Confessions of a Recovering Plastic User and Catching up

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The last three weeks have been a bit of a blur, to say the least! My husband took a week off of work when UG3 was born and I just rested. Then I went right back to trying to manage the yard and can. Our garden took a hit from Mr. Greenie trying to take over while I was down, poor man. My cucumber seedlings died.

I'm halfway to earning a $25 Amazon gift card for more Weck jars through Swagbucks. Can't wait to get more 1/2 liter tulip jars, I'm almost out of pints! If you're interested in joining Swagbucks to earn gift cards for your online time too, check out my referral link!

I have picked apricots from a church member's yard and received a bunch of grapes from my parents who came to visit this weekend. So, I have been dehydrating apricots, red currants, and raisins, and canned apricots, apricot jam, grapes, and a pineapple from Food Not Bombs. All free! Winter looks better and better every day.

Here's our canned goods so far:

And our dehydrated foods waiting for a big enough load to be oven canned (probably after the grapes are raisins):

Confession time: We have recently read Dave Ramsey's "The Total Money Makeover" and have decided to reduce our budget to get out of debt completely. Our food budget took a hit and the plastic-free options from Phase One have gone to the wayside. We are now buying eggs from the grocery store again and milk in a plastic jug. Luckily our chickens should start laying within about month and a half, so no more egg cartons at that point.

We've been getting a lot of stuff from Food Not Bombs which is heavily packaged. Is it hypocritical to benefit from this organization and increase our amount of recycling? We reduce waste by eating food that would otherwise be thrown away, recycle the packaging, and since we aren't buying the food, we aren't contributing to the demand of more packaged food, right? Or am I justifying just to save on our food bill?

Here's to a fruitful harvest and becoming debt-free!

Little Urban Greenie