Ongoing Challenge #5 Moey -- Get Back On the Horse

Oh, I did have a week last week! It was just a sucky week, won't go into too many of the details, but the long and short of it is that I flunked on ALL the goals last week. So my new ongoing challenge to add today is, Get Back On the Horse.

Something is better than nothing, right? Keep on keeping on, and don't give up.

A brief update is that the garden is producing nicely for us at the moment in spite of borers and raccoons. My potato plants have made an appearance, so I need to learn to care for them so they will produce potatoes, and hope that it doesn't get too hot for them. It is definitely a much warmer summer than it was last summer, which is good in a way, because the heat is reducing the fungal problems we had last year (which killed the tomatoes and would affect my little potato plants too.)

I have borrowed more interesting books from the library, some of which I would like to share in a future post. Seems like the library is getting in JUST the books I am wanting to read lately, so I am sure to check the "New Books" section every time I go. I can not keep up with all the reading I am wanting to do.

As far as the Dollar-a-Day challenge, due to a few extenuating circumstances (needing some extra TLC in the form of ginger ale and sprite and easy-to-digest foods,) plus a general meltdown of the system, I have spent about twice what I had budgeted for on groceries over this past week. It is still a good total, but I can do better if I refocus.

I plan to go through the stock and pull together as many recipes as I can, using what we have on hand and utilizing what is currently ready for harvest. I really don't want to waste anything, because it does make a huge difference in a small budget. When I wasn't watching the budget so closely, it didn't really matter that much.

Ongoing Challenge #4 Moey -- 30 Minutes in the Garden

One thing I am trying to accomplish with these Ongoing Challenges, is to make a habit out of doing *something.* Sometimes I let my expectations and dreams get too big for what I can reasonably expect from my time and energy in this stage of my life. So then, I feel defeated and don't even try. The garden is one area where I tend to do this. I have lots of wants and wishes for the garden, but nowhere near enough time to accomplish what I want to out there. But I thought it would be a good idea to see what can be accomplished in the time that I do have, maybe half-an-hour a day, and why not see what happens?

So this goes on my Ongoing Challenge list too -- 30 Minutes in the Garden, Daily.

In our vegetable garden, we currently are growing lettuce, carrots, beets, onions, yellow squash, cucumber, big tomatoes, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, capsicum and hot peppers. Everything is doing fairly well at the moment although the tomatoes are suffering a little from the humidity and fungal growth -- which reminds me, today I saw toadstools growing in the squash plants, and now I am wondering if the squash will be safe to eat...hmmmm...the humidity is killer here!

Anyway, so I have been getting into the garden for my 30 minutes -- I try to do it early before it gets so darn hot! and I have been able to make some good observations (like the fact that we have squash vine borers again, and the lettuce has bolted) and do a couple of necessary things like pull up the bolted lettuce (saved a couple good ones for seed, though) and harvest the ripe vegies, and whatever.

Last week, when I had decided that I would do my utmost not to waste another bite of food, I went shopping in the pantry for potatoes -- had a little 5lb bag that had not been opened yet, but when I went to get out the potatoes, they were all wrinkly and starting to mold and sprout. There was only one good one in the batch. So, (uncharacteristically, and only because I had made it a challenge,) I cut up a couple of the ones least moldy and yet sprouty, and dug up a little patch to plant them in. My oldest son helped me plant the potato pieces, and so far there has been no sign of life.

So today I dug one up a little bit, and could see that it is sprouting some little leaves down there in the soil. Life!

I went and looked up what I should have done to plant potatoes (soak in salt water, plant in spring because they don't like hot weather, etc.) and it wasn't very encouraging...still, it didn't cost me anything but 20 minutes of cutting, digging and planting, and if I get a new batch of potatoes out of something I was going to throw away, I will be very happy. :-)

Ongoing Challenge #2 Moey -- Don't Waste

This walks hand-in-hand with what Deb posted earlier. What she was talking about is a little more pro-active than what I am talking about. At this point in my household, I need to get control over the wastage of stuff -- food, materials, time, talents.

I have read many good books during the course of my married life, about this, but probably the stand-out resource, to me, is that well-known collection by Amy Dacyczyn, The Tightwad Gazette.

This is the book that taught me how to turn leftover bits of foody everything into muffins, casseroles, soups, quiches; how to make almost everything from almost anything; how not to be stuff-proud but money-poor; and most importantly, WHY I would want to!

The fact that the author had both a small income and a large family (six children,like Deb and me), makes her ideas both credible and attainable.

I'll let all the single ladies keep Oprah and Cheryl Mendelson, give me $15 worth of Amy any day.

Now, here is the small difficulty: the book (as a series of newsletters) was compiled in the 90's, in the USA, and so is both somewhat outdated and somewhat USA-biased in its ideas, materials available and advice. (That is one of the reasons I think Deb's input is so valuable as an Aussie.) So in our lives, I hope that we can continue to think of creative ways to use what we have, and not to waste.

I just love that challenge.