Food Spendin' This Month

Pay day 15 Oct. $100 Withdrawn for local farmer's market $500 set aside for Misc groceries.
From the $100
$20 for 25lbs of beets to store over winter
$26 for 50lbs of carrots to store over winter
$1.30 for lettuce
$4.05 for sweet peppers
$5.50 for 10lbs of onions to store over winter
$15 for a calendar
$20 cheat lunch at Tim Horton's


From the $500
$3.98 Hellmanns light
$3.96 5lbs Mandarin's
$13.95 Tenderloin
$13.50 Whole Fryer Chicken
$13.34 Whole Fryer Chicken
$3.66 Ground Chicken
$3.33 Ground Chicken
$9.89 Side Ribs
$10.35 Side Ribs
$10.06 Ham
$8.66 Basa Fillets
$5.49 x 5 Bacon Schnieder's Natural
$19.99 Tigerprawns
$5.49 x 4 Free Range Eggs
$4.99 5lbs apples
$4.99 2L carton of coconut milk
$7.99 Personal hygiene item
$3.49 Dried pineapple
$4.99 Dried cranberries 400g
$4.00/3 Cans of Pineapple
$6.00/4 Cans of flavored tuna
$1.49 x 2 Cans of sardines in mustard
$2.00 5 kiwis
$4.99 5lbs apples
$3.61 1kg broccoli
$5.30 1.3kg yellow peppers
$1.23 .280kg lemons
$4.99 Apple juice +.35 deposit and environmental fee
$2.33 1.5kg green cabbage
$14.31 0.4kg Pecan halves
$4.00 2.3kg bananas
$2.18 1.3kg bananas
$1.73 0.8kg cauliflower
$4.39 1kg peaches
$2.79 1.3kg cauliflower
$2.10 1kg celery
$2.92 1.3kg red cabbage
$1.50 avocados
$1.54 0.35kg fresh ginger root
$.98 for tax

Total of 258.77 shopping at Quality Foods

We will continue to write a complete list of what we bought and where, at a later date. That's all for now!

Jan-2012... this got complicated and we were unable to finish this post.  We will retry at a later date.

For sale! This one isn't food.....

Name a price and we'll talk about colours and personalizing.  Just so you know, I prefer the rough look and don't have the skills or the desire to make these look store bought.  I can do the tie to look nicer for sure though, this was Micah's helping hand and what he wanted on his.

Being Realistic

So for the menu today....

Breakfast - a mix of nuts and seeds and dried fruit and some canned cherries to put on top.

Lunch will be leftovers from yesterday - Shepherd's pie, this is not paleo, it was a frozen dinner given as a gift when baby number 4 was born.  These are very helpful seeing as all days don't work out according to plan.  Again, I'm trying to be realistic rather than an extremist.  However that said, shepherd's pie could easily be made paleo.  Check this recipe out.  There will likely be debate on the peas and beans though.

Supper - roast with some sort of veg.  I have some yams in the pantry closet, it sounds like a match made in heaven to me. 

Scallops

Another recipe from everydaypaleo.com.  I highly recommend that you go and pick up this book or order from amazon.  This was a hit!

I like to call this one, who needs veggies?

mmmm, ribs!
If you are interested, please comment on the picture and I can add the recipe. 
Until then, you can drool over the pictures.

Canned Pears

Trapper, our new friend gave us a great gift on our front step the other day! 

PEARS!!!!  

 (and some apples)

We canned them and oh my, they are delicious!  Easy too.  

We just put sliced, cored pears into jars and added apple juice.  

Attempted to keep the little ones content... (it mostly worked)

No refined sugar with all the yumminess, maybe more!  Try it and see!

I'll try to get a picture of a finished can up soon.

Canned Turkey Soup

So Thanksgiving is over.  The turkey is ready to be made into soup.  YUM!  So let's get on with it shall we.
Two turkeys (one left over from a few days ago) are added into the pot, along with some loveage, thyme, peppercorns, and salt.  I let it boil for about 2 hours then we came up with this.

Next part is the greasy part, straining and separating the turkey from the bones.

I've opted to freeze at this point.  Anthony is away in Arizona for a couple of days so I'll finish it with him when he gets back and we have more time.

.....more to come.

Ketchup

Slowly simmer a pot of roughly cut tomatoes, skin, seeds, and all, until they break down.  Pass them through a food mill into another pot, add a cup of vinegar, a cup of sugar, a little ground clove, salt, and grated onion.  All this is to taste.  Add herbs, too, if you like, but the effect should not be tomato sauce-like, so go light on the oregano and basil.  Cook this down on the lowest possible  heat as long as you can until thick.  It's ketchup!
This is a recipe from the book called The Lost Art of Real Cooking by Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger.  You can find it for sale here.

I'm going to try to paleo-fy this recipe and make it taste just as great.  Notice there are no measurements... We'll see how this goes!
Ok, so far, 20 lbs of tomatoes are cut and in a pot.  I simmered until broken down. 

Now to throw through the food processor (I don't have a food mill)

Now to add honey, grated onion, salt, ground cloves, vinegar...

I'm doing this for the first time so I'm just going to do a little at a time until I get the right flavor... so here we go.
I put in 2 cups honey, 2 grated onions, 2 Tbsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, and 2 cups vinegar.

Looks like this is going into round two.  Maybe I'm over-cautious but the ketchup is still simmering and it has been nearly 12 hours since I started preparing this.  Looks like I'll finish this up tomorrow.

Day 2.  So I woke up went to gymnastics, ate lunch, played outside... now back to the ketchup.  I simmered the ketchup while we were doing everything but sleeping and gymnastics.  It looks good now.

I'm ready to can.
Sterilize jars for 10 minutes.

Add to jars.

Now according to my book, boil for 15 mins.  Done!

For Tuesday night Bible study?

http://everydaypaleo.com/2011/07/25/decadent-fruit-dip

I opted to use this as part of lunch today instead.. YUM!

October 10, 2011

Typing with one hand right now so this will be short. 
What's on my brain?  Supper will be ribs with yam fries I think, and breakfast is on the go.  Frittata is what we are going to have.  I'll let you know later about how it went over.  Lunch will be leftovers from Thanksgiving, YUM!

October 7, 2011

Breakfast - Paleo No-Oatmeal from Cavemanstrong
Lunch - Leftovers/ boiled eggs
Supper - Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Sauce over mashed Cauliflower
Supper is from the cookbook Everyday Paleo, a cookbook that in my opinion everyone should have on their shelves, paleo or not!  YUM!!  This recipe for supper tonight is one we haven't tried, I'll let you know how it goes.

Learning how to afford and eat paleo as a family - A mum's post

So Anthony had his one year anniversary this summer that just passed.  We have been moving towards eating Paleo as a family.  This has been harder for me.  Being pregnant I found it hard to keep myself from just going to bread and peanut butter and sometimes jam.  Along with other things that are sweet to the palate, many other things. 
Right now I still haven't done much reading on the subject.  I have been busy with parenting books, Bible studies and canning.... lots of canning!  I'm both excited and scared though to see that I feel better when I'm eating more along the Paleo way.  I've noticed myself feeling sick when I eat potatoes and sometimes bread.  I'm excited because I know that I'm feeling better when I eat healthier, but scared because I don't want to seem ungrateful if offered food by a generous friend.  It's hard to say no for me.
The other challenge is our new baby.  We now have a 3, 2, and 1 year old and a 2 month old.  It ends up that someone gets a bee sting while I'm breastfeeding and simultaneously someone has accidentally tied themselves to the neighbors slide with their skipping rope, all while I'm thinking.... "What's for supper?"  Paleo does not offer a myriad of "quick meals"  most are quick if planned ahead but not on a whim.  So to make life a bit easier I've been planning out our weeks.