Desperate Times...

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Canned two quarts of raspberries from the farmer's market and 6 quarts of blueberries from Food Not Bombs.

Made Greek yogurt twice from a free culture starter I got at Food Not Bombs. I used the tutorial for making it in a insulted lunch pail from Food in Jars. Now the yogurt plastic habit can be broken!

Canned 3 quarts of tomatoes from the Farmer's market and dehydrated the cores and skins for vegetable powder. Took all night before UG3 was down and everything was ready. Tomatoes take the longest to process with a 95 minute processing time for my altitude. Also watered the garden with the waterbath water. No waste, yay!

Garden is doing well, my surviving cucumber plant is flowering like crazy, so pickling season will soon be upon us. Another two fall cucumbers are coming up and some green beans as well. So, hoping for an abundant harvest from those before Winter.

With the heat wave we've had, no tomatoes are ripe yet, so they'll all come ripe when it cools at the same time. Most likely I'll be flooded with free tomatoes soon, which means spaghetti sauce, diced, whole, Rotel style, salsas, pizza sauce, ketchup, and tomato soup concentrate will be in abundance this winter.

Discovered that two of the blueberry jars didn't seal and were inappropriately fermenting on the shelf. Had to compost those. I also got a real deal on my beloved Weck jars. A local classified ad sold us 32 jars for $30, and normally they are about $5 a jar. Real win for us.

Now for the sad decision. We have been aggressively been attacking our debt and have realized that we can't afford our hybrid car with our more realistic budget, even with just paying the minimums of what we have left. We have paid off two of our smallest debts and have three more to go without the car which doubles our debt. (Mortgage is separate.) Yay for our progress!

So, with heavy hearts, we will be selling our car back to Carmax, cutting our losses, and buying a beater under $3K. We don't travel or drive far from home, so getting stranded won't be an issue. Eventually we will upgrade slowly back to a used hybrid, after saving up and trading up for slightly better cars along the way.



To a debt-free, plastic-free, and zero-waste future,
Little Urban Greenie