Well, its friday, and I can’t believe its been eat out of your pantry for two months now, I really want cabbage back in the house.. Remind me to grow more storage cabbage next year in the garden, I have lots of canned cabbage, dried cabbage and sour cabbage but I can’t believe how much I miss having fresh cabbage available to me in my cooking..
Other then cabbage, I am not currently feeling any other real push for extra’s in regards to eating any different or with difficulty’s to date, but its fall and a time of bounty and our pantry and cellar overflows in many ways..
DH came home with two new cookbooks from Whitehorse Yukon for me, and I am quite excited to read them though, give a review and try out some of the recipes, as they use things like my birch syrup, high bush cranberry jelly, Spruce sugar and Spruce salt, along with a number of other wild harvest things I have in the house, which is awesome to have gotten a book that provides idea’s and recipes for wild craft foods. He also came home with some lovely locally made boo sausage, hmmm I do love Cariboo, it was something I eat fairly regular when I lived in the artic, and had access to the local hunters store in Iqaluit, Nunuvat.
Speaking of the north and gifts Dh came home with, I got a instructional DVD on tanning hides, working the hides for clothing and other interesting northern winter items, I can’t wait to sit down and watch it right though.
If you have been limiting your food shopping and eating mainly out of your pantry, what have you found that you are lacking? or missing? I am giving fair warning, I am going to go buy cabbage this week!
This is part of the Homestead Preparedness Challange under Food Storage.
Just another Day on the Farm 
As always, the goal isn’t to do without, or to deprive our families, but to figure out just how much we need to get us through the winter.
I’m almost done all of those apples. I should be done tonight. I’ll post a picture of all my dried apples when I’m done. I’ll soon be getting carrots and more potatoes, as I had always planned.
One odd thing that I, for the second year in a row, will likely run out of … is fat. I just realized we don’t have enough lard, and I’m not sure what to do about that. I’m kind of shocked at the amount of fat that we use – mostly butter and lard, but a considerable amount of canola oil, too. If I do a pig next year, I’m going to really focus on saving and rendering every last bit of fat.
Morning C.D.
I have to admit that I am glad I figured out just how much I miss having winter cabbage, I have looked at adding in better winter storage cabbages but they have been types that I am not as familiar with, and so I have grown and enjoyed the ones I have been growing, this eating of my pantry has shown me that I need to expand my knowledge on this plants, both in growing and in storage, Figuring out where to put a little extra focus, a very good thing to learn.
I hear you on the fats, I have been much more aware of it this year, then I have been any other year, and I have made a number of different choices in my butchering to be able to get every last drop of fat out of the different critters, now I need to see how long they will last in storage, I have a number of pints of duck fat, and lamb tallow, I have a couple pints of lard still, had No luck at all yet on local nut oil, but I did save a number of jars worth of all the different seeds, including pumpkin, naked sqaush seeds etc, they won’t help with cooking per say, or baking but they are good for adding in extra fat in the diet itself.
Look forward to seeing your photos of your apples, I did find it interesting that I got my power bill in, and without me canning daily over the past month, it was eighty dollars less, that gives me a better sense of just how much my canning is costing me over the month on power..
Hi FarmGal, Now that we’re back to nut oils again (actually, I think this is close to where I first came across your blog), I wonder if you ever found out anything from Diana Beresford-Kroeger? If not, this is a great article about her which also includes a link to her website. http://www.thegreeninterview.com/diana-beresford-kroeger-bio
Let me know what you think, but I’m pretty sure you’ll find her a woman after your own heart.
Morning Deb
I did do some reading on her when you posted last time but thanks for the link on this post, some of my readers have already used it, so it was clearly of interest to others as well 🙂
I have planted a number of nut tree’s on the farm now, but I don’t have crops yet, and without being able to collect my own nuts the costs are far to high for me to play around with store bought ones.
We’ve gone without shopping (at all) for over a year, and we still eat mostly from our pantry. I agree about having fat on hand. We have found that we truly need over a gallon of oil a month for our family.
A good variety of fruits and vegetables is really important when you aren’t harvesting from your garden.
And though it’s not food, having extra dish soap on hand for all of the extra baking pans is really important!
Hi P. H.
Thanks for stopping by, I will have to find time to go to your site and see if you did any writing about your year of no shopping.. Thanks so much for your impute on how much oil your family used. Thankfully I was able to put up alot of fruit and veggies for winter use, I hear you on the extra dish soap, I go though alot when you make everything from scratch!