Living the Pantry Lifestyle - Hot weather and a power outage

I'm writing today with a stuffy head. We had record breaking heat and humidity last week and we finally have a couple days of nice weather.  However, the pressure in my head tells me all sudden weather changes are not fun.  I will take the headache, though, and keep the heat away for at least one day. 

I made certain to empty Mouse's water bowl a couple times each day and refill with cooler water.  She mostly lounged on the wicker table or underneath the rocking chair when there was some shade.  Flowers have had to be watered every day.

Each morning, I have been closing all the blinds in the family room where the morning sun shows brightest.  On the hottest days, the blinds stayed shut most of the day.  I did laundry early in the day and kept the oven off all but one day.

Dinner menus this week included two different salads and a stir fry meal. When I was buying produce last week, I noticed rotisserie chickens were on sale so I purchased one and that gave me chicken to use on both salads and I mixed it in with the stir fry after it was cooked.

The 90+ temperatures with heat indexes over 100 are to return next week.

I think the heat was behind the great clearance prices I found last week when I walked into Meijers.  I usually park near the pharmacy entrance because there are less cars parked there on weekdays.  There was a large rack of clearance items and I noticed they were blankets and throws.  When the heat index is 110, I suppose people are not interested in buying blankets?

Unless you are someone who thinks ahead and sees excellent quality blankets priced at 75% off.  I bought a queen size heavy cuddly blanket and a queen size mid-weight blanket.  I have had extra blankets on my mental things to stock list in case we lost heat in winter.  I was thrilled to find two at such a small price.

Their throws at 75% off were lovely but they were white and my cat's hair is dark.  Enough said...  I remember when my son was little and we were looking at sofas to purchase.  I told the salesman that I needed one the color of the bottom of my son's shoes!  White has never been an option for furniture or linens here.

If I see a rack of clearance items, I usually will check out what is on them.  I saw boxes of the new Ball Aluminum Cold Drink Cups on a clearance rack recently.  I had them on my grocery list to try soon so I purchased one box at a great price. The boxes are large so they probably had too many in stock.

Like everyone else, we are trying to find ways to save on our food budget.  My husband does most of our Kroger shopping, although I shop there once at the beginning of the month for some items that is just easier to get myself than to explain to him what to look for when he did the weekly shopping.

He called from Kroger last week to tell me our favorite Ruffles potato chips were on sale for $1.99 a bag (their retail cost is $5.49 a bag now).  I asked how many bags he had to buy for that price and he said four.  I quickly thought of where I could store three extra bags of potato chips and told him to buy four bags.

The math makes that kind of stocking up an easy decision... $5.49 for one bag not on sale and just about an extra $2.50 more for four bags?  Kroger has quite a few sales like that and I need to start looking at their weekly flyers to check on them.  Oh, I put the extra bags of potato chips on top of my shoes in my closet but one must find pantry space where they can, right?

I have been finding more packages of fresh vegetables on clearance that only need to be used quickly.  I don't buy anything that already looks old, even if it is on clearance.  

I knew Father's Day was coming up when I did my Aldi stock up shopping earlier this month so I purchased small sirloin steaks for a special dinner.  Their "use by or freeze by" date was well after Father's Day.  Steaks are a splurge but a good way to make the day special.  I just purchased asparagus to go with it and realized by that price that asparagus season is now over.  Yikes!  But it was for a special dinner.

We had another power outage last week, most of which we think were caused by squirrels getting on power lines in our back yard.  I keep the "report outage" number for our rural electric company on the side of the refrigerator and called using the cell phone immediately.  Our land line phone does not work in power outages.

Since it was daylight, I only brought one battery operated lantern out in case we had to go into the garage during the outage.  The deep freeze was kept shut and the refrigerator freezer was kept shut but we quickly removed from the refrigerator what we needed and then quickly put it back when we had to.  Otherwise, that was the only time the refrigerator door was opened.

I charge the Amazon Fire tablet (if needed) and the cell phone every morning when I get up and every night before going to bed.  Sometimes I will plug the tablet in to recharge in the afternoon if it is getting very low.  Our cell phone is just a flip top phone so it doesn't need long to charge.

I charge my Kindle Paperwhite when I notice it is below 75% but it holds a charge for quite awhile.  I think getting in the habit of keeping devices charged is a good preparedness idea and living in a rural area where we can lose power unexpectedly, it has proven to be useful many times.

I used to have a few movies downloaded on the tablet but I found that favorite TV shows are more practical since they are usually thirty to forty-five minutes. (That tells you how much of the hour is taken up by commercials.)  Right now, I have a couple cooking shows, a half hour travel documentary, and couple half hour episodes of a favorite TV show.

I do have one favorite made for TV movie that I keep downloaded on the tablet. It is on Amazon Prime since it is not available on DVD.  It is called An Amish Murder and while it sounds terrible, it is a very good mystery.  Even when you watch it and know "who dunnit".

Late May and June are the months I spend part of my discretionary budget on flowers for the front porch and deck, which means there is no pantry budget left this month.  So, I didn't get anything for the pantry this week, unless you consider the bags of potato chips sitting on my shoes.  My husband has to eat a very "clean" diet but potato chips are his one big food vice.  So, they will not be there long.  ;)

As requested, I am linking to the Heavy Cream Powder that I buy.  I like all of Judees products.  I need to purchase buttermilk powder and potato starch soon.  I've noticed on a lot of Japanese recipes that potato starch is used for breading their fried chicken recipes instead of flour and I have to try it!

I have a package of Judees dried eggs in my pantry and I thought of getting another except they are the one product that has gone up so much that I don't want to spend that much!  I know the cost of eggs are going up but I didn't think about how that would increase the cost of dried eggs so much.

Mentioned in this Blog Post

An Amish Murder on Amazon Prime (I purchased it long ago before it was part of Lifetime TV membership)... here.  It is an excellent mystery if you can ever watch it.  It may be on a streaming service that includes Lifetime Movies.  

My husband and I think there must have been one or more Christians on their staff because they made some other good movies, like Saving Sarah Cain (Amazon DVD... here).  Also available on Amazon Prime I think.

It is the movie version of the book, The Redemption of Sarah Cain, which is an excellent stand alone book. (Amazon link... here).

Judees Heavy Cream Powder, 11 ounces... here.  There is a larger bag offered.

Ball Aluminum Cups... here.

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

Image:  Three Hens With Coop