Dang It!

Another 12 day gap. How does it happen? It's not like I have TONS of things going on. Well, quite a few but last Saturday I was done doing everything I'd booked for the day by 5pm and that included a nap and 2 hours reading books...so clearly I COULD have blogged. But the inspiration wasn't there. No, that's not it. I don't have any inspiration today either. Well, maybe a little.

Anywho, here we are. The topic du jour (other than "Dang It!") is: Accidental thrift.
So it snowed. I snowed alot. Like a super lot. Not like a few years ago when we had 3 feet in Plummer by Christmas, but like 12 or 18 inches over about 5 or 6 days. I don't like shoveling and it was drifting back over any tracks or shoveled bit anyway. Then the city crew plowed the street and there was a berm about 6 feet wide and 2 feet deep between the car and the road. Of course then it rained and coated the berm, and everything else...Thanks Yaktrax!...with ice. A quarter inch of ice. So I didn't drive. Eventually they plowed to within 6 inches of the back of my car (and left a GIANT snow pile in the yard but whatever). I put salt on that and a mere several days later the car was free again.

For about 10 or 11 days I didn't drive at all. I always walk around town but I know I would have found SOMETHING to do out of town if it hadn't been a giant pain to shovel the car out. So, I stayed home. I cooked from scratch and went to the local market rather than running to the Moscow Co-op for the bits and pieces to fill in around the ingredients in the house.
Turns out, there is a new much more liberal, policy on which produce is past prime and marked down. A crazy liberal policy. I got a total of 10.1875 lbs of perfectly fine produce for $4.37! Much of it went into the freezer and the rest got eaten. The 3lb 2oz bag of bell peppers was the toughest to consume quickly. Half ended up sauted and frozen for future use, most of the rest are now stuffed with blackbean sweet potato chile (garnet yams were in the reduced bin despite being fine...perhaps just weren't selling), and the last bit were consumed just sauted. I'll put the recipe below because it was awesome. There was also a head of cauliflower, 2lbs 3oz, for 99cents, and a bag of salad for 99cents. Not a bad selection.

Here's the recipe for sauted bell peppers I got off www.vegweb.com that was amazing and I'll be eating often from here on out:

3 T olive oil
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
4-5 bell peppers (any color of sweet pepper), sliced into thin strips
splash of balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper if you like

Heat the oil over medium heat in a skillet large enough for the peppers to be in a single layer.
Saute the garlic until is just begins to carmelize
Add the peppers and stir frequently. Saute until they are al dente, or more if you like them soft.
Throw in the balsamic vinegar and remove from heat (or turn it off if you're using an electric skillet).
Stir to coat.

Delicious as is, or as a sandwich (hot or cold). Season with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper if you like.
Something about the vinegar and the toasty garlic on the peppers was just right.
You could probably add some onion slices if you cared to.

So basically, being lazy about digging the car out saved me gas and grocery money.