Saturday, March 26, 2011

Market Day

Cold Spring Market is getting bigger as the weeks go by, the weather getting warmer brings out more shoppers and more vendors...Today the 3 Chicks Sugar Shack were there. I should have bought a maple cupcake, but instead I bought a quart of syrup and a bourbon barrel matured syrup to send to my army brother. I just think a pig roast in the desert needs bourbon maple syrup...I have a feeling I will be purchasing some more for myself..My goodness I like living in Maple country....

Anyway an even 100 dollars will buy:

1.5 lbs of scallops
1 oat loaf
4 rolls
2 lamb spring rolls
2 black bean chili tamales from Block Factory Tamales
1 lb or so of mushrooms
1 lb or so of spinach
7 brussel sprouts- i dont know if we like brussels so i am going to try them out
4 onions
1 spring garlic
1 qt Maple Syrup
8 oz Bourbon Syrup

The big ticket items were the syrups and the scallops. I think though that we can stretch the syrup to last quite some time and the scallops get stretched over two meals..

The menu this week:
Saturday: Burgers (bought beef last week in beacon) spinach sweet potato fries
Sunday: I am going to the Bay Ridge St. Paddy's Day parade
Monday: Roast chicken with brussel sprouts and rice
Tuesday: chicken potpie
Wednesday: mushroom risotto with scallops and spinach
Thursday: Winter carrot and ginger ravioli (Bongo and Capacci Pasta from Beacon Market) with vegetable fried rice
Friday: black bean vegetarian chili tamales and assorted leftovers
This week's Homestead Revival post got me thinking we are doing ok preparedness wise. We are already thinking about ways to stock up on food without hoarding it, we already buy our staples in bulk (well as bulk as we can get without real storage) and we constantly replenish our food items. The next paycheck I think I am going to invest in some sprouting kits, because I find we are spending lots of money on greens in the wintertime. I could just as easily grow the microgreens myself. I really count our local eating as part of our preparedness. I think that by knowing who the local farmers are we are one step ahead. Our bread people grind their own flour, something that to me is useful to know in case I ever make that leap into locally sourcing our grains. We are starting small. This is our first year in the house, first year of the garden so there is a lot of trial and error that is going into preparedness. We also don't have much money to spare for things, so I am going to be looking into how to become prepared for anything on very little money. It's a whole switch of lifestyle to become self sufficient and we are taking baby steps.

"This week, for the Preparedness Challenge, I planned the garden more. I really looked at what we spend money on, what we eat and what we can store. I started putting away money for a pressure canner (the plan is use the change jar for preparedness savings) and I placed an order for 2 rain barrels through the County Extension office (the Cornell cooperative extension). I also noticed that the local outdoor store is having a sale, so I will go over there today to see what we can afford right now."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you like maple country, you should bring the fam for a visit - we're sugaring this year!

regina said...

that is impressive! it takes like 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup we learned at a sugar shack over the weekend..which totally killed my idea to tap into the one sugar maple we have on our property....