Recipes, Food Tips, Healthy Eating & More

I have started buying more produce and gone back to freezing what I can. Truthfully, I enjoy doing so. I did so with a garden why not with produce from the store? I go every 2 weeks now. Only have the freezer above my frig as living in a small apartment is restrictive. Thankful for the the things I have and know how to do. May not have much and I don't mind.

Hi,
Simple living is easier on all of us, as we age.
I would love to simplify my life.
In time, in time I tell myself.

@funcountess . In my younger day I canned as I shared with you but now freeze . Get fresh vegies and fruits from a farm to my door .

@funcountess The freezer we bought is pretty big. I will put some gallons of water in to take up the extra space and keep things cold if the power goes out. Right now it's about half full.

When we do manage to sell we will stay in southern NH. I would love to move back over the border to MA but we would need to pay hefty taxes if we did. We may stay in our town, or move to a town a little closer to the border. Since I go to Mass General for most of my healthcare I want to stay as close as possible to that. My son would love for us to move to Denver but I do not see that happening at all.

If you would clean up the kitchen you would be welcome here too! I don't mind cooking most of the time, but I hate planning what we will have. Today I am wishing I had a frozen pizza in the house. There is one made by Amy's with no cheese so I like that, I put provolone on it rather than mozzarella since provolone has no lactose. I have not been able to find that in the stores recently though. I do have yeast on order, they are really price-gouging for yeast these days, if you can even find it. That and bread flour are in short supply.

I guess I need to go down to the freezer (it's in the basement) to figure out what we will have for dinner. I'm tired all of the time these days so cooking is not fun by late afternoon. I know the fatigue is from boredom and a bit of depression.
JK

@contentandwell
Hi,
I am amazed at the products in other states that are hard to find or in short supply that we have here in Florida. There is no shortage of frozen pizza or fresh/frozen pizza dough or yeast. The main uptick in prices so far seems to be in Chicken and beef but not that much to worry about.....yet

FL Mary

Hi contentandwell,
Glad you got your freezer.
Besides gallons of water, you can make your own ice cubes and put them in plastic bags.
So you are from the pretty state of New Hampshire. Beautiful leaf season.
My dad was born and raised in Boston. He always said Mass General was a top rated hospital. With health concerns you want the best.
I learned from you provolone cheese is lactose free. Good to know.
All I buy are Amy’s products. Their enchiladas are my favorite.
They are made in California.in a small town of Petaluma. Do I dare say that is close to jjjjjjjjdduck1.
But let’s keep that a secret. Ha
Right now my kitchen is compromised, has been for over 18 months. All I have is a toaster, and one burner hot plate. With the virus all work stoped on rebuild/repairs.
In 9 days new window are going in. They were ordered February first. It’s a long 4 months.
I don’t know when insurance company will get to the kitchen.
You are not alone, fatigue is all over. It’s due to stress, and the unknown.
In late afternoon I don’t want to think about dinner either. I am afraid of take out, since you never know the health of the workers preparing. My favorite place had a worker who had cov19. Who knows how many people the employee infected?
Does your husband help you around the house?
It’s probably dinner time for you. You are 3 hours ahead of California.
Take care
Funcountess

,

@imallears Yeast is in short supply everywhere I thought, even on Amazon. It's in such short supply that the prices on Amazon are ridiculous. The King Arthur Flour site is not gouging but they are sold out of course. I did manage to find an expensive type on Amazon and paid at least three times the typical price but I really want to make pizza.

@funcountess The leaf season up here really is beautiful, with all of the sugar maples red and orange. When I came out of retirement, when my daughter started college, I was an inn manager at a local inn, The Bedford Village Inn. It is the nicest place in the Manchester area so we had many affluent guests in the fall from all over the country -- the "leaf peepers" is what New Englanders call them.

I was born just outside of Boston. Mass General is rated as the second best hospital in the country, to Mayo in MN being #1.

All aged cheeses are lactose-free. One way to determine if a cheese is lactose-free is to look at the sugar content. If there is no sugar there is no lactose -- lactose is a sugar. The only problem is that they can say lactose-free if there is just a trace per serving but often with cheeses you eat more than a serving so all of those traces can add up and cause a problem.

I love Amy's products too, they are usually very good quality and tasty. I didn't know they were made in Petaluma. We stayed there one night on our way into Sonoma wine country, back in the day when I could drink wine.

We have not yet ventured to do take-out.
My husband will move his dinner plate to the counter, just above the dish-washer. Does that count? He will vacuum and wash floors though, and make himself a sandwich for lunch. Unfortunately he is very spoiled.
JK

@contentandwell
Hi,
I am going to check out yeast again when I go to the supermarket next time. I was there nearly a week ago and there was a lot of fresh dough and some frozen dough. Our Publix bakeries are the best around. My favorite Amy’s product is organic California veggie burgers. They are always in my freezer for a quick lunch or dinner. I have used them over salad in a pinch.

Call me a leaf peeper too. I lived in NY and Long Island most of my life and we always traveled further upstate and then up the coast every year just to look at the spectacular foliage....and bring back leaves of course. Our favorite drive was going up to see relatives in Canada and eating seafood everywhere we could. We skied in Vermont but I always wanted to live in a coastal town........and be like Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote. Actually I would like to be a snowbird. I will explain to those of you who are not familiar with that term.

It’s uncomfortable here now.....not the time of the year for stews or heavy meals.

FL Mary

@imallears So you are basically a displaced northeasterner also. Those of us who live close to the coast are very particular about our seafood and fish too. I am the customer that the fish guy hates to see because I always want to know how fresh the fish is, and when it came in.

As I think I have mentioned before, I was in a ski lodge with a bunch of singles for four years at Killington. That's where I met my husband. We took a ski vacation every year with the kids from the time they were pre-school until my son's senior year in HS -- never to Killington which my son still mentions. Those were great times.
JK

I have succeeded at making my own sourdough starter and enjoying baking/sharing/eating my own sourdough bread. There is a satisfaction in doing this and the smell of the yeasty,sourdough aroma is intoxicating. I freeze some and also share with some of my neighbors. Some had not eaten home grown sourdough bread. What fun this adventure has been.