I haven’t had much time to post lately, but this morning I had a solid chunk of time and wanted to write a few posts for the coming few days. But wouldn’t you know, I was having problems getting online! And naturally, the problem wasn’t resolved until all of the littles were awake and my opportunity had passed. 🙂

Shabbos (Sabbath) dinner – challah, chicken, roast vegetables, potato kugel, carrot kugel (w/almond flour), salad, chocolate coconut chia bars; lunch – were invited out

Sunday – breakfast – chia muffin loaf; l – bagels, egg salad, tuna salad; d – braised sprouted lentils with sausage, roast vegetables, beet salad

Monday – b – fruity chia blend, hard boiled eggs; l – spicy peanut sesame noodles (with rye noodles); d – vegetarian chili, cornbread, apple-celery salad

Tuesday – b – coconut rice; l – vegetarian chili, cornbread; d – curried chickpeas with vegetables

Wednesday – b – eggs, salsa; l – biscuits with peanut butter and jam; d – ground beef and cabbage stew

Thursday – b – carrot banana muffins; l – ground beef and cabbage stew; d – sunburgers

Friday – b – spirulina chia blend; l – CORN (Clean Out Refrigerator Night/Day)

This week I’m experimenting with two new items I bought in bulk: chia seeds (5 lb) and xylitol (55 lb). You’d think I would buy a small amount first to see how I like it, but I didn’t so it’s a good thing that so far I’m happy with both! They’re interesting additions to our diet and later in the week I’ll write more about them.

A couple of weeks ago when I did my monthly shopping, I was thrilled to find a new source of raw milk that is exclusively grass-fed; my current source wasn’t. The price was about $1.50 a gallon higher but I was glad to pay it, and I stocked up. Unfortunately, I was doing a huge organizing job in the basement during our recent heat wave, and I needed to plug in the fan; since the only plug was the one the mini fridge was using, I figured I’d unplug it for 30 – 40 minutes and then plug it back in when I was done and didn’t need the fan. Bad idea – that’s where most of the milk was being stored and I got so busy that I forgot all about it for three days. 🙁 So now I have a lot of milk to use for baking. It will take me a while to use it up since I’ve moved away from a heavily grain based diet, and I’d have to make wheat flour (vs nut flour) quick breads every day to use it quickly! The good thing is that raw milk sours, not spoils, so it is still usable and at least it won’t go to waste. But I sure am disappointed not to be able to drink the milk as I had intended and wouldn’t have spent $45 to have sour milk!

Because I had some large bulk purchases this month (nut flours, xylitol, chia seeds, 5 gallon coconut oil) plus the boys backpacking trip supplies, I have a good amount of staples, but left myself unusually low on funds. Like maybe $12 for the second half of the month! Times like this are in some ways more fun because it forces you to be creative unless you want to feel deprived. 🙂

I got a lot of organic apples because they were on sale for just .33 lb, which was amazing! But they don’t holding up well in the heat (nothing does!) and I don’t have room in the fridge for them all, so today or tomorrow I’ll be slicing them up and freezing them. I don’t feel like canning or dehydrating them, and I think this will be the easiest thing right now. We gleaned peaches a couple of weeks ago from a neighbor with a fruit tree, which also had to be sliced up and frozen since they were so ripe.

It would have been best if I had dealt with the apples last week, but instead I took care of the large amount of organic carrots I bought (another nice sale, .50 lb)- in the hot weather I have to really be on top of the unrefrigerated produce so the great buys don’t end up being financial losses. Sometimes I really don’t feel like I want to spend the extra effort on doing things like this; when life is so busy you have to make a choice and doing the most frugal thing isn’t always the first thing. When dd15 saw a 40 lb case of ripe bananas for .25 (no, that’s not a typo!), she had to strongly encourage me to buy them before I would agree – I didn’t feel like making the effort to quickly use/freeze them before they’d be overripe and attracting fruit flies.

I haven’t been spending much time or energy on the garden, and like everything, you get the best results when you consistently invest yourself in something. But again, my energy isn’t unlimited, and I’m willing to accept that I have more weeds and less produce than I would if I was more attentive to the garden. So I’m not harvesting the amount of vegetables I initially anticipated. The ducks are growing fast and though they’re quite happy, I’ve hardly had time to pay attention to them – they get fed and watered daily, but aren’t played with the way the first ducks that we had were. Part of it is the hot weather – no one wants to be out in the middle of the day, and everyone has been busy going in different directions around here lately. My hope in getting the ducklings when they were a day old was for them to be used to us, and though they’re used to the kids playing on the swingset (that’s the part of the yard they prefer to stay in) while they watch from under an outdoor chair, they aren’t interested in being held by any of us.

We have another busy week ahead, but it’s a reasonably paced busy week with some nice activities planned. I hope you’re all enjoying your summer!

Avivah