What the Holidays do to the budget!

We went to the grocery stores the day after Thanksgiving.  There were some specials.  And we had made special trips to buy specials even before Thanksgiving, soft drinks, 4 12 packs for $10 which used to be a common price but now not so much!  Now I had resolved to spend $167 per month, having bought three months' meat at the Butcher's Block already.  And despite temptation, we still have enough meat left for another two months, if I'm careful.  But this is Christmas too.  There were some things I knew I wanted to have.  Fruit cake.  Several kinds of cookies. Caramel corn.  Mincemeat pies.  And for Christmas dinner, shrimp cocktail!
We bought some steak too, very marked down.  So between specials and compulsive items, we spent, when it was all added together, $192.65.  So about $25 above budget.  So what, about 14% above estimate?  It's not that I am sorry, exactly but I want to figure out if and when I will need to increase the budget.  All sorts of questions have to be answered including whether we want to increase our standard of living.  Remember, we don't budget because we don't have the money, we do it to prove we can!
Inflation is difficult to measure.  Some commentators estimated that the Thanksgiving feast this year would cost between 13% and 17% more.  But it's not so simple.  A lot depends on how much of the food is prepared before you buy it.  I understand that one week, Meijer's had turkey for $.32 a pound.  Now we don't have a Meijers  here but we do have a Walmart, which will match all sale prices.  Kroger had sweet potatoes for $.19 a pound.  With some travel, We could have bought traditional fare for traditional prices.  If I were going traditional.  We had chicken though, which I had bought at the sale price of $1 a pound.  Potatoes, home canned green beans, home-made fried onion rings and the Halloween pumpkin were very cost effective.  Last month we provided for a Holiday feast without increasing the budget.  But apparently I don't feel the same about Christmas.  Or we shopped when we were hungry.  Or were in an ornery mood?  I assure you, the decision to budget is very fragile!

I have spent money on Christmas decor too.  I bought this tree for the Nuthead dolls at Elegant Options.  I plan to make tiny paper ornaments and mock popcorn strings to go with the apparent poverty that Nutheads nearly always depict.  I only have four, because though they are cheap, they are exceedingly rare.  Tomorrow I plan to refresh the paint on the wooden stars and snowflakes I usually hang from the light fixtures.  But it's not time for the tree yet!  Note the blooming geranium we had on the table for Thanksgiving.  The prospect of some snow this week really sparks my Christmas Spirit!

The Paper is here!

My youngest daughter used to say that desirable interiors, or clothes, or anything that needed to be fashionable, were "magazine" and I think that conveyed her intent very well.  Now that my home has been "published" in the paper does that make us "magazine"?  You know we are still unconventional!  It was such fun to see our familiar surroundings pictured in the Saturday paper.  We thought Ms. Krause did an excellent job too.  Lots of new blog readers showed up yesterday as she put the blog address at the end of the story.

However, I have already changed out the quilts on the quilt-rail.  I am late in doing so as I try to rotate them quarterly and I will have new ones for Christmas.

I have blown my monthly grocery budget.  I discovered that the "Butcher's Block" has a bulk rate, that I can get a sizable reduction in the price per pound if I buy a "package".  So I have spent $99.99 for 30 pounds of meat which just fits in our tiny freezer.  5 pounds each of lean ground beef, thick cut bacon, stew beef, pot roast, sweet Italian sausage, and chicken tenders.  The meat is top quality.   The temptation to chow down on high meat dinners is powerful.  I have already considered that maybe I won't be able to make it last 4 months.  But maybe 3 months . . .
That would mean that my monthly grocery budget will be $167.00 for the next 3 months.  But I haven't figured out how to recoup the extra $100 I've now spent for October!  Read here for further news on that!

We have company coming this week, in spades.  So the menus are patch-work:
Today, Meatloaf, cheesy rice and broccoli, sliced tomatoes, canned peaches.
Monday, double-meat chili, french bread with garlic butter and Parmesan, last of the peaches.
Tuesday, company breakfast:  bacon, sausage, hot biscuits, scrambled eggs, orange juice, coffee,
supper:  hamburgers, roasted garlic potatoes, sliced tomatoes, cupcakes.
Wednesday company supper, beef stew, hot biscuits, salad with blue cheese, apple pie.
Thursday, leftovers.
Friday: company dinner:  Kuliaba, (salmon in pie roll), last of the salad, assorted leftover desserts.
Saturday:  company breakfast:  poached eggs on toast, bacon, orange juice, eat out for supper.
Sunday:  company breakfast: biscuits with sausage gravy, hash browns, yellow tomato omelet, coffee and tea, eat out for supper.

"See my beautiful big brown eyes"?

According to my Mother, that was how I introduced myself to people on the street when I was three or four  In those days we did not call them "strangers"  they would have been "passers-by".  We spoke to everyone.
We were asked to bring a childhood picture to Writing Club Tuesday night.  This was the one I chose.  Then we were asked to write about the picture or to write a letter to the picture.  I wished I had brought a teen-aged picture, if I'd had one, like the others did.  There aren't any pictures of me during high school, even though I did all the things other kids did, Prom, graduation, in the school play.  It was just that my family was disintegrating.  Dismayed, I contemplated something to say to this picture.  As often happens during our writing practice, once I put my pencil to the paper, it just poured out:

"Dear little girl with the beautiful big brown eyes:
     You're so little, sitting on that bench-not yet four years old.  What can I say to warn you about the shoals ahead?  You've already noticed that things are done very differently in Owensboro, Kentucky, where you are now, than in Chicago where you live.  Playing in Grandmother's apartment under the watchful eye of the kitchen maid while Mother and Nana are off doing whatever grown-ups do.  When the fighting began, you hid under the white clothed table.  In Owensboro a flurry of adults around you where ever you go, buying clothes like the little pink organdy dress you have on.  New shoes and socks, a pink bow for your hair.  No fighting here, at least where you can hear  You'll remember this moment all your life-see the photographer age and eventually die-like the women who fluttered  in your orbit for these few weeks.  Take all the loving, the spoiling, the flutter, and keep it, but let the fighting die.  Meanness always exists and loving is sometimes in short supply but it's weightier, so you might get less of it but it'll be enough . . . .. . "

The Hot Brown Sandwich listed on last weeks menu. It was pretty good except the sour dough bread was somewhat tough under the rich Mornay sauce.

We went on our monthly shopping trip last Monday.  Tuesday morning I replenished the pantry.  From left to right:  Powdered sugar, whole wheat flour (not much of it). 5 pounds of self-rising flour, 10 pounds of plain flour, 2 pounds of sugar.  Up above, dark brown sugar, rose hips, light brown sugar, and an extra 4 pound package of white sugar, for when I make the rose hips into jelly.  I bought the rose hips at the health food store, in bulk.


On a sunny day we went to a garage sale just a few blocks from our house.  I bought this wall hanging for $3.  You can see that the quilting is very nice

 And the piecing is very nice too.  When I took it off the frame, I found the edges compromised by light, stretching and staples that had rusted.  But the center is fine.  I have only to add surrounding fabric to have a lovely quilt.  The hard work has already been done!  I have coupons for Joanne's fabric store so I will look for some suitable colors for the borders.  Shall I make it big or child size?

When I boil eggs for us, or for Eliyah to have as an after-school snack, I always put onion skins in the water.  It doesn't look all that good.

Then when they are boiled and rinsed, they look like this.  And one can always distinguish the raw eggs from the cooked.  Besides, they look nice.  We always had brown eggs when we lived in the country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Day

Today was our big day!!!  The newspaper sent a columnist out to do a story on our home!  I don't know what could be more gratifying.  Or more work!  I swear, we have moved every piece of furniture around, cleaned under each of them, run up and down stairs looking for likely relics and still wound up with an empty bookcase!  We set up the living room in the winter configuration, with a table near the wood stove for  warm dinners.  Tired of decluttering the table all the time, we put a bookcase at the end of the couch to hold all the stuff that we fidget with while watching TV.
 

 At the last minute, yesterday, I made some necessary bread and then some sweet rolls to offer with tea.  We enjoyed her visit very much and it was fun to expound on our philosophy and our stuff for a couple of hours.

We went to great trouble to get in this new-to-the-house barrister bookcase and then didn't fill it.  I am looking forward to seeing some of Bill's miniatures in it soon.  Notice the knock-your-eye-out vintage tablecloth from the forties.  There's a touch of that salmon color in the window shades.

I am afraid I didn't follow my last weekend's menus at all.  Saturday night we were both tired and grumpy after prolonged house cleaning and I attempted a nap at 5:30 in the evening.  I wasn't much interested in fixing supper, I can tell you.  The phone rang.  I didn't answer it.  It rang again and this time I grumpily got up and answered and our friend Janet said "Can you come to a gourmet dinner, right now"?  What?  Where?  Well . . .I guess . . .. .so. . . So we changed out of our dirty clothes and went and what a dinner it was!  I forget how many courses there were, all seafood:  crab cakes, clam chowder, smoked salmon and the main entree, delicous baked fish, with carrot cake for dessert!  Oh yes and somewhere in there was shrimp salad.  We were hours eating that lovely meal.  And then they were bringing out take-away containers, so we brought some home  too.
Sunday night I made some rissoto and got the ingredients wrong and made about a half a gallon of it.  Guess we'll be having it again.  I laid the pieces of fish on the hot rice, vegetables alongside and fresh brown bread, cream cheese and smoked salmon open-faced sandwiches.  It was just as good the second time!
Tonight I'm making hot brown sandwiches, with chicken slices on the bread, hot Mornay sauce, bacon and tomato on top.  Steamed broccoli and applesauce for dessert.
Tuesday:  Baked potatoes with cheese sauced broccoli, sliced tomatoes, home-made bread and butter and applesauce
Wednesday:  Hamburgers, baked beans, sliced tomatoes, applesauce
Thursday:  Pizza
Friday:  Pork tenderloins, rissotto, mixed stirfry vegetables, brownies
Saturday, Cream of potato soup, chicken and cheese sandwiches, brownies.

September is the harvest season

These vegetables cost me $5 at a roadside stand: 4 giant tomatoes (each one weighs about 12 ounces), 3 red peppers, 3 zucchini, and 5 baby pumpkins!  I love this season.  We stopped at the orchard below Bedford and bought a peck of apples too.  I had a new recipe for "Paper Bag Apple Pie".  But it called for boiled cider.  So Eliyah and I stopped at the store and bought some apple juice and I boiled it down to a thick syrup in a crock pot.  We made the pie the next day and Eliyah and his mother took some home. It was very good but rather a lot of trouble.  The topping was streusel rather than strips of pie crust.  The paper bag we baked it in became very browned and smelled of burning paper!          

In this lovely weather, I like to hang out the laundry.  The whites I hang in the sun on my umbrella line which I installed in the back yard myself 10 years ago, using a bag of cement that can be mixed right in the hole to set the pipe in.  In the winter the whole top portion can be brought in, folded and stored in the garage.  A good thing to do because now-a-days a sooty coating appears on the rope that comes off on your whites and has to be scrubbed off very vigorously because it doesn't come out of the clothes at all. I don't remember that from all the clothes lines in my childhood!  The darks I put on a folding rack on the front porch.  They don't need any sunlight to fade them.  I like the smell of outdoors and the faint stiffness in the fabric. Too, sunlight is the best disinfectant of all and completely non-toxic.

Here are the menus for the week:

Sunday:  Boneless pork chops, dressing, sliced tomatoes, corn, the last of the pie

Monday:  Pasta with red sauce, tossed salad, dark chocolate

Tuesday:  Hot dogs, cottage fried potatoes, steamed broccoli, dark chocolate

Wednesday:  French bread pizza, ice cream

Thursday:  Hamburgers, garlicky broiled potato wedges, sliced tomatoes, last of the ice cream

Friday, Chili, cheese sandwiches, tomato slices, if there are any more, canned peaches

Saturday:  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, Home canned green beans, canned peaches