I made a trip to the mountains to visit Edible Landscaping (www.ediblelandscaping.com). I have wanted to try pawpaws for several years, and they were ripe, and I've wanted to buy some plants from there for at least as long. I didn't end up buying anything I would regret if we move soon, which is looking a great deal less likely than before. I got a couple of small outdoor plants and several potted tropicals. I got a coffee plant, which was probably foolish, since we'll get, at best, one small pot of coffee a year from it. If I plant the seeds, in a decade or so maybe we'll be up to a pot of coffee a month. At least it is a nice houseplant, requiring little light. I also got two citrus, a Persian lime and a Ponderosa lemon. So, while I've been needing a greenhouse for a while, now I urgently need one in the next 60 days or so. I've decided to go with a commercial greenhouse kit, the kind with aluminum frame and hard plastic walls, and Sam's Club has one for just under $500, including the thermal vent opener. I think the sheet-plastic-covered tunnel kind are just too ugly to set one up 10 feet from my neighbors' yard, since my kid is always at their house and I'm trying to stay friendly. And the lovely greenhouses that can be made with recycled windows are permanent structures by necessity, and would have to be left behind if we moved.
Unfortunately, my husband just changed jobs again, and my unemployment payments are irregular, and we are currently broke. So, my new 30-day challenge is to buy no food at all until October 11. This will serve other purposes besides saving money. It will force me to clean out my pantry. It will be a good test of my disaster preparations. And it will force me to attempt baking bread again, which I had given up on. I didn't prepare for this, I just decided to do it, so there will be some suffering involved. We will soon run out of real coffee, milk of course, tea, and honey. I'll also be forced to give up my diet soda addiction, at least temporarily. Caffeine headaches will probably push me to the emergency supply of generic instant coffee and powdered creamer, which I added to our preps after the hurricane. I have herbs in the garden I can make tea with. We have plenty of instant hot chocolate. Am I obsessed with beverages? Maybe, but it's probably just that I'm not remotely worried about actual hunger. I did just finish a 30-day food preserving challenge, after all. I will run out of onions soon, and I'll have only my Egyptian walking onions, which are very tiny and currently sprouting in the garden. My son is going to complain when there's no more spaghetti, chicken nuggets, or bacon in the house, and the only milk is powdered skim, and I'll have to be creative to appease him. Luckily he likes baked goods. Oh, and eggs, I need to go freeze a few so my husband doesn't eat them because I'll need them for baking. But mostly this will be an exercise in creative substitution for me. Do you think I'll be able to do it? Could you do it?
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