Sunday

If only 7% of the world’s Christians adopted 1 orphaned child,
the world’s orphan population would disappear.

On this Mother’s Day,
may your heart be moved to meet the needs of a child.

Giggles in translation

This afternoon I heard an unusual amount of chatter in the back bedrooms, and upon closer investigation I realized that the noise was coming from at least 4 children congregated in my bathroom. I poked my head into my bedroom and asked them what was going on. My 10 year old daughter, home from Ethiopia since last August, was the first to peek out of my bathroom.

“We’re just pounding ourselves, Mom,” she reassured me.

Which, after a moment of confusion during which I imagined blood and pain, I realized actually it meant they were weighing themselves.

A few answers about the garden

After my tomato post the other day, several of you had garden questions. I can’t remember how much I’ve told y’all about this before, so you may want to skip this if gardening isn’t your thing. I suppose our garden would be small to a farmer, but it is big by most people’s standards. The main garden is about 120 feet by 50 feet. Then there’s a separate melon patch (probably about 18×10), a 30-ft row of strawberries, a 40-ft row of raspberries, 6 grapes, and 6 fruit trees. (Gracious - no wonder something’s always in desperate need of weeding!)

My husband moves the tomato plants from starter packs to yogurt containers because they’ll be stunted if they stay in the starter packs much longer. But around here it can still possibly freeze at night for a couple more weeks. The varieties he’s growing this year are Beefy Boy, Romas, Prudens Purple, Brandywine, yellow pear, and Sungold cherry tomatoes.

He’s also already started cabbages, dill, melons and peppers– all indoors under lights. This year he’s also starting more trees– chestnut trees, hickory, black locust, Kentucky coffee trees, and sweet gum trees. My hubby is a bit of a tree fanatic– he can’t walk past a tree in the park without checking for seed pods. When we moved to this property, there was ONE lone wild rose bush on the entire 3 acres. Now there are at least a hundred. A few huge, many small, but when we remember the look of the place 15 years ago when we built the house it is quite the tranformation.

Since their transplant to the yogurt containers, the tomatoes got moved out from under lights to a big sunny bank of windows in his shop. There they’ll experience colder temperatures and start to harden off, which will make the move to the garden in a couple weeks less of a shock. Out in the garden, each baby tomato will be planted a little deeper than it was in the pot to develop good roots, then be surrounded with a tomato rack and covered with clear sheeting for a week or two, to prevent sunburn. By mid-July they’re usually up to my shoulder, and by early August we’ll hopefully be getting our first tomatoes.

As far as spraying fruit trees, we’ve discovered it is really necessary, esp with apples. We use Sevin, per package recommendations, with a pump-up cannister sprayer with a wand. We spray about 4 times over the summer, once soon after bloom, and about every 4 weeks after that, stopping at least 3 weeks before picking. I don’t love spraying, but the truth is that grocery store apples are loaded with spray. We spray less often than the regular growers do, and don’t get perfect results. About 50% of our apples are ‘perfect’– ie, bug free. about 30% have a small bug hole or two someplace, and the other 20% of our apples are only good for applesauce after some careful trimming. But I am content with the results we get, and am not anxious to use more spray than that.

For those of you interested in starting your own seeds, John recommends The New Seed Starter’s Handbook by Nancy Bubel. Growing your own plants allows you lots more variety and is much more affordable than buying plants already started, especially if you want a good-sized garden.

One thing that really makes this huge garden possible is the help of everyone in the family. About 3-4 days a week we all head out to work in the yard/garden for 30-45 minutes after breakfast. Working together we can get so much more done! Last night 9 of us worked on flowerbeds for 45 minutes. Add that up — that’s almost 7 man-hours of yard work complete in less than an hour. And the truth is, when we all work together, the atmosphere tends to be pretty decent. I call out 15 minute intervals so that people know that the time is ticking away. People chat, sing… and yes, they occasionally whine (but not much, because that earns bonus minutes!) The littlest girls fill sleds with weeds and drag them to the burn pile. And when we are done we can step back and see real improvement.

Anyway, that’s the scoop on the garden for now. I’ll share growing pictures later!

Team work

This afternoon my 12-yr-old daughter coaxed the three year old to help her clean the living room. I say help in the loosest sense of the word, because vacuuming can be challenging with the weight of a 3 year old attached to the vacuum handle.

But it was amusing to hear the two of them chatting and working together. At one point the 12 year old (who arrived from Ethiopia 9 months ago) handed the three year old a couple of pillows. “You know, couch have a backward? You put?”

“Yeah, I know, ” says the three year old, not at all confused by her big sister’s unconventional use of English. With great assurance she runs to toss the pillows into their stash-spot behind the couch.

“I have sweat on me!!” huffs the 3 year old as she triumphantly drags chairs away from the dining room table. The 12 year old and I share a grin.

“Mom!” calls the 12 year old a few minutes later, grinning again at the three year old who is now sturdily shoving the vacuum around all by herself. But soon she gets the vacuum snagged in a tight corner and needs some assistance.

“Uh, oh, ” says big sister to her. “Thank you. Right now my turn. And then you again.”

The 3 year old is much displeased at this and pouts away in a huff. The 12 year old relents at her distress and calls her back. “OK– let’s go, same time, both.”

And off they go again, vacuuming in tandem.

Doesn’t work for me: Walgreen’s

When Shannon turned Works for Me Wednesday on its head this week, asking us instead to tell about something that doesn’t work, I instantly knew my topic.

Walgreen’s.

More specifically the deal-hunting at Walgreens that involves many flapping coupons, spending much good money on fancy name brands, and waiting for rebates that come many weeks later and sometimes are disallowed entirely.

I know that many frugal blogs talk about the wonderful deals that are to be had at Walgreens. But after trying this for three months in a row, I have to admit that this particular money saving strategy is doing nothing but frustrating me.

Yes, I’ve saved some money. But I’ve also been coaxed to buy name brand products that I would never waste spend my money on otherwise. I’ve spent literally hours cruising the aisles with fists full of coupons. My little girls are starting to whimper when we even drive past Walgreens. And the stuff I end up buying is so….small. Call me strange, but when I walk out of a store having just spent $50, I want to be holding more than one bag. I hate the sinking feeling that I would have been much much better off having bought my Colgate, Prell, and toothbrushes at the dollar store, coupons be hanged. And I would have gotten done much sooner.

I WANT Walgreens coupon-stacking/rebates to work for me, I really do.

But after my latest shopping fiasco, I’ve got to face the facts.

It all started last week when I realized the soccer field was only two blocks from Walgreens. I decided that my little girls would be much happier playing on the swings and watching big sister’s soccer practice than cruising endless aisles at Walgreens. So I handed my teenaged sons a cell phone and asked them to play with the little girls while I zipped over to make the most of the May rebates at Walgreens.

Around and around I went, matching coupons and reading fine print and trying to make sure I got the maximum money back. Besides about $10 worth of rebate items, I was also hoping to get a $10 ‘register reward’ for buying 4 Colgate products. I was especially pleased about this deal because I also had coupons for Colgate to jack up my savings. I only had a few more things to find when my cell rang. It was my son.

“Hey!” he said. And then he called the name of my 3 year old and I heard odd screaming fading in and out. He called her again, sounding distracted. More odd wavery screaming.

I called his name, starting to panic, trying to get him to talk to me. But he didn’t seem to be listening to me. I called his name louder. Panic was rising in my throat. Was she hurt? I knew it wasn’t irresponsible to leave my 3 and 5 year olds at the park with their 13 and 16 year old brothers, but the mom guilt kicked in…

When still he didn’t answer me, I left my cart in the corner and jetted out of the store and hopped into the van, trying to fight back the fear that the three year old was really seriously hurt. A minute later I was pulling into the parking lot. To see my little girls swinging, screaming happily as they went back and forth. The big boys were protectively in position behind them.

Augh.

I called out to my son to hang up the phone. He looked at me, puzzled, utterly oblivious to the fact that he’d called me.

Relieved but still rattled, I jetted back to the store to gather up my coupons and my last couple items. At the checkout, the cash register accepted all my coupons (yeah!) but then refused to spit out my coveted $10 register reward. ?? The teenaged clerk sighed and called his boss, who arrive by turtle 20 years 6 minutes later. It was then that I learned you aren’t allowed to combine coupons and register rewards. I’d saved $3 with coupons only to lose my $10 reward. Not only that, but on closer examination, it turned out I’d bought the wrong Colgate products, so wasn’t eligible for the reward anyway.

I was now 10 minutes late to pick up the kids, so instead of arguing, I scooped my bounty one teeny $40 bag up and hurried off to get the kids, who were thankfully still happy and well.

On the way home I consoled myself with the fact that at least I still had about $10 of rebate money coming …eventually.

Except when I got home, I discovered that somewhere in all of that hassle, I’d lost my receipt.

Bye-bye rebates.

I am, however, the proud owner of a bottle of plaque-revealing mouth rinse, which I never in a million years would have bought without the promise of a rebate. Oh, and some lightbulbs–only a buck, and yes, we do use those. And more toothpaste. Toothpaste that cost 3x as much as I would have spent at the dollar store.

Yes, I realize that with a little better concentration and a firm grip on my receipt, I would have saved a bit of money. But I am left with the overwhelming feeling that really, sadly, Walgreens rebate/couponing does not work for me.

Sweet, sweet deal on cereal at Albertson’s

For those of you who live near an Albertson’s, this week is a great week to stock up on cereal. If you have a preferred customer card, you can buy 10 boxes of General Mills cereal for $10. If you have coupons, the deal gets even sweeter. I happened to have a fistful of coupons and today I bought TWENTY boxes of cereal for– get this– $11.50. Awesome. Talk about having fun shopping– that was definitely it.

Oh, and for the curious, we eat cereal two mornings a week (about two boxes per meal) which means that the cereal I bought today will last about 5 weeks.

Freebies for homeschoolers

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Hearty Beef Dumpling Stew

Here’s another of the meals that I featured on my Frugal Cooking Carnival

Beef Dumpling Stew

Serves 8

Stew
2 lbs hamburger or sausage
2 T. oil (olive or vegetable)
2 c. sliced carrots
2 c. minced onion
4 T. flour
8 c. beef broth (make this with beef bouillon if you don’t have beef broth on hand)
4 c. pureed tomatoes (or 3 c. tomato sauce and 1 c. water)
1/2 c. milk
1 c. corn
1 c. slivered cabbage
3 c. potatoes, cubed
Salt and pepper to taste

Dumplings
3 c. flour
2 T. baking powder
1-1/2 t. salt
1 T. paprika
1-1/2 c. milk
2 T. butter

Soup: Sautee hamburger or sausage in a deep heavy pot until browned. Remove from pan and pour rendered fat in a small bowl. Sautee carrots and onion in olive oil in same pot. Once the onion is translucent, mix in flour. Cook for a few minutes, then add beef broth. Scrape the pan to get any bits off the bottom of the pan. Add milk, water, tomato, cubed potatoes, cabbage, and meat. Let come to a simmer and cook for about 20-30 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.

Dumplings:
Mix flour, baking powder, paprika, and salt. Warm milk and butter in microwave. Pour the warm mixture over the flour and stir together.

Taste the soup and add salt and pepper to taste. Now spoon the dumpling mixture on top of the soup in little blobs (about 2 T. per dumpling). Cover with a lid, and let the dumplings simmer on medium-low for 7-8 minutes. Break a dumpling apart with a fork to make sure dumplings are cooked through. Serve.

A fire hydrant, maybe.

The other day in the van my five year old daughter exclaimed excitedly, “Did you see that lady walking back there?”

“No, why?”

“Mommy, she looked exactly like a telephone pole.”

My eyebrows went up. “Really?”

“Yeah, she was sooo tall and sooo skinny!”

“Really??” I said, trying to imagine the proportions of such a person.

“Yes, and her clothes were exactly the color of a telephone pole.”

And I spent half a second feeling sorry for the poor soul dressed like a telephone pole. And the next three blocks feeling rueful because not even a 5 year old would ever call me telephone-pole-lean.

Sunday

Psalm 61: 2-4