Saturday Plans

We got up early and went to the farmers market. I had ordered honey from a local beekeeper and it was in. I also bought some greenhouse tomatoes. They had all kinds of greens, onions, squash, etc. I love the farmer's market and country cooking. If I only cooked for myself, I would have had a big pot of greens on the stove now. My favorite is collards. Bruce came home from work in the early years of our marriage to find I had been cooking collards. He complained about the smell from the minute he opened the door. After that, I would wait until he was going to be away on a business trip for a few days, and I would make a big pot the day he left and eat them all week. When I was growing up, my granny lived with us and she cooked dinner every night. She always started out with a pot of beans or peas. Then came potatoes-fried or stewed. Big iron skillet of cornbread. Sliced onion and sliced tomato from the garden. We only had meat maybe once or twice a week, usually meat loaf, salmon patties, or fried chicken. A real treat to me was when she made fried chicken livers. I guess we were practically vegetarian but didn't realize it. She was used to Depression era meals and meat was harder to come by. All those years growing up, I complained and wanted other things, "exotic" things like spaghetti or tacos. Now I am married to a man who ONLY wants tacos and spaghetti, and I want country cooking! We are going to drive a couple of hours away today to go to my granddaughter's piano recital. She asked me if I would come the last time they visited, so I wouldn't miss it. All is in progress for B to retire the end of May. I'm trying to plan better on our food spending, so have been putting all my recipes into the Cozi app. I like it because it can pull a recipe off the internet and put it in the app, then add the ingredients to my shopping list. We have an Aldi's here, and my daughter and sister both do the majority of their food shopping at Aldi's. Well, my mother-in-law is a big time brand snob, and the one time I took her there and she didn't recognize the brands, she declared everything "off brands" and "inferior products." I went and bought a few things the other day, and she knew it. I made dinner that night, a OG zuppa toscana copycat recipe, and she complained that it had an off taste. Neither hubby or I tasted anything wrong. I didn't use any Aldi food in the recipe, but there was no need to tell her that, because she had made up her mind. Hubby and I were talking about it this morning and he said are there other ways we can save without buying Aldi's? I said, "I'm going to Aldi's. I'm going to cook with Aldi's brands. If it does taste wrong, I won't buy it again, but if I like it, and you like it, and she doesn't, then she can make a sandwich." He doesn't know why I'm not as afraid of his mother as he is, I guess. Oh the joys of having your MIL living with you. And I guess this is a first world problem but one of the main reasons I want to do my part to reduce eating out and food costs is so I won't have to give up my cleaning lady. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻