AND She's Back!

Taking a break from blogging over the holidays was awfully nice. I apologize right now for those of y'all who were curious about what we at throughout the past 2 weeks. To be completely honest, I would be embarrassed by publicly announcing how little cooking, and, therefore, how few actual meals, we really did eat. We coasted on left-overs quite a bit - to the point where now, just a little over a week since the Christmas festivities, we're pretty much out of those left-overs. Weird. Anyway, here's yesterday's menu:

Breakfast: Eggs, yogurt, get whatcha want

Lunch: Egg rolls

Dinner: Left-over spaghetti, re-fixed into a 9X13 casserole. We had enough left to somewhat fill a 9X9 that got put into the freezer for future use sometime when we're not all home - or maybe for lunch someday.

This year I'm hoping to do more freezer cooking, but in a way that works for me. My plan at the moment is to prepare about twice as much for each meal (or at least some meals) than I normally would, and stick what's left into the freezer. This plan seems good since it won't take that much more effort on my part, and, if we decide to have folks over at the last minute, we'll have enough food to support that decision. We'll see how it goes.

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday sure seems like a long time ago...

Breakfast: If I'm remembering things correctly, Daddy fixed grits, eggs, sausage, and bacon.

Lunch: ... I have pretty much no recollection of lunch. Which means it was probably left-overs.

Dinner: We set up our Christmas tree Saturday evening, so we had our traditional finger foods. We get the frozen hors d'ourves from Costco.

Sunday:

Breakfast: French toast casserole... type thing.

Lunch: Pot roast with pickles, salad, and mint brownie bites

Dinner/fellowship: Egg rolls

Cookies, Bread, and Purees - Oh My!

Lame attempt at a clever title, I know. Moving on! Yesterday was a very busy kitchen day for me, and if I had to guess, today probably will be too. The morning began with a batch of chocolate chip cookies (I use the recipe on the back of the Hershey's semi-sweet chocolate chip bags; I've found that to be our family's favorite so far.). Before I'd even washed the dirty dishes from those, I did a batch of bread. While the loaves rose, I caught up on the dishes, and even had a couple minutes to sit down! Once those when in the oven, I started dinner: Crock Pot Chicken Enchilada Soup. Then we had a brief-ish lunch interlude, and finally the real project of the day began: deal with the many butternut/honeynut squash we've acquired recently. But first, here's the menu:

Breakfast: Get whatcha want - I had yogurt.

Lunch: Fresh bread

Dinner: Chicken Enchilada Soup

Now the project description ('cause I know y'all are just dyin' to hear about the last 6 hours of my day yesterday). I combined my own meager knowledge with several online descriptions of ways to do this type of thing. I came up with the following, probably inefficient, way of doing it:

Dinner in the crock pot, squash in the food processor and microwave!

- Rinse squash, slice in half lengthwise, scoop seeds and string-y stuff out. (BTW, the disposal doesn't like squash seeds very much, so you might want to put them directly in to the trash or compost.)

- Place meat-side down (or skin-side up, if you prefer) in a glass dish

- Cover and microwave for 10 to 15 minutes, until it's soft.

- Scoop squash out of skin, and place in food processor

- Once the food processor is about half-full (or a little less), process until thoroughly ... unstring-y. I took each batch about 5 minutes in the food processor, and it came out about the consistency of peanut butter (for the honeynut - a bit soupier for the buttenut)

- Bag up and freeze! I did a gallon or so this way.

Got Soup?

Today was just another average Friday. The band members and Mama did have to leave for a gig this morning, and they're still gone. So, Luke and I, once again, were left to fend for ourselves for much of the day. Thankfully Daddy was able to get home earlier today!

Breakfast: Much to my astonishment, there were 2 Krispy Kreme doughnuts left this morning! So of course I had another fried doughnut for breakfast (don't judge me!). A little later in the morning Mama made craisin muffins. Luke and I have enjoyed those throughout the day.

Lunch: Luke and I had left-over Greek Avgolemono Soup from Tuesday. We supplemented with yogurt and muffins.

Dinner: The last of the frozen tomato soup. :( I have enjoyed knowing we had that available a little too much, I think. Still, on nights like tonight, when I don't want to cook, and I forgot to get meat out earlier, it's awfully nice to have on hand!

Birthday Weekend!

Saturday was my younger(est?) brother Luke's and my grandmother's birthday celebrations (mine too actually, since my birthday was the week before). So the family gathered 'round for a delightful lunch and afternoon here at Belle Springs Farm. But here's the review:

Breakfast: Get whatcha want (if I'm remembering correctly... a lot has happened since then.)

Lunch: Hot wings and potato salad. Dessert was plain cheesecake (Cheesecake Factory brand, frozen, from Costco) topped with homemade white chocolate glaze/sauce and fresh raspberries and fresh raspberry sauce.

Dinner: Left-overs!

Sunday's menu:

Breakfast: Get whatcha want ... again. Yeah, I really need to work on that...

Lunch: Dirty rice (see Thursday's post), green beans (fixed Friday since Saturday was going to be so busy), and left-over cheesecake

Dinner/Fellowship: Left-over wings, hard salami, wheat thins, cream cheese, sweet-hot peppers (pickled)

BEEF!!!

We have some now!!! Like, 200lbs or so. And for a killer good price!!! The beef cost $192.18 to process. I have to confess that for that really awesome price, and the amount of meat we got, I'm almost tempted to say we'll never process our own beef again. However, I'd personally rather miss the fellowship and camaraderie we've always had at those times. Still, at a dollar or less a pound...

When Daddy went to pick up our beef, he also grabbed some bacon and sausage. That brought the total to $229.52. The grocery balance for this pay period, including the $34 from the last one, is now $304.69. As I said in the last post, we'll have some chickens to pay for, but after that, there shouldn't be too awfully many expenses... right? I hope!

Today in Review

Breakfast: Eggs with a homemade cheese sauce (now that we have cheese!) and a pound of that really good bacon from our processor.

Lunch: Tomato soup with fresh, homemade bread. I turned one of those ginormous cans of crushed tomatoes into potential tomato soup, pizza sauce, or meatless spaghetti sauce. I added sauteed onions, fresh garlic, dried oregano and basil, and salt and pepper and then immersion-blended it all together We ate some (with added milk and cheese, of course), and I froze the rest in 3 quart-sized freezer bags.

Dinner: Dirty rice with homemade bread. I tried to get rid of the rest of last week's loaf, but no one would eat it when there was fresh bread around! So, it also went in the freezer. It'll either get turned into bread crumbs or croutons, or it will be thrown out in a couple of years... Anyway! I made a very large batch of dirty rice, so what we didn't eat at dinner (which was quite a bit, since there were only 4 of us here) went into a crock pot for Sunday!

I also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies today. The Aldi's chocolate chips are decent, not great, but tolerable, but I don't care for the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the bag. (My foodie side is showing itself again.)

Daddy made a Costco run for me today! He got 14 items for $107.62, and now we're ready to celebrate a few birthdays this weekend. ... Hopefully.

The balance I'm left with this payment period is now, I believe, $34.21. Well, at least we're positive, and hopefully in a couple of months this will be built up to more. I know that tomorrow we've got to pick up our beef (roughly $200 + whatever, if any, bacon we get from the same place), and sometime in the next week or so I think we've also got a chicken stock-up. Each of those will cut significantly into next month's grocery money, but after that we shouldn't have to buy meat for a while! It'll sure be nice to have a full freezer again!

Weekend Recap

After spending about $80 Friday, I'm very glad to say that we didn't spend any grocery money this weekend! I did forget to add $6 for 2 dozen eggs to Friday's list of acquisitions.

Yesterday Mama and the band members were gone again. Daddy, Luke, and I had pancakes for breakfast, whatever we could grab for lunch (peanut butter and crackers for them, yogurt for me), and for dinner we had a frozen dinner that Grammy Evelyn sent home with us. Pecan pie was for dessert.

Today being the Lord's Day, we prepared most of today's food yesterday. Breakfast, however, was get whatever you want - if you have time. For lunch, Daddy and I prepared meatballs, green beans, and a pecan pie. For fellowship, I fixed a fruit crisp... thing. I threw in a bunch of blueberries, added a can of peaches and a can of apples, mixed in a little sugar and cornstarch, and added some sort of oat topping. Yeah, I wasn't really sure what I was doing. Hopefully it'll turn out okay anyway.

The Challenge - Assets, Part 3

I  cleaned out the chest freezers; everyone rejoice with me!!! I got rid of a few random pieces of bean-seasoning bits that were 3+ years old, and I made the executive decision to go on and get rid of the pints and half-pints of oatmeal and cream of wheat berries that have been in there for over 2 years. By way of an explanation for each of those respectively, we had 4 hogs that we processed about 3 years ago; the smoked, fatty ends of the hams and whatnot were wrapped separately to be used as flavor in beans, soups, and stews. As for the oatmeal and wheat berries, we used to occasionally use them in muffins, but, as you can see, we haven't in ages.

Anyway, after I was able to see, I did my best at putting like things together (beef with beef, chicken with chicken, veggies with veggies, etc.). Once I finished that, I had a pretty fair idea of what was in there. At that point, I will admit, I had to fight off some minor twinges of discouragement. My lazy self noted a decided lack of things we used really often and/or are quick and easy to prepare. Here's a quick overview of what I found:

• Pork (all of it's quite old...)
• 1 very large fresh ham
• 1 what I think is a smoked ham
• Various bean-seasoning bits
• 4 packages of country ham, all small-ish
• 3lbs of breakfast sausage

• Chicken
• About 8 whole, all but 1 from a trusted source (Some of us watched "Food, Inc." the other night...)

• Beef
• 2 large packages of ribs that are... really old.
• 3 large packages of roasts + 2 more individual roasts

• Fruit
• 2 quart bags of mixed
• Several bags of blueberries

• Veggies
• Several, but not many, quarts of squash casserole "mix"
• 2 pints (or are they half-pints?) of butter beans
• 1 small bag of black-eyed peas, I think...
• 4 or 5 small packages of spinach
• Roughly 2.5 - 1lb bags of green peas
• 5 bags of ready-to-be-fried okra
• A few pints of shredded carrots

• Nuts
• 1 large bag of hazelnuts
• 1.5 bags of chopped walnuts
• 1.5 bags of pecan halves
• 1 bag of almonds

• Dairy
• 9-ish lbs of homemade butter
• 16 lbs of homemade cheese that's somewhere between mozzarella and ricotta 

It looks like a lot, but, as I said earlier, a whole bunch of stuff we usually use is gone. For example, note the conspicuous absence of ground beef or venison on the list. Thankfully we're going to take one of our steers to be processed in the near future. (More about our farm next time!)