Black Friday: Can you say free?

My free red camera is on the way. It is a Kodak M23 Easy Share. I like low prices; I like sale prices; I love free. I am so parsimonious! Okay, I like inexpensive and good quality and great photo results. My photos online may not be as good as some, but I am superbly happy, like a pig in slop. Yeah, and it's red, too. See.....

Yes, I am really low tech when it comes to cameras.  It pays to be happy with low-tech because it is cheap and Kodak seems to be good quality, unlike some cheaper off brands. My last Kodak Easyshare was priced $189, on sale for something like $70. I purchased it for $22 with the MaxPerks rewards I had built from turning in print cartridges at Office Max.

I sincerely hope this Kodak is as good as the last two. I seem to need a new one every 2 years! The first one was eating new batteries. I got one picture off a fresh set of batteries. The last one has a lens problem. It extends and retracts, making beeping noises. Ah well.

The new RED camera I will receive on December 1st was on sale for $69.99 at Office Max and also at Amazon. I don't have money or Max Perks Rewards, so I chose to use my Amazon cards. Altogether, I had earned $80 for just searching, $5 Amazon cards at a time.  Since I have not really gotten into any other method of earning Swagbucks, I had very few.

Office Max had only five Kodak M23 cameras for Black Friday, so I doubted I would get one. There is no way on earth that I would have gotten up in time to be close to the front of the line at 5 AM when they opened. Maybe later today, I will drop by and see. (Friday night, none where sold.) I could not have used SwagBucks at Office Max and would have had to use my MaxPerks gotten for recycling.

My newish Kodak SD card is 8GB. I paid the price for a 4GB because it was priced wrong. YAY me! Charlie said, "No way!" when I told him what I paid. He thought I was wrong, mistaken. Me? He lauded my finding one at the wrong price. Anyway, I won't be needing a new card ( no $$$) at the rate I take pictures.

Okay, my other $5 Swagbucks just disappeared???

The Swagbucks were saved for a Katadyn camping water filtering contraption, but that will have to wait. I mean--why have sanitary water in a water emergency when you have a red camera?

Your turn
Did you get anything on sale and free with swagbucks?

I had to buy eggs!

Yes, I with the faithful hens who laid eggs for over two years had to buy eggs! I kept eating them and feeding them to my hens. It all boiled down to one egg on Wednesday night. So, at the 11th hour, literally, I went out to buy eggs.

The hens did not fail me. It is not their fault. I don't get up early to let them out to take advantage of early sun. They don't have water in their cage those few hours. Plus, last night at 4 PM, they were headed to their cage beside the door. Also, they have not been fed enough protein the last few weeks. They have laid faithfully for two years and their prompt, daily, egg-laying days are most likely over. But, I expect they are capable of laying more eggs each day if I can get conditions right for them.

When their hen defense is complete (hopefully, next Monday), they will become more reliable layers once again. When they cease to lay, they will be pets. I will limp by this winter on what they lay. Next year, I will give a broody hen eggs to incubate. It seems they all try to be broody, sitting all day on eggs if I allow them. Hopefully, I will never have to have baby chicks in the house again. But, I will if I must. Actually, I kept them in here too long.

Compare the sizes: my hens laid the brown egg

This brown egg is one of the smaller eggs my hens lay. It belongs to Fancy. The egg on the right, the white egg came from the carton of Large Eggs.The white egg is a commercial large egg.  I always wondered how my eggs compared to store eggs in size. Look at the same eggs in the picture below.



Hopefully, when the hen security is set, they will get more than 7 or 8 hours of daylight. I suppose I am lucky to get any eggs at all.

Your turn
Do you have hens who are laying? Have you had a chance to compare your eggs with store-bought eggs? If you are planning on getting hens, see what you have in store? I think that is a drastic difference, don't you?

Thanksgiving 2011

Virginia and Bob

I was talking to a friend I have known for 20 years. When he asked what I was doing and where I was going for Thanksgiving, I told him I would be here, by myself. A few minutes after we hung up, he called me back, saying his girlfriend, riding in the car with him said I should come to his sister's house.

Since I did not make the chocolate pound cake yesterday, I got up this morning and made three. One for Bob and Virginia, one for the dessert table today, and the other for me.

adorable baby--concentrating on elimination

Blogger decides where on the post to put pictures lately.

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Hostess gift

From my stash of gifts, I decided to give the hostess a set of cards. Since they are blank inside, these can be used for many occasions. The cards and envelopes, 10 each, cost me about 10 cents. The ribbon is leftover from something else, satin cloth ribbon, not paper ribbon. The gift did not get wrapped since I was in a hurry and could not locate proper wrap in my stash at a glance. I was tired before I left...lol. Hmm, the borrowed camera puts dates as it pleases, apparently! The picture was taken as the cards rested inside the basket where my pound cake was lying as I carried it to my destination.


The plan was for me to meet Bob and V at Arby's and they would lead me elsewhere in Birmingham or just pick me up and take me, returning me to my car later. I thought Bob said "quarter to eleven." No, it was "quarter after eleven." I arrived at "twenty to eleven" so I would not keep them waiting.

In the meantime, I had to go to the bathroom. Arby's was not open, so I had to walk next door to McDonald's, which was open.  After I got back to the car, hunger struck. I scrounged around for money. Nope. I had wayyy less than $1. So, I started searching my purse to ward of hypoglycemia and all the confusion that follows.

Finally, I found a jar of half-eaten peanut butter, brought in the car on another occasion for exactly the same reason--hypoglycemia. My plastic bag only contained forks. It was impossible to get a forkful of pb, so I sat with my feet out the door, eating pb until they arrived. Okay, I contaminated that jar, and might not want to eat from it again after I put lots of germs in and it sat in the sun, incubating them.

Another baby that never made a sound until all was over. Have you ever seen such a monstrous walker? The high chair in grandma' house was huge with a footprint to match a small car! Obviously, I have not been around the newfangled baby equipment. I never saw Brianna playing with the gadgets and toys. She is eating some sort of cereal or baby kibble, as you can see.

Philip

This man was the highlight of the day, well, except for turkey. I overheard a snippet of conversation and joined in. He is an English teacher who was discussing his month-long trip to England as a grad student and the low price of rail fare. As it turns out, his favorite Romantic poet and mine is the same--Wordsworth. We quoted snippets of poems and discussed the Lake District and Tintern Abbey "Intimations of Immortality," "The World is Too Much With Us," and other relevant-to-Wordsworth material. No, we did not bore everyone since they just ignored us...lol.  Neither of us remember anything completely, but we were nonetheless enthusiastic.  Neither of us was a poseur who tried to top anything discussed and who had perfectly memorized poems and facts for the amusement of others, spewing them continuously.

For the last twenty years I have spent wonderful Thanksgivings at the home of a friend. Conversation was always rife with politics. Political activists and attorney abounded at my friend's home on most occasions! This day was different and pleasant. Between babies and Wordsworth and varied conversation along with an abundance of food, I left feeling filled in many ways.

I did not get a picture of the table, spread with delicious dishes. Everything was gone by the time I thought of taking pictures...lol....and I was eating with gusto. There was a dessert table, jam-packed with goodies. The picture below was taken as I sat since my back does not like to be bent for a proper picture.

My chocolate pound cake is behind the little bowl in the center of the dessert table. Wow, with the pictures placed willy-nilly, this post is all over the place and I am in no mood to make it more coherent or to tighten it up.

OOPS! I have been reminded that I did take a picture of the food on the table and my hostess. I have no evidence on my camera. Something happened to the most important photos of the day. Oh well.

THE END

Your turn

Did you spend Thanksgiving in the midst of friends or family? Did you overeat as I did? Did you travel far? Do you have any unusual stories to tell?

Stabbing Cranberries

It's not as serious as my stab, but it is with the same knife. Even though I have read/watched how to dehydrate cranberries, I am not going to blanch them so they will pop. That seems to sacrifice too much of the juice. Oh, no, I am going to stand at the sink, sopping from popped cranberries instead of carrying my knife to the ottoman and sit to do this job. When I stand, I shake/tremble from the pain, so I have to sit ever so often. Below, is how many cranberries I can pop at one standing.

Also, the knife that stabbed me in the chest

Rather than heat the cranberries to popping open stage, I took a knife and stabbed them. I would have cut them slightly, but the skins were too tough and I was mashing cranberries.

Once I put them in the dehydrator, I drank the juice that had drained through the colander. Straight lemon juice has met its match for sourness. But, it was only 1/3 of a cup, so I drank it down, thinking how good it was for me.

If you ever decide to dehydrate cranberries and don't want to heat them in water until they pop, I would suggest you slit or stab each one while it is frozen or semi-frozen. I lost juice and being mushy made the cranberries difficult to cut open. That is why I stabbed.

Why cut them open? I think it is called "case hardened." If not, let me know the correct term. All it means is that the outside dried faster than the inside can and moisture is locked inside. You don't want this to happen to your cranberries or anything else. That is what happened to the slices of sweet potato. 

How many I had to go to finish

ready for dehydrator

two leg/thigh quarters cooking away on the stove

Whether this will be chicken and dumplings or not is still up in the air. If I feel like making dumplings tonight, it will be chicken and dumplings. I don't like thighs, but this is what I had, so I may just give all this to exbf who is coming to help me tomorrow. He will not want the broth, so that will be just more broth for me for Thanksgiving. We will see. But, I am so hungry for dumplings.

The kitchen smells good and is warm with cranberries in the dehydrator and chicken boiling away. Maybe I will make cornbread for dressing.   I think not.

front-frozen for exbf, scraps for hens,

back--quart of broth, bit of meat for me

Some day, I will try canning broth. But, I would need more than one quart, maybe four pints?

It's done. My day is mostly over. One last thing--I will mix all the dry ingredients for a chocolate pound cake, my contribution to a Thanksgiving Dinner that starts at noon! UGH! I am accustomed to my friends who say, "We eat at five; come at four to visit." Then, we eat at six. Okay, I can do this. I know I can! And, I will cook my turkey next week.

If I get out all the pans for the three pound cakes, have the wax paper cut, and all wet ingredients ready, this will not be hard tomorrow night. I hope I have enough eggs. I think there are only four and the ingredients call for five. So, I may use dehydrated egg whites for the missing egg.  I bought it awhile ago for the one egg unless the girls lay another before tomorrow night.

Your turn

Have you ever dehydrated cranberries? Did you heat the berries to pop them? Or, did you just puncture them? Raise your hand if you like chicken and dumplings? Do you use the fat on top of the broth in the chicken/dumplings? I hate to remove all of it. What do you do with it if you take it off the broth? Personally, I consider it part of the broth. 

All Dried Out

sweet potato, green beans, carrots, corn=8 lbs

The best part of dehydrating frozen vegetables is that the blanching is done by someone else. Blanching is not difficult, but it just more energy that I don't have. Seven of nine shelves are full. One shelf with onions is not showing, and I don't know why.

The other shelf is for some of the two heads of celery I bought for $.88/each. I was pooped and did not get to it today.

There are still cranberries to dehydrate. I want to see if they are good without added sugar. Craisins are great, but have added sugar. If I cannot snack on my dried cranberries, maybe I can add them to dressing, just like Stove Top Stuffing does.  I love that boxed dressing! However, I do make my own dressing from scratch at Thanksgiving.

Here are the results. Each two-pound bag of these vegetables was at least a half gallon.
The sweet potato medallions were too thick, so I sliced then in half. Two-pounds of frozen corn= two dehydrated cups. Two-pounds of frozen green beans=a dehydrated pint. Two pounds of frozen carrots=1 dehydrated cup.

The sweet potato medallions never did dry, so those will be cooked soon, but stored in the refrigerator. 

Okay, this was 1/3 of an onion that I put in there. It is stored in a 2-ounce pimiento jar. I imagine I will use this within the next week.





A snack; better than chips
Of course, as usual, I had to try everything. The sweet potatoes will take your permanent teeth out. I have another method of dehydrating next time. The corn is too crunchy and tiny. The carrots will break strong teeth. These are of jawbreaker hardness. Aaaaah, the green beans...sigh. They are a scrumptious crunchy snack, healthful and delicious with no seasonings. I suppose seasonings would improve these for people who need seasoning.

You have to understand:
I have never met a green bean I did not like.
These little babies were very crispy.
Yum! And nutritious.



High-end groceries sell clam shells of dehydrated vegetables, slice very thin with seasonings, oil, and preservatives added. Even after dehydrating, seasoning can be added to these vegetables.  The clamshells of dehydrated vegetables sell for an exorbitant price. Home-prepared vegetable snacks are cheaper and don't contain preservatives.

Your turn
Have you ever dehydrated frozen food? Do you think you would like dehydrated vegetables for a snack? How do you prepare dehydrated vegetable snacks?

500th Post--yesterday

Yesterday, and I have a little tiny callus on the tip of my right index finger to prove I am really working at this. It is so unattractive. I was going to remark about the occasion yesterday, but I forgot. I suppose the 500th post will be memorable.

July 13, 2011, was the first I posted even though I had been working on the blog for over a month--June until July 13. I am loving this experience.

I love all my followers and readers.

Nicking my areola

Sorry, no pictures!

Who knew that eating fresh food, preparing it at frugally at home, even in the face of adversity, could be so dangerous? Not I!

As I went into the den to my comfortable chair, I walked cautiously with a bowl of potatoes in my right hand and a sharp knife in the left hand. The knife was pointing toward the floor.  I always walk with the knife tip down, even when I am not shaky with walking. I grip the knife with the blade coming from between my thumb and index finger. Safe enough? Should be.

I put the bowl of potatoes on the ottoman. As I reached my chair, I lowered myself, leaning forward and sitting as I braced myself on the chair arms to ease gently down to spare my knee and back. Unfortunately, as I put my hands down to lower myself, leaned forward to ease down, the knife was pointed up just because of how I was leaning with my hand on the chair and managing to sit without much excruciating pain.

Do you know how bad nicking an areola hurts? With a very sharp knife? Almost hit the nipple! Yikes! Don't try this at home, folks.

Maybe tomorrow I will run with scissors. Well, if I could run, I would. Or I could get an Official Red Ryder Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle and maybe shoot my eye out.

No, it did not bleed, just turned bloody looking. I had three days of examining myself to see if the damage was permanent or worse because the pain seemed not to diminish. After a week, it is all better.

This is the price I paid that day for eating fresh vegetables.

Your turn
Have you managed to hurt yourself, despite cautionary steps? Have you stabbed yourself in the breast? Oh, just tell me a funny or horrifying story of accidentally maiming yourself!