Living the Pantry Lifestyle - In which I have proof God has a sense of humor

It is October, my favorite month of the year!  While May is beautiful and November has Thanksgiving and December has Christmas... October is still my favorite.  I'm not sure what our color will be like here, there are definite changes now but we had a very hot and dry summer, which does not make for stunning Autumnal colors.

I had already purchased two inexpensive mums for the porch and yesterday I bought a big pumpkin at Aldi (less than $3.00) and two pie pumpkins this morning to place between the mums.  Along with a couple resin pumpkins, they make the porch ready for enjoying the season.

As to God's sense of humor, you may recall last week when I said I much prefer baking from scratch and kind of get all snooty about cake mixes?  Well, as I was perusing Facebook during one of those rare times I view it other than weekends, I saw a recipe for a type of blond brownie that I had to try.  After all, I had a box of yellow cake mix already a couple of months past its' Use By date so, there was my excuse.

It was quite good and very easy.  I could still taste the salt but perhaps if I add vanilla next time, it will help.  I think the reason I find so many cake mixes salty is that they usually are made with table salt and I have stayed away from it for a couple decades at least.  Table salt (think Morton's) now has a chemical taste when I eat it in foods.

I use mostly Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt or any other good sea salt.  I have a fine ground of Himalayan pink salt in my salt shaker.  I even have Maldon sea salt flakes that I have kind of hoarded through the years.  But all of these are a natural salt and not made chemically like table salt.

Back to the recipe, I think most people will like it.  I froze a lot of it since I can't eat too much sugar at one time and when I cut the "cookie" in half in the 9 x 13 pan, it came out of the greased pan easily and I was able to freeze it in foil just as it came out.  It should be easy to slice and defrost at a later time.

I'll type out the recipe below.  It is probably good with any flavor of cake mix but it called for a yellow or white mix.  It is the kind of quick recipe that I liked to have when there were young kids in the house and little ones came over to play.

{Mr. & Mrs. Christopher just attended the wedding in North Carolina of one of those little boys who would stop by and check to see if there were cookies in the glass biscotti jar where I kept them.  Time goes so fast!}

So, the whole cake mix thing didn't stop there because my grocery store had confetti cake mix and confetti icing on sale last week, which is the one cake mix I had on my grocery list to "put back".  I bought two boxes for making cute celebration cupcakes quickly and two tubs of vanilla confetti icing for the cupcakes. 

I don't often buy icing in a tub and who knew the various confetti icings came in neon colors now?  I had to search for vanilla in the midst of all that food coloring.  As a mother of a very ADHD child, I wanted to make the sign of the cross in front of all those additives. (Believe me, manufactured food coloring could send my son into a tizzy!)

But I digress...

As far as what it looks like in my grocery stores, I went to Meijer and Aldi for my big monthly stock up shopping.  Meijer had a lot of empty spaces on their aisles.  There were just a few packages of frozen potatoes in the entire section where one would usually find them.  Their frozen vegetables that I usually buy were sparse.  

I was able to buy a medium size bag of kitty kibble but there were only a couple of large bags and neither of them were brands I recognized.  Other aisles had spaces but there were still items to purchase, perhaps a different brand than one usually buys.   

Prices have gone through the roof in some food items.  Whoever is saying that our food prices have gone up about 3% have not shopped lately.  Not to mention I noticed a lot more sizes of packaging being reduced.  My grocery bill at Meijer was $20.00 more than usual and the only meat I bought was a package of beef bones for $10.00 for the deep freeze.

Aldi was fairly well stocked, they still had less dairy than they once did and I noticed there were fewer packages in the meat department.  I had to go to Kroger this morning as someone's husband forgot to buy his wife's organic whole milk (he drinks almond milk) but I didn't mind because I wanted to look through their selection of frozen vegetables.

I was able to buy all the frozen vegetables I needed as well as a package of frozen potatoes I needed for a recipe.  I took the time to look up and down a few aisles and Kroger looked well stocked.  It was the best stocked during the COVID lockdowns, too.  Probably because it is the largest grocery chain in the country?  

The only thing I noticed not in stock was Essenhaus canned beef but they had a lot of Essenhaus canned chicken.  Which is the opposite of Meijer, they had plenty of Keystone beef but no Keystone chicken.

I also decided while at Meijer to go up and down some of their non-food aisles and found empty shelves in their camping and outdoor section.  There were a few rows of shelves that had perhaps six or seven coolers spaced out among the shelves.  

I don't recall who it was that I was watching recently that said when a store they go to often was remodeled recently, they had put all of their camping and outdoor supplies behind locked glass containers.  I know, he couldn't figure out why, either. They didn't include any weapons or anything having to do with them that one could understand being behind locked doors.

Now for the recipe and then I will share a couple favorite cookbooks, again.

Lazy Cake Cookies

• 1 box yellow or white cake mix
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 5 Tablespoons melted butter
• 2 cups mini chocolate chips (I used 1-1/2 cups regular chocolate chips)

Mix together ingredients.  Put batter in a greased 9 x 13 pan. (I had to use the back of large spoon to press it down completely.)  Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes. 

I'm sharing two favorite cookbooks this week.  One I purchased a year ago and the other about six years ago.

Little House Living is a cookbook by Merissa Alink of the Little House Living blog.  It not only has regular recipes in it but it has a lot of recipes for cleaning products as well as a large section about "Make Your Own Mixes".  

I've had this book for a long time and there is a lot to read in it.  I need to dust it off and reread sections to make some of my own mixes that I haven't thought of before.  Her blog is still a fun read, too.

The paperback version of Little House Living is... here.  There are third-party copies available of the book in hardback, too.  The Kindle version is... here.

I purchased The Gathering Table: Growing Strong Relationships through Food, Faith, and Hospitality last year.  It is one of those beautiful books about hospitality from a Christian perspective.  

It is divided by the four seasons: Spring: Family Picnic in the Park, Ladies Brunch, Tea Party; Summer: Favorite Pie Party, Anniversary Picnic, Sweet Corn Factory; Fall: Hayride, Easy Sunday Supper & Bonfire, The Pumpkin Patch, A Real Tailgating Party; Winter: Friday Night Pizza Party, Snow Day, The Big Game.

This book is available in hardback at an excellent price... here.

Also Mentioned in this Blog Post

Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt... here.

Maldon Sea Salt flakes... here.

Note:  Blogger only shows five blogs I link to under "Favorites" now but if you click on "Show All", they will all appear and Little House Living has a link there.

Disclaimer:  Most links to Amazon.com are Associate links.

Image:  Cookbook and Apples