So now I've expanded herbs. Two lemon thymes, an oregano, a golden sage and a purple sage, and a varigated sweet marjoram for the herb garden. A lemon verbena for my porch and one for my sisters porch. A curry plant for my porch. A honeydew melon sage in a hanging pot to go along with the hummingbird feeders- because they love the red blossoms and it's a tasty sage.
The mint border... LMAO. A couple years ago it was some chocolate mint for free from a neighbor, and a pineapple mint I purchased and moved out of the herb garden and into the mint border. Then my buddy mailed me ginger mint, banana mint, orange mint, and apple mint. Now I've picked up mojito mint, lemon mint, and Kentucky julip mint. Kind of makes me want to roll around like a cat in the stuff, heh. But also now that trouble hill that was full of crappy weeds, rocks, and almost impossible to do anything with including mowing will be a huge area of some of the most tasty scented stuff in the yard! Plus lots of good tasty stuff for cooking and teas. How nice is that?
The plants for friends and family are now hardening off nicely- and will be ready to go out in a week or two. I took the time to repot every single tomato plant. Basically popping the dirt out of the red solo cup, gently knocking off the bottom half to two thirds of the dirt, dropping the plant back into the cup, and refilling with the dirt I knocked off. This will stimulate the roots, make the plants way less leggy, and in general be an overall good thing.
Got the last of the pole beans in the ground. So now I have Eye of the Tiger along the string side of the dog run, Succotash along the link side- leaving spaces for where the white tomatoes will be getting tied up, and the three Mayflowers that sprouted got their own teepee down by the squash bed by the garlic. The Gold Nugget, Ronde de Nice, and Musquee de Provence squashes got planted in as well.
Today I direct seeded the Golden Wax, Lynx, and Masai beans into their beds- and the 5 other fresh bean seeds I started in TP tubes are starting to pop, so those will be ready to go into beds in the next week or two. That gives me time to see what popped for direct seeding, I may change my plans and plant in my tube plants into the beds depending on how the beds pop or not.
Found out the Menards has way better pricing on the fencing I want to make tomato cages with. Instead of 50 bucks for 5 foot tall 50 foot long, I can get 6 foot tall 50 foot long for just 54 bucks. An extra foot taller on the cage is a very good thing. And they have concrete reinforcement wire in 50 foot rolls for almost half the price that Home Depot did for if/when I want to make CRW cages.
And today was rainy.. but Hardings had some oober good deals, so we went shopping.
Buy 2, get 3 free- on bacon, lunch meats (ham and turkey), 2.5 pound bags of boneless chicken breasts, shredded cheese, center cut boneless pork chops, and bread. So for about 100 bucks, I got about 250+ bucks worth of groceries- thank the gods for a chest freezer! Geez, the chicken alone, 50 bucks worth of chicken for 20 bucks? And that will last us for a goodly while too, since we usually use up a 8 pound bag or so a month. And the lunchmeat, that shit is expensive! Now we got a goodly couple months worth of meat there too.
Of course, when the freezer gets stocked, other stuff must come out. Glad I did up one of those pork roasts recently, lol. We only ate about a third of it for dinner with it done up Asian pulled pork style, and yep, the rest of it got vacuum sealed up into 2 packages and into the freezer for later eating. But the pair of chickens I picked up for 88 cents a pounds a month or so ago came out, and are now defrosting- those will get done up in the large roaster/slow cooker in a couple days for a delish couple dinners and lunches worth of chicken as well as a gratuitous amount of chicken stock right in the roaster- plus the carcasses to make regular stock with. Something tells me a batch of chicken bacon ranch pasta salad is in the near future :)
And Meijer had baby protabellas on sale 10/10, 11th free. So of course we picked up 11 packages. Two are going into dinner tonight, six will get pickled up into fridge pickles tomorrow, and the last three will be made into a super tasty sounding soup by my sister in the next day or two.
In lunch news... I've discovered baby food in pouches. Yep, baby food for lunch. Sounds weird as hell, right? But there are seriously tasty combos of veggies and fruits- and it's just puree, no additives, no strange preservatives- folks want their babies to eat pure straight up. Which is kind of funny considering how much that changes to pretty much shit junk food once they are toddlers, ha. But one pouch is a half cup of puree, a full serving of fruits/veggies. And when I hit them on sale or clearance, I can get a pouch for 50-75 cents. Pair that with a hard boiled egg or two for 25 cents or less, and a cracker snack of various kinds for another quarter or so.. and I got a full blown full lunch for well under 2 bucks a day. And it's tasty as hell. I sometimes swap out the eggs for nuts- like this time I found 3.5 oz bags of peanuts in various flavors at Menards for 75 cents a bag- those will get split up into 3 portions each. The cracker snacks are the big variable. Sometimes it's triscuits, which is 9 servings per box at 2-2.50 a box, sometimes it's snack packs of cracker sandwiches with can cost 2-2.50 for 5-6 packages, or cookies which can be 1 dollar for 6 packages or today I picked one up that is 12 packages.
All of this is oober nice for being portable. I can easily eat this stuff while driving to work. Or in the case of some of the packaged stuff, I can put one in my pocket, and have a nice mid work snack with no muss for fuss. It don't sound like a lot of food, does it? But it is right in line with what one should eat for a lunch portion wise. A serving of protein, veggies, and breads/fiber.
I can hardly wait till the garden is producing to add fresh veggies to this mix :)
With fresh meat in the house, I'm making pork chops for dinner tonight... and it's getting about time for me to prep up taters to boil up for mashed taters... so off again, off again, jiggity jig.
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