Freezing Peppers and Other Fun Stuff

My cats have woke me up at 4 am. Not my best time of day. My schedule lately has been very hectic. I'm now working in St. Louis 4 days a week and while I'm there I just stay with my older son Sean to save gas and wear and tear on my car. Today is the day I drive down there and I'm going to be very tired. It's five now and there is no going back to sleep.

Last weekend the small farmers market here was selling homegrown green peppers by the peck (yes, I know all about Peter Piper). They were small and misshapen but $1.99 for a peck of peppers is an awesome price. Of course that meant I spent some time chopping up and freezing peppers.

Peppers need very little preparation to freeze. All you need to do is chop them up, spread them out on a cookie sheet and freeze. After they're frozen you just package them up.

I got a lot of banana peppers from my little patio garden but for some reason my green peppers never got any bigger than a quarter. I used up all the banana peppers as i picked them so I didn't have any to freeze.

I got mixed results from my other plants, too. The cherry tomato plant produced tons of delicious little tomatoes. I ate most of them right off the plant. We had fresh herbs all summer, my son Ryan has been making homemade spaghetti sauce with them. I only got a couple cucumbers and no zucchini this year. The zucchini plant produced lots of little tiny finger sized fruits but they rotted on the plant. I have no idea what was going on. Were about due for our first freeze so I've already started cleaning out the garden and getting ready or winter. These last couple years I've learned a lot with my little garden and maybe next year willbe even better.

Musing About Contests and Other Fun Things

I am a little disappointed in the response to my Pillsbury Sweet Rolls Giveaway, I have to keep reminding myself that this is a new blog and it takes awhile to build up followers. I'm thinking of having contest just for people to follow this blog. How about a Subway gift certificate? How does that sound? If your already a follower you'll still be eligible so you can go ahead and follow me now. You'll still need to come back and leave a comment if I do decide to do this.

Speaking of contests I have a new review and giveaway starting sometime next week after the current one ends. It's for Yoplait Yo Plus yogurt so check back next week. One of the gifties that came with my package from MyBlogSpark and Yoplait was a pedometer and I've been having fun with it. I managed to walk three quarters of a mile yesterday from the time I got home at 6:30 and opened the package until I went to bed. I've had it on all day and I'll see what I get up to.

I'm having car problems again so got to pull out even more of the "frugal tools". It's a good thing I stock up when things are on sale. There's a lot of things I won't have to buy for awhile and that really cuts the grocery bills. I've also gotten good at using what I have on hand and whats on sale. If you remain flexible it can really cut down on your food costs.

I called the phone company and I think I've cut out some of the unessential services and reduced my bill. I'm not sure though, have you ever tried to talk to those people? There's so much double talk and this package that package stuff that it's hard to keep it all straight. We'll see if it's lower. I supposedly lowered my internet speed but I don't notice any differences. I also find the "That rate is only for new customers" total garbage. I've had their internet services for years and never got a discount. Now is that fair?

I stopped at the little farmer's market here in town for the items I needed for the veggie tray and potato salad. They had some tomato plants out already and I bought a cherry tomato plant and planted it. It's a little early but since it's in a pot if it's going to get too cold I'll bring it in. There's a picture here of the garden I had last year.

Signs of Spring at Last

Aren't they pretty? I've been watching this little patch of daffodils since it first poked it's little green leaves out. It's right behind my office. I got off a bit early today so I stopped at the fruit and veggie stand to get some green grapes. They were more expensive than the ones I saw at Wally World so I passed on them but they had some red leaf lettuce plants so I bought them and planted them in one of my patio planters. I tried to start lettuce from seed last year and it didn't work too well so we'll see how it goes.

Wow, it's been a busy week or so, I've been in St Louis a lot. Which means I haven't had a lot of computer time. My son is on his PC most of the time I'm there and I hate using his laptop.

Finally went shopping last night and Kroger's has Kraft cheese on sale. Woohoo, I use a lot of cheese and I stocked up. Final price between sale and coupon was $1.17 for the 8 oz bag of shredded cheese. I think I'm going back tomorrow, they limit the amount of coupons you can use so sometimes when the sales really a good one I'll make a couple trips. Our Kroger is not that far from where I live so it's really not a big deal. They had some other good bargains but I didn't really have the time or money (today's payday) to do much shopping last night.

I've finished a couple of blankets for Project Linus. They give handmade blankets to children in our local hospitals. I love making these and you can see them and find out more by going to my Deb's Crafts blog.

I've also been posting a bunch of contests on my two contest blogs, one lists crafty contests and the other one lists food giveaways. Check them out if you like to enter contests!