Market & Kitchen, July 18

Rainclouds are gathering here now, but at least it was sunny this morning. Going to the farmers market is much more pleasant when it's not raining. It's been cool, too: I doubt it got above 23ºC here today. But that means I can cook & bake without heating up my apartment, so I'm happy.


Groceries this week started yesterday at Strictly Bulk with some almonds ($0.99), a bag of organic kamut (64 cents! May need to make this a staple, since I cooked some and tasted it and it's great), and 2L of milk ($5.78). They only had one of the 1%, so I'll make my yogurt with 2% this week. And some chocolate chips to satisfy a serious chocolate craving I was undergoing. Really people, it was a crisis situation. And walking past 3 or 4 chocolate shops on my way home (at least 2 of which were advertising sales) did not help in the least. The chocolate chips ($0.33) hit the spot though. I didn't eat them all.

I also stopped at Valumart for olive oil (1L $5.99), orange juice concentrate ($1.29 each, a staple for me), and soft goat cheese ($2.99).


At the farmers' market I bought redskinned new potatoes, some sort of elongated beets (I hunted around for the ones with the nicest tops), green&yellow beans (very fresh and sweet, they're delicious--and I don't even really like green beans that much), a cabbage and a horrible purchase of mulberries. Bland bland bland. And $5. Shoulda gone for the blueberries, but I wanted to try something new. Ah well, live and learn. Spent $19 total.

One last stop at the fruit & veg shop for bananas, onions, garlic and mushrooms. $3.93 there, which brings me to a total of $42.23 for the week. Technically under budget, but I wanted to see if I could only spend $175 on groceries for the month, which means I have $33.09 left. Doable, considering how much I have in my pantry & freezer, but I'm nearly out of bread flour and I wanted to get a bag of red fife flour which I estimate will run me ~$8. I'm also nearly out of peanut butter and tea supply's getting low. So we'll see.

I've already done a bunch of cooking for this week: I made vegetable stock, cooked up some cannellini beans, boiled the kamut, and baked oatmeal raisin muffins. I also cooked some caramelized onions, and they went into...bread pockety things. I also did some pizza ones with sauce, mozzarella cheese, and spinach. I guess those would be closer to pizza pockets. I thought about doing some with black beans, salsa, and cheddar cheese, but I decided to keep it to 2 kinds this time.

Yogurt is fermenting as we speak. I didn't use any powdered milk this time like I did last time; I'm interested in seeing what thickness it gets to. I might also leave it to ferment for 6 hours to see what happens. A third change: I didn't sterilize the jars before I started. Decided it was too much fuss. If my yogurt turns, that will be a lesson learned I guess.

I also did a load of laundry, washed the bathroom, and pulled up my plants the succumbed to the flies. (TODO: buy new herb plants) Pretty pooped.

Oh, yeah. The menu! Shuffled things around a bit last week so I could use up my vegetables. This week I'll be making:

• Pizza pockets, cabbage slaw.
  
• Kamut, cannellini bean and mushroom salad (inspired, and very roughly based on this salad from Cooking Light) - will probably add some goat cheese...
  
• Pasta with beet greens, cannellini beans, and goat cheese
• Smoked pork chop, sauteed cabbage, steamed beets, roasted garlic mashed potatoes
• spicy cabbage/black bean pancake with soy/ginger/lime/molasses dipping sauce
• potato pancakes (leftover mashed potatoes, egg, bit of flour) with beet/yogurt or beet/goat cheese sauce/salad/condiment.
  
• baked salmon with some sort of flavouring TBD, potatoes or rice...probably cabbage, maybe spinach from the freezer...whatever vegetables I have left.

Got yogurt and granola for breakfasts (I'll use up the mulberries here), but I might run out of granola. Might make more midweek, or just ration it out and restock on the weekend. Oatmeal when I feel like it. Fried eggs & leftover pancakes for Sunday breakfast. For lunches: leftovers and curry and soup from the freezer. Green beans, bananas, and oatmeal muffins for snacks.