Buy a Friend a Book Week Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 1 is the beginning of Buy a Friend a Book Week. Check out buyafriendabook.com for more information. Anyone can participate, and there are normally several blogs who celebrate by giving books away!

Deals This Week: 6/28-7/4

Target at AttentionTargetShoppers.blogspot.com

CVS at FrugalCouponLiving.com

Kmart at BargainBriana.com

Rite-Aid at MyFrugalAdventures.com

Walgreens at ALotOfSavings.com

Walmart at BeCentsable.net

Food on Friday

Happy Friday! This week I tried my hand at drying cherries. I just love dried cherries, but they are so expensive, usually around $10 per pound! My son and I picked cherries this week, with my mom at a local orchard. Since we’ve had a lot of rain recently, it seems that cherry season will be rather short here, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick again this year. We’ve been eating fresh cherries at meals, but I wanted to dry some. My friend found a brand new food dehydrator at a garage sale for me earlier this year for only $6! What a deal! I made strawberry fruit leather the other week from my freshly picked strawberries. I made 3 batches, and I preferred the last batch, since it was thicker. So yesterday, I dried cherries and made some cherry leather. The cherries turned out well, although I didn’t make many, since I wasn’t sure if they would be good. And since they shrink, you have to dry a lot of them to get a decent amount. The cherry leather got too dry, so I had to throw that out. Oh well, I am still learning. Since I still have cherries, I may dry some more, as well as freeze some.

Yesterday, I picked my first zucchini from my zucchini plant. It’s a bit funny looking, but I’m sure it’ll taste fine. I have two zucchini plants and two yellow squash plants. Both plants have small vegetables coming, so hopefully they’ll yield more. The squash plant had some larger ones, but they rotted. Since I am not a gardening expert, I don’t know what the problem was. Hopefully that won’t continue to happen.

My two regular tomato plants (in the ground are doing well), and I have two cherry tomato plants that also seem to be growing well, the latter were started from seeds, to it’s neat to see how big they are now. The four tomato plants I planted in pots, upside-down are not doing as well. One plant died. Although the other three are much smaller than the ones in the ground, they do have small green tomatoes on them, which is encouraging!

I have several bush pickle plants in containers on my deck and they have small cucumbers on them. I am hoping that they can be used for pickles, since it’s called a bush pickle. I have three of those, and one regular cucumber, although they all look the same…

If I have time, I’ll try to take some pictures of my garden and post them today.

Here is a list of links I want to share this week:

Strawberry Bread at HeavenlyHomemakers.com

Salad Dressing Recipes at HeavenlyHomemakers.com

What’s On My Food at WhatsOnMyFood.org

Healthy Summer Recipes and Menus at EatingWell.com

The Simple Dollar Podcast on Food at TheSimpleDollar.com

Healthy Summer Potluck Side Dishes and Desserts at EatingWell.com

Protect Your Freedom to Eat Nourishing Food and Support Small Farmers Against HR 875 at TheNourishingGourmet.com

Whole Grain Bread with soaking instructions at PassionateHomemaking.com

Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal at LynnesKitchenAdventures.com (This sounds great! I’ll probably wait to try it when fresh fruit is not in season though.)

Buttermilk Syrup at LynnesKitchenAdventures.com

Nutrition in a Nutshell at KeeperOfTheHome.org

Simple Affordable Bread at KeeperOfTheHome.org

Frugal Sweetener: Organic Raisins (thanks to The Nourishing Gourmet for this link. I have a chocolate cookbook where many recipes call for prune puree, but since prunes are so expensive, I haven’t tried any of these recipes yet. I think I will give them a try using a raisin puree.)

Booking Through Thursday – Hot

Now that summer is here (in the northern hemisphere, anyway), what is the most “Summery” book you can think of? The one that captures the essence of summer for you?
(I’m not asking for you to list your ideal “beach reading,” you understand, but the book that you can read at any time of year but that evokes “summer.”)

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I am going to list a few books, even though I know the question just asks for one…

Anne of Green Gables is both a classic and a “summery” read. So many of scenes take place outside – falling off the roof, sinking in a canoe, and her imagination seems to normally take place out of doors. And I think it would be wonderful to visit Green Gables and Avonlea in the summer!

Flabbergasted and A Delirious Summer, both by Ray Blackston also seem to embody summer, with rides in a convertible and trips to the beach.

Read more responses to this question or participate at Booking Through Thursday.

Works for Me Wednesday – Organic Peanut Butter

Some time last year, I decided to switch from regular peanut butter (Skippy, Peter Pan, or generic) to Richfood’s Organic Peanut Butter. The latter is available at Costco and only has two ingredients, peanuts and salt. It took me a little while to get used to the taste, but now I prefer it. It doesn’t contain any partially hydrogenated oils. Even though there is supposedly such a small amount of partially hydrogenated oils in regular peanut butter that it’s considered trans fat free, I will do what I can do avoid foods with trans fat.

I have also tried other natural peanut butters, but haven’t found any that come close to the Richfood peanut butter from Costco.

Check out more things that Work for Me Wednesday at WeAreTHATFamily.com.

Tuesday’s Tip Jar – Sneaky Carrots

Macaroni and cheese was the meal I scheduled for this evenings supper. As I was blending the mostly thawed tomatoes, I remembered that I had some leftover cooked carrots from our dinner last night. There were not many carrots, probably 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup. I decided to add them to my stewed tomatoes. They blended right in, and no one noticed!

So if you have some leftover vegetables, consider sneaking them into a sauce or some other way into your dinner. It uses up leftover items, and adds nutrition to your meal.

Check out more tips at BlogMommas.com.

Food on Friday

Oops, I almost forgot about posting today. And I am not sure why, but I did not accumulate a list of food/recipe links…so here are some websites that one can easily get lost in. I just spent a while at KellyTheKitchenKop.com. There are a lot of tips, info, and recipes at this site. And it’s easy to spend a great deal of time there.

And here are some other food related websites I’ve been enjoying lately:

HeavenlyHomemakers.com
PassionateHomemaking.com
TheNourishingGourmet.com

Cherry season is here, or almost here, depending on where you live. Be sure to check out these cherry recipes.

What are some of your favorite food/recipe websites or blogs?

A Claim of Her Own – Book Review

A Claim of Her Own, a new historical fiction novel by Stephanie Grace Whitson is an exciting story about Mattie, a young woman fleeing her past and seeking refuge with her brother who has settled in South Dakota, where he is gold mining. Mattie arrives in Deadwood, and immediately understands what her brother meant in his letter to her, “Walking down the main street in Deadwood is like stepping onto hell’s front porch. It’s frenzied and filthy, and it’s the last place on earth any man would want to bring any woman he cared about.” This town is nothing like what she is used to – most businesses were in canvas tents, the signs made out of old lumber or sheets. The men were filthy, both their language and appearance.

Follow Mattie as she struggles to forget her past and start a new life in this dirty, remote town. Does her secret past catch up with her? And how long will she stay in this dumpy town? Pick up A Claim of Her Own to read about what happens.

Booking Through Thursday – Fantasy and Sci-Fi

Sci-fi author (Sharon Lee) has declared June 23rd Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Day:

“So! In my Official Capacity as a writer of science fiction and fantasy, I hereby proclaim June 23 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Day! A day of celebration and wonder! A day for all of us readers of science fiction and fantasy to reach out and say thank you to our favorite writers. A day, perhaps, to blog about our favorite sf/f writers. A day to reflect upon how written science fiction and fantasy has changed your life.”

So … what might you do on the 23rd to celebrate? Do you even read fantasy/sci-fi? Why? Why not?

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I don’t think I’ll be celebrating on the 23rd. Although it would be wonderful to sit down and read some sci-fi books all day, I don’t see that happening anytime soon…
Science fiction/fantasy is a genre I enjoy, but I haven’t read any books in this genre recently. Some of my favorites are:
The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis)
Space Trilogy (CS Lewis)
The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien)
The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
various books by Madeleine L’Engle
The Enchanted Castle (E Nesbit)
The Princess and the Goblin (George MacDonald)
Dominion Trilogy (Robin Parrish)

Do you enjoy fantasy/science fiction books? If so, what are your favorites?

Deals This Week: 6/14-6/20

Wal-Mart at Centsible-Sawyer.com

Target at AttentionTargetShoppers.com

CVS at iHeartCVS.com

Rite Aid at MyFrugalAdventures.blogspot.com

Walgreens at MommySnacks.net