Beautiful Saturday

Spent most of my day sitting out back and washing the vintage canning jars.  I am getting them ready to be priced so we can set them out on the 2 weekends of the Spoon River Drive.  We live off a major route of the drive that gets a lot of traffic and Renee and I will be setting up our crafts.  I will be putting out my rag rugs, soap and baskets along with some of the canning jars we picked up last month.  I will finish washing them up tomorrow and then I will start the pricing.  If you want to read about the Spoon River Drive check out the link here:   http://www.spoonriverdrive.org
After washing the jars I might get started on canning the russet potatoes, I want to have them done by Thursday.  On Friday we will be going down to the Arthur Amish Produce Auction for the last time this season.  Of course we will go to the bulk food store and the salvage store while we are there.  Not sure what we will find as the growing season is about done.  I am hoping to get some squash, would love some beets and anything I could use to can mixed vegetables for soup.  I have red potatoes, onions, peppers and carrots so far.  If I can get some cabbage for it I could always use a bag of frozen corn and frozen lima beans.  When I get this mixed canned all I have to do is throw some beef in the crock pot, add a little water and cook.  About 2 hours before done add a jar of tomatoes and a jar of the soup vegetables and you have wonderful healthy vegetable beef soup.  You could also use chicken or turkey instead of beef.  Having so many things canned makes meal time easy and very cheap.  I added up the amount of jars of food I canned for myself this year and have about 600 jars done so far.  I am proud as a peacock when I look at all the stuff in my storage closet.  After the potatoes, vegetable soup mix and whatever I pick up Friday the only thing left on my list is chili beans and some black beans.  I will continue to dehydrate cherry tomatoes and peppers from my garden and when I find some celery and mushrooms on sale I will dehydrate them.  I am completely out of the celery I dehydrated last November, running low on dehydrated carrots and also low on mushrooms.  I won't get any of those items until I find them on sale.  I picked up 6 bags of carrots at Aldi today for 49 cent a pound; I will be using them for the vegetable soup mix and will dehydrate some.  Aldi is the best place to pick up fruit and vegetables on sale.  I look at the ad on line every Wednesday to see what they have special for the week.  I seldom buy anything unless it is on sale, this is the only way to live.  With my storage closet and the deep freezer we are pretty much set.  Now if I could only get Ron to stop buying candy we could save more money, oh well it could be worse.  :)
Later, take care.