I went to check out a new grocery that opened up in South Austin, Newflower Market (I see from the website that this is the same as Sunflower Market in the southwest) after getting sales circulars with some pretty fantastic specials (which were then matched by special "this store only" sales at the nearest HEB). It is mostly fresh items - a large area of produce with a meat counter and some small aisles of mostly organic dry goods. I liked it. There was a lot of organic produce (as an aside, there is an interesting list of good foods to buy organic here), some of it for very good prices. I wish I could remember normal prices for more items, though, because on a lot of things I just wasn't sure.

I was wandering around the store just looking at stuff when a woman asked me about storing ginger. I passed along the really handy tip of peeling it (just scrape with the edge of a spoon) and storing it in the freezer to grate as needed. I ran into the same woman at organic eggs as we compared the price to that at Costco (the same), then again at yogurt. She told me how she makes her own fruit roll-ups / fruit leather by just blending up the fruit, adding applesauce and a bit of sugar, and drying it in the oven! I was telling her how easy it is to make yogurt. I am excited to try fruit leather and she's anxious to be able to make her own yogurt since her son has some allergy issues and she can customize it to him. It was pretty fun to chat with someone interested in exploring making stuff from scratch. I wish I'd gotten her email address or blog address or whatever she has... I bet she know some other cool tips!

Now I'm excited to make fruit leather. James' parents want to go strawberry picking next week. Maybe a good time to try it out?

And while were talking about all this homemade stuff, check out this post on making butter. Butter! Seriously!

And ok, this term "prairie-cool" cracks me up so I'm adopting it. Ta-da, it's a category.