How It all Went

The reason I even started this whole thing is because I wanted to use up the rest of the zucchini from the neighbors. We really love our neighbors, the Snowbirds. They area young retired couple whose nest is empty, so they spend the winters somewhere warm. Yes we are jealous. Over the years I've really gotten to enjoy them, they make me laugh. They assure us we are right on schedule. They loan us stuff. And he gives me his coupons. Anyway, this year they shared zucchini, cucumbers and green beans. and I finally decided it was time for the last batch of bread. But the pantry smelled.

So off on the potato adventure I went. Thanks to Katie and Tiffany for their ideas I made Make Ahead Mash Potatoes. 3 batches of them. Of course, this was unplanned cooking which means unplanned shopping. So here is what I do: I go to Savings Angel and do a search on Sour Cream, Cream Cheese, and Onion. Then I can see where the best prices are. This week it was Family Fare. Really who knew? And they are just down the street. I might not score the deal of the century, but at least I can see where I will be gouged the least. So now that I am typing, I realize that I spent more than the silly potatoes! Well I just can't stand to waste food. It accounts for some of the extra pounds that came with our babies and decided to stay around. Yep, we don't make the kids clean the plates, we do. I had planned to make my Russian Meat Salad or as others call it: potato salad, so at least I had those ingredients on hand. That is why I bought the potatoes in the first place. I need to hire serious cleaning help to recover my kitchen, which was looking a little wind tossed when I began. It now looks like a full hurricane blew just over and dumped all the stuff it collected on my counters. Sorry, I didn't photo that for you, my self esteem is not ready to let you into my kitchen on it's worst day. So I decided it was time to grill out. This way I can clean up a bit while The Prof cooks.



You can see my potatoes ready for the freezer. I reuse the plastic bags. See this is a post of confessions. It really started in our year in Russia. They don't have Zip Lock there or even an Aldi generic. So washing worked. They all had these draining dish racks that hung just about your sink. Really a ingenious design for it. So we would clip them on the bottom of it with clothes drying pins. Yep we line dried the laundry there too. There are few money saving ideas I haven't tried at some point. But I don't love all of them. And I don't do all of them. But now that I know that you don't have to waste your plastic bags, I recycle them. Moving on....I will also confess that Cents and Mite didn't finish their potato salad....so I had to.