Crumbs

Blessings Darlings!

The Julian calendar says today is Imbolc - which is a milestone and high day to be sure, but it's still just the middle of the 'hungry time of the year'.  So making food stores get thru' till first good harvest is still a priority, especially for those of us who farm and/or garden.

Part of the art of frugality (and surviving, and MacGyverism in general) is the 'expanding the marginal utility' of everything.  You know - re-use, re-purpose, re-cycle type mind set.  Like - I just started onion seeds in egg cartons.

That's a feature in my kitchen as well.  Not JUST pre-planning use of leftovers, tho' I certainly do that.

Let's talk bread.

We who make our own bread know that it has, especially in winter, a variable lead time from starting it to getting it on the table.  Yeast prefers warm weather, and we who use as little heat as possible have house temperatures that vary greatly day to day.  This is because, while I raise the temperature for a few hours in the morning and evening, after that the rate at which the house temperature drops varies by how cold and windy it is outside.  So I have to pre-emptively bake bread, anticipating need.

I don't always do this well.  Sometimes I get a lot of bread in the house at once, and there is risk of some of it getting moldy before it all gets used.  That's where making bread cube dressings for chickens and such comes into play, or making bread puddings, etc.

So the LOAVES can have their marginal utility expanding.  But what about bread crumbs?  After all, slicing that lovely, crusty home-made bread really does produce a heck of a lot more crumbs than you get buying pre-sliced bread!

First, how would you collect the crumbs from slicing?  In my case, I've set it up so the cutting board we use for bread sits in a low-sided quarter baking sheet.  It nests very nicely!  Slice bread, the crumbs stay contained.  And they build up FAST.

So, you have lots of crumbs, now what?  First you use them in the dishes that normally require bread crumbs - topping casseroles, frying foods, buttered crumbs on veggies, etc.  But when the Chubby Hubby or the Spawn leave slices of bread out that they've cut badly (like, they only got half a slice, etc) then I end up with LOTS of stale bread and crumbs.  What then?

The you look online, and find lots of recipes for cookies made from bread crumbs!  They aren't half bad, either.  I'd share them, but I really haven't changed them at all, and I don't have the links handy (Printed them out LONG age).

Crumbs.  They're for dinner.  And dessert.

Frondly, Fern