In a time of inflation and shrinkflation, we tend to focus our frugal efforts (including celebrations and complaints) on small everyday things, like groceries. It's easier to blame a package of mushrooms for going bad after only a day in the fridge, than it is to try to make sense of all the reasons that we seem to get less and, often, not what we expected. It helps when we do find good stuff for lower prices, such as at the local supermarket that seems to be on a never-ending reorganization project.
We have been on an early-winter binge of soup making, which meant resurrecting an old-faithful split pea-sausage soup recipe (combining the usual ingredients with a dried-vegetable mix we found at Euro Foods); trying out a friend's taco soup recipe (using our own taco seasoning spices), and adding half-price ravioli to turkey soup.
We haven't been making as much bread lately, but we did use this easy recipe to make rolls for Christmas dinner. (We let the bread machine do the mixing and first rise, then shaped them and let them rise again before baking.)
A few weeks ago, we made a couple of trips to local apple growers. At one of them, I bought a jar of apple butter (besides some apples), and half of that went into a batch of holiday-style squares (think date squares, only with apple butter and dried cranberries for the filling). On our other apple stop, we bought a new kind that turned out to be not our favourites for eating, so after Christmas I cut them up into the crockpot, added a little water and cinnamon, and let them cook down into applesauce. (You could puree it in the blender, but we didn't bother.) But what to do with all that applesauce in the fridge? I could have frozen it, but it was a more interesting challenge to use it up fresh.
The first thing I made with it was an applesauce cake, which also finished off the jar of apple butter. I used this recipe, adjusting the ingredients a bit for sweetness and amount of liquid. The only caution I would make is that you do have to really watch your proportions. Our cake turned out great, but if you're not careful (or don't bake it quite long enough), you could get something sad and soggy. I think the fact that I used demerara rather than regular brown sugar might have helped keep the cake light and not heavy/soggy. I will also say that the teaspoonful of vanilla in that recipe sounds a bit out of place, but it works.
Yesterday, we were looking for meat deals at the supermarket, and Mr. Fixit found a package of pork chops. Maybe it was something to do with a recent writing project involving Normandy, I don't know, but "pork" and "apples" sounded right together, so we translated A Year of Slow Cooking's Applesauce Chicken recipe into "Pork With Applesauce Gravy." (One addition: when we first made this recipe about fifteen years ago, we appreciated the fact that the recipe didn't have any added salt, but now we prefer to add some in with the seasonings.)
So that's where all the apples went.
On a different note, we have been trying to warm up a couple of chilly spots in the house (and the garage when Mr. Fixit works out there), without turning the heat up everywhere. The thrift stores didn't seem to have the right thing, so we bought a small heater at Giant Tiger which has made the living room much cozier. Then today we found a 1980's heater at the Salvation Army store. Mr. Fixit checked it out carefully, and it seems safe and fine and everything, so that's going to go in the garage.
Also, I had been wanting to find something a bit more seasonal, or just a little different, to hang in the spot where we have the William Morris tapestry. I saw a needlework wall hanging at an antiques market, but the price was out of our budget. Then one day we were at Value Village, and I was browsing through the home-decor stuff and found this table runner. Mr. Fixit and I both had the same idea: what would it look like as a hanging? We decided not to take down the tapestry, but just to layer them up, at least for the time being. The colours of the two pieces aren't the same, but the leaves on the runner connect with the leaves and flowers on the tapestry, so I'm happy with that.
More thrift store finds
No comments:
Post a Comment