I am eating like a FREAKING ROYAL.
Today: eggs for breakfast, fresh from the chicken's vent (that's their butt hole). Clover sprouts. Fresh cracked pepper which is some fancy pepper mix from my pantry. Cost: 1cent for the sprout seeds, 1cent for the pepper. A bit of coconut oil to fry in so 1cent of oil. The egg was about 1$ because I'm feeding 6 hens and 2 cocks (haha) and only averaging 1 egg a day over the winter. In the summer, eggs are cheaper. Still, all this food was in the pantry stock or coming out of a hen's butt on the property. No grocery trip. Total: $1.03
Also had water, free from the tap. Coffee...stuff that is in a 3 year old can at work. Might have to quit drinking that because I'm pretty sure it's giving me B.O!!! What the heck. But, it's free.
Lunch: Pumpkin soup and smoked duck. LOTS of smoked duck because it was pretty well thawed out. The porch-fridge is working fine, but still, been eating on this since thursday and needed to finish up the meat so I can boil the carcass tonight for broth. I'll feed the bits to the chickens.
Can of pumpkin from 2nd harvest, free. Garlic from the garden, free. Low sodium bouillion cube I bought months ago, 8 for 99cents so 13cents. Pepper, 1 cent. Onion jam, 1/2 jar from the farmers market $3. Bit spendy. It had been in the holiday gift stash, but we didn't do office gifts so I threw it in the soup. Delicious. Duck: free for helping butcher ducks. Total: $3.13.
A spendier meal than usual of late. I could have gone with a half jar of onion jam but the porch fridge will turn into a porch deep freeze tonight or tomorrow and that can ruin some jam (taking all other liquids/gels to work tomorrow to keep them from blowing up during the week of frigid temps in case the house freezes).
Supper, because of the big lunch, will be simple and light. Spaghetti noodles (free from 2nd harvest) and blackberries saved in vinegar. I picked the berries myself for free, and there is probably a penny's worth of vinegar in them. The vinegar left in the jar is amazing! I might put some garlic olive oil on it, which was a gift (Thanks Chris and Pat!) that I am really enjoying. With the vinegar-berries it makes a tart-spicy sauce on the noodles. Total: 1cent.
I had a bit of buckwheat honey with some tea this afternoon. The honey is spendy so probably 5cents. The tea was a gift. Total: 5cents
Total for the day: $4.20 of pantry/freezer food.
Not bad.
There are 3 weeks left in the month. The first week has been pretty easy!
I'm making veggie-rice casserole on the stove right now with brown rice from 2nd harvest and mushrooms and carrots (dried) that were a gift (Thanks Sherry). Some saffron (see...eating like royalty) which was a gift (Thanks Chris and Pat!) and lots of garlic from the garden. Pepper of course. This can go out in the porch-fridge/freezer without any major damage to it to be eaten with duck broth that might turn into duck-noodle soup with some of the dried veggies in the pantry or I might fry it up with an egg.
For protein I have:
Elk meat, 1lb
Duck, a whole pekin duck frozen and a few jars of duck meat
Venison: a few jars
Chicken: on the hoof and a jar or two.
Lentils, about a cup of red lentils (oooo...those would be good in the rice!!!)
Eggs
Powdered eggs from a friend (work fine in baked goods)
Unflavored gelatin
For veggies:
seeds to sprout
Dried soup base of mixed veggies
Garlic
Dried mushrooms
Dried carrots
5 or 6 cans of mixed veggies from 2nd harvest
Starches:
Brown rice
Spaghetti
Spinach Rotini
Gift card for artisanal bread
1 1/4 cup flour (I'm using it to thicken soups now mostly since I'm so low and have the bread card use)
Fruit:
2 jars of jam that were gifts
Berries in vinegar (huckle, service, black, maybe blue?)
Misc:
1 or 2 half pint jars of salsa
Plenty of spices/herbs
1 small bottle hot sauce
1 c sugar (which will go in kombucha)
1 1/3 cups buckwheat honey
Tea bags
Coffee (free office crap and 2lbs of decent beans bought for 10$ from the discount grocery store)
Kombucha (I havea mother and enough sugar to brew another batch this month)
Vinegar
Mustard
Salt
Arrowroot powder
Baking powder and soda
Ener-G egg replace (bought AGES ago)
Yeast
Cocoa powder
Green Chili powder
Camelina seeds (work like chia seeds)
Tuesday is a 2nd Harvest distribution day and if they have plenty, I'll head over. There is another one at the end of the month.
The only thing I'm really "low" on is veggies but since I have 3 kinds of seeds to sprout, even without 2nd Harvest, I'll be fine. The berries work great in rice puddings with camelina seeds. Makes a decent breakfast. They also work with a dollop of vinegar in the unflavored gelatin. It's not fabulous, but it's a good shot of protein and easy to make/store so I have a grab-n-go protein item.
I ate up my potatoes, onions and about half the veggies and all the canned fruit from the the 1 2nd harvest distribution I got in January. Also ate up the January bread that I charged to the gift card.
Very nice to have the hens putting out an egg or so a day. Getting brown ones that must be Gertrude as she is the youngest layer and lays brown. Have gotten 2 blue eggs which would be Pru. And a couple of white ones that are mostly likely Pearl. The only other white egg layer is Flora and she's nearly 5 years old probably. And a banty. The white eggs have been quite large and the banty eggs are a medium size. Flora is the last banty. One was taken, probably by the Alaskan bald eagle that is wintering on my property, a while back.
I'm enjoying going through my stash of food. Makes me bit a bit more creative with what I cook and more willing to try stuff like berries on pasta (which is delicious because all the ingredients are good and I'm not over complicating it.
Drinking up the really crap coffee from work is a challenge. It is truly awful and I smell like stale coffee. It might have to go on the garden. I hate to waste free food, but I think there is a reason it's been sitting around the office for a few years. It's sh!t. Was probably gross when it was fresh. Still, I want the container because it's a real can and will make a good chicken feed scoop. I'll dig deeper in the cupboard of abandoned things and see if there is different extremely stale office coffee.
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