Ways to Put Up Fruit for the Winter

Our ancestors got it right when they learned to preserve the wonderful abundance of summer and fall fruits for the long days of winter. Think toast or biscuits with your own home made jelly and jam, pies or cobblers for cold evening treats, or a bowl of crispy apples for afternoon snacks.

You don't have to spend time canning over a hot stove to have the best of summer and autumn produce on your table all winter. While your family might enjoy traditional jams and jellies, don't stop there. Dry some plums, freeze some peaches, store apples in the cellar (or basement or closet)!

Jellies, Jams and Butters

Making fruit into spreads is the way most people become acquainted with preserving fruit. It's a fairly simple and straight forward approach to keeping fruit and takes little extra equipment. Use fruit that's not in the best condition for butters, jellies and jams, but never use fruit that is old, moldy or dry for anything. You can cut away bruises and other damage.

Sweetened fruit can generally be canned in a water bath canner, or any pot large enough to cover your jars with water for a couple of inches. You will need to find recipes or instructions specific to the fruit you want to can. Don't assume that because one fruit takes a certain amount of time or is prepared a certain way that all fruits can be done that way. Jellies, jams and preserves are not canned as such, but heat sealed. Find and follow instructions for the specific fruit you have.

Freezing Fruits

To freeze, use ripe but not overripe fruit and wash thoroughly. When you're preparing it to freeze, you will find that cut or peeled pieces darken in the air. Put them into a bath made of a tablespoon of vinegar to about a quart of water. You can also use small amounts of flat (or not) citrus based soft drinks, or unsweetened lemonade in the water to keep fruits from turning colors. You can buy a product to keep fruit from turning but why buy it if you don't have to?

If you're preparing several packages of the same fruit, cut, peel or slice enough into the bath for one package at a time. You can use the same bath over and over and even freeze it for later use, so don't drain it away, but lift the fruit from it with a slotted spoon or strainer. Cover the prepared fruit with sugar syrup made to your taste. If you don't use sweetener, cover with plain water, then get to the freezer quickly.

Whole fruits can be frozen without water. Put them on a tray or cookie sheet to freeze, then store in an airtight container.

Dehydrating Fruits

Whether you use the sun, your oven or an electric dehydrator, wash fruit, peel if necessary, and pretreat in a bath as explained above to keep it from discoloring. Place fruit on racks, keeping individual pieces from touching, and dry at 120 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

Different fruits will have different qualities when they are dry. Some types will be brittle, others will be leathery. If you are going to keep dehydrated fruit for several months, pasteurize it before storing by putting it in a 175 degree oven for 10 minutes. Don't overdo it or it will turn to charcoal!

Don't wait much longer or the abundance of summer fruit will be gone!

It's time to gather tea for the winter

Right now is a great time to gather plants for tea  (tisanes, actually) from your garden, yard or wild areas to use this winter.

You probably have a few plants (aka, weeds) available that make good tea and right now, they're free for the taking. Free is frugal, right?

So what can you make tea from?

Dandelions (leaves and roots)
Berry leaves (strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, etc.)
Rose hips (a little later in the season; don't forget them)
Mint (any kind, including catmint, horehound, lemon balm and so on)
Flowers like clover, chamomile, goldenrod, meadowsweet and yarrow
Some trees have bark that make tea, like cherry

Make sure you can positively identify any plant that you gather. Most plants are best when gathered early in the morning. Don't pick too many leaves from a plant or you will damage it. You can pick over a few days to minimize damage.

Dehydrate the plant material by putting it in a single layer on a food safe screen or cloth in a warm, not hot, place. Don't dry in the sun, as delicate flavors may be damaged.

Some leaves will be dry and ready to store in a day's time; others will take two days. They are ready when they're crunchy with no trace of moisture left. Store in a glass jar with an airtight lid. As much as you might want to show off your teas, don't store them on the counter. Put them in a cabinet or pantry where it will be dark most of the time.

This winter when the cold winds blow and you want something comforting, put a heaping teaspoon or two of your free tea in a cup and add boiling water. Let it steep at least five minutes or more, depending on the tea.

You will soon learn how much you need and next year, you'll know how much to harvest.

Things to do before cold weather gets here

1. Check insulation in your home and caulk around windows and wherever it's needed.

2. Get your car serviced to make sure the antifreeze and tires are up to par, especially. Get a tune up if needed.

3. Check the coat closet to make sure everyone has enough cold weather gear. Jackets, coats, snow shoes, mittens and hats need to be in good condition.

4. Have your furnace checked or your chimney cleaned or whatever you use to heat your home, serviced and ready to go. This includes filters and thermostats.

5. Bring in plants that need to winter over in the house. Mulch over other plants that need it and clean up the garden.

Enjoy the weather right now! It will soon enough be cold!

Frugal Breakfasts for Frosty Mornings

Some of us have already awakened to freezing temperatures and killing frosts this year. Even if you haven't, the cooler temperatures make warming breakfasts appealing. Oatmeal is probably the most popular hot cereal and store brand oats are a frugal choice over brand name oats, since they're generally of good quality.

Most of us don't want to eat oats every morning, though. Another hot cereal is good old fashioned Malt-O-Meal®. The three original varieties - Original, Chocolate and Maple and Brown Sugar - are still available and still very inexpensive per serving. They're quick and easy to make and most kids love them.

Another good cold weather breakfast is pancakes. They're so simple to make from scratch that I wonder how they ever started selling pancake mixes in the first place. There is one that may be cheaper to buy than to make pancakes from scratch and that is Krusteaz® pancake mixes. All you do is add water.

And then there are biscuits with gravy or butter or peanut butter or just biscuits.

Any of these breakfasts will cost you just pennies per serving.

Disclaimer: I'm not paid for mentioning either Malt-O-Meal® or Krusteaz®, although that would be nice. They are products that are inexpensive and good quality. Products like that help us keep our costs down and eat well, too.

Fireplaces and Attics Can Waste Your Money

Heat rises! You know it does. Places like attics and fireplaces when not in use, allow the air that you pay to keep warm  float right out the roof.

Enough insulation in your attic will make a big difference in your heating bill, but if your attic door is leaking warm air up and out, you still will be paying more than you need to. There are special bats that cover attic doors, or you can cut one to fit the door. You'll need to tape it on to keep it in place when you close the door. Weatherize the edges, too, with strips they make for doors, or make your own from felted wool. Just cut strips and use white glue to attach them.

Fireplaces are great for cold weather, but they don't heat well unless they're equipped with a "heatilator," which are pipes going through the masonry and opening into the room, carrying the heat that would otherwise escape up the chimney. Some fireplaces work better than others due to their mass and the way it's arranged.

More than losing heat through the chimney when it's burning, a fireplace loses heat through an open damper when it's not burning. You can't reach in to the chimney to close it until the fireplace fire is out and fairly cold, so there is a lot of hot air going right up and out. Close it as soon as you can, but don't forget to open it before building the next fire!

Save Money by Not Heating These

Do you heat your pantry, closets and empty guest rooms? Do you heat hobby rooms or bedrooms all day long when no one is in them?

You're wasting home heating energy and money if you do.

It's a simple thing to close vents and keep the doors closed to unused rooms. Go a step further and make or buy draft stoppers if there is a gap under the door. Weatherstrip the inside of pantries and closets and wherever else it may be appropriate.

The idea is to seal these rooms away from the rooms you want to heat. Less space to heat = less money to heat it.

Note: It would be very unusual for food in a pantry to freeze unless it's on an outside wall and your house gets really, really cold, but keep potatoes and other fresh foods toward the inside wall for the best flavor. 

Ready Your Home for Chilly Weather Ahead!

For most of us, it's time to start winterizing our home. I know it's still fall and I know that ultra cold and snow are still in the future, but NOW is the time to get ready - not when there's a blizzard going on and you suddenly realize that the drapes are billowing with the wind and the furnace seems to be working very hard and not making much progress.

Start outside the house. Drain hoses and make sure outside faucets are ready for the first freeze, then check around the foundation of the house to make sure there are no new cracks or gaps that need to be filled.

Gutters need to be cleaned of leaves as autumn progresses, and chimneys and vents need to be checked for leaks.

Cover and/or store your outdoor furniture and make sure all the garden and lawn tools are brought in, cleaned and stored.

Look around the windows and do any needed caulking. Even newer windows may have cracks around the outside frames.

If you have plants that need special care before winter, now is the time to do it, or at least plan for dividing, mulching and cutting back.

Doing these things is much more pleasant when the skies are blue, the grass is still growing and the air is warm.

Heaters for the Frugal

Probably the cheapest way to stay warm when it's cold is with a wood stove... IF you can get out and get your own wood. Buying it may be cheaper than buying gas or oil, but again, it may not.

You can get wood for free or cheap but you have to work at it. Some places (newspapers, notably) get deliveries on wood pallets which they sometimes give away. It's cheaper to do that than to ship them back where they came from and they're there for the asking.

Besides that, keep an eye on your local Freecycle or Craigslist for trees that need to be removed or other free firewood for the picking/cleaning up. You might even have some in your own backyard.

Besides wood stoves? Kerosene can be inexpensive if you live in a small house, but there are dangers to using kerosene heaters indoors. Look for one that's made specifically for indoor heating and don't use lamp oil in it. Go to a gas station or farm supply store and ask for plain old fashioned kerosene. It will smell, yes. If you can't stand the smell, you can get kerosene that's been deodorized, but it will cost more.

Electric heaters can inexpensively heat a small space like one room of your house while you turn down the heat in the rest of it. Figure the cost by finding the cost per kilowatt hour on your electric bill, then multiplying times 1 1/2, which is 1500 watts, the maximum allowed by law. Multiply that by how many hours you use the heater to get the cost.

How else can you stay warm? Warm yourself and not the house.
Or go for some extremely frugal warming up tips.
Or see how I stayed warm when the power went out!

Don't let conventionality make you pay more in heating bills than you need to. If your  bills are too high, look around, make some adjustments and do what you can to stay warm and keep as much of your money as you can.

Gardening in January

So. It's mid January, the seed catalogs are piled high, the grow light is... oops, forgot to turn it on this morning. There, now. The grow light is encouraging a few onions and lettuce for now. Next year, I'm going to use it for herbs when it gets too cold outside. The other grow light - the one that's supposed to hang on something when I don't have anything to hang it on, will be used for starting seedlings for the garden soon. I lay it over bricks to get it the right height. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

But this summer I plan to try to create a system similar to the one I got for Christmas which is the one I'm using now. It's a frame with a hanging light that can be adjusted over a planter.

Yeah... I can garden in the dead of winter. ;)

So far, I've just been looking at the seed catalogs, but sooner or later, I will try to plan where to plant what. With a limited area, I have to be pretty creative at times, but so far, so good. I already have most of the seed that will be needed this year, but of course, I gotta try something different now and then.

Frugal take on a garden is all that good food. It can be cheaper than the grocery store kind and it's a whole lot better.

Ways to make a garden more frugal:

• Container garden in castaway containers.
• Make your own compost. 
• Hoe and pull weeds by hand. 
• Try no till gardening
• Make your own special fertilizers
• Water by drip irrigation instead of overhead

Want to talk about it? It's time!

Draft dodgers

AKA, draft stoppers, draft snakes or draft guards, these soft log-like forms are great for stopping cold air, insects and dust from entering your home under a door or a window.

As frugal luck would have it, they're easy to make and chances are that you have something already on hand to make them from.

I say "something" because they can be made from a lot of different things. If you're in a big hurry and don't have time to cut and sew, roll up a towel or rug to place under the door.

If you want to make a real draft dodger, you will need some kind of material. Closely woven works best, but if you don't have any, use what you have and of course, used fabric is perfect for the most frugal draft stopper.

Besides that you will need 

• Needle and thread or a sewing machine 
• Stuffing, which can be dry corn, beans or rice, cut-up rags or yarn scraps, or (better because of its insulating nature) use newspaper rolled to fit the tube. If you don't want to use newspaper or rags, remember that something rather heavy will keep the draft stopper in place better, but even plastic bags, crunched and rolled tightly, can be used. 

Here's the way I do it: I cut the material at least 12 inches wide (wider if you have a healthy gap to fill) and 8 to 10 inches longer than the bottom of the door.

I fold the fabric in half lengthwise and sew the side to make a tube, then I sew one end firmly closed. I have gathered the material with thread and then tied it closed tightly with ribbon or string but I like the sewn end better.

Then I just stuff it and sew the open end. That's all there is to it.

Keeping out the cold is more important than making something look good, but when you have time, you can decorate your draft dodger with embroidery stitches, ruffles, lace or rickrack, or make a cover for it that can be laundered.

I don't need them at the outer door, but I use them against the bedroom door during the day to keep from heating it. You could use one against closet doors, or any door to a room that doesn't need heat.

Since they're so cheap to make, why not?

Cold weather driving

Are you ready for cold weather? I think I am... well, I mean I am, mentally. Physically, there are still some things to do. The house is in pretty good condition and today we'll do some clean up in the garden and yard. We won't get it all done because things are still growing, but we can get a good start on it.

One of the things I usually put off until the last minute is getting the car ready for winter.

Here, where freezing weather is a daily fact of life during the winter months, we need our vehicles to be trustworthy. We need to start with an oil change, and have them check the levels of antifreeze, transmission fluid and windshield washing fluid. (There's nothing worse than driving behind a mud slinging truck in freezing weather and not being able to keep the windshield clean!)

Air pressure in the tires need to be checked and checked often during cold weather. Don't check them while the tires are cold, though, because the pressure will measure lower than it will be when the tires are warmed up. Wait until you've driven a few minutes.

Beyond the car itself, if you live in cold country, be sure to have a kit for yourself and passengers. Blankets, of course, but also a good shovel, snow brush, ice scraper, flashlight, flares, first-aid kit,  jumper cables, and a fully charged cellphone and a cellphone charger. You could also add a power bar of some kind and a container half full of water, although it may be frozen solid. If it isn't, you can drink it and if it is, you can dump it and use the container to gather fresh snow, if that's your situation. Snow will melt faster than a clump of ice.

It makes sense to be prepared, no matter how easy you think the trip will be. Things happen. Yeah, I'm talking to me, too. And I WILL do it. Right now.

Frugal ways to prepare for cold weather

Cold weather is just around the corner for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. Every fall, I start thinking of frugal ways to keep warm without spending everything I have on a heating bill. There are lots of ways, but some of them only return small savings and some of them require a lot of effort, so here are three of the easiest, most frugal ways I've found to save prepare for cold weather.

My snowy back yard (2009)

I've seen people walking around in short sleeved shirts and complaining about how cold they are. Layering clothing is a very frugal way to keep you warm without having to turn up the thermostat (or put more wood on the fire). A sweater or overshirt or even a jacket makes frugal sense when you're chilly, whether that's inside or out.

Men wear undershirts in cold weather, why not women? And children? An undershirt, a long sleeved shirt or sweater and a jacket will keep you toasty warm. Do the same with pants. Long underwear is a frugal alternative and is available for men, women and children. Use them, along with heavier weight pants like jeans and corduroy and if you're still too cold when sitting, put a blanket or throw over your legs.

Another frugal way to stay warm is to eat warm things. Cold weather calls for soup and stew, but any other meal served hot is good, too. There are two reasons for this: One, is that the heat really does warm you up from the inside out and the other is that the richness of the dishes give you energy that helps the body maintain an even temperature.

Drinking hot fluids like tea, hot chocolate or broth will help, too. Avoid cold drinks except for water.

Another way works only if you heat with gas or oil: Use an electric space heater only in the room where you are. Close off the rest of the house and turn the thermostat down so it doesn't have to heat the rest of the house much at all. Even two space heaters can be more frugal than running the furnace enough to heat the whole (unused) house.

Frugal toasty toes

I wear knitted slippers around the house a lot - at least in the winter - and with the recent cold spell we had, my feet got downright cold. I started dreaming about felted inner soles, but as a rule, I won't buy anything that takes special care so I didn't have any yarn that would felt or shrink.

Thrift store to the rescue! In one of my forays, I found a wool sweater marked "Dry clean," which means that it will shrink if I wash it in hot water, which is exactly what I was looking for.... for $2.50.

I think I'll unravel the arms and save the yarn for a future felting project, but felt the rest. There will still be enough to make felted inner soles to last through several winters' of very frugal toasty toes.