After last weeks busy week, I looked forward to a lower key week this week. It was a nice week to catch up on some things.
We finally have made our homemade peanut butter. As we have tried to simplify our food and get rid of anything processed, peanut butter stayed as something that we bought. I had no excuse for not making it, I just didn’t.
After making peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the children with this, they absolutely love it.
It is very simple, I poured a container of unsalted peanuts into my food processor.
I then turned it on and let it go. At first, it just made finely granulated peanuts, but as time went on it looked like peanut butter.
I added 1 tsp of sea salt into the mix as it was mixing and it tastes wonderful. To me, it taste like eating a peanut butter cup because it has that “real” peanut taste. My children just think it taste like a real nut.
I was able to finish up my sauerkraut. Some jars finished after 5 days and then some lasted for about a week. I just scooped down into the middle of the jar and took out a fork full of kraut. When it tasted done, I put that jar into bags and placed into the freezer.
A few of my jars, I knew tasted badly. I let them sit and the taste got worse. I believe it was due to not having the sauerkraut completely covered with water thus allowing bad bacteria to grow.
But I am extremely happy of how the good ones did turn out. We served some with sausage this week and it was so good. I will definitely make more when we run out.
I also had purchased all of my apples last week and was glad that I could just leave them in the basement. I thought we would take a few bushels and make some sauce with them.
I was glad to have my children help me make it. It was easy to wake up and start some pots cooking in the morning and just let them simmer on low until we were able to make it into sauce.
We used Fuji apples this year and the sauce turned out with a brown tint. It tastes fine without sugar but it just doesn’t look as pretty. We put our sauce into plastic baggies and then freeze them. My children enjoy partially frozen sauce.
We have been being frugal with the amount of driving that we do. As I drive a 15 passenger van, it can cost us a lot to go to town more than once per week. This week I had to do some running in town so I planned on doing that and taking a trip with a friend to our local nature center.
We had a wonderful time walking through lots of beautiful trails throughout the woods and getting to learn things from the nature center building. A very good educational trip and the best part was it was FREE.
We continue to watch our lights and we haven’t had to use any heat yet. It has been very nice to enjoy a lower electric bill before those winter months come and the bills go up.
Any frugal accomplishments for you?
