No Spend results ~ Dehydrated Celery

Meals were from the freezer and pantry.  Remember all that onion soup I froze?  Well, I pulled some, along with frozen corn we put up, a jar of home canned potatoes, and with pantry goods, created a potato/corn chowder.   Honestly, this was so good.

I have homemade baking mix on hand, so I pulled shredded zucchini for some muffins for school lunches.  Evening snack was popcorn, which we still have plenty of.
I had wild caught cod in the freezer, so that went well on a bed of greens, along with my home canned corn relish.  I had jasmine rice on hand, so I made a side of coconut/lime rice to go with it.  Yum.

I have several "cans" of homemade condensed mushroom soup in the freezer, so I made up another dish with tuna.  

Speaking of pasta, I still have tomatoes, tomato sauce, paste and two jars of pizza sauce (I found another that was hiding).   We made pizza too.

I pulled some garden pumpkin puree, and made these breakfast on-the-go muffins (or for healthy lunch packings).  I found the recipe online, but if you google oatmeal pumpkin muffins you'll most likely find one.  I think this one was a weight watcher's recipe, and I used 2 eggs vs. 1 egg white and 1 egg.  I also used powdered milk vs. fresh milk (we were out of it at the time), and I used our homemade vanilla extract.


Our home canned relish has been handy to make cold pasta salads, as well as making homemade salad dressings for lettuce salads (although we are down to two meals worth of kale this week).

We had peanut butter and homemade jams and jellies as a back up meal.  And eggs are still coming in, just a bit less than usual.

The school held a book sale, which we did not buy from.  This was the first year to not buy any books from it.  The kids are using the library anyway. 


I ran out of face moisturizer, so I'm using my homemade hand cream (without the essential oil) on my face.  

Overall purchases were mainly animal feed, milk at one point, poster board for school, gas for the cars, and more toilet paper going into the next week.  I have been making a list of all our items we do need to re-stock, like honey and apple cider vinegar. Oh, I did purchase lemons and limes.  We can't grow citrus here, and I use lemons for elixir and both for ginger-ale.  The limes came in handy for the jasmine rice too.

If you don't dehydrate food, this is what dehydrated celery looks like.
 

 Before

After

 

This is what I do with the celery that is frozen in the ice cube trays. 

Yesterday was a much slower day for me, thankfully.  Today, I finally get my hair cut.  It's been over a year, and it's driving me crazy.  I can manage it in a bun, but anything else is not conducive to housework and soon-to-be garden work.  I cannot stand my hair in my face when I'm bending over to work (most garden work).  Youngest is going to have a hay day today.  It's her last day to practice the fish braid on my hair (which is the newest for her to learn).

I made the kids a dozen banana muffins for after school, and that was the extent of my cooking.  Leftovers went pretty far.

School closed today due to heavy fog, but now they will have to make the day up.    The forecast said the fog will eventually lift and the sun will appear again.  I'm thinking I might get another porch visit today.