Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Ok, on Monday I did my grocery shopping trip.  Now since I was shopping 30 minutes away and going to 4 stores this was a planned excursion.  Gas is too expensive for me to not plot trips.  So off we went to Aldi's, Sam's Club, Earth Fare and Publix.

Aldi's netted me grounded turkey, BLSL chicken breast, strawberries and mangoes - all at fabulous prices.  Sam's Club provided vinegar, baking powder, frozen blueberries, and 50 lbs of onions.
Earth Fare was the source for safe food coloring for us, as well as a couple of bags of gluten free flour, safe tortilla chips, puffed sorghum and puffed rice.
And last, but definitely not least, was Publix with a fabulous sale on Meow Mix that netted me another 3 or 4 month supply for the cats.

Yesterday the chicken was repackaged, vacsealed and frozen.  And the cat food was repacked into bottles and buckets.  That was all I got to do in regards to food stuff yesterday.  I did get a lot of cleaning around the house done since the weather didn't allow for much outside time.

So the plan for today was to make strawberry jam and get the mangoes into the dehydrator, along with creating a new garden bed for the tomatoes.  But this plan required several other projects to start with.  First for me to get all the miscellaneous tools and items that had accumulated around the dehydrator put back where they belong.  Second for the kitchen to get a top to bottom scrubbing because the strawberry jams are going for sale at the farmer's market.  And I wanted to make absolutely sure that there was nil chance of any type of contamination.  I have some high quality standards.

Well waking up this morning put a nix on the kitchen scrubbing for today.  My spine is screaming and all my lower back muscles are cramping - not good conditions for going up and down.  So the plan is altered.  But the decisions to make regarding altering....  Well, putting in a new garden bed is out for the same reason that a top to bottom kitchen scrubbing is out.  But cleaning around the dehydrator is still possible.  So I'm shifting to working on the items that are for home.  The kitchen will get scrubbed at countertop level and as far up/down as my back will permit.  Then mangoes are going in the dehydrator.  Also, onions will be sliced and set in the oven to caramelize.  If the space permits, I'll be doing two big roaster pans.  Then they will get pulled and turned into "cream" of onion soup and canned.  I think that's all that I can fit into today but I'm hoping that maybe I can also get a second batch of caramelized onions done that will be canned as plain onions. 

The onions were recipes that I tried for the first time last year.  I found them to be so incredibly helpful (and tasty) that we have run out of them.  And for me that has been amazingly frustrating.  It was so wonderfully to be able to throw a dish together quickly by being able to grab onion soup or caramelized onions off of my pantry shelf.  And more so because these things were so incredibly inexpensive to make when safe purchased versions are so expensive - if they can be found at all.  I have to adapt for 12 food allergens in our diets.  Actually, it's 13 if you include my reactions to MSG.  And safe foods are hard for us to find.  These allergens are why Earth Fare is part of our grocery shopping despite how much more expensive items are there.

So anyways, I think telling you about this has cleared my head about what I am doing today.

Oh, and lest you think that I've been lazy so far today, we've already made blueberry muffins for breakfast, washed all the dishes and done our homeschooling lessons.  Life is very nonstop around here.  Off to work.  I hope you are having a wonderfully productive day as well.