Yesterday's meals

Breakfast: Get whatcha want

Lunch: Nachos

Dinner: Cranberry scones and country ham

Birthday weekend recap

Saturday afternoon we celebrated Grammy and Claire's birthdays.

Breakfast: English muffins, bacon, eggs

Lunch: Corned beef, cabbage, potato salad, and apples. Dessert was a variation on Baked Alaska.

Dinner: Left-overs, get whatcha want.

Yesterday:

Breakfast: We pulled a loaf of pumpkin bread out of the freezer.

Lunch: Roast with potatoes and carrots, green beans, CCBB's

Dinner/Fellowship: Egg rolls and mini quiches.

What was on the menu yesterday

Breakfast: Cream of wheat, yogurt, get whatcha want

Lunch: Popcorn + whatever you wanted while watching one of Luke's Christmas presents: Spy Kids.

Dinner: I think I mentioned that we froze the left-over spaghetti casserole earlier this week... Well, we had that, those of us that were home.

Today we're celebrating Claire's and Grammy's birthdays!

Just another Thursday

I got paid yesterday. I should first add that my budget has been adjusted to $450/pay period, and that when Mama made the withdrawal, she picked up some things. That makes my total for the next couple of weeks $431.05.

When it came to meals yesterday, I kind of failed, but here's my full confession:

Breakfast: Mama and Daddy started juicing yesterday, so they had that. The rest of us had yogurt, eggs, get whatcha want.

Lunch: Left-overs, yogurt, get whatcha want when you want it. My only excuse is that were struggling with colds around here, and we're very lethargic...

Dinner: Red beans and rice. My first time doing beans like that. I did them as if they were in a crock pot, but they were in a pot on the stove instead. Our good bean-cooking crock pot has been missing for months. Still, it worked fine on the stove.

50lbs of carrots

Crazy? I think so, but let's not go there. Whatever happens with them in the end, we now have 50lbs of carrots to use; I am given to understand that they will be used for juicing. Why? Again, not too sure about that one. As I type, Claire is making carrot muffins with the left-over pulp from the first juiced batch. The next few weeks - if it lasts that long - could be very interesting; perhaps we can use it for something more appealing sometime. Like carrot cake. Or starting a compost pile. Anyway, the carrots cost $37.65, and it's been what? something like 3 months since I started this project. So, I figured I should take what's left over quarterly. This time I'm left with $600.57, which, frankly, I'm having a hard time believing... Faulty math in there somewhere, perhaps, but I hope not! I could use $600 right now. I'm supposed to get paid soon. We'll start from square 1 then, so this total really has very little to do with anything except my own personal finances right now. :)

Okay, now that we've got the money issues dealt with, here's yesterday's menu:

Breakfast: Eggs, yogurt, smoothie, get whatcha want....

Lunch: Left-overs, spanikopita

Dinner: Chicken, rice, green peas, apple sauce

What's the menu today?

Breakfast: Eggs, yogurt, get whatcha want.

Lunch: Chewy pretzel bites. If you haven't tried them, do. They're amazing. Particularly if, like me, you "accidentally" use almost twice as much butter as it calls for! :)

Dinner: Beef stew and cornbread. Remember my attempt at cheater beef bourguignon? I posted about it HERE. Well, I tried it again today. Again it got rave reviews. I like rave reviews. The difference this time was that I used 2 chuck roasts, more carrots, and added some green bell peppers and a little bit of celery to the onions as they were browning. Oh, and I only used one can of mushrooms - I think that was all we had... And I don't think we had quite as much old wine for me to throw in this time. If I had to notice a significant change it the dish, I would say that it didn't turn out quite a rich as the last one, but I am almost of the opinion that that's because the old wine I had available this time was VERY old, and a much lighter-colored red wine. Of course, my knowledge of wines is limited at best, so this is really all conjecture. Whatever the differences may be, it was still good! Unlike the cornbread, which I choose to blame on the fact that we're out of buttermilk...

Now I'm going to go and see if I can get someone else on my line of thinking that we really need to have peppermint hot chocolate this evening. REALLY.

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.