How Frugal Am I?

Pretty damn frugal. One of my pet peeves is how wasteful plastic bags are. Not that I'm particularly "green". I actually find the over use and commercialization of that term rather nauseating. I absolutely positively cannot stand waste. If it has value don't chuck it into the landfill. Which brings me back to plastic bags. Plastic grocery bags, if left unchecked, will literally take over your home. I try to be good and take one of my many reusable shopping totes on my retail expeditions. However, being the forgetful sort, I invariable end up with plastic shopping bags laying around. What do I then to with those bags? They are handy for lining small trash cans, like those under the bathroom counter. Use them doubled, as they seem to be getting thinner (and thinner) and are usually riddled with holes. Only the brave (or stupid) would attempt to put liquid waste in them. Another handy use I find for them is padding items to be shipped. (Yes, I also save all my smaller boxes for mailing in). That takes care of plastic shopping bags, but what about all those zip-lock food storage bags? First of all, I try to use as few of them as possible. I am very partial to the glasslock storage set I found at Costco. But sometimes you just need a zip lock bag, like for freezing bread in small portions. Home baked bread has no preservatives and will tend to mold if not eaten in a timely fashion. I only buy good quality heavy duty freezer bags. And, as long as they have not held meat or fat, I wash and reuse them.  Yesterday was "bag washing" day.

The bags are scrubbed in hot soapy water, rinsed thoroughly and then given a sanitizing bleach water soak. In good weather they are hung on my clothesline but during the winter they are hung on one of my Ikea folding clothes racks and left to dry in the brewing room. That is the warmest room in the house because that is where our libations ferment.

Spaghetti Sauce Time

The tomatoes just keep on coming. I can't believe they are finally getting ripe. It's almost Halloween. Oh well. We'll take 'em when we get 'em. I've been working on a spaghetti sauce recipe. This last batch turned out wonderful. This recipe may be "the one".


I got these 4 jars, plus a Pyrex bowl full (that I'll eat tomorrow night). Why aren't the jars full? I am going to store these in the freezer and the contents need lots of room to expand. You don't want glass jars rupturing in the freezer. That would be a nasty mess to clean up. I would much prefer to water bath can the sauce, but I have the wrong type of stove (glass top). Freezing will have to do. I started the sauce process Tuesday night, after work. I got Gladys all set up with her strainer attachment and began blanching and peeling the tomatoes.


I have to say I was disappointed in the KitchenAid strainer. If I wanted "tomato juice" it would be fine. But it was taking out most of the tomato along with the seeds. I quickly abandoned that idea and went back to chopping the tomatoes in the food processor (R2D2). I don't mind seeds in my sauce. This spaghetti sauce is easy to make using your slow cooker. It needs to be the large size.

Roxi's Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce
10 cups chopped fresh tomatoes, skins removed
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 Tbs. olive oil
2 cans tomato paste
2 Tbs. dried basil
2 Tbs. dried parsley
1 Tbs. dried oregano
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 Tbs. salt (or to taste)
1 tsp. pepper

Place tomatoes in a large crock pot. Saute onions, pepper, and garlic in olive oil. Add to pot. Add remaining ingredients. Stir well. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours to allow flavors to meld. Crack the lid, by setting it slightly to the side, to allow moisture to escape and cook on LOW another 4 hours. Freeze or can.

I was able to use my home grown basil and parsley in the sauce. I am getting quite a bit of use out of my dehydrator. Here is the parsley. This is from 2 plants. I started with 4 racks full. Then I condensed it down to one rack. Here it is when completely dry.


I then removed the leaves from the stems and crushed up the leaves before storing them in these handy jars which I'd re purposed. They used to hold Japanese "sprinkles". The kind you put on rice.

Another Step Towards Giving Up Plastic

I have way too much plastic in my kitchen. And not all of it is useful. I have a bunch of those Glad type storage containers. The kind you buy at the grocery store to put leftovers in. Often I will cook a large batch of soup or a casserole, and freeze the leftovers to have in my lunch. But many times the plastic containers don't hold up well. I've had them crack open and waste whatever was in them. Another problem is that you really shouldn't heat food up in the microwave when it's in plastic. I know we've all done it, but we shouldn't. Plastic also absorbs oils. You can never get it really clean. It's OK for storing dry goods, but glass is much better for storing most food. Today I visited Costco, to stock up on all my basics, like butter, flour, sugar, etc...and look what I found. An 18 piece set of Snapware Glasslock storage containers, for $29.99. You can see that they usually sell for quite a bit more. You can freeze in them and also microwave in them (minus the lids). The only drawback is you cannot use them in the oven, like you can with Pyrex. I'm so happy, I just Freecycled all my old plastic containers. Well, not all of them. Hubby wanted to keep a few for sandwiches.

Dehydrating. The "Best" Way To Store Food?

I stumbled across this series of videos, from Dehydrate2Store.com, the other day. I recently purchased an American Harvest FD-80 to play with and wanted some guidance on how to best prepare foods for drying. I got WAY more information than I ever could have hoped. This lady has got to be the Queen of Dehydrating. After watching her series of 4 videos I was ready to purchase a better dehydrator as well as a vacuum sealer and food slicer. I believe dehydrating is the best way to store food for the long term. This is something I will be exploring in the very near future, but I wanted to give all of you a heads up as to where to find this information. Why does dehydrating appeal to me? It is much easier than canning, takes up a LOT less space, weighs less, and can store your food indefinitely. Take a little time to watch her videos and let me know if you agree. I have a link to her web site/blog on my sidebar. She has much more information and many more videos there. Happy dehydrating!