Hold onto your hats

I realize that this won't be exciting for anyone else, but I just found out that you can can rhubarb. Oh my gosh! Can I say how much easier that will make food storage next year? Less freezer space taken up with rhubarb! And I can easily put away more of it! *Does a little happy dance* Plus, if it's canned I'm far more likely to use it for non-baking purposes, such as rhubarb sauce to go over pancakes. I'll have so much more leeway, both in terms of space and in how I can use it. Since Shane loves rhubarb (he and his brother eat the incredibly sour stalks raw) I think I'll try some of the other rhubarb uses on that site, such as rhubarb juice. As much as I love rhubarb, I totally under-utilize it. I tend to only make a couple of things with it (gingered rhubarb crumble, rhubarb coffee cake, rhubarb pie) so if I'm able to store more of it next year, I'll definitely have to get more creative. I do have a bunch of rhubarb recipes which I've never tried.... I know my mother-in-law tried making rhubarb wine this summer, although I'm not sure how well it worked. (She's going to open the bottles at Thanksgiving, I think.) If that turned out well, I see no reason why I couldn't make some.
In fact, this is making me hungry for rhubarb. I should probably pull some out this weekend and make something with it. If I have time. Four more shows! I'll be sad to be done with "Annie", but it will be nice to have my weekends back.
I've fallen down on keeping track of our food spending over the past couple of months. For one thing, do we count the honeymoon or not? Do I count non-human-food/non-food purchases at the store, like dog food and toilet paper? I think I need to write out a new list of standards for myself (what counts, what doesn't) and start posting it here once a week so that I'm more accountable. So from now on, I'll make a Sunday post around that and say how well I did at staying under budget.
The construction in my building this week is awful. They're tarring the new section of roof and even though it's "low tar, non-toxic" (according to the website they set up) it's been giving us headaches, making us feel sick, and my throat feels like it's been scraped raw. It also smells like they set up the ventilation to put all of the fumes into the library, because no other part of the building smells as bad. I think this is worth complaining about.