If my mother could see me now. . .

I used to cringe at my mother's thriftiness. Born during the Depression and raised singlehandedly by her own mother after her father left his family for another woman, my mom knew how to save with the best of them. We joked that it was in her Scots blood. Mom scrimped, saved, reused, recycled, made do or did without, questioned waitresses about receipts, sent in for $1 refunds, waited until items went on sale, and pinched pennies so hard they screamed.

Man, did she embarrass me.

And then I became her.

You see, after my mom passed away several years ago, I realized that she had managed to save - out of my parents' modest income - enough money for my dad and her to travel to Europe several times. . . to give extravagant gifts to her grandchildren at Christmas and birthdays. . . to feed a horde of single friends at Thanksgiving. . . to support organizations that battled against hunger and animal cruelty and for human rights. . . to give regularly to her church. . . and more. All of this from the woman who kept her skivvies together with safety pins on more than one occasion.

She had to have been doing something right, I figured.

Nowadays, while I save safety pins for other uses, I find myself skimping and scrimping a lot like Mom did. I enjoy my pet indulgences (see my beading blog, for instance), but I really do weigh most purchases carefully before deciding yea or nay.

Recently, I became acquainted with a wonderful woman who rescues animals scheduled for destruction at shelters and finds new homes for them. She also collects food for various local groups that serve homeless people and others experiencing hard times. She keeps some of the food that's really long in the tooth for a hog farmer and for her own chickens, and she now shares some with us for our chickens. (We raise them for eggs, not meat.)

She also passes along produce and other items that are past their sell-by date or cosmetically icky but still safe to eat. This is food that needs to be dealt with quickly.

After receiving lots of apples (organic, no less!) that were beat up but usable,

I put in a session of slicing/peeling/coring on my indispensable slicer/peeler/corer (note the little pile of apple labels next to the peeler, headed to the garbage can),

threw a big bowl of peels, cores and rejected apples into the chicken yard,

cooked the apple slices with a little water, lemon juice (from our Meyer lemon bush), agave syrup, lots of cinnamon and a touch of salt,

blended it all up with an immersion blender, put several jars of applesauce into the freezer and shared a couple with family members. Some of the sauce in the freezer will go into baskets my women's group assembles for families experiencing difficult situations.

Roundup: Instead of being tossed into the garbage and added to the solid waste stream at our local dump, the apples were collected from a retailer and sorted for use as human or animal food; the ones for human use were then sorted further and processed, with the scraps going to our chickens, who will use this feed as fuel and will produce eggs as well as droppings for garden fertilizer.

A very productive circle!