Things have been so busy after my food shopping that I didn’t give you more than a hint about my wonderful bargains this past week!  Since I know you can’t wait to hear, here are some :):

– 8 containers of 3 lb ricotta cheese, $1.49 each

– 6 containers of 4 lb cottage cheese, $1.69 each

– 3 cases of cherries, 18 lb per case, $10 each

– approx. 10 lb wild salmon, $4.19 lb

– 2 cases cultured goat milk, 24- 8 oz containers per case, $5 each

– 3 cases whole organic milk, 3 gallons per case, $5 each

– 2 boxes of ripe bananas, 10 lb each box, 50 cents each

– 1 case nectarines, $8.75 (don’t know how many pounds, it goes by the number of fruit)

– 47 – 1 lb packages of organic split peas – .49 each

– 1 huge watermelon (20 lb?), 3.99

– 30 dozen eggs, $1.19 per 18

I also bought 50 lb potatoes, 80 lb sweet potatoes, 50 lb hard white wheat, and a bunch of frozen veggies (30 lb, maybe?).  I got other odds and ends, but those were the big things and together with the case of chicken and 10 lb of fish fillets I ordered from the butcher several days before, pretty much filled up our fridge and freezer.  Remember that even though it looks like I didn’t buy much variety, that I shop from my pantry when it’s time to prepare meals, and that if I didn’t buy it this month, I didn’t need it.  Every month, I shop to fill in the gaps and stock up on whatever the price is excellent on.

Part of doing a big shopping trip like this is that it takes a couple of days afterwards to unpack everything, reorganize the shelves or food storage to put it away in an organized way, clear out the fridge and freezer to make room, and then can large amounts of fruits if I get a super buy on them.  We dehydrated bananas and made banana jam, cooked all the nectarines into compote (I didn’t have room in the fridge for a couple of days and they started to get soft so this was the solution to save them), made cherry-apple spread, lots of applesauce (with the many pounds of apples we picked this week – it’s a blessing to have so much, but it’s also a lot of work!), made tomato pineapple jam that never jelled and ended up mixing it into a pot of cooked apples for a tasty but interesting flavored chutney, and pitted lots of cherries to freeze.

I still have the rest of the cherries to deal with tomorrow before they start to go bad – maybe 35 pounds or so.  I think I’m going to can them in juice, the way I did last month.  My husband thought they were delicious, and they’re relatively quick and easy to can.  It’s a lot less work than jams, and more personally satisfying, because I don’t enjoy canning foods that I won’t eat, and don’t really want the kids to eat.  My experiments with jam on Thursday took a lot of time and weren’t very successful, because I tried to use fruit juice as a sweetener instead of sugar, but sugar is a major ingredient in making jam and getting it to thicken.  It was too much time for too little reward, and I was exhausted at the end of that day.

Canning whole cherries is simple.  I wash them, de-stem them, and the kids prick each cherry with a sterilized needle to keep them from bursting from the heat when they cook.  Then I put the heated cherries into the canning jar, pour boiling liquid on top of it, put the lid on, and pop it into the canner for processing.  If I had done this on Thursday instead of feeling like I should be more creative with all the fruits I had (ie, the jam), I would have gotten through them relatively quickly (ie, in one full day of canning).  But now they’re starting to get soft spots so I’m going to need to spend some time sorting through them and cutting off any parts that aren’t good.  That will be the project for tomorrow.

The kids are enjoying the goat’s milk, which is nice, since it’s so good for them.  I’ve never bought goat’s milk before, so it was taking a bit of a chance.  I had heard goat milk has a strong flavor, but maybe because this was cultured, and my kids are used to drinking cultured milk (kefir), they all like it and didn’t comment on the different flavor.  The small individual bottles are perfect portion sizes for each child to have for breakfast, so that’s we’re using them for, and we’ve already finished a case and a half of them.

The wheat went into two 5 gallon buckets with lids.  The split peas also went into buckets like these (prevents any insects from finding their way in).  I put most of the cheeses and milk into the freezer, and pull them out to defrost a day before I need them.  The salmon and chicken are also in the freezer, so the freezer is pretty much filled to capacity now.

Having room in the freezer for everything new means taking out and using older things that were using the space until then.  Can you tell why it takes a couple of days to get it all done? 🙂

Avivah