Saving Money On Meat & More! Dining Room Refresh- DIY Reupholstered Chairs & Paint

 

 Saving Money On Meat And More!-

As we all know grocery prices get higher and higher. While we don't eat meat everyday we do eat some. I was recently at a Fred Meyer grocery store. I browsed around and stumbled onto some huge 9 lb. pork roasts. They were $24.00 each. I read down on the sticker at the bottom (we are members of the Savings Club) the roasts were $8.00 each. That's about $1 a pound! 

 

I decided to buy two for that price! When I got home I cut both of them in half. I created two boneless roasts and two bone-in. I used my Food Saver bags and froze three of them. I roasted one of them with the bone in, low and slow with herbs. The meat came out fabulous! Very juicy and tender. I served one meal with fresh veggies. Another meal with roasted yams. A third meal I did shredded pork with barbecue sauce and Memphis style coleslaw on top, WONDERFUL! Recipe here Memphis Style Coleslaw-

What a deal! Good reminder to keep your eyes open when shopping and try different stores. I have heard recently there is getting to be a shortage of Baking Powder. Buy some! It's cheap and can be used for all kinds of baked goods. This is a really great preparedness item. 

I love Starbuck's Strawberry Acai Refresher, but they are just too expensive. I found a copycat recipe and made my own! Pretty close! Recipe here Copycat StrawberryAcai Refresher

First you simmer white grape juice and strawberries to create a base concentrate, then strain to get the berry juice-

 

 

 

 

Last I added the powders listed on the recipe, stir and refrigerate. It keeps for about two weeks. You use 1/2 concentrate and 1/2 water. I found some freeze-dried strawberries at Trader Joe's for $3.00 and I topped with those just like Starbuck's (a little darker), but much cheaper! I bought the powders listed on the recipe. Those will last a LONG time and you could use in smoothies. You could play with this recipe and use other fruits if desired. Fresh strawberries here are terrible so I bought frozen. Worked great!

I bought two totes of organic mushrooms at Costco, will dehydrate most of them for storage, $5.00 for a 24 oz-

Not to forget pets, bought a big back of cat food for Bonnie to go in a tote with oxygen absorbers. I still have two extra bags of chicken feed.  Now if they would just start laying!!! Should be any day....

Dining Room Refresh- DIY Reupholstered Chairs & Paint- 

Years ago I bought two used French style chairs for the dining table. The fabric was worn so I had them reupholstered for about $40.00 each. Over the years they got food stains, shampooed them and spot treated them I could never get them really clean-

 

They were just past the point of no return. I saw YouTube video on how to reupholster these kinds of chairs. I knew that I could do it myself and save a ton of money! I looked around for fabrics, did not want to do plaid/stripes since it has to really aligned to look good. I stumbled onto some denim fabric with embroidered dragonflies at the checkout stand at the local fabric store-

 

I had planned on getting just plain navy blue playing upholstery fabric. When I saw this fabric I knew this was the right one! To start I used a blow dryer to soften up the glue stick material that the upholsterer had used to attach the trim and removed all of that-

 

 

 

Next I cut out large pieces of fabric to cover the chairs and ironed it. I read it's really important always iron it before you start stretching it to get it really flat. Dave helped me in a few spots and I stapled it around really well. I did this on top of a card table, helped a lot to have it UP-

 

So clean!

I was not able to find any trim locally so ordered some on Amazon in Navy. I wish I had gone a little bit lighter on the color but it's really hard to see on a computer. After I got everything upholstered, I trimmed off the excess, and then hot glued it all the way around with the trim. It looks so much better! 

 

 

 

Clean and will last for quite a few years. Not perfect but works for me. The total for the fabric was about $25, the trim was about $8.00, I have some fabric and trim left over. I might do some kind of a fun pillow for the summer.

 

 

I started thinking that I wanted to repaint my little shelving unit that hangs on our dining room wall. It was a deep blue. With the new chair and buffet fabric it was a lot of blue. I had seen the PBS new series All Creatures Great and Small and loved the green accents in the kitchen. I also liked the green paint on my antique wood-handled kitchen utensils-

 

 

 

PBS All Creatures Great and Small Kitchen shot

It's called French green or Antique green. Previously I had used spray paint but was not able to find this color anywhere. I settled on a large bottle of craft paint at Hobby Lobby, about $6 each. I bought some new foam brushes, wide ones worked really well for the two big shelves. I knew it would take two coats especially on the metal side pieces. I love the color! I wish I could have found chalk paint in this color, but it does have a satin finish which I like. Took two coats-

 

I finished my thrifted shadow box with the WWII chicken print. I added broken egg shells, wheat and Lavender-

 

Says "I am a brave little WWII hen, don't eat much but produce a lot"

Winter Reflections, My Dietary Shift

Winter Reflections-

Sometimes I just get the blahs in the winter. Maybe it's the shorter days and we had one of our "inversions" this month. Very cold and gray with the stagnant air hanging in the valley. Luckily they didn't last too long! December was busy- right after our anniversary was Thanksgiving, then my birthday, then daughter's birthday, then grandson's, then Christmas! I bought gifts starting in the summer and stashed them. Great way to save $! Our grand kids get plenty of plastic toy gifts from others, so I load up on books and art supplies for them. Lovely flowers bloomed this year in time for Christmas Eve! We had a nice lunch buffet at my house with my two daughters and their children. With freezing rain in the forecast we moved it forward into the afternoon instead of evening. Sadly our one daughter who lives in Oregon was not able to make it since the highways were closed with a terrible ice storm, better to be safe at home. 

 

Dave's gift of a new French butter keeper, made by a local artist in McCall (I picked it out)- 

We've had a lot of medical stuff going on the last several months. Not much time for blogging! Dave had an eye injury, with a horrible ER experience. Short version- they never had an eye Dr. see him or even get a call to one. We were able to call the eye Dr. on call at Dave's eye clinic on a Sunday and he opened up his clinic and saw Dave. What a miracle! We got a good diagnosis and he was treated and recovered.  Dave also had a chronic ankle injury for a few years, wearing a boot for months really slowed him down. He's doing PT now and sounds like he can get a full recovery. I've had chronic leg pain for months, did diagnostics and luckily seems to be ergonomics at work. My chair was cutting off circulation from what I can tell. I elevated my feet and started acupuncture. Getting improvement already! In the fall I went thru some cardiac issues, had a procedure and finally came out the other side. Changing meds was quite the drama. After weeks things finally calmed down! I'm feeling fine now and stable. I am grateful for the excellent medical care I received and my insurance. We weren't able to spend Christmas with our daughter living in Oregon. There were several ice storms and the highways were closed. We told her we missed her but better to stay home and be safe! We did some Facetime with our other daughters and family here for a Christmas Eve early dinner. We got hit with freezing rain too later in the evening, so we changed dinner to late lunch. We loved seeing our three grandchildren! Youngest redhead is walking, and the two six year olds are super fun! So glad we live in the area!!!

I'm very grateful for my family, especially Dave's support thru my cardiac issues.

 

 

My Dietary Shift-

With all the stress of medical issues I was eating way too much junk food. That caught up with me when I had my labs done in November. My doctor mentioned looking at starting the Mediterranean Diet style of eating. I heard about that before but didn't know quite as much as I do now. I've started it and I'm feeling better already. It is much more plant-based than I realized. While I'm not going vegan meat is used a lot less. Dave and I are both very dairy sensitive so we're not eating tons of dairy/cheeses. I got some really good information from this website, and he also has some good YouTube videos. I found this nice assortment of recipes 20 Mediterranean Diet Recipes  I LOVED this video by Greek chef Diane Kockilas Flavors of Greek Ikarian Longevity  Ikaria,Greece is a "Blue Zone" where people live very long, healthy lives. If interested she has some great other videos, very easy to watch!

 

A good video overview  Blue Diet for 90 Days Results  with great info!

 

Homesteading Thrifting Finds/Pressure Canning, Veggie Garden Growing! My Eton Mess, RIP Rosie

Homesteading Thrifting Finds/Pressure Canning-

Here's an update of some things that we've been doing here! My thrift store radar was pinging the other day, I went to Goodwill, came around the corner and saw something I have been thinking about buying new. With the price of wheat going up and up and no end in sight in the future, I had thought about buying a bread machine. Since I work full time I thought it would be nice to buy a machine where I could just dump everything in and have a loaf of bread! You can also use it to make a lot of different kinds of doughs for other purposes as well. I really just didn't want to spend the money on it. So I went thrifting and what did I find? A Breadman Ultimate bread making machine! For a whopping $10.00! I love the fact that loaf goes sideways and is not shaped like a square- 

I plugged it in at the thrift store, the power came on, looks like it's been very well taken care of and hardly used. It even came with the owner's manual and the recipe book! I wiped it down, washed it and it almost looks brand new. Will give it a test run this weekend. While I love Dave's Killer Bread, and a few of the other whole grain breads, it's just getting too expensive. I really loaded up on flours the last eight months, as well as wheat berries. So I can definitely make bread a lot cheaper than I can buy it. And fresher too!  I also found a really nice big heavy class Anchor Hocking storage jar. Like new as well! $4.00. 

I did some research on how to dehydrate eggs, since we have our own, and turn into egg powder. Egg powder will take up a lot less space than freezing eggs in our freezer. I'm also trying to move away from relying on our freezer in case we have brown outs/blackouts in the next 6 months and ongoing. After doing research I realized that I could use my existing dehydrator I just needed to buy some food grade silicone liner trays. I found a good deal on Amazon, $14.00 for four, and they fit perfect! I may also make some fruit leathers for the grandkids- 

Basically you do about 8 to 10 eggs at a time, blended, and dehydrate at 140° until completely dry. I think I read that can take about 10 to 12 hours or more. I will be doing that shortly since we have almost six dozen eggs! Will fire it up this weekend and post results. 

I've been doing some research for a while and decided to start doing pressure canning. For a long time there was a lot in the media about NOT being able to use a glass top stove. After I did a lot of research I realized that you can, however you have to make sure about the weight, the size of the burner, and the canner. After doing research I decided to buy a Presto 16 quart pressure canner. It will be a good smaller size for us. I did research on my stove top and how big the canner would be. I was really excited to see that the thick round part of the canner bottom fits exactly my large burner, perfect-

This was something that I saw lots of places is really mandatory. There's also weight limit on most glass top stove of about 50 lbs so I didn't want to get a huge canner. I was really excited when it arrived it fits perfect! I will not be dragging across the glass either, and was advised to only have the one pot on the stove at a time. Best be careful! Looking forward to canning meat, beans, soups and veggies! Will post more of that over time. 

Veggie Garden Growing!

After all the crazy weather we finally got our vegetable garden planted and cleared off our deck! There were so many pots and plants on the deck for so many weeks I couldn't even see what the deck look like underneath it all! 4th of July weekend we made a push on Sunday and Dave and I laid out all the veggies and strawberries. He planted all of that while I was able to plant up all the herbs, flowers and some of the perennials. I can finally see my deck again! 

Sorry about that thumb

We have a really nice mix of vegetables this year and we're very fortunate found some really good deals. With my job change and other craziness I was never able to start any seeds in our grow light plant rack. We have planted several kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of cucumbers, collard greens, curly kale , three or four kinds of peppers, some small refrigerator size watermelon, yellow squash, and something else I'm probably forgetting! 

Mound garden this year, gorgeous from all the rain! 

flowers near the veggie gate

lots of veggies! 

New strawberry row, will add more next year

Luna peeking out behind the gate

Lots of thornless blackberries! 

Lavender to harvest, I leave 30% or more for the bees

White lavender

Small watermelon, my 1st!

We mulched everything really well and my herbs really took off in this hot weather! Now we're finally into the part of just watering and keeping an eye on everything. We're finally in the mid-90s and this will probably be the norm for a while. I think the rain is finally over! Need to mulch the strawberries a lot more, taking a beating in the heat! 

My Eton Mess-

I read about a traditional Eton Mess, a British dessert and decided to try it! Jamie Oliver did something pretty similar. Eton Mess is a traditional British summertime dessert of gooey meringue, sweet strawberries and rich cream in a generous sticky mess. Here's what I did- crushed about 3/4 cup fresh strawberries and 1/2 cup fresh blueberries. I used a potato masher, added a few Tbl of sugar and left on the counter to get the juices going. I bought some Trader Joe's meringue cookies (not baking a huge one for two people) then whipped some heavy whipping cream. I used our medium drinking glasses. I started with the slushy juicy berries, then add the cookies (cut in 1/2), then the whipping cream. Keep layering. Last fresh plain berries on top, added a cookie on top. That's it! I loved it!!! 

RIP Rosie-

Rosie was our wonderful Rhode Island Red hen that we had for about almost 10 years. She'd been through her trials and tribulations over the years. Several months ago she started limping really badly and had to use one of her wings on one side to be able to walk. She kept doing pretty well was eating, drinking and hanging out with the rest of the flock. I couldn't really tell what had happened. I did read chickens can have strokes, maybe that was it? I examined her but couldn't figure anything out. Over time she started eating less and less and resting more. I couldn't bring myself to euthanize her because I'd had her for so long. So I kept her comfortable. I made sure she always got treats 2xs a day, water, was clean and would take her from the nesting box at night where she slept, down into the main part of the garden. Depending on the weather would be in, or out, of the coop. She enjoyed being with her pals. Finally last week I could tell she was ready to go. I brought her in, she sat next to me in a nice laundry basket on a big fluffy towel-

It was nice and cool. She only lasted about an hour after I brought her in. She had a really good life, she ate lots of bugs and weeds and laid wonderful eggs. I like to think that she's on the other side now with her chicken friends who preceded her. We'll miss you Rosie! She was a real trooper and the mother/protector of her flock. She had quite the personality! RIP my sweet girl. Last summer with her flock-

The Giant Tree Trim! Success Wintering Over Veggies w/Row Covers, Seafood Lowland Boil Recipe, Mason Brand = Pur Brand

The Giant Tree Trim!

Spring is here! While I have been feeling the blogger blahs, I am ready to start planting seeds! We'll set up our seed starter stand and get things going under the grow lights. Last fall we decided to get more sun on our backyard vegetable garden area. I could see the writing on the wall with potential food shortages and other issues at that time. We have a huge maple tree that we absolutely love! Gives us tons of much-needed shade on the hot west side of the house. One of the challenges though has been getting enough sun over the garden. Quite a few years ago we used a really great tree service (Wolff) and they trimmed the south side of the tree enough to open up the garden and keep the tree healthy. Tree preservation here is key. They've also done some other trimmings of the tree, taking down some dangerous huge branches. We called them again this winter and got a bid on thinning the south side  again. I had them leave enough branches, however, over the coop to give the hens some shade. Our huge tree you can see from the front yard-

I left the chickens in the coop in the early morning with snacks. I went over with the tree crew to try to keep the chicken's sunroom intact. They did a great job! Sometimes you have to make these tough decisions for food production. We also had them trim back our apple tree in the front, so that we can reach it for better harvesting. When a fruit tree gets too tall it gets to be impossible to harvest the fruit at the top. We had them trim it a few years ago and this year just had them shorten the top a bit. Problem solved. 

Tree over the coop, left some for shade

Much more sun on the right! 

Tree all trimmed! 

Success Wintering Over Veggies w/Row Covers-

In the photo above you can see the white row covers covering some of our winter veggies. Usually in the fall I have always ripped out our collard greens, etc. and gave them to the chickens. This year I decided to cover them with row cover and see if they would survive the winter or not. They are collard greens and kale. I cover them really well with a double layer of  row cover and secured them with some heavy rocks. Other than that I didn't really do anything else. Dave and I uncovered them a few days ago and they look great! If some of the leaves are bitter we can give them to the chickens for feed otherwise we will be eating them. Row cover is so cheap here, about $10 for a long packaged piece it's worth the investment. Just another way to increase food production! I expect they will really take off with the warmer weather now with some water and a little bit of manure.

Seafood Lowland Boil Recipe-

Last week I saw an old PBS episode of Emeril the Chef, and it reminded me of an old recipe I used to do. Years ago I saw some travel show where they did a lowland boil. It's traditionally done with a spicy broth with crawfish, beer, vegetables and sausage. One of the secrets was putting in a can of beer. Old Bay Seasoning is used, easily found at all grocery stores. I used this recipe as a base McCormick.com  To do it economically I bought a bag of frozen seafood mix. It has shrimp, scallops, squid, and muscles. I bought an extra bag of medium-sized frozen shrimp. I went ahead and bought some fresh Old Bay seasoning. I followed the basic recipe here but cut it in half. I also eliminated the sausage, trying to be a little bit healthier. I did about 2 to 3 quarts of water with almost a half a container of Old Bay seasoning, onions quartered, Yukon Gold potatoes chopped, six large chopped carrots. At add one can of plain beer, don't use a lager or anything dark! Adjust water as needed. After the vegetables were fairly well cooked through I added the seafood for about 15 to 20 minutes. I served this with cornbread and it was great! Keep well in the fridge. 

Mason Brand = Pur Brand-

Last year I noticed Pur brand lids showed up in stores. Now I'm seeing jars with both brands listed. Looks like a merger or something similar. Luckily I am seeing canning lids in grocery stores! Nice to be able to stock up.