Groceries and Gardens and GIFs

We've finally gotten into a smooth rhythm when it comes to grocery shopping. We try to keep our weekly grocery bill under 35 a week, though that's been a recent achievement. Obviously, it was much easier to keep it low when we lived in the south.

As every Muppet knows, shopping around is the best way to ensure the best prices on food. This is also a way to murder joy.

We have two shops relatively close to us: Stop and Shop and Save-A-Lot. Save-A-Lot is nationwide, I believe, so you probably have seen their empty parking lots as you drive by.

Stop and Shop is a relatively expensive and very conveniently located. I track prices there and can occasionally find pretty good deals. They have a great seafood area, like fresh cod for 2.99 a pound good*, but we don't do a whole lot of shopping there. That leaves, well, you know.

It's not as bad as you might think**.

It's a pretty convenient bus ride away and we buy almost all of our staples from Save-A-Lot. A local bakery sells its day old bread there for 99 cents a loaf. We usually pick up two loaves for the week. Cheese, peanut butter, tomato sauce, eggs… Stop and Shop's rock-bottom sale price is the average price at Save-A-Lot.

But yeah. That place is the Daytona Beach of beaches.

I miss Kroger. I could get free items regularly there. I still have a mini stockpile of health and beauty*** products from my time near a Kroger. This was facilitated by double coupons, owning a car and better deals. I used to wonder about people who chose to shop exclusively at heavy discounters (which is what Save-A-Lot is) instead of just utilizing coupons at big retailers; I see now why people choose to shop this way. It's just easier somehow.

Another thing that factors into our grocery shopping is the fact that we don't have a whole lot of room for convenience purchases anymore. Until I can find a grocery cart abandoned by somebody's grandma on the side of the road, we're hauling it in backpacks. We've just resorted to eliminating boxed foods from our grocery list. It's not always easy or fun. If we want swiss cake rolls or pizza or mac and cheese*** then we make it from scratch. I mean, I don't make the mozzarella or cheddar. That would be obnoxious.

And we don't buy organic, usually****.

So our garden. It's a thing that exists now.

xxOrGAnICxx

I purchased seeds about a month ago from Walgreens when they were running a 5 packets for 1.00 thing. They didn't have a huge selection (an alarming number of sunflower varieties, though) so I just got what I thought we would like: tomatoes, squash (of the hott summer persuasion), cucumbers, lettuce and peppers.

I've already been growing some parsley and I finally planted this seed paper thing I found in my backpack. I don't really feel like explaining the whole story, so just go with it.

I had 2 little terracotta pots that used to hold basil and thyme. As peppers are supposed to be very persnickety I put them in there. I made additional seed planters from newspaper. This way when I plant them I won't have to remove them from their home-- the newspaper eventually dissolves. Or so I'm told.

I made them by wrapping newspaper around a cup and then folding the bottoms under. The soil keeps them intact, but I still wrapped them in some jute string that I had leftover from the rug. The markers are from a fake credit card I was sent today.

I'm also trying to grow celery from an end-- it's something that is apparently pretty well known in gardening circles. Just chop the end off the celery (the part you would normally throw out), place it in water and plant it when it spouts. I just started it last night, so we'll see.

Overall, I think the highlight of my day was when I opened the bag of soil and involuntarily said "agg! So dirty!" out loud to myself. So there's that.

*Those glassy fish eyes staring at me. Can't do it.
**If you're thinking it's the Myrtle Beach of beaches.
***Dream meal
****I think all the pesticides make me a better person.

Weak Coffee and Gardening.

I actually like weak coffee, so all of those above things are fun.

Before we moved from the south, neither of us had a strong desire to drink coffee. Geord likes very strong coffee (i.e. chickory) and will drink it if we're sitting at a Cracker Barrel, but I've always been an orange juice or soda or chocolate milk person*.

Mostly a soda person. A Diet Mountain Dew kind of person.

This is no big secret of mine, and those that know me well could tell you that about me. Maybe that's all they could tell you about me**, but it's a very well known fact.

Boston doesn't really care for DMD. They sell it in overpriced grocery stores but not in vending machines or hotdog stands.

And when we realized we had to hoof it back with this cancer causing drink strapped to our backs, I started to wonder if it was all worth it. -dramatic pause-

Shakespeare gotta get her caffeine.

My mother is a confessed coffee addict, as is the older of my two younger brothers and the girlfriend of said brother. When my mom came up to visit for the first time, she gamely brought instant coffee-- this is something she hates. She'll drink it-- oh yes, she'll drink it-- but she's a traditional coffee drinker at heart.

She was staying for 8 days, and my tender heart couldn't stand to see her mix one more powder into her mug***. The day she arrived, I ordered a 13$ french press from Amazon. I anticipated its continued use during my mom's stay and when my brother comes up to visit.

This little guy makes about 2 cups and has a convenient hook for us to hang him when he's done. While my mom was here it definitely served it's purpose (read: he was in constant use-- we're talking 4-5 times a day). When my mom left, we washed him out and hung him up.

Occasionally we would get him down and whip up a couple of cups, but it was a rarity. As soon as the weather changed, we changed. Suddenly we're drinking coffee like 4 times a week (compared to the everytime everyday schedule I'm on with DMD).

One of the most common money saving tips that makes it to all those helpful top ten lists is to a.) not buy coffee out and b.) reuse your grounds.

As I've never bought a coffee out (once, okay) the first part doesn't really apply to me****. The second part now does.

I don't wholly reuse them, in that I don't use the same exact grounds, no more no less, another time. I add half the amount of fresh grounds before I make a new batch and store the french press in the fridge with the grounds inside. Every few days we clean it out. I guess this stretches our coffee, but I've never had any coffee experiences to compare this with. We're still on the same Starbucks blend coffee we got when my mom was here (2 months ago).

Also, what I said about never wholly reusing them is not entirely true: I accidentally just did that. So weak.

While I'm finishing up this weak cup, I look over and see a seed packet on our counter. We're planning on starting a garden this late winter/spring. We don't have excellent prices on produce-- in fact, things that are seasonal, like carrots and cabbage, are ridiculously expensive at our local grocery stores. We're limited in our store choices (after all, we're limited in our money right now), so we've decided to grow some of our own. Hopefully we'll have enough to feed ourselves, though we know we'll have access to a local farmer's market in the summer that has pretty good prices*****.

We're planning on growing tomatoes, arugula, zucchini and squash. These things are supposed to be pretty low maintenance and grow well in containers.

After seeing a post on growing celery from the chopped off ends, I may do that too. I'm not sure-- I helped out with a pretty large garden when I was young and I really didn't like it. Now I'm all excited. Hm. This may not last.

Anyways, my constant goal is to keep our grocery budget for two people under 100 a month. I haven't been able to do that (well, this week being the exception) since we got here. I think a garden will be the just the thing.

*I'm also other kinds of people. I'm a Abraham Lincoln person. Also a basketball and sleeping-in person.
**They might know about my obsession with videos featuring cats, but I don't know. I don't want to speak for them.
***She was on like her eighth one. Also I tried it.
****I regret it to this day.
*****We only got to go on the very last day. We were exploring our neighborhood and stumbled on it. They gave us mounds of leftover produce for 5$.

New Year, Rearranged Office Space

A new year has begun and I've already consumed a box of Cheez-Its and rearranged some office furniture. It's as fun as you think it is.

Anyways, the true reason for rearranging everything is that I am clearing out our impossibly small office space to make a storage room and pantry area. I've been wanting to do this for a while, because our kitchen is too small to accommodate all the boxes of macaroni and cheese I want to buy. Or flour and canned goods.

Up to this point, I haven't really had enough food to warrant this type of change. We don't have a car and we don't live very close to any grocery stores. This necessitates a pretty lengthy walk with backpacks and cloth bags full of staples every week. It's pretty tiresome. Though I must say, the new backpack given to us by my younger brother is definitely helpful. We actually put off buying one until Christmas because we knew we could get it for free-- now it's hard to see how we made it without it.

We moved a larger bookcase in the room to hold extra food, and this room will also serve to hold our recyclables (and deposit bottles) along with our seed planters and compost...jar? I've found a few cool ones online that have charcoal filters to keep the smell down. I'm not so worried about that. I think, after reading my 61st article about composting last night, that I'll be able to do it correctly. WITH WORMS*.

We've got several projects in the works right now, but most of them center on getting Skyrim for keepsies. Other projects are things like making money and gardening, which are boring and frugal.

*or slugs? Which is cheaper?