Monday Miscellany
It's 10:00 am as I write this, and I really should be doing some other things at the moment.
(Like, laundry, school with my girls, making a menu plan, making a grocery list....)
So, how about a quick 30-minutes-of-blogging dose of randomness?
Here's my latest Hungry Harvest box. It has something new to me in it....a rutabaga!
I think I'm going to opt for roasting it, since roasting improves pretty much any vegetable by 97%.
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Joshua and Lisey didn't carve their pumpkins (yet! Joshua says he's still going to.), but Sonia and Zoe did, before Halloween.
Zoe's (on the left) is Jack Skellington's dog, Zero. And Sonia's is Gollum, from Lord of the Rings.
(She and Zoe are both rather obsessed with LOTR.)
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Joshua outgrew some of his jeans, and since none of his cousins are his same pant size, I wasn't sure what exactly to do with them.
I thought about Goodwill, but then again, the odds of someone needing this very tall, very slim pant size seemed a little...slim.
(Ahahahahaha!)
I checked eBay, and noticed that these jeans do seem to sell. I listed them, (using the eBay app to upload photos from my phone), and they sold the next day.
Now they're out of my house, I have a little extra cash, and I know they're going to a person who needs the exact size Joshua had.
SWEET.
We've barely had to run our heat so far this fall, although we did keep our A/C on a lot later than usual. A/C is less expensive than heat, so it's all good in my book!
It's looking like some cooler weather is actually headed our way now, but hey, at least we had a very outdoors-friendly October.
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Ok, my 30 minutes is almost up, so I'll wrap this up.
I know it's still fall (I mean, see my photos above!), but tomorrow I have a fun holiday offer for you guys from Grove.
Including this fabulous red apron.
Anyway, more on that tomorrow.
Laundry, school, and menu planning are waiting for me!
Yes, it is now 10:50 and I really need to be doing something else as well, just had to check email and your blog! Glad to see your post and those nice autumn pictures. The leaves have been late to turn and now the colors are so rich and gorgeous! Makes running errands and school drop off/pick ups that much more enjoyable!
The scenery is beautiful. I do miss those changing seasons here in Florida. We have to look fast if we want to see them.
My husband loves rutabaga and I don't. I would roast it and I have seen recipes using apples with it but he likes his plain with pepper sauce ( vinegar infused with hot peppers).
We don't get pumpkins much because they go too fast in the heat but I do like picking them up cheap after Thanksgiving. I cook and purée them for later.
Thanks for the lovely pictures!
OMG- that is a photo of my beloved Bernese Mountain dog Gretel! A frugal purchase- no way but she was a sweetheart with a mink coat that floated. My Monday is starting out great- I trimmed some bushes and scrubbed the kitchen floor. Now I'm heating up some potato soup I made Saturday. It's a beautiful day too.
I'm glad you sold Joshua's old jeans so fast! I have some old clothes at home I've been wanting to sell on eBay. But they're so worn out that I wonder if it's even worth it. Maybe I should just take action and see how it goes.
It's beautiful scenery! I went hiking this past weekend, and I took lots of pics of the fall leaves. ^.^
Try Facebook yard sale groups. Lots of pictures does the trick usually.
I use the eBay app to list things all the time now - it is so easy!
I LOOOOOOVE rutabagas. Like, so much that I can eat a whole one myself. I dice them up kind small and then cook them covered in a pan on the stove with butter and a little water if needed. That said, I think they are kind of a love/hate thing, like beets. Roasting is a good way to start. Unless your family is like mine and doesn't like roasted vegetables. Crazy people.
Roasted Root Vegetables are delicious - sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, parsnips or carrots, rutabagas, turnips, all cubed, along with chopped onion, garlic, and fresh rosemary tossed with oil and salt and pepper.
A produce tip for the rutabaga is to set it in a bowl with a little water and microwave for a few minutes to make it easier to peel.
I’m from Northern CA and not running my A/C is such a financial relief! A/C is run off electricity, which is like a bajillion dollars in my neck of the woods! In fact, nearly everyone here, including us has solar here. We went from $3,600 in electricity use a year to around $300-$400!!! Significant different!!! Sure, I have a loan for my solar, but even after paying that monthly we’re still ahead over $1,000 annually. When it’s paid off, we’ll be golden! Gas to run our heater here is chump change compared to our former $450/month summer electricity bills and we keep our house at 78 degrees. For our 2,050 sq ft, two story home we pay between $45-$125/month in the winter. So yeah for fall and winter!!!
I feel kind of dumb asking this, but exactly how does one figure out or compare costs of gas vs. electricity or heat vs. AC?
I only have electricity, but I know AC is cheaper just because our utility bills are cheaper in the summer than in the winter.
I've always assumed that this is because we're moving the temperature less, but I could be wrong.
Like, in the summertime, the hottest it gets outside here is 95 at the worst. And I'm depending on AC to bring it down to 77. That's not even a 20 degree difference.
However, in the winter, the outside temp is often 32 degrees or lower, and that's way more than 20 degrees lower than what I want my house to be at.
I agree with Tiffany. In general, natural gas is significantly cheaper than electricity which is why in many parts of the US, gas is used for home heating and water heating. I live in the upper Midwest and it would be unaffordable to heat with electricity. Heating with natural gas is much less costly than cooling with electricity.
I wish I had that option! Alas, electric heat is what we've got here. Oh well.
Thanks for making this make sense to me!
Oooh, let me know how the rutabaga tastes! I've never had one so I admit I'm curious about it. What a Monday!
Out of curiosity--what size were those pants? I have a son who is built very similarly. 🙂 And...where do you purchase jeans for Joshua?
They are 29x34, available online from American Eagle. Such a lifesaver for lanky, slim guys!
That's good to know. My 15 yo son wears 30/34. I have such a hard time finding jeans for him.
It's a lifesaver for me that skinny jeans are a thing now. Slim skinny jeans with the adjustable waistband pulled way tight...that's what works for my skinny 6 year old. My 9 year old thinks it's cool to wear shorts year round. And i don't even argue with him since it's so hard to find pants that fit him
I know, right? I often wonder what I would have done had my kids been born in an era of baggy jeans.
What great photos! Cute dog, good pumpkin carving of Zero, and it looks so Fall-y! It's pretty hot here in TX still so I'm awaiting our next cold front. Keep us posted on the rutabaga: I'll be interested to see how it turns out. Can't wait to see the apron tomorrow.
I am LOVING the Amazon button in the top right of your blog! I'm not sure if it's new, but I just noticed it. I'll be sure to stop here first before I place an Amazon Prime order. Which is, like, every day 🙂 Happy Monday!
My dad loves his rutabaga like his potatoes...mashed.
He cubes them up, boils them until soft, drains them, and mashes them with butter, a little milk, and salt/pepper to taste. I've never developed a taste for it, but he loves it.
If roasting doesn't go well, maybe mashing (even mixing 50/50 with mashed potatoes) would work?
Rutabaga is a Christmas food in Finland, made into a casserole with spices that are similar to pumpkin spice.
Other times of year we dice it together with potatoes and carrots into soups and stews such as beef stew.
Someone in the comments asked how rutabaga tastes-well not good at all!!! lol!!!
Not sure if even roasting this IMO awful vegetable could even make it palatable.
You will have to let us know in all honesty what you think.
Heh, well, I'll have to keep you posted once I try it!
Rutabaga can also be known as wax turnips. My family's favorite way to eat them is cooked, and mashed. Then it is layered in to a casserole dish covered with American cheese and then topped with mashed potatoes. The dish is then placed in an oven and the cheese melts and the mashed potatoes brown. Yum.
We did a similar thing but with Velvetta (sp?). You can hide anything with that stuff.
There's a fabulous recipe for rutabaga in a cookbook of the Russian scholar Darra Goldstein. It was published under two different titles: The Winter Vegetarian and The Vegetarian Hearth, and includes lots of cold-climate vegetarian recipes, as opposed to the more common Mediterranean and middle-Eastern dishes that don't do us much good in January in New England.
Anyway, the Oven-Roasted Rutabagas and Potatoes are so good that my family actually invited them to Thanksgiving, where newcomers are very seldom welcome!
This is my favourite way to eat rutabagas: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/mashed-yellow-turnips-with-crispy-shallots-recipe-1944741
Man, I do like your blog. 🙂
I think we call Rutabaga swedes, we find them a little strong on their own but I like a small amount (e.g. 1 cm slice) finely chopped/grated and added to a shepherd's pie meat base. My sister has mashed them but mixed some in with potato as she found it on its own a bit strong. But I haven't tried them roasted I like the multi-veg cube roasted idea, sounds yum.
Love rutabagas!!! My mother cuts it up and boils it with a potato or 2 and then mashes it. I love it and she usually makes it doe me and her.
Funny story in my husband's family is that they all hated "turnip potatoes". Turns out their mother was adding the turnips to the mashed potatoes to stretch the potatoes and ruining the flavor of mashed potatoes. None of my in-laws eat rutabaga/turnip and I love them!