Day 3 has arrived with light snow, below 0 temps an so far its s pretty grey day, so after taking the dogs for a yard walk. I am sitting with a nice big old pot of red rose tea that I threw a few dried red clover buds into. Loving my flowering plant on the table it beings such cheer to my writing spot.

Day 1 was all about taking stock of what I had in regards to fresh food in the fridge or fruit bowl and what was coming in from the farm. Day 2 was all about starting more food if possible. Day 3 is all about STRETCHING that fresh food or preserving it.

in my mom’s little space on the door that she puts her goodies , I found two smaller rolls of garlic sausage, one got frozen and one got used for supper last night, and tucked behind them was a wrapped up half used the greens main cut off fresh green onions, the outside of each had some slime-rotting leaves. That was easy enough to remove, far more important is the fact that these greens had strong active perfect looking roots.. So they got potted up and placed in a warm sunny window to start growing me more green tops.

One of the best things I can say in regards to using up the fresh food is to look at it carefully, its it going bad, does it have staying power or will it go bad quickly.. if its turning or will go fast its important to preserve it..

Don’t keep it fresh, I know that seems odd to some because they are going to be thinking, keep the fresh as long as possible but in the long run, looking and being honest.. what can you preserve for future use

Herbs that will go fast, chop and preserve in salt or put it in the ice tube tray cover with your favorite oil, freeze, pop out and bag them up.

Tomato’s dice them up, and freeze them or make a fast salsa so they will hold longer in the fridge.

Cucumbers, peppers and such.. get them in the pickle, or ferment them… In our case I found a cucumber in mom’s area and while one end was gone soft, I did the rest into a quick salad.

If it will stay well in storage then for sure keep it raw and fresh..

So back to the 1/3rd idea, this was our supper last night, a little carb heavy I know but hubby loves his corn 🙂 It meet what I am looking for in  the beginning of this challenge, 1/3rd fresh being used and 1/3rd coming from my dry pantry or freezers and 1/3rd coming from my canning pantry.

If there is one thing I learned living in Iqaluit Nunavut Canada in a fly in and fly out, you only get one sealift food order per year when we lived there in the early 2000 back when it just first became the capital and we were still on the old food mail system. I could order fresh once a month from a store in Quebec to be flown up at goodly cost otherwise, everything came in one sea can sealift shipment that you were not even sure when it would arrive depending on sea ice..

Its that you always need to look at your pantry in balance.. If you eat all the peaches in the first month, there will be no more canned peaches for the next 11 months.. this has really stuck with me (after a number of failings when I would run out of things in second half of the year due to not planning carefully enough in the first six months)

Plan most of your main meals to be balanced when possible on the 1/3rd plan, once we truly lose all fresh, I am hoping that the farm will provide the 1/3rd.. we will see, otherwise I will move to 1/3rd dry pantry, 1/3rd freezer and 1/3rd canning pantry.

Day 2 Farm impute – 6 eggs

Egg total 14 eggs