Friday, April 25, 2008

Defrosting...spaving....and, Aaah

The trickle of the freezer snowpack
This morning the sun came out and I was ready to take on some much needed homemaking tasks.  After a week of cold, gray and my general sense of 'blah', I shortened our school day, rolled up the garage door and set about defrosting the deep freezer and cleaning out the car.  The real estate in the deep freezer has been shrinking from the ice encroachment while the space in the car has undergone major junk encroachment.  With the car cleaned out and the freezer snowpack melting in the ever-warming garage, I was ready to move on to some serious 'spaving'.  

Spaving.  My hilarious twin imparted that term to me recently.  Spend to save--'spaving'.  I am definately a spaver.  My mom was a frugal grocery shopper.  She would take us shopping in a  grocery warehouse (I think a Waremart-Winco ancestor) where you pulled a pallet shopping cart around and wrote the prices on the can lids with a black grease pencil.  Then, there's the autumn attic  in Little House In The Big Woods 'fairly bursting' with drying herbs, pumpkins and other stores of food that always incites my romantic inner pioneer.  Some spavings of the day included #10 cans of refried beans (a serious quantity--I make ahead piles of burritos and freeze them for quick grab lunches or just freeze the beans in smaller quanitities) and a big bag of Bob's Red Mill whole wheat flour (I freeze that, too--Pantry moths!!  Have yet to solve that problem.  What are they in???)

A fascinating observance in my spaving today is the recent run on rice.  The rice shelves at Cash and Carry (United Grocers bulk place) were empty.  The rice shelves and bulk bins at Winco, empty.  Grains of rice remained on the shelves like the spillings of a feeding frenzy.  I like to keep some bags rice on hand in the freezer (pesky moths have driven them from the pantry).  Just out of curiousity, we checked Albertson's--they had a lot of rice--no one spaves at Albertson's.  :-)

Back to the weather....as I cleaned and tasked about the driveway I noticed the buzzing.  The cherry tree, still awash in snow white blossoms despite a week of pelting hail, was audible with the chorus of hundreds of bees busying themselves in the long-needed sunshine.  
Ah-h. Come June there'll be cherries.  

Can you see the pollen baskets on the bees?

1 comment:

Cherie said...

This post was really fun! Yes, I can see the busy bees. Good for you for the garage/car cleaning, and I REMEMBER THE BLACK GREASE PENCILS for marking prices. Blast from the past! My mom shopped at one of those old warehouse stores, too, in Roseburg, and I loved marking the prices down.

I was wondering if the rice panic arrived here. I was in Winco a day before the news hit here and there was plenty of brown rice in the bulk section. I already have what I want so didn't buy any. I hope there's more in stock when I need it again. If not - oh well, plenty of other foods to choose from. For now. ;)

So glad we connected in blog land!