Frugality

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What to do with 30 bunches of organic celery?

Last month, Azure Standard had a box of organic celery on sale for $11.25 ($12.21 w/tax).  Each box was guaranteed to contain at least 30 bunches of celery, which is what I received.  So, each bunch of Organic celery cost me $0.41/each.  So, what did I do with ALL. THAT. CELERY?

Well,  I started by chopping it up.  I had two bowls full.  Each bowl contained 15 bunches of chopped up celery.

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1 of 2 bowls full of organic chopped celery (15 bunches).

Then, I loaded them onto my Excalibur Dehyrator trays and dehydrated them! I filled my dehydrator twice and turned two huge bowl fulls into this:

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Two half gallon canning jars full of dehydrated celery!  I will end up grinding some of this up into a powder to go into my vegetable powder mix that I keep on hand, but I will leave most of it as is for now.  It will be used soups & stews in the coming months, especially in the winter.  While celery is easily accessible all year long and not overly expensive (usually running around $0.97 to $1.30/bunch), buying organic can cost even more.  But, at $0.41/bunch, I now have plenty on hand whenever I need some for a dish.

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How to Repurpose A Lard Bucket, otherwise known as “My New Egg Bucket”

I had an empty lard bucket that I wanted to do something with, and then I had a brilliant idea!

All you need is:

Krylon Paint for plastics (I used black and red)

An empty bucket

A few stick-on letters

A little time!

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Start by removing the lid and handle from the bucket.

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Next, give it a good washing in hot soapy water.  You’ll probably need to wash it a few times.  Once it’s nice and clean, allow to completely dry.

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Take outside and spray paint desired color.  You will probably need to paint a darker bottom to hide all the colored inks in the bucket itself.  I used black as the bottom coat on mine.  I also painted my lid and handle black.   Once dry, I placed the letters where I wanted them & began painting my second color.  I painted both the inside & outside of my bucket red.

Once it was completely dry, I brought it inside & reattached the handle.

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I also made this little “cushion” to go in the bottom of the bucket to keep the eggs from making contact with bottom of the bucket – hopefully to keep down on any “accidental” cracking of the eggs.

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Voila!  My new egg bucket! I love it!

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I may just have to make a few more of these as I come across empty buckets!

 

This post is linked to:

Heritage Homesteaders

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My Next Adventure…..

It really does help to know your meat processor! Or, in our case, his son!  He has been such a blessing to us, and he’s a wealth of information!  When we began discussing having a cow processed last fall, we found out that most people do not save the soup bones, liver, heart, tongue, or suet from their cows.  If you ask, he will save the soup bones & suet for you – FREE!  How amazing is that?!  (He will also save the lard from pigs when they get them in!)

I recently put in a request for some lard/suet, and yesterday, I picked up 3 boxes full of suet (beef fat)!

Beef fat!

Beef fat – 2 of the 3 boxes I picked up!

Here, you can see what it looks like!  Isn’t it beautiful?!  I can’t wait to render it down into tallow very soon.

Frozen Beef Fat (Suet)

Frozen Beef Fat (Suet)

*A tip we received from his son (my sweet husband works with him) is to save some of the best suet & keep it in the freezer.  When we want to make hamburgers, pull it out and & grate some over the top of of the ground beef!  That is an awesome idea!  This keeps the lean hamburger meat from falling apart on the grill.

If you’ve ever had hamburgers fall apart while grilling them, it’s probably because they did not have enough fat in them to hold them together.  Some fat is okay for you.  There is no reason to cut it all out of your diet.  Your body needs some healthy fats and, believe it or not, lard & tallow are good fats – just like butter!  Yes, you can have too much of a good thing.  Moderation is the key!

Stay tuned for my new adventure into rendering tallow!  Blog post coming as soon as I get a chance to get this done.

This post has been linked to:

Heritage Homesteaders

Chicken Chick Blog Hop

Homestead Blog Hop

Oak Hill Homestead