My first attempt at fried green tomatoes. We ate them with plum chutney. So good!

We’re either on budget or over this week, depending on whether or not I decide to finally go ahead and tack on that Fetal Food Allowance that so many of you have generously insisted we qualify for. It does make sense: I’m eating more and craving/needing more expensive foods (obscene quantities of fruit, more moderate amounts of orange juice, and the more-than-occasional bar of dark chocolate with blueberries) because I’m pregnant. And that certainly won’t let up once the baby arrives. As I recall it from Kiddo #1’s babyhood, during those first six months of exclusive breastfeeding I was even hungrier than during his pregnancy. I ate more in those early nursing months than during the pregnancy (and lost all the baby weight while eating that much. Exclusive breastfeeding, mamas. It’s good on about 50 different levels).

But I’m stubborn, and highly competitive, and I’m still hoping to find a way to stick to the original $125 a week budget now that our family is growing. It’s possible. I know it is. If there hadn’t been a pumpkin-milkshake-and-harvest-burger Burgerville incident over the weekend, we would have come very close to the budget this week. That means it’s totally possible. I’ve only been baking about half the bread we eat in the past few weeks, so if I can get back to baking all our bread, and ration the chocolate bars to one every week and a half…

Yeah. Maybe.

So…the numbers:

Groceries: $134.37
Burgerville stumble: $10.37

Total: $144.74

I don’t know. Maybe we will up the budget for the fetus. It’s going to get harder soon, produce wise. The winter spinach didn’t grow in the garden because our neighbor’s cats shat in the spinach bed and besides contaminating the soil with their evil feline toxoplasmosis, they also churned the seeds all up. The baby greens that I sowed too late are making a valiant effort, and if I remember to get them under cloche this weekend maybe we’ll have those. But otherwise, it’s looking like a winter of kale, mustard greens, some Brussels sprouts, and more kale. Oh yeah. And a bit of chard. There are only three turnips left in the ground, and we had really spotty germination on the beets so we’ll only be getting one meal or maybe two out of those. We’ve got six winter squash of various types set aside. The carrots are gone. I think we might be able to get one last half pound off the pole beans. There are still a bunch of green tomatoes, and some have already ripened nicely. ButI think of tomatoes as more of an add-on. They don’t count as food to me.

This means that what we’ll have left in the garden soon is going to be kind of dull, rather one-note. It’s good food. If we had no money to buy vegetables, we would not go without this winter. But damn, that’s a lot of kale and not much else. I really, really wanted to have that spinach. I was SO looking forward to it. I planted a WHOLE BED of it. We were going to have a ton of spinach this winter. Ah well. Pass the kale.

Unless the Brussels sprouts plants surprise me and give more than one crop each. We have 8 plants left, having lost two to the dreaded aphids. Do the Brussels “come again” after the first picking? If so, things aren’t quite as bleak. Damn, we love Brussels sprouts in this house. Roasted with olive oil and salt and pepper…. AHHHHHHH….

Fucking cats.

Cats aside, clearly I didn’t plan enough root vegetables. They got us halfway through fall and that’s it. Of course, the 10% germination on the beets really didn’t help matters. Next year, a fresh pack of beet seeds and parsnips (0% germination on the parsnips, little shits), and just way more of all of it. And I’ll remember to put the bird netting up to keep the cats out the minute after I finish sowing the spinach seeds.

You know…if we really get desperate for variety, I did slice, blanch, and freeze quite a bit of the Vegetable of Mordor this summer before I got to the point where I couldn’t even look at it. What do you think? Am I ready to brave the zucchini again? Maybe if things get really bleak in January. Though I could be tempted to break out some of the stuff I shredded for muffins. Zucchini muffins aren’t sounding bad at all right now…