Part 58
After hitting one more big box store – Seth hung around to play muscle and to get prices so he could work on a budget – Seth went back to his corporate life, and I headed to some thrift stores to look for the twins’ clothing needs. I only picked up a couple of items here and there and knew that it was going to mean stopping at a discount store that I’d been hoping to avoid due to the Christmas shopping crowds.
Ugh. That’s all I’m going to say, beyond I walked in with a list and still managed to come out with double the items that I had intended. Dat gum that ancient, evil yellow smiley face. It’s been around forever and still knows how to cause chaos to the budget. Looking in the sewing notions area did remind me of a few things that I needed to order online and now I have to decide whether to have the items shipped to Marion’s office or have them shipped to a pickup location for some anonymity. Those pick up locations aren’t always in the best parts of town but I think I’ve found one on the way back to the homestead. It is neither too close nor too far away and it is at a convenience center so at least I have options.
My nearly last planned stop of the day was at a farmer’s market. The Atlanta State Farmer’s Market covers 150 acres. How many vendors there are depends on the season. Pulled in and had to park in the back, which was no hardship for me, but I watched a couple of people having to haul fresh cut Christmas trees they’d just purchased a far piece. That reminded me I had to decide whether to use the artificial tree Tom and I had used or cut one and bring it in. Tom had always despised December for various reasons, so I was the only one in charge of decorating (at least when I could keep Tom’s mother out of our business) and consider it “my” tree, not ours so there was no emotional strings attached to what used to be. It is just a matter of deciding what I have time to do and what is best for the twins.
Speaking of the heffalumps, I loaded the twins into the stroller and headed to the vendors praying they’d tolerate the continued confinement for a little longer. There were quite a few vendors there, more than I had been expecting. About six of them were selling fresh cut trees and a few more had other fresh greenery such as wreaths, and the poinsettias that jumped into the van after a fight with my conscience and wallet. This time of year, there wasn’t a wide variety of fresh produce, but I wasn’t worried about that. What I was really there for was the citrus fruit and other tropical fruit that was sky high in the groceries that I’d taken Seth to on my quest to conquer The List.
I’d come prepared and had set aside money specifically for this, so the cost didn’t freak me out. I got several varieties of every orange, tangerine, clementine, mandarin, lemon, and lime I found. I grabbed enough kumquats to make a small batch of wine
[1] and a few other things such as kumquat preserves
[2] and freeze-dried kumquats
[3]. I don’t think I’m going to be able to depend on the potted pomegranates in the greenhouse for all I need so I got a bunch of those as well, especially since I wanted to make grenadine
[4]. I also picked up white, pink, and ruby red grapefruit. To add to things, I picked up a ton of avocados, papayas, and mangoes. Managed to find a bag of blood oranges that didn’t break the bank. It was cold so I wasn’t worried about the fruit getting overripe before I could get it home and processed. I was however running out of space after all the bulk staples and other miscellaneous that I had purchased (and that Seth had added to since some of the groceries would be used for him). I had room left in the van but I needed to be selective … and because I was getting very close to the dollar-limit I had set for this run.
I wasn’t worried about my transactions being traced. One of the things that I’d done the day of the auction was to load up a bunch of credit company backed gift cards so I could use them rather than credit or debit cards that were in my name. So few vendors were now able to accept old-style dollars that most people just deposited them whenever they happened to get them. People still find stashes of paper money and coins on occasion so technically they were still good, but they were terribly difficult to spend. Everything had to be converted to digital currency. I still held some of the old-style cash because of Poppa Gary and his brother that passed before him (not the other one that was a spendthrift) but I separated it out from the “collector” stuff and have been depositing it here and there since I turned 18 and was legally able to. I had gotten out of the habit while married to Tom, had been too cautious during the separation and divorce, and hadn’t had the time between the divorce and now, so it was time to get back to that. Old PMs were even more regulated. Some people still turned them in on occasion, but you could only trade them in at government controlled banking institutions for the internationally controlled price. Then you received digital US$ … for a fee of course. That gold then went to Fort Knox where it was held for government approved industrial uses along with all the other PMs that were turned in back when the Conversion Event happened and the US changed from physical US$ to digital US$. They didn’t actually make illegal or confiscate old-style cash or PMs but they are heavily regulated making them a serious pain to deal with.
Barring some of the machinations I went through to avoid being tracked anymore than I could help, the most tiring part of going to the farmer’s market was traipsing back and forth to take my purchases to the van and get them put in like finding a spot for a puzzle piece. There weren’t that many spots left. I put the large box of dates I’d purchased between the two chairs and that’s where I saw something I’d thought Seth had accidentally left. Well, he’d left it but it wasn’t an accident. I still don’t know whether to be t’d off or laugh.
”Mattie, I know it is a lot to ask but if you find some cranberries at the market to make the Alaskan Ketchup, please use this gift card and purchase whatever it will pay for. I won a ridiculous game and before you say anything it is because you taught me. It was that Triangle Golf Tee game. How I get myself into these things I do not know, but I don’t want a word breathed to the family. They’ll irritate me into insanity if any of them get the information. I’d much rather have the ketchup.” -- Seth
Beyond ridiculous but if he could bring us ice cream and pj’s then I could do this for him. I knew I’d seen one of the vendors selling fresh cranberries, so I traipsed back in telling the twins it was for Bud. Well, that headed off an upset as they were growing tired of being in the stroller.
And then I ran into a vendor selling pineapples for a surprisingly decent price given what I’d been seeing them for in the stores. I wasn’t just thinking about the fruit I could have for preserving and making wine
[5] with, I was thinking about the pineapple vinegar
[6] I could make with the scrap pieces, and the pineapple tops that I could use to grow my own pineapples
[7] in a tropical greenhouse if I could get one built. I bought several cases with each case containing 5 to 10 pineapples depending on their size. I also bought a couple of cases of bananas for freeze drying, making banana wine
[8], banana jam
[9], and a few other varieties
[10] as well as preserving them rebel style
[11]. Each case of bananas weighed about forty pounds and I had to borrow a flatbed to get them to the van. That was fun … not. Between pushing the heffalumps in their stroller and pulling the loaded flatbed, I was regretting sending Seth back to his other life. It was worse than when I had been moving out some soured hay bales right before I found out I was pregnant. Thank goodness I got that all done then.
I made the mistake of taking one more turn around the market and bam … there was a vendor selling some stuff that I remember my mother using. It wasn’t cheap by any stretch so I’m going to try growing my own starting next year, even if it means growing them in a tub in a greenhouse.
My first treasure was moringa. It is a tropical tree so I’m not sure how successful I will be but it is worth a shot. The vitamins it has are High in vitamin A, vitamin C, and several B’s. For mineral it packs calcium, potassium, iron, and magnesium. Then there is the protein issue. Moringa leaves provide all nine essential amino acids, making them a rare plant source of complete protein. I know Mom took this stuff in gelatin capsule form but I kind of remember her using it in other ways, like in her nutritional smoothies. Moringa is used in a lot of Third World countries to combat the consequences of hunger because of how packed with nutrients that it is.
Another treasure I found was hibiscus. I like it during the summer as a sweetened “koolaide” kind of drink, and in the winter it makes a tea that that has a sweet/tart flavor that mixes well with other tea flavorings such as berries, fruits, and flowers. Bulk containers of anise and chamomile jumped into the handcart as did some of the pre-mixed and flavored teas like sangria, orange, linden, and yerba mate.
As early as we had started shopping because of the extended holiday store hours, it was growing late and I needed to finish up and get to the homestead. It was already getting gloomy, spelling some wet weather as well as an early sundown. I paid for my purchases, got the vendor’s business card with their website just in case, and then hauled it out to the van. I nearly did a head thump when I realized the stroller would also need to be packed into the van and I got the twins and the stroller in there, but just barely. To make a little more room for my last stop I climbed in the back, closed the doors and decided to do a little reorganizing so nothing would fall over as we went up the forestry road.
The twins collapsed while I was moving things around. They’d had a full two days and I was relieved they’d decided to simply go to sleep rather than get cranky. Garrett I think had been the deciding factor. He’d thrown his blankey over both of them and Rose went from giggling to silence in less than a minute. I was glad that I’d moved their car seats to the face-to-face position and had “caged” them in with a framed bumper and cage type arrangement. It wasn’t strictly legal but it was definitely safer for them and would keep anything from hitting them if it did wind up falling over. I’d wrapped the frame with old preschool nap mats that I have no idea how they wound up in the flotsam that I’d collected and used zip ties to keep them on. Admittedly it looked ridiculous but it worked for my purpose since there were no seats in the back to put their car seats into.
I was almost finished and had started to debate just going back to the homestead instead of my last stop, especially when I thought to wonder if they’d even be open by the time I could get there, when I heard a couple of female voices.
“Are you sure it was her?”
“If it wasn’t Mattice it was her doppelganger, especially since she was pushing twins in a stroller that looked exactly like the one we gave her.”
Of all the freaking bad luck.
[1] Kumquat Wine Recipe - Home Winemaking
[2] Easy Kumquat Jam Recipe – A Simple Way to Preserve Kumquats - Sustainable Holly
[3] How to Freeze Dry Kumquats at Home (& 5 Ways to Use Them)
[4] Make Your Own Grenadine for Shirley Temples and Beyond
[5] Pineapple Wine
[6] Homemade Pineapple Vinegar (Vinagre De Pina) Recipe - That's Nerdalicious
[7] Unleash Your Inner Green Thumb: How to Grow Pineapple from the Crown! - johnysfarm.com
[8] Banana Wine
[9] The Ultimate Banana Jam Recipe: Transform Overripe Bananas into Sweet Perfection - Lockrecipes
[10] Banana Jam...French Caribbean Style
[11] How to Preserve Bananas: a Water Bath Canning Recipe
