pretty nice. The bushel of carrots were $7.75, 25lbs of turnip $7. 50, 2 lbs of green peppers at $2.50, 5 gourds for 20 cents each ($1), tomatoes were 70 cents a pound (3lbs so $2.10) and no spray strawberries were $2.50 a box. The strawberries aren't there because it wasn't until we got home I remembered I sat them down to carry stuff out and didn't go back to get them. Grrrr. I was so looking forward to nice fresh strawberries! Total spent: $24

We usually get a lot more at Avery's but they didn't have much and we didn't want to shop around the other ones. 3 bunches of celery at 77 cents each and two grapefruit at 59 cents each.

These aren't really a farm goodie but they are the best chips! I especially love the burlap bag they came in. These chips are made in New Brunswick (technically in our 100 mile zone even though it is across the Bay of Fundy) and can be hard to find around here (Bridgewater's Appleberry's is the closest place I know that stocks them). They make awesome sweet potato chips! Small hand batches of kettle chips are the best (even though they are made with canola). These were $3.99 at Winners (at Pete's Frootique they are nearly $5 and you don't get an awesome burlap sack with them!).

This is what I got at the Saturday farmers market. Almost 2 dozen pullet eggs for $3.75, 2lbs of grassfed beef for $5 and a pound of ground pork $2 (I think it's pastured but probably fed grains/feed too). I got the meat before I knew we were getting the beef, otherwise I wouldn't of bothered!

And finally, I got this at Sobeys. 2 blocks of cheese ($3.99 each) and a bag of spinach ($1.99). No one had spinach in the valley and I still crave greens. There weren't even any at the farmers market because it was pouring rain and the lady I usually get them from wasn't there. I will buy more cheese when they don't only have skim mozza. I also need to get milk and go to bulk barn again.

So an extremely productive shopping week! If I can remember how, I am going to put our grocery tally in the sidebar so I can keep track of our expenses. Remember that this isn't just for the week, but I am attempting to store up some food for winter. I have been doing a lot of reading on how to store food for winter use, even if it is different in this modern day than it was over a hundred years ago.

Monday Market Report Sept. 27th

Well, I didn't have much luck at the market on Thursday. I went but didn't buy anything. I wanted to, but there wasn't anything we needed nor were there any good buys.

Saturday, however, was a much better day! At the farmer's market, I bought two packages of grass fed beef ($5), two huge bunches of organic leeks ($2 each, so $4), a handful of organic hot peppers ($1) a bunch of organic green onions ($1), a big bunch of greens, I'm not sure what, maybe kale? (I usually get swiss chard from this lady but this was all she had, $1), 1 pound bag of dried beans ($2) and two dozen eggs ($3.50 for regular and $2 for pullet eggs). So a pretty good haul for just under $20.

I dehydrated the leeks and I'm really hoping to get more this week as they dry so good and are so Tasty!!

After the farmers market, we went to Wallace Brother's farm for some apple picking fun! We picked a huge basket of apples and it was $7.

I asked about arctic kiwi and they had some this time! Shaylee is showing the container we were filling. He only charged $1 for a 2 pound container! The half pint containers in the store are on sale this week for $2! They are so super yummy! I hope they have more the next time we go.

Market Report

This is something I want to get in the habit of doing. Fresh produce markets probably won't be around much longer so I want to report in what we got and how it was.

At the Thursday market, there wasn't much of interest so we got 2lbs of stewing meat from King Limousin Farm and since we got there early, I was able to get 2 dozen farm fresh eggs. It was $6.50 for the beef and $6 for the eggs.

On Saturday, I got 4lbs of tomatoes ($0.50 a pound! I would of bought them all but I didn't want to be greedy), a bag of dried beans ($2), a bunch of swiss chard ($1) and a big bag of organic greens ($3). $8 is a great price for all that stuff! It would of been way more at the grocery store.

Let's see, it would of been at least $4 for the tomatoes (not local), $3 for the same beans, $2.49 for the swiss chard (not local or organic) and $6 for organic greens, again, not local. So nearly $16 at the grocery store for non local, mostly non-organic food.

So $22.50 spent at the farmers markets. Next post will be how good it was and/or what I've done with it!

Monday Market Report

I am still hoping to do the Monday Meal Plan but I thought it would be a step in the right direction to have a Monday Market report. If I do my marketing on Monday morning, then it will start my week off with a full larder. Then in the summer, I can do the Farmers Markets on Saturday and that will be less to buy when I do my Monday Marketing (or I will be less tempted to buy in the store when I've already bought locally at the market).

I made three stops this morning. First was Dayton Fruit and Vegetable. There I picked up the following:

Spinach: $2.00

10lbs bag potatoes: $1.99

10lbs bags onions: $2.97

cabbage: $0.67

sweet potatoes: $3.28 ($0.79/lbs)

garlic: $0.48

2 small english cukes: $1.50

Bananas: $1.30

Total: $14.17

Then I went to Sobeys. There I got:
1.5kg bag of blueberries (craving!): $8.49

1 container natural yogurt (need for the cultures): $2.49

8 cans coconut milk: $5.25!! (it was signed wrong so I got one free. It was regular $3.29, ringing in at $2.50 but it was signed 2/$1.50)

Total: $16.23

I went to Superstore next. I wasn't going to but I knew they had some things I wanted:

2L Mac Nut Frozen yogurt (I told the kids I'd get it for them to try): $4.00

2lbs mussels: $3.00

small carton sauerkraut: $1.59

900g bag brown rice: $2.39

pack "natural" cheese strings: $3.00 (with coupon)

3pack large english cukes: $3.00

omega eggs: $1.99 (half off)
free range, farm eggs: $2.39 (half off)

4L Cooks milk: $6.93

Total (including cents off for using cloth bags): $28. 14

So $58.54 isn't too bad. We have a lot on hand and a lot of this will last longer than one week. I got mostly whole foods so it was a good trip in my opinion. I am seeing some stew in my very near future as well as some blueberry smoothies. I have really been craving veggies lately and need to get some more greens growing.

I hope to later get a meal plan up. I have a lot to do from our trip including lots of laundry and dishes, plus even though we left with the apartment clean, it seemed to spawn filth overnight.