Food Musings

The weather continues to be......well, interesting. Yesterday it was overcast, mid 20's and spitting snow a bit of the day. There was no real accumulation, but the tiny little flakes were flying around. Today we got up to a very thin film of ice that melted away by mid-morning. But it remained very overcast, damp, and the fog just gets thicker and thicker outside. Looks like significantly better weather the next couple of days. I'm looking forward to it

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The VA mobile unit was in town yesterday, and hubby had his annual checkup with them. It's so nice to have them come to us! After he was finished, we went to Chillicothe. It was one of those wonderful weeks when the stores had a lot of good stuff on sale – I love those weeks! We went to the regular grocery store and stocked up on their sale items before hitting good old wallyworld. From a money standpoint, it was a very beneficial trip. But it was nearly 2:30 when we got home, and I was pooped by the time we got everything put away. We hit the local grocery store today for their sale items.

There have been so many times over the years that I had to be a very prudent grocery shopper. I remember what was for me the early days of the warehouse grocery store, back in the mid 70's, when you pushed around what amounted to a large wooden flatbed on wheels and stacked your groceries – usually by the case – on it. That was in the days of being paid once a month, and it was a real challenge to buy a month's worth of groceries.

When the two older kids were tiny and we lived near Salem, Oregon, the local grocery stores carried milk in plastic bags. They had a special pitcher that went with the bags – you placed a half-gallon bag of milk in the pitcher, pulled the top corner of the bag through a slot on the rim of the pitcher and snipped the corner off. They were economical, but I never really got the hang of doing that!

When we lived in Portland, I happened on a small vegetable market near our home that sold gallons of milk in the regular plastic containers. But in true Oregon fashion, the milk would cost less if you would wash out and return the jugs to the market. They would be cleaned, sanitized, and re-used. It was a good idea – and if you know anything about Oregon and their being at the forefront of the “green” movement, it's not surprising they would come up with this concept.

When I was growing up on the farm, we had a very prolific milk cow. I was somewhere mid high school before I had milk from a store on a regular basis...........though Grandma and Grandad had delivery milk from Central Dairy, and I enjoyed that on our visits to Jefferson City. That cow was both a pet and a pain, but as a kid I never realized how much money she saved us at the store.

A neighborhood family had chickens and sold eggs commercially. Mom worked for them from the time I started school until they quit selling eggs when I was in high school. We were always able to have all the eggs we needed at a very reasonable price. It didn't matter that some of the shells were cracked or if they might be double-yolked. I think several of the neighbors bought their eggs there.

That egg farm was actually my first job – they took occasional vacations, and they paid me to help Mom process the eggs. I think I bought a pair of shoes with my first earnings. A few times over the years, all three of us would gather the eggs twice a day as well. That was when I learned that you don't yell at an old hen who is pecking your shoelace untied. There's nothing like the cacophony of a structure full of hundreds of hens cackling all at once – and there's really nothing like the dead silence that occurs immediately when a human raises their voice! I got in trouble for that one.

Reminiscences aside, I'm very pleased with this week's shopping excursions. I shouldn't need much at the store for the next few weeks, and that's always good for the budget!