Stocking Up To Hibernate

No writing wisdom or news to share this time. But the temperatures are plummeting, so I’m preparing to hibernate and expecting to spend more time at my keyboard. This takes serious planning. So this post is all about having everything in place so that I can write. And for HH and me, that means making sure there’s enough food:)

HH loves to watch the weather channel. While I’m sitting in my office, pounding on keys, he’s following weather patterns across the U.S. to tell me what the temperatures will be and what to expect in the near future. When he informed me that below zero was expected and there would be single digit temperatures for most of the coming week or two, we decided to do our grocery shopping while it was a balmy 33 degrees outside.

Now, even though it’s just HH and I in the house now, I spent most of my life fighting with a grocery budget to feed us and two kids and whatever friends they brought home with them most days. I learned that buying big packages of meat and then repackaging them into what I needed each night for suppers was a lot cheaper. It’s still cheaper, so that’s what I still do. The upside of my old habits is that we should never starve, even if we’re snowed in for a LONG time. The downside is our freezer is jam-packed with food, so that it’s hard for HH to find room for the cartons of ice cream he can’t do without.

Just as an example of my penny-saving ways, we came home from our shopping trip with a huge package of beautiful pork chops for a little over $12 on sale. I divided the package into small Ziploc baggies with 3 pork chops in each one and got 5 packages out of it. That’s 5 meals for $12, unless I invite someone for supper and use two of them in one night, which I’m prone to do.

Anyway, our freezer and cupboards are well-stocked now, and you’ll all be happy to know we shouldn’t perish if we can’t leave our house for a long time. We even bought enough coffee. And once the temperatures plummet, we’ll hibernate. HH will watch the news and the weather channel, and I’ll write. And cook. And be pretty content.

Wherever you are, stay warm. And happy writing!