Pigs: Skin and Bones

I'm going to have a hard time getting out of bed tomorrow.

We roasted a half-pig in the smokehouse for the Fourth of July, and the other half has been hanging ever since. Things have been busy this past week, and the second half had not been processed. Mr. Farmer just didn't have time, so the job fell to me.  

Men generally handle the skinning around here. They skin deer and pigs and sometimes various fowl, if they don't feel like dealing with feathers. We have a friend who can dress and skin a deer in under a half an hour. He can do it in twenty minutes if it is hung at the right height and his knives are sharp. I guess this is a skill that comes from practice, however. Today I learned that skinning is HARD WORK.

I've never skinned anything before, and skinning, like butchering, can't really be learned from books. Sure, the background helps, but you never really get it until someone puts a knife in your hand and says, "Go to it!" So I did. I put the half-pig on the counter and started trying to peel away the skin. The edges had sealed to the fat as they dried, and it was hard to get the angle right even to get it started. I had to turn it several times and contort my body in ways I didn't know I could just to get the knife in where I needed it. In short, it was a nightmare.

Nearly an hour later, the skin was off and I could get to butchering. I boned the entire thing, including a very tricky shoulder blade. Mr. Farmer said I did nice work, but it sure felt like a lot of exertion for only a few pounds of meat! My neck aches, my back is burning, and I feel like I could go to bed now!

Well, now it is time for a prophylactic dose of Aleve. Mr. Farmer is going to reward me by cooking the remaining fresh ham on the grill tomorrow. I can't wait!

Cooking: Concord Grape Syrup

The kids and I picked a lot of concord grapes this summer. Somehow they got loose in the woods and were growing up through some trees. Most summers you can smell sweet grapes, then wine, then vinegar on the breeze in late August. Most summers we smell them before we remember that they are even there, and by the time you smell them, it is too late.

Concord grapes are fairly acidic and very seedy, and therefore not great for snacking. In the past we have made wine out of them, but Mr. Farmer was not in the mood. Many years ago I made jam and jelly, but there was a recent coupon/sale combo that resulted in this:

There are 16 of These

So, having what appears to be YEARS worth of concord grape jam and jelly in the house, for thirty cents per two pound jar, which is less than what the glass alone would cost me if I made my own, it just didn't make sense to make jam. But I remembered my attempt at jelly when Young Master Farmer was just about two years old. I did something wrong, and the jelly didn't gel. The result, however, was a delicious syrup that we enjoyed on pancakes and waffles and French toast. Syrup made a lot of sense.

Concord grapes are very seedy. Those seeds are stuck really well to the flesh of the grape, and removing them is a chore. The seeds also have a fairly strong flavor, so you have to choose your battles when removing them. Cooking them will impart some of the seed flavor into your juice, but removing them raw is a lot of hard work. I chose to take the easy road this time and cooked the grapes whole (seeds, skins and all).

Of course if you want to cook a bunch of THESE...

You must first pick through a lot of THESE.

After picking through all the stems and leaves, I washed the grapes thoroughly and simmered them for a couple hours. As they cooked, I mashed them in the pot and stirred them so that the seeds broke loose. When they were done, I was finally appreciative of this weird seive that Mr. Farmer has always insisted was important:

This worked SO well!

I had to do almost NOTHING to get down to just seeds!

Look at all that beautiful juice!

I returned the juice to the pot and simmered some more, adding alternate cups of white sugar and corn syrup. I lost track of how many, and I think I burned my lips from all that acid, but it came out to be quite delicious. I poured it, still hot, into jelly jars and canning jars, wiped them up, and stuck them in the fridge. As expected, we ate it all so fast that there was no point in canning it properly.

Cooking: Super Hero Potato Salad

This is Super Hero Potato Salad because making it made me feel like a little bit of a hero(ine). You see, Waste is Gluttony's ugly twin brother (or at least that cousin that always ends up in the shadows in family photos), earning him a spot among the 7 Deadly Sins as far as I'm concerned. When I made this Potato and Egg Salad, I saved red potatoes that were starting to sprout, celery that I accidentally put on the top shelf of the refrigerator that partially froze, and the hard boiled eggs that didn't peel pretty enough to be pickled. Rescuing those perishables makes me their savior, right? Ok, so if you have little kids, feel free to tell them you are making "Super Hero Potato Salad" just to get them to try something new. I won't tell.



Family/Party Size (I always cook this way. Sorry.)

3 lbs red potatoes, cubed small & boiled (peel if you like- I'd rather not)
4-6 stalks celery, chopped
6-8 hard boiled eggs, chopped
fresh chives, snipped
1 cup mayonnaise (Wanna make your own? Here's how!)
1 tbs prepared mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp granulated garlic
1/4 tsp cayenne or hot paprika (skip this if you used spicy brown mustard)

Quick Method

Cube the potatoes small and boil in salted water until just soft and not too starchy.
Drain, then plunge into cold water. Drain again.
Toss together potatoes, celery, eggs, and chives.
Chill thoroughly.
Gently fold in mayo, mustard & seasonings.
Chill again or serve. Don't leave out more than an hour, unless you can sit the bowl in a bigger bowl full of ice. Mayo can be a breeding ground for bacteria that causes a large amount of food-borne illness.

Chives:
The first to show up to the party, and the last to leave!

Thrift: The Homemade Shampoo Experiment

Several months back, my dear friend Jenn posted a hilarious blog entry about getting sucked into purchasing an overpriced haircare product. At the time I seemed to be getting hit from all sides with haircare: she was bewailing how hers failed, and a number of other blogs I read were going on and on about homemade shampoo and conditioner. I'm a creature of Habit, but I am also a creature of Thrift. So when multiple blogs featuring women with many different hair types exclaimed that shampoo and conditioner could be replaced with water, vinegar, and baking soda, I just HAD to try it.

The recipe was simple:

Rinse out the last shampoo bottle you will ever buy. Add 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Fill the rest of the way with warm water. Shake. Rinse out the last conditioner bottle you will ever buy. Add 2 tablespoons of baking soda. Fill the rest of the way with warm water. Shake. Use as you would normally, skipping the lather step, of course.  That's Strike One for most people: You have to do a little work. It took about 2 minutes, so it wasn't really a negative for me.

The premise sounded too good to be true:

For pennies a month, your hair will be as clean and manageable as it was when you used commercial shampoo. There will be no chemicals on your hair or going into the ground. You will make less waste because you won't be throwing out bottles.

How it worked:

My hair was clean! I have fine, oily, poker straight, dark blonde/light brown hair. After using the homemade combo, my hair was as fluffy and oil-free as it is after using shampoo. I did not experience the static-cling fly aways that conditioner usually handles for me either. In short, it was pretty good! It did not leaving me smelling like vinegar at all. I did not tell Mr. Farmer that I was doing it, and he never knew until I told him.

Why I'm not still doing it:

I remember a very long lecture in high school about the American fascination with scented products. Some report or other determined that more than half of Americans choose their shampoo by scent alone. Another quarter or so choose them by other subjective factors, like how their hair feels while using it and after using it, the brand name sounding luxurious, and the like. In my case, however, it was largely a comfort issue.

It didn't take long for me to get used to squirting a runny liquid over my head instead of lathering. The results were good, and bubbles just end up in your eyes anyway. My problem was with Day Two, Three, Four, etc. You see, on the first day, when you make your products, you mix them with warm water, and go take a shower. After your shower, you stow them in the corner of your bathtub, or in my case, the floor behind the toilet (remember, I was trying to see if Mr. Farmer noticed a smell, so I didn't want to let on that I was doing it). Both the tub and the bathroom floor get cool when not in use. So, on the second day, I get into my hot, steamy shower, get wet and warm, then squirt a generous amount of freezing cold, vinegar-infused water over my head. EEK! Then I rinsed that out quickly, warmed up again, and had to repeat the process with freezing cold, baking soda-infused water.  The shock was terrible, and it made the chore of showering almost unbearable.

And did I mention:

...that for the past 17+ years, ever since Mr. Farmer introduced it to me, I have been using a shampoo and conditioner that top out at $1.29 a bottle? In fact, this stuff routinely goes on sale in my area for as low as $0.69 a bottle! I think it is OK to splurge on this less than two dollar a week luxury for the sake of not squirting ice-cold liquid over my head twice a day.

I can afford this small luxury.

Your mileage may vary, of course. But for me, it just isn't worth it. Of course, if I run out of shampoo, I am never out of luck!

Cooking: Scrapple

3  pounds processed pork parts
4  quarts broth
3  tbsp salt
4  tsp black pepper
2  tsp white pepper
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme
2  tsp rubbed sage
1  tsp ground savory
2  tsp granulated onion
3  tsp marjoram
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
3  cups corn meal
1  cup buckwheat flour


Making scrapple is actually more process than ingredients. The list of seasonings above, however, is the closest to the scrapple I remember in my youth. I am extremely proud of Mr. Farmer for working it out. The process usually takes us several days to complete.

The first step to making scrapple is the cooking of the first two ingredients: cooked pig parts and broth. Pork liver, tongue, etc. (basically anything you don't want to keep for the dogs - some people use snouts and such, but dogs LOVE those, so we don't) as well as bones with any meat left on them are boiled for hours and hours (sometimes we do this overnight) until fully cooked and meat is easily removed from the bones. The broth is strained off and put away to cool. The meat is sorted and separated to remove cartilage and excessive fat, then ground through a fine food mill.

When you're ready to cook, bring the broth and spices up to a near boil. Add the corn meal and the flour slowly. Once that is completely combined and smooth, add 3 pounds of the prepared meat. Simmer the scrapple low to medium low until the corn meal is soft and the flour is indistinguishable from the meat (they are about the same color, so we are talking about texture here). A slight increase in heat at the very end may be helpful. The mix is ready when a wooden or plastic spoon stands up on its own in the mixture.

Did you think I was kidding?

Once the mixture is fully cooked, pour into loaf pans and cool at least a full day (2 is better). Scrapple handles best when frozen and sliced. Fry it up - Thin and Crispy or Thick and Squishy - you decide.

Cooking: Homemade Mayo

We are a mayonnaise family. When I was a kid, I couldn't put my finger on what it was about my aunt's macaroni salad that made it so much better than my mother's until I found that she made it with mayo- not, well, you know.

I always knew mayo was made with eggs and oil, and we have had chickens for years now. I have been avoiding making my own, however, because I kept reading horror stories about stiff arms for days and mayo that wouldn't set or would separate within minutes of coming out of the fridge. In short, I was chicken. Then one magic day I found that you can make mayonnaise in the blender! It is super easy! Even with full-price (not on sale, no coupons) vegetable oil, making your own mayo is about a third of the price of buying it. I will soon start buying my oil by the case for even bigger savings.

Look how easy:


In a blender, thoroughly blend:
1 egg
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
dash hot paprika
1/4 c oil

With blender still running, remove cover and add:

1/2 c oil

Once that is completely combined add:

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Let it blend and then:

1/2 c oil

That's it! I find the easiest way to get it out of the blender is to take off the blades, put the bottom into a wide-mouthed jar, and push the mayo into the jar with a rubber spatula. Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

NOTES: Yes, you can double the recipe, if you have a good strong blender. It will almost fill a standard mayonnaise jar if you do. You may need to use your spatula to help keep the blades running effectively, however. If you have a modern, $29.95 model blender (like one of mine is), you should probably stick to the small batches.

Substitutions:

You can substitute vinegar for the lemon juice. I tried this and Mr. Farmer preferred the lemon.
You can use any red pepper of your choice for the paprika. Cayenne, Old Bay, etc. all work great.

Add-ins:

Make your own gourmet mayo! Add a teaspoon of garlic powder, dried dill, or horseradish at the beginning of the recipe.

Thrift: Best Coupon Haul So Far

You know how weight loss ads usually have small print at the bottom that read, "Results Not Typical- Your Results May Vary"? Those Extreme Couponing shows should have the same disclaimer. Getting the great deals like they show on TV takes a lot more time and work than they would like you to believe. Many steps in the process are left out. When they say, "So-And-So's six hour shopping trip netted her $625 worth of groceries for $18," you hear "$625" and "$18" but did you hear "six hour shopping trip?" I bet you missed that one, didn't you? I'm going to give you the details of my best coupon stock-up deal to date, the good and the bad.

The Deal:

• ShopRite had a special "Advantage" deal where the register printed out a $5 coupon and a free reusable shopping bag coupon for your next order for each 6 qualifying items you purchase.

The Steal:

• Many of the qualifying items were less than $1 each with the regular sale price or coupons. With the right combinations of items, you could end up getting a lot of things for free, nearly free, or tax only.
• That $5 coupon printed out as soon as the 6th item scanned, not at the end of the transaction, so it could be used on the same transaction!

The Catch:

• Many of the items had limits on the number you can purchase at the special price. That means that in order to stock up and make use of the deal multiple times, you need to make multiple trips or multiple orders (something they gloss over on TV). This takes time to do, and it can be embarrassing. 

The Plan:

• Qualifying toilet paper was 4/$3 (must buy 4). Qualifying tissues were $0.99.  A set of 4 rolls and 2 boxes would be $4.98 and the 6 items would return a $5 coupon and a free shopping bag.
• Qualifying pasta was 8/$10 (must buy 8). I had coupons for those which doubled to $1 off each box, making the price 8/$2, and yielding a $5 coupon and a free shopping bag. CHA-CHING!$!$!
• To keep within the limits, the TP/tissue combo could only be done twice per transaction. To be able to use the two $5 coupons on the same transaction, the total had to exceed $10 in merchandise (not tax), so I added a packet of Kool-Aid to get the total up.
• Lost yet? OK, here's the fun part...

The Haul:

Actually, This Isn't All of It

• 40 Rolls of Toilet Paper
• 20 boxes of Tissues
• 20 boxes of Pasta
• 11 Re-Usable Shopping Bags
• 4 packets of Kool-Aid
• 2 packs of Paper Napkins (regular price, non-qualifying... I just needed them)
• Retail Price (including sales, but not coupons): $75+
• TOTAL COST: $5.92

How My Results Varied:

• At some point during the scanning of my coupons, the coupon bin did not register one of the free shopping bag coupons. Having been distracted, I thought perhaps I had not placed it in the box, so I inserted another identical coupon in its place. In the end, only 9 coupons for shopping bags counted instead of 11. Loss: $1.98.
• This deal took 6 orders to complete. I spent about an hour and a half in the store between the 2 visits.
• I was so tired after this trip that I did NOT visit another store that had something else I needed on sale. I missed out on that deal because of it.
• The next day I went to a different store for items for dinner as well as a few things we had run out of. I spent $35 on 9 items.

So there you have it: Coupons in The Real World. Of course this is one example, and there are people who spend all their time doing this. It really did feel good to spend a nickel on each item, and to have the peace of mind to know that I won't have to buy them again for a while. It is work, however, and does not work every time without fail. I guess I won't be buying tissues or toilet paper for a while - unless they are on sale and I can stack that sale with a coupon! 

Thrift: Dumpster Diving

There was a time, not so long ago, when grocery store managers and employees happily set aside their spoiled baked goods and produce. They liked the idea that it didn't go to waste. They might have even been a little jealous because they didn't have animals of their own that they could give those scraps to. But when the rumor started going around that a certain Mom and Pop eatery was taking away the scraps and serving them to paying customers, our friendly green-grocers became less helpful. I cannot blame them for wanting to stay out of the scandal, gossips being the way that they are. So, once again, we are the victims of small-town boredom and small-mindedness.

So now we must dumpster dive. The grocery store managers and clerks tip us off to when the trash has gone out, and we help ourselves. The permission saves us from any legal difficulty we could face; the pigs get their goodies, and the store staff can avoid any drama. It sounds like a perfect arrangement except for one small issue: Mr. Farmer has a bee sting allergy.

Two times in less than two weeks he was stung by dumpster-loving buzzers.  The first was on Little Miss Farmer's birthday. He was stung on the eyelid, and he finished his chores before coming home. It was at least forty-five minutes before he finally got a Benadryl, and the swelling was pretty intense. He was in bed all of Miss Farmer's birthday and mine, and it was sad to see. The next sting was on his arm, and he got his medicine sooner, but he was still pretty uncomfortable because of it. Multiple stings could actually be dangerous for him, as I have seen in the past, and now I feel that I need to worry every time he announces that it is dumpster diving day.

They Pollinate the Cucumbers,
and They Make Mr. Farmer Swell Up

So, we take our chances. The extra food is a great treat for the pigs, and they love it. It saves us a few bucks on feed, which is starting to get pretty intense now that we have so many of them. The baby pigs are even eating the produce now. You can't beat free!

The Piglets Love the Watermelon!

Thrift: Freezing Sweet Bell Peppers

Did you know that bell peppers freeze very well? That time of year will be upon us soon, and I absolutely hate waste. This time the sweet peppers came from the local grocery store. They were past their peak (definition: half of them had actual mold on them), and the pigs didn't seem to care for them. So, I sorted through them, pulled out the ones that were in better shape, and prepared them for storage.

First I washed them whole and removed the stickers. Then I took off the tops and removed the seeds. I cut them all into tiny dices and mixed them together in a big bowl. Then I rinsed them again one last time and let them sit in the fridge for a few minutes in the colander to drain. I bagged them up in zipper bags and stacked them in the freezer. A couple of the bags I mixed chopped onion with the peppers.

Admittedly peppers do lose some of their snap when frozen, but they still work well in a lot of recipes. Bang the bag against the counter a few times and they break right up, making measuring easy, right from the freezer! Toss them, still frozen, with your warm pasta to help cool it quicker for macaroni or pasta salad (you didn't really think I only had one method for speed-cooling pasta, did you?). Toss them into your spaghetti sauce. Add them to your homemade salsa. Fry them up with sausage and serve over pasta.

Sausage, Peppers, and Onions

Whether your garden is overproducing, your animals are being picky eaters, or your brother-in-law scored yet another just-before-closing deal at the flea market, don't throw out those peppers! Freeze them!

Cooking: Making Scrapple- The Dirty Work

Waste Not - Want Not.

In case you didn't know, Scrapple is a kind of sausage that includes "everything but the squeal". This combination of flour, corn meal, broth, seasonings, and offal (organ meat and other parts generally discarded) is somewhat of a local delicacy, but it's one I grew up with and have been missing over the past few years. The bad news is that it takes quite a bit of good, old-fashioned, hard work to make.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of being a part of that process. Many pig parts had been boiling in a large stock pot on the stove for nearly a whole day. Once they were cool enough to touch, they had to be separated. I pulled on a pair of black rubber gloves and just dug into the pot with my hands. I used a big stainless steel bowl to hold the bones. I separated the meat into a scrapple pan, and the fat, skin, cartilage, and small bones into another. It was slimy, drippy, messy, dirty work- and I had not had my morning tea yet.

My Low-Tech Meat-Separating Station

When I was finished, I bagged up the clean meat and the fat/grizzle.  The bones went into a warm oven to roast before the final smoking for the dogs (ours and our neighbors'). Maybe, if I'm lucky, I won't have to do that again. Ick. 

Thrift: Pig Goodies

Pig feed is a significant expense. Our pigs' diets consist primarily of whole corn and ground corn feed. The feed is specially mixed for us and sold to us for bulk pricing, which gives us superior feed at half the price of the feed store. We are able to save even more on feed by supplementing with food scraps that would normally be waste. I call them treats or goodies.

We keep an empty coffee can on the kitchen counter for all non-meat kitchen scraps. Lettuce and cabbage hearts, coffee grounds, tomato and sweet pepper tops, bread ends, egg shells, and all manner of other goodies are put aside for pig consumption. Sometimes we mix them into the slop. Other times, we just give the treats separate from regular feed.

When we got our first pigs a few years back, our partner was a man who, like Mr. Farmer, longed for farm life in spite of living so close to town. He was a youth director for a large catholic church. That youth group had dinners nearly every weekend, and so nearly every Monday or Tuesday he would clean out the fridge. He brought bags of salad and veggies. He brought stale bread. Sometimes he even brought not-so-fresh fruit. The piggies were happy.

He has since moved on, but it didn't take long to find a new benefactor. Many of our neighbors despise waste, and one in particular knows someone who works at the local grocery store. Bakery goods like doughnuts and loaves of bread are hauled to my home instead of put in the dumpster. Fruits and vegetables that would normally rot in a landfill are instead heartily enjoyed by my happy hoard. We have even been given some vegan meat and cheese substitutes that were not purchased by their expiration dates. Such spoiled pigs!

As a rule of thumb, pigs do not seem to enjoy things that grow under ground. This surprised us, since they enjoy digging so much. Just the same, many potatoes, onions, and carrots (and their peelings) have been left to rot on the ground when offered. Those scraps end up in the mulch pile instead.

If Young Master Farmer were to caption this photo, he would call it,
"Two Black Pigs Nomming."
Om Nom Nom

Thrift: A Case of Green Beans

Someone had scribbled "2/16" on the side of this case of green beans. The actual date, however, was 2/20. I was going to need to act quickly.

I opened the crate of beans expecting the worst. They had been given to us to feed to the pigs, but I love green beans, so I was really hoping I could salvage some of them for human consumption. On first glance, they looked marginal: the color was not very bright, and they had small brown lines on them. I grabbed one and bit it. Much to my delight, it was sweet and still crunchy. One or two of them tasted a little starchy, but they were edible. I set to work almost immediately.

Some vegetables can be cleaned and frozen directly, but most- including green beans- need blanching first. I did not consider directly freezing them for even a moment. They were from an unknown source and in just barely usable condition. So I set my biggest stock pot on the stove to boil. I also prepared an ice water bath in a stainless steel bowl to stop the cooking once I took the beans out of the water.

While the water heated up, I cleaned the beans. I started just squatting in the kitchen with a pair of scissors and 2 bowls: a small one to catch the snipped off stems, and a large one to accept the beans. After 15 minutes or so, however, I realized that the process was a bit slower than I thought it was going to be. I was able to remove the stems from a large salad bowl's worth of beans in that time, but it was too much on my back. Plus, the dog kept sneaking up behind me and stealing beans out of the crate, one by one, while I worked! So I loaded a grocery bag full of beans, latched the crate tight, and moved the operation to the living room.

The living room setup was easier on my back, and I was better able to defend the beans from the dog, but I still ran out of steam before I made much of a dent in that crate. I blanched the whole, cleaned beans for a minute and a half per bowlful, then plunged them into the ice water bath. I had to add more ice to the bath a few times. Then I patted them dry with a clean towel and packed them into gallon-sized freezer bags.

Day Two was lost to sloth, unfortunately, as the couch was too comfy and the movie on TV too interesting, so Day Three was my last chance at salvaging some of the green beans. I put the water on to boil, set up the ice water bath, and set up shop at the coffee table again.  This time I snipped off both ends and cut each bean across the middle for smaller cut beans. It was slower work, since I had to pick around some moldy and soft beans, sorting out only the ones that were suitable for eating. It didn't take long before I gave up and started blanching and cooling and drying and packing into quart-sized freezer bags. With less than a third of the case processed, I had to relinquish my beloved green beans to the pig feed stash.

The Final Yield was 5 Gallon-Size and 2 Quart-Size Freezer Bags of Green Beans

Thrift: An Introduction to Food Preservation

Sooner or later, the matter of thrift was going to come up. My family isn't a wealthy, well-to-do bunch of hippies that is experimenting with a lifestyle just for our own amusement. Most of the things we do because we feel that we need to do them. We behave in ways that support our beliefs: family, community, hard work, faith. Thrifty living is one of those things.

**** History ****

My skills of food preservation are legendary. They started back in 1997. Young Master Farmer was just 2 years old, and I was staying at home raising him. We lived in an antique store in Maryland, which I minded while Mr. Farmer worked. With an average of 2-3 customers per week, I really spent most of my time chasing the toddler around once everything in the store had been arranged. Mr. Farmer, on the other hand was busy at work cooking and delivering meals to a string of non-profit daycare centers. Once again, he was my inspiration.

The non-profit status of the daycare system gave us access to a local food pantry, where marginal groceries could be obtained at an unbelievably low prices. Cereal was purchased by the pound (box weight included) for pennies. Produce was sold for $5 per item- as much as you can carry of that item. So about once a week Mr. Farmer would cook, load up the van, deliver the food, then go to the food pantry and fill up the van again.

Children are not as fond of fresh vegetables as they should be. So sometimes there would be far more than could be logically used, or the boss might veto a particular dish that Mr. Farmer had planned. In these scenarios, case after case of borderline-spoiled produce would arrive in my kitchen, and with a quick kiss Mr. Farmer was off and running again.

The first was eggplant. In spite of his assurances that the children would assume it was meat once it was fried and covered in sauce, the boss refused. So, I began breaking it down. I sorted out the completely spoiled eggplants and put them aside. I cubed the partially spoiled and froze the cubes for use later in veggie sauce and Ratatouille. And the best eggplants were sliced thin and frozen or breaded, fried, and frozen for later use in Eggplant Parmesan. The tops and spoiled parts were put aside and delivered the following day to a local farm animal rescue where a very greedy pig was waiting. This process continued for months until I had preserved nearly every type of vegetable and fruit imaginable.

Leaving Maryland did not mean the end of my preserving career. Shortly after we settled in the mountains in PA, Mr. Farmer's brother came to live with us for a while after the passing of his boss/landlord of the previous 24 years. He came to be employed across the street from a large flea market, and frequently worked on Sunday. So nearly every Sunday, all season long, he would bring home whatever produce the vendors had not sold and were ready to sell at a loss. One day he brought 2 flats of strawberries, and we made Strawberry Pie, Strawberry Jam, and Frozen Strawberry Topping. A tall box of sweet red peppers was purchased for $2; the sliced/diced and frozen peppers from that box lasted a year! Three flats of cucumbers yielded gallon after gallon of every kind of pickles imaginable- and my new found love for pickling anything.   All at no cost to me, and very little cost to my brother-in-law.

Yes, there is a trade off of time for money when reclaiming nearly-spoiled and cast-off food. I invested in a mandolin slicer to save my poor fingers from the many knife blisters I have endured. Many a Sunday afternoon has been spent cooking and processing rather than relaxing. But the rewards are immeasurable: a homemade product, a lack of waste, and a savings of cash!

Preview: My Next Preservation Project
Details Soon!