Little by little...

We had some guests over for dinner on Easter Sunday. I made:

1. a ham -- bought at my local Sprouts. I bought the smallest one they had, but knew it was way too much for just 4 people. Rather than asking them to cut it down for me at the meat counter, I resolved to save the leftovers, which I did.  I put up 4 containers of ham slices (3 in the freezer and one in the fridge), plus used the ham bone to make a big pot of lentil & barley soup. I put 3 containers of that in the freezer and one in the fridge, too; 
2. mashed potatoes - the potatoes were given to me by Jim Meredith at the last Sonos rehearsal, who received a 50 lb bag from a man at his church. I used 5 of them and still have 5 left;
3. veggies - I used up a bunch of stuff from my last Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) basket, including carrots, mushrooms, red chard stems, kohlrabi, and some greens.

Today for dinner we had the refrigerated soup - just enough for 2 cups. Brian also finished the BBQ ribs he brought home from his farewell lunch at work last Thursday and I had a ham sandwich, using some ham slices from Sunday. 

This morning, neither of us felt like cooking, not even oatmeal, so we each had PB sandwiches (Brian had his with homemade jam, thanks to many wonderful friends with fruit trees who love to put up jam!). This finished the jar of PB, so Brian asked me, "Do you want to save this jar to store stuff in?" I replied, "Well, I'm trying to switch to glass rather than plastic...." and he said, "Yeah, ok, but this is here now." I agreed and so we did save it. 

It's all well and good to switch from plastic to glass, but it's ok to keep using the plastic you have (provided it's safe for storage and/or microwave re-heating) rather than throw it out. I have several large plastic containers from yogurt and even have some old metal coffee cans (they must be at least 15 years old, as they are from when my first husband got addicted to coffee -- neither Brian nor I drink the stuff) in which I store things.

Yesterday, Brian & I went on a couple of reconnaissance missions to check out stores that I heard had good bulk sections.  We went to Frazier Farms in Vista. It was ok. They had a bit better selection than the Sprouts here and their prices were about the same. If there was something I couldn't find at Sprouts, it would be fairly easy to go to FF and get it there. FF does have fresh bulk peanut butter and almond butter, as well as honey.

We also went to Winco up in Temecula with our friend Barbara. Winco has a HUGE bulk food section with a fair amount of organics (though not as much as FF or Sprouts). We bought some oatmeal there, plus wild rice, and some individual green tea bags (10 cents each!).  Their prices are pretty good there, but not good enough to make it worth the trek up there more than once every other month or so. Barbara goes to Temecula twice a week for work, and she said that if I need anything from Winco, she'd pick it up for me, so that's good to know.

I'm trying to cut back on my aspartame consumption, which has been linked with general health problems, including an inability to lose weight (ironic considering it's used in "diet" drinks). The trick is to find a source of caffeine that doesn't include sugar or an artificial sweetener. I don't like coffee or iced tea. :-( So last night, I used two of the green tea bags to make two quarts (2 quart-sized mason jars) of hot green tea. I let them cool down, then put "Re-Caps" on the jars & put them in the fridge. Today, instead of reaching for my usual Coke Zero, I had some cold green tea, sweetened with stevia.

Have you tried stevia yet? I apparently bought some a while ago at Trader Joe's as I had an unopened jar in the pantry. The container says that 1/3 teaspoon is equivalent to 1 teaspoon of sugar, but there are no carbs! I put in a little at a time until I had it as sweet as I wanted and it was great! I really recommend  it!  BTW, I had some Coke Zero later in the day & had a headache within about 15 minutes. Hmm....

Tomorrow, we plan to do an inventory of our pantry. I know there are lots of things in there that we no longer use and could be donated to Goodwill. I mean really, how many plastic refillable water bottles do 2 people need?? We'll also figure out what supplies we have and then cross-reference the inventory lists from the 2 freezers, do some meal planning, and then head over to Trader Joe's to stock up on what we need. We'll go to TJ's because we still have a few $100 gift cards - at least 2, possibly 3. We'll find out for sure how much we have the next time we go.

Before I go, I wanted to share a picture of our waste bins. The grey one is for landfill stuff, the blue one is for recycling, and the black one for yard waste. As I mentioned in a previous post, I usually empty the yard waste bin into the compost bin. We can generally go two or three weeks between emptying the landfill bin (and now, we'll try to go even longer!), but our recycle bin is usually full each week, especially with pop cans, beer & wine bottles, and magazines. We are letting magazine subscriptions expire, and are researching electronic versions for any that we want to keep, such as Brian's car mags. So, combined with trying to buy things in reusable or no packaging, I expect this amount to dwindle, too. 

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