Watching the Groceries: Wrapping Up the Third Quarter of 2026!

 

With the start of the fourth and final quarter of 2026 just begun (how did that happen?), I have looked at our grocery spending to see where we stand for the year.

And the short version is? Better than I had hoped, given the prices of food and some of the splurges I made. I keep a running spreadsheet on my computer and will sometimes make editorial comments as I go, some of which make me laugh and some of which make me wince when hit the end of a quarter.

So numbers first. In the third quarter, we spent $628.19 on groceries, which for purposes of tracking means food items and common household items such as detergent and toilet paper. Of that, only $23.33 was spent on household items, just under 4% The monthly average for third quarter? $209.40. 

Okay.

Year to date, we have spent $1854.61, which comes to an average of $206.07. 

I can live with that!

Looking back at my second quarter post, I see that I called attention to the price of milk, which was on an upward trend. Three months later, the price of milk has come down substantially. (Good, because I love milk.) Probably the biggest "splurge" was when we were recently at Mayo Clinic I picked out some items at Trader Joe's (and note that the one in Rochester, MN is the only TJ we shop at, period) to help shove more complex carbohydrates into my diet as my doctor and I work with my diabetes. So yes to the wild rice and the penne pasta made from brown rice. 

We will have a large stock-up at Aldi in the coming days as we have been eating out of our pantry and garden much of the summer. I know what we don't need: we have A LOT of frozen chicken in our freezer from some walloping sales at Kroger. But I will grab my Aldi list and check on our supplies of staples so I can fill in the gaps.

There has been a lot (A. Lot.) going on in this household, much of it good, much of it complex (even the good stuff), and a chunk of it in the "just get through it" category. My health is stable, but there are some issues that my personal physician and I are watching. Will that impact our grocery spending? Maybe. Who knows?

It is what it is.

There is one very recent development that takes the first place blue ribbon (our county fair just ended) and has nothing to do with grocery spending, but is too good not to share. Last Friday, Warren's daughter Elizabeth gave birth to Gideon, the first child for Elizabeth and her husband Justin, and the first grandchild for both immediate sides. 

Yes, Warren is over the moon. (As we all are.) 

Let's see how we finish 2026 on the grocery front! 

Back

We have been back for one week, having arrived back in Ohio last Sunday. I just finished catching up my accounts and am wending my way through paperwork I'd shoved aside before leaving. I'll post my August figures in the next day or two, but dollars take a backseat to these short glimpses.

Here are my sons, preparing a meal together, all grown up:

And here is Ramona, running into the ocean, just on the brink of being seven and beginning second grade (school started while we were there and she had her 7th birthday the day we left):

Lyrick will be three at the end of this week:

And this guy? Almost seven months old, almost crawling, and has an opinion on everything:

For the record, he was thoroughly approving of his sister making peanut butter cookies.

It's always good to be back home, but, oh, how I miss them!

Long-Distance Grandmother

The Symphony opened its 35th season last night in a most spectacular fashion, but that is not what this post is about. Saturday was also the semi-annual book sale at our local library. Warren had dropped me off there on his way to open up the concert hall for the soloist to practice. After picking up a reserved book, I wandered back to the bookmobile garage, which was serving as the bookstore for the sale.

The Amazing Ramona

I bought three children's books with Ramona in mind, adding to the collection at home. As I sat in the sun and waited to Warren to swing back around for me, I wondered about the books I had just purchased and when to send them out west. If I bought all the children's books that caught my eye, I would be bankrupt. If I shipped all of the children's books I already have, Ben and Alise would have to jettison furniture to make room for them.

It has been eight months since we have held Ramona: that baby is long gone. We have been Skyping regularly as of late, and I marvel at the child Ramona has become. She blows kisses (smacking her hand to her lips and shouting "mmm-WAH!"), flails a hand (sometimes two) in hello or goodbye, and occasionally leans in startlingly close ("My, what BIG eyes you have, Ramona!") while bustling in and out of the camera range. It is always highly entertaining.

It's not the same as being there, wonderful as modern technology is. I hope that when we are finally all together again, Ramona will recognize our voices and make the connection between Grandma April and Grandpa Warren on the computer screen and Grandma April and Grandpa Warren in real life.

Alise's mother Mona (aka Grandma Mona) is a frequent visitor to Portland and is headed back there for Halloween. I'm grateful Mona is in Portland so often. She provides parenting (and mothering) to Ben and Alise and deeply devoted grandmothering (i.e., adoration) to Ramona. But I'd be less than honest if I said I wasn't a wee bit envious of her frequent trips.

It's hard to be a long-distance grandmother. As I pick books to send out, I sigh, wishing I could settle Ramona on my lap and we could turn the pages together. I just sent out a footed sleeper printed with dinosaurs and I want to be the one tucking her toes into the footies and zipping it up to her chin.

The last time we Skyped, Ben and I talked about the blocks. These are the wooden building blocks Ben and Sam played with, including the same ones my brothers and I played with and some of the same ones that my  mother played with when she was little. Ramona will be the fourth generation to play with these blocks and I know it is time to pack some up and ship them out. But it's hard: I want to see Ramona play with the blocks at my house.

In the spring or early summer, my Portland three will be coming east for a visit. There is a lot of family here who have not met Ramona, and many who have not seen Ben and Alise for many years (seven come this Christmas, but who's counting?). Do I need to add that I am looking forward eagerly to that visit?

Between now and then, it is a long, slow walk to the future. I know there will be more books; there is already a growing stack in the closet for Christmas. And the candy corn socks at the grocery today? (I went in for fruit and dish soap, really.) Well, they are already in a sealed envelope with Ramona's name and address on it.

And I will be living on furious waves and a big "mmm-WAH!" tossed to the sky, waiting for the future.

Ramona Dawn

                             She came without ribbons. She came without tags! 

                             She came without packages, boxes, and bags!

                                                     With apologies to Dr. Seuss

We have been waiting forever, it would seem. Oh, not really forever, just nine months, but it seemed like forever. It seemed like dream time, when everything moves in slow motion, liquid syrupy slowness.

The sense of liquid syrupy slowness increased greatly after Alise called me over a week ago to say she was having contractions, that she and Ben had been to the hospital but sent home and told to walk around and return when she started to feel uncomfortable.

Walk around until she started to feel uncomfortable? By Monday, Alise was back at work. And Ramona was, well, not yet here. And so it went, until yesterday when Ben called to say "we are at the hospital."

We were on the way out the door to the home of our good friends, Margo and Gerald. I cannot think of friends I would rather be with while waiting for Ramona's arrival. Ben promised he would keep me posted, which he did up right up and through the moment he called to say, "mom, you're a grandmother."

Now the time is real time. Now the last nine months have been compressed into that one phone call. Now the clock is moving in the right rhythm. Now the dreaming is over and the real work begins.

Ramona Dawn has arrived.

Bread Upon the Waters

Cast your bread upon the waters,

For you will find it after many days.

Ecclesiastes 11:1; New King James Version

Grandma and Grandpa Nelson lived on a farm about 12 miles away when I was growing up. We spent many Sunday afternoons there having a traditional Sunday dinner. In the summers when I was very young, my older brother Dale and I would spend several days at the farm "on vacation." Looking back, I realize the vacations were more for the benefit of my parents, but I remember the excitement of going to the farm with my little overnight suitcase.  

Farm vacations! That meant gathering eggs, playing in the barn and fields, helping slop the hogs, running up and down the lane, snapping and stringing beans, husking corn, picking tomatoes, and eating my grandma's delicious cooking (hands down, she was the best cook I knew growing up).

Usually at least once during our vacation, Dale and I would "go fishing." Even though a small creek (the "crick") ran through the fields, we did not fish there as the water was too shallow. Rather, we would trudge down the dusty lane to the main road (melodiously named "Hogback") and then walk a very short distance to where the creek ran under the road. The culvert had old concrete abutments on either side of the road, and the little bridge (as we called it) marked our fishing hole. From there, perhaps all of six or seven feet above the water, we would let down our lines in the vain hopes of catching a fish. In retrospect, it was something only young children would do, as only a child would believe in the impossibility of there being anything bigger than a minnow in the brackish, shallow water underneath the little bridge.

Our fishing lines were baling twine and safety pins. We occasionally made "poles" out of old sticks, but only to extend the reach of the baling twine, which had a maddening habit of floating on the water's surface. For bait, we used what was popularly called a "dough ball." Dough balls were wadded up pieces of bread, preferably the white, spongy stuff (and let's face it, we all ate the white spongy stuff back then), moistened with water until the bread could be kneaded and shaped around the open safety pin. Once we had the lines suitable baited, we would lower them over the side into the scummy, green water (no small feat given the nature of baling twine) and wait.

I don't remember how long the fishing expeditions lasted. 20 minutes? 30? Hogback was a quiet gravel road in those days, so two young children could sit along the roadside undisturbed for a whole morning. I doubt we lasted that long. The heat and the dust, let alone the boredom of no fish, probably drove us back down the lane to the cool dimness of the house before too much time elapsed.

In Ecclesiastes 11, we are admonished to cast our bread upon the waters and wait for the return. We cast our bread constantly on the waters in those days with little tangible return. We never caught a fish. In looking back, I wonder whether we even ever got a minnow nibble.

A number of translations and interpretations analyze Ecclesiastes 11 in trade and financial terms. The New International Bible is blunt:

Put your money into trade across the ocean.
      After a while you will earn something from it.
 Give shares of what you earn to a lot of people.
      After all, you don't know what great trouble 
might come on the land.

More than one writer has used that or a similar translation to say that Solomon (the presumed writer of Ecclesiastes) was giving us financial advice to invest broadly and diversify our holdings.

I'm not so convinced. Perhaps Solomon was thinking of economics. But he could have been thinking about fishing. My brother and I cast our bread upon the waters, watching our dough balls get stickier and slimier with each successive cast. As I noted, we never caught a fish, so our measurable returns were non-existent. But there were intangible returns beyond measure: water striders skating across the water, a tadpole or two, birds singing in the bushes. If we were really lucky, a dragonfly, all shimmer and elegance, would hover for a second or two before zipping away. 

My grandparents sold the farm in 1970 and moved to a "modern" ranch style home on the outskirts of a small village. The old farmhouse is long gone; the lane is now an access road to houses built back on what used to be the farm. It has all changed.

But the memories remain. Without even being aware of it, as a child I invested broadly in storing up the sights, the sounds, the smells, the sensations, and the flavors of my days. Even though Grandma Nelson has been dead for almost 30 years and it has been even longer since I sat at a table full of her cooking, I can still remember what her fried chicken and her homemade sweet pickles tasted like. In writing this post, I can feel again the heavy dust of the lane between my toes as we walked, the curiously smooth feel of a tadpole in my hands, the sun beating down on my shoulders as I tried to straighten the prickly baling twine enough that it would reach the water.

We cast our bread upon the waters in those days, wildly and improbably, hoping for just one fish. Half a century later, my bread has come back to me.

Behold the Broccoli!

July is winding down and our garden is gearing up. Gardens, plural.

After months of lollygagging around, the peppers have finally decided to grow. They are like the boy who was always the smallest one in class but suddenly puts on seven or eight inches over the summer. There are blossoms on most of them and maybe, just maybe, I might reap one Purple Beauty or Sweet Chocolate yet this year.

Maybe.

I may get a lone eggplant from the one plant that did not get overshadowed by the broccoli. The artichokes have also had to joust with the broccoli for sunlight. Everything I have read about artichokes says "180 days" and it will be nip and tuck with the calendar to see if they can produce a choke before the first frost.

I had no idea that broccoli grew so fiercely and could so completely dominate a garden. If my peppers are the smallest kid in the class, the broccoli is the boy whose parents start him a year late so he will be "good at sports." (Why was that always the reason given? Why didn't anyone ever say "I held my kid back so she could kick butt reading?")

The tomatoes have not been intimidated one whit by the broccoli. Thanks to my helter-skelter, post-planting transplanting, there are tomatoes everywhere. Pig is gone. Oh, it's still there, but hidden under the tomatoes vines that now cascade down over it.

The tomatoes are still green. Drat. I just know the first ones will ripen when we are out of town in early August. I know it, I know it.

Down in the sod garden, the pumpkins and zucchini are in full and beautiful bloom. Whatever has been nipping the zucchini blossoms seems to have slacked off. Maybe it didn't like the taste of zucchini stem that much. As for the pumpkins, after quickly taking over three-quarters of the garden, they have gotten down to the business at hand.

I recently learned that pumpkin vines have male and female flowers. What I did not know was whether we have enough bees and other pollinators around to make the necessary introductions. I am pleased to report that when I walked down to the patch this morning, I saw not one but several bees landing on and lifting off from the pumpkin blossom flight decks.

The bees know their stuff. We already have a baby pumpkin.

I cut the first broccoli last weekend. After I washed it and put it in a bag for later, I turned to Warren and said "let's stop at mom and dad's because I want to give dad some of the broccoli."

Mom and dad live about a mile (as the crow flies) from here, just outside of town on a rural road. When we pulled into the driveway, dad was out in his garden. It had been dry, so he had pulled the hose out to the garden, then ran it up a stepladder to a rotating jet sprinkler. Given the height of the ladder, dad figured the water could reach the whole garden. That is a typical "dad" solution: it may not be pretty, but it is practical and immediate. And it worked.

Dad came up to the truck as we got out. I handed him the broccoli and he grinned. My dad is not an easy man to get presents for, but certain things go right to his heart. The first broccoli from our gardens is one of those things.

Warren stood and chatted with mom (he is a favorite of hers, so much so that I have no question about where I stand on that scale) while dad and I looked at his garden. His tomatoes were dying off one by one; he thinks it is because he planted them at the end closest to the walnut tree at the lot line. Could be; walnut trees are brutal on gardens. The beans looked good though. (In fact, his beans are good. As I write this, I have a sack of green beans from him waiting to be blanched and frozen.) We talked about how next year he may move the garden further south and reseed to grass the section nearest the walnut tree.

I haven't thought too much about next year. Getting through this year is such an adventure. Oh, at times I look at the broccoli and wonder if I should expand the garden to give those bad boys more room next year. But for the most part, except for some occasional notes in my gardening notebook, I am too consumed with this year's crop to look ahead to next.

Our friend Kermit stopped over yesterday to give us some fresh peaches from South Carolina, where they had been on vacation. Kermit is gardening using the "square foot" method that seems to be all the rage this year. While we shared some zucchini bread at the kitchen table, Kermit and I compared garden notes. He likes the square foot method and is getting good results. Kermit is already planning ahead as this year was just a trial run.

I understand the principles of square foot gardening and can appreciate its appeal. I don't see myself turning to that method. I like the confusion and the mess of a traditional garden. I even like the weeding. My sprawling, higgledy-piggledy garden has brought me joy and contemplation and sweat all at the same time.

And maybe I am not tempted by square foot gardening because I remember the size and abundance of my grandparents' farm garden when I was little. The farm is long gone but my memories are not. Even if I could fit the right plants into the grids of the square foot garden, I am not sure I could fit my heart.

Up and At ‘Em in the Garden

My grandparents, my dad’s parents, always grew a vegetable garden. Always. There were just the two of them, but they planted enough corn, tomatoes, bell peppers (mysteriously called “mangoes” in the family), onions, and other vegetables to stock a small grocery. Some of the produce went to family members who were the grasshoppers to my grandparents’ ants or who had moved “into town” (in this case a village) and no longer had space for a garden. Some of it showed up fresh on the Sunday dinner table all summer long. Quite a bit of it got canned or frozen by my grandmother for future use. (When she died, my parents spent an afternoon tossing out ancient canned goods that she had “put up” sometime in the last decade.)

My grandparents gardened because they had both grown up in the “hollers” of eastern Kentucky without much money or resources other than family ingenuity and hard work. Putting food on the table was a year round effort and one that they never slacked off at as adults, even after the children grew up and even after their finances allowed them to go a little easy. Young newlyweds during the Depression, they never forgot the lesson of “not enough”—be it dollars or beans—and every year for as long as they were able, they planted to ward off that specter.

This year I am following in my grandparents’ footsteps for lots of reasons, including a love of cooking and a desire to cut food costs. While I was writing this post, 74 homemade seed pots were sitting on the back deck. I am sunning them outside every chance the weather warms up to give them a break from the platoon of lamps that I have kept them under for the last two weeks. The broccoli sprouted first; the tomatoes are popping up daily, sometimes hourly. Seed by seed, sprout by sprout, my garden is coming to life.

I picked the vegetables as much for their names as their qualities. With names like “Sweet Chocolate” and “King of the North,” how can I not be enchanted with the possibilities in the pepper patch? The weeds are still a distant haze on the horizon.

It turns out that I am a worrier when it comes to gardening. I worry that I waited too long to start the seeds, that I don’t have the soil warm enough for them to germinate (although the tomatoes are quelling that worry), that the seed pots will disintegrate before transplanting time (they’re only newspaper), or that when the time comes to put them in the ground, I will run out of room in the beds (which have still to be prepared) because the seed pots only cover the vegetables that need an indoor start and not the additional ones that can be planted directly outside (another twelve different vegetables, including pie pumpkins).

When I have worried myself into a knot, I remind myself of my grandparents’ garden. I am quite sure my grandmother, as no nonsense a woman as ever walked the earth, never fussed over seedlings or carried them in and out of the house to sun them. She knew what I am learning: the seeds will sprout, watched or not. I can hear her urging me back to my other tasks: There’ll be work enough in the garden without all of this nonsense! They’re plants! They’ll grow!

In the end, if Grandma is right, I will spend the summer feeding my family and friends out of this garden. Like her, I will can and freeze the surplus for the winter to come. For now, though, I have to be content with scanning the pots daily for the first shoot, the first slim green thread rising up out of the potting soil.

Seed by seed, sprout by sprout. And an occasional sunbath on the back deck.