Pizza Deal; Celery Deal; Tomato Deal

It was very late and I gave in to my urge for pizza that had continued unabated for weeks. As I headed home from WM, I decided to stop in and get a pizza. Since all the lights were on, including the drive up window light, I thought they were open.

Well, no they were not open. The guy unlocked the window and told me they were closed and about to go out the door. I asked if he did not have even one pizza. "Well, we have one large pepperoni pizza that is cold and not very good." "How much does a cold and not very good pizza cost."  "$2."

I never ever eat pepperoni since I am allergic to pepperoni. I thought I would do like everyone suggests and just pick the pepperoni off. By the way, I never do that. Now, I know why. I had a bad reaction to the pizza even with the pepperoni picked off and tossed.

Now, there are three packages of pizza in the freezer for exbf. Boo! I still want a Dominos pizza. What I had was just a poor substitute that leaves me still unsatisfied.

Why do people think picking out the part to which you are allergic will work? No, it does not.

Celery is $0.50/head. A pint of grape tomatoes is $0.98/pt. I bought seven pints of tomatoes and five of celery. Both are destined for the dehydrator.

Your turn
Have you found any pizza deals after hours? Do people ever suggest picking out things that you are allergic to as though nothing will be left behind that affects you adversely? Are there any celery or grape tomato deals in your area? What are the deals where you live?

I've Got Celery

Sprouts has celery for $.48/head. I purchased 10 heads of celery. Now, can you guess what I will do with it?

Yes, I will dehydrate it all tonight. Usually, I dice celery to dehydrate. This time, I will cut in long pieces to fit in a half pint jar, standing on end inside the jar. I will split the ribs lengthwise, sometimes in four pieces, depending on the size and part of the rib.

The reason for the sizes? I don't want to bit on a piece of celery, even cooked. If the pieces are really small, like no larger than 1/4x1/4 inches, I am fine. That is just too much chopping for tonight.

If I split the ribs and slice them about five inches long, when I add them to soup, I can pick the celery rib out. I know. It's silly. Even if I throw in a half a rib of celery, I avoid that huge piece in my plate or bowl.

I can eat small dices of celery in tuna or chicken salad. I know it's weird how I like and dislike. My hot chicken salad recipe is half chicken and half celery, diced. Somehow, I can eat all that crunchy celery. Maybe it is the abundance of cheese in this dish...I don't know.

Do not eat the leaves since that is where any toxins reside. My mother told me that and it appears it is true. Maybe you can read this for more information. Maybe I am allergic to celery.

The taste that cooked celery imparts to any dish is a memory of my mother's cooking.

Your turn
Do you regularly cook with celery? Do you add the dices to cold salads? Do you have strong feelings, good or bad, about celery?

99 Degrees and Failures and Accomplishments

Remember my celery grown from the bottom of the celery? Well, with all the worry of the tornado, I just watered it too much. Soon, it died.


Remember the celery at its zenith?

Absolutely no potting happened on Wednesday. I accomplished much, but it was indoors:

*sorted and dated cans of food
*made up a box of food to give a new acquaintance who is struggling
*sorted a few books
*packed away blankets
*loaded and washed dishes in dishwasher
*washed iron skillets
*took cans to recycle=$4.68 (78 cents/pound)
*picked up produce for hens
*washed and hung out three gray pair pants (rinse cycle and vinegar only)
*hung another small load of clothes
*folded and put away clothing from the clothes line
*sorted and threw out eggs kept too long (tornado turmoil)
*scrambled eggs for my breakfast
*ate from $ menu at McD with $1 gifted coupons. (Exbf ate too)
*saved 1/4 of amount purchased on necessary items by using coupons at store
*made a frugal salad for dinner for exbf and myself and one for his lunch tomorrow
*got haircut
*returned item to store
*gathered a few items to take to the thrift store

Well, it is no wonder that I am exhausted now, Wednesday night.

Ex bf did lots. Tuesday, I found a guy who mowed my yard with a riding lawnmower and only charged me $10! However, it did still look ragged since he could not walk with a regular mower to finish it. I assured him I was satisfied. I had a plan. Ex was coming Wednesday to mow. So, he had time to do a few other things instead:

*used weed eater on the yard and made it look very nice
*fed hens (he likes to do this)
*filled 2.5 gal waterer
*watered plants in my pink 4x4 foot garden/planter
*watered all the stressed plants on the table waiting for me to repot them
*dug up the volunteer Wave Petunia that was outside the rocks (and put it in a pot!)
*carried the cans for recycling to the car for me
*took most of the trash to the road
*got a plastic box from gutter, emptied it and washed it for me
*dumped rotten food into a container to throw away (from tornado, what I lost in refrigerator)
*carried the chicken produce
*put things in compost by fence
*brought egg every time (3) the hens laid one...he likes to do that
*reports who is on the nest now.

He was tired, too. But, he said it was better than mowing. He declared he would never have chickens or a cat or dog.  But, he enjoys telling me of the hens' antics and who is doing what. Chickie Daddy is a good and valued friend. I made sure there was plenty of water taken out to him, and a snack in the afternoon. Then, he had a long drive--1.25 hours home.

Here I am on Thursday and nothing done about potting. The plants will all get watered.

High today--104 degrees

Your turn
Do you ever have a very busy day and think you have piddled until you sit down and recount the tasks, large and small, seasonal or everyday, and decide you just did accomplish something? How are your plants? Any failures on the road to food freedom?

Tidbits

Meal moths
They are back after the cold winter in lesser numbers, but into my arsenal has come a cordless vac. These critters cannot fly well, so they fly erratically, making it hard to swat or clap my hands upon them. Hopefully, the vac will just suck them up. Yeah, good idea, but the vac has a handle on the end, making it unwieldy to handle...gone back to store, unused. Thankfully, almost all my food is now in Tupperware or half-gallon Ball jars. The rubber canning seal protects from an invasion of even the smallest of pests. I just screw the lid on very tightly.

Celery
The celery now has 5 stalks. The taller of the two original stalks grew 3/4 of an inch in two days. Indeed, it does taste like celery. I ate a leaf. now, there are now two 5-inch stalks, up from 4-inches when I first wrote about them.

Hen security
Two people donated to their security. Thank you. I still have a long way to go to protect them from predator raccoons.

My health
Knee (L) has tear in meniscus and will need surgery. An open MRI has been scheduled for my shoulder. The doctor also believes it could be a torn rotator cuff.  I cannot go into the hospital for the knee until the chickens have a secure place because I won't be able to get them into my house each night. I had knee surgery on the right knee a few years ago and know exactly what I face.

Egg production
I now regularly get three eggs each day once again. Now that winter is over and the days are long, the hens are all back in business. The hens were two years old around March 21. They are doing well.

Raccoon attack
Did I tell you that one morning I awoke, fuzzy about the dream I may have had? A squirrel had been caught in the live trap. Was it a dream? I went to the trap and there was a squirrel head. Raccoons pull their victims though the bars, ripping them into pieces in the process.  No, I did not mean to leave the squirrel to die. But, its demise just proves that at least one raccoon is still around here, a threat to my hens. Since there are woods nearby, there will always be raccoons....sigh.


Birthday
My son turned 43 yesterday, April 16, 2011. How did he get so old, so fast? I have vivid memories of him as an infant, a toddler, schoolboy, young man, student. Now, he is married to a very lovely young woman and father to a six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. He was seven in this picture.

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights...uh...I mean wasted celery

This celery looked much better when I bought it two days ago, and it was still in the plastic sleeve in the grocery store under their lights. Still, it is a nice head of celery.
Jonathan Bloom's query
At WASTED FOOD, he asks readers in his post, Turkey Week Project, for suggestions--"Yet, with all of our abundance, though, comes the threat of waste. That’s why I’m hoping you guys will submit some advice here and on the Wasted Food Facebook page about how you plan to avoid waste at Thanksgiving." I had started this post when he posed his question. This post is timely in more ways than one.

Confession
Celery is the one thing I waste the most. There, I said it, "My name is Linda, and I waste celery." Okay, now that I have that burden released, I will share how I try to handle the celery problem all year long. I have vowed I will not waste the rest of the Turkey Day celery as I am want to do. I would say I usually waste about a fourth of my edible celery. Shame on me.

I always justified my waste while cringing at wasted food and wasted money by saying, "Chickens need food, too. They love celery." And, they prefer it chopped!

Thwarting celery waste
Every time I buy celery, I am in great danger of letting some of it spoil. The most beautiful head of celery is awaiting my thrifty ways and a really sharp knife. Since there is only me, it is hard to use the whole head and not let some of it go to waste.

I will not actually eat celery raw, even with dip. It has to be diced small as in tuna salad for me to eat it raw or cooked. The taste of celery in cold salads or cooked foods is something I desire, so I keep buying and wasting celery.

By prepping my celery for Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey and dressing, I will have only spent $0.44 cents on celery for each day since I will not buy one head of celery each holiday. If celery goes lower than $.88 cents/head, I will buy another head, dice, and freeze for next year.

Of course, celery does make good chicken food when it goes South---NOT my intentions.

Prepping celery for Thanksgiving and Christmas
I will wash and dice up most of the celery for making dressing for Thanksgiving AND Christmas. Since I don't make much dressing for just me (9"x9" pan) but want it chock full of celery, the one stalk will do for two small pans of dressing. The rest will be cut into 4" or so pieces to be used while cooking the turkey breast I will have both holidays. I will just throw several pieces of frozen celery stalk into the turkey cooking bag. (I know they are plastic and wasteful.) (Okay, possibly toxic.)

Christmas celery prep on L,starting prep for Thanksgiving on R

Celery Prep
The white plate has a scant two cups of diced celery which will be frozen for Christmas. On the same plate are two pieces of celery that will be frozen in the same bag as the diced celery. Those two pieces will cook with the turkey breast. The one piece of celery in front of the cup  will go into a single serving of turkey salad next week. Pie pan contains chicken food. White dirty plate holds compost. Whole celery stalks are what I will prep later today or Saturday for Thanksgiving (my cooking will be on Sat.) and will be the same as the prepped Christmas celery. I use an old Corelle plate for dicing, chopping and cutting.

Onions, too
Onion is not so hard to use up before it turns. So, onion is never wasted. Today, I was going to  chop onions and celery for Thanksgiving and Christmas and freeze all. But, I became tired and lazy. The Thanksgiving portion of onion and celery will just wait patiently until I cook my dinner on Saturday. Thanksgiving Day will be spent in the company of friends in Birmingham.

No toxic celery leaves for my hens
The hens may not get the celery leaves, and I don't use them. Celery leaves have the highest concentration of pesticides; the stalk has much less. My hens don't need the leaves since I eat the eggs. Plus, I just don't want my hens to eat pesticides!

Celery leaves go into the compost until I can find organic celery. Pleeease, don't tell me I am making poisonous compost.

Buying only what I will eat...unless...
Since I only eat the breast of the turkey, I will buy a turkey breast for my Saturday Thanksgiving dinner. I am unwilling to eat anything but the breast. However, if I find a turkey at the right price--really low--I will buy and cook the whole turkey, sharing all but the breast with a friend who helps me with things I cannot do around the house.

Waste after Thanksgiving?
Do you mean the dinner? Not a chance! I love Thanksgiving food to the end! I am sad when there is no more gravy for the dressing.  Actually, I can make a meal of just my tasty cornbread dressing.

Your turn
Visit Jonathan's blog. And tell me, are you a celery-waster all year like I am? What is the one thing during the year that you waste? What do you waste at Thanksgiving? How can you avoid this waste? Okay, off to chop celery and onions!