What we are eating.

This is a blog post about what we are eating.  And guess what, it is written by a fat person who isn't trying to lose weight (sin of the ages is that I like my body).  This is not a blog post about our food philosophy or about saving money or about eating healthy.  Its just about what we are eating and enjoying.  That's all.  I hope you too can enjoy a meal today!

This is applesauce season. I always think that applesauce is a September/October food. But around here our apple trees start losing apples in August.  So I go around the yard, pick up the firm ones, and toss the soft ones down in the dried out pond.  I bring in my bucket of firmish apples, leave them in a sink full of water for an hour (to get out any bugs and such) and I boil those apples to death! Then I run them through the ricer and voila! Applesauce.

I have now made 3 batches so the kids aren't eating it quite as quickly.  Today's batch I'll 'put up' because applesauce in December is so delicious.

The garden this summer is overgrown and ugly.  Seriously the weeds are taller than the rest of the plants.  This weekend I might take a weed eater to it just to give it the look of a fresh haircut.  The great thing about raised beds though is that we still have some great plants! Last weekend I pulled some beets and carrots. I picked some greenbeans and overgrown broccoli and roasted them all up.  Veggies that fresh are amazing.  The roasted veggies outshined the roasted chicken by miles.

We came back from Portland on a train a couple of weekend ago around dinner time.  So we ended up buying a couple of "cup of soup" instant ramen cups for dinner.  The kids LOVED them! At costco yesterday I bought the 48 pack of Ramen noodles for 6.00.  That's like 15 cents a meal.  We toss in some chard from the garden and some green beans in the boiling water before adding the noodles and we end up with a health(ish) and super cheap version of ramen.  I also love chard in soup. Junia btw is kind of obsessed with ramen so this is perfect for her.  She is so excited to take her ramen in a thermos to school!

We are also trying to get our food budget a bit under control.  The best way is, of course, for us to eat what we have.  But we also have to have a couple of staples and also it needs to be simple.  I could read a million posts online about it but I have read enough. Anyway we are trying this: go to costco once per month and buy all the staples: diapers, dog food, canned goods, small snack foods (granola bars, fruit leathers etc), meat, pasta, breads (in the freezer)  Then hopefully most everything that we will need will be to make things from the staples. Thus, each weekend we will be buying produce rather than staples.  Going to costco 2x per month is kind of a killer for us. I'll let you know how it goes. It might be a fail...

A lot of our snack foods right now are coming off the trees. Our apple trees, pear tree and plum tree all have delicious fruit on them! Because the coyote population on the island is on the rise the raccoon population is down. Yippee for us! The plums are all ours!

So that's it. Random I know. Really random!