Tag Archives: recipe

Thankfulness Challenge: Day nine!

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Today I am thankful for these three things!

  1. Children: specifically our children
  2. Parents: specifically our parents
  3. Freezers: specifically our freezer!

I just cleaned out the little freezer of our refrigerator and found food I didn’t know I had! I threw out some food that had been forgotten and organized the freezer to make more sense! I have been organizing and trying to streamline our food prep. system. This really means that we have been making food ahead of time like I did about 6 weeks ago. Today so far we have made granola, freezer biscuits (see recipe below) Pizza crusts, pre-made the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then also Ham and Cheese sandwiches and corn bread mix! Did you know that if you spread peanut butter on both slices of sandwich bread it keeps the bread from getting soggy after you add the jelly. So the sandwich would look like this  bread, PB, jelly, PB, and then topped off with the top slice of bread. We also did this with the ham and cheese sandwiches but a little different. Put the mayo or mustard in between the ham and the cheese and not right up next to the bread. There are enough for the week double bagged and in the freezer. Since  we home school we don’t need to have sandwiches everyday. The one day we do need to pack a lunch we leave early and get home late. I am trying to reduce the stress on that day. I will let you know if it works. :0)

Angel Freezer Biscuits

2 pkgs. dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
5 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 c. sugar
1 c. shortening
2 c. buttermilk

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Sift flour, cut in shortening. Add yeast and buttermilk to dry ingredients; mix well. Knead quickly 20 to 30 times. Cover and let rise in warm place for 2 hours.

Punch down, roll 1/2 inch thick. Cut with biscuit cutter. Place on a cookie sheet, then freeze. After frozen place in freezer bag until ready to serve. To prepare place unthawed on cookie sheet in cold oven. Bake 400 degrees until brown, 25-30 minutes.

We will be pre-prepping the dinners when the other crew gets in from the grocery store.  I am a bit more ambitious this time as I am adding some family favorites to the recipe list and increasing the number of meals to 25 main dishes, 15 lunches and ten  breakfast items. So far I think our grocery budget is about $257 spent. They shopped at Aldi’s first and then the Dollar Store. I had subdivided the grocery list into different stores as  Aldi’s is cheapest and the  Dollar store has the cheaper Mexican food items. The last store on the list has the best produce and meat so the big bucks will come from there. This list is also a bit inflated since we  needed to replenish the pantry. These meals should last the month which would be a great blessing to all of us since it promises to be a busy one.

Dinners

  1. Chicken Parmesan rolls
  2. South of the Border Lasange
  3. Pasta sausage and peppers
  4. Slow cooker Pork Chops
  5. Orange Rosemary baked chicken
  6. Beef Potato Casserole
  7. Stuffed Shells
  8. Pasta primavera or pasta salad
  9. Slow cooker Chicken chili
  10. Chicken Broccoli Stir fry
  11. Rio Grande Lasagna
  12. Slow cooker pork chop dinner
  13. Chicken and rice soup
  14. Crock pot spaghetti
  15. Chicken and Macaroni
  16. Chipped beef on Toast or rice
  17. Tuna Casserole w/ potato chips
  18. Tuna Crockets or we also call them Tuna patties
  19. Honey chicken/asparagus stir fry
  20. Spinach rice and cheese + burger patties
  21. Crock pot BBQ pulled pork sandwiches
  22. Chicken patty sandwiches
  23. quiche with bacon
  24. Beans and cornbread
  25. cheesy potato soup

Most of the dinner recipes are from the saving dinner website. I am adjusting most of them for freezer meals. I am also including in the shopping list the other meals that we will eat that are not freezer meals. We just needed a plan for dinner, lunch and breakfast. I am not satisfied that we are eating as healthy as we should. The names of the recipes are what the kids  call them so they are family food. I am also not a nutritionist so these meals are probably not balanced in some way.

Lunches

  1. burritos
  2. tomato soup and toasted cheese
  3. tuna salad with lettuce and tomatos
  4. tomato and swiss cheese with alfalfa sprouts
  5. left over soup
  6. pita bread sandwiches
  7. chips and cheese
  8. apples and peanut butter
  9. banana peanut butter sandwiches
  10. BLT’s
  11. Homemade pizza
  12. macaroni and cheese
  13. Broccoli salad with raisins
  14. ham and cheese bagels
  15. baked potatoes
  16. left over bean soup

Breakfasts

  1. oatmeal
  2. bagels
  3. cereal
  4. granola
  5. yogurt and granola
  6. Peanut butter and apples
  7. peanut butter and Bananas
  8. cream of wheat
  9. pancakes
  10. instant oatmeal
  11. Sausage biscuits
  12. Freezer biscuits
  13. muffins
  14. oven French toast
  15. Frozen waffles
  16. eggs

Well, I will write more later and include photographs of our dinners in process. The other thing to understand is that we will round out these dinners with vegetables, salads, side dishes and possibly, sometimes dessert!

What do you do to stay organized with your meals?

Karen

Super quick Valentine Party!

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I decided about 2 pm on Valentine’s day that our family needed a special dinner. Specifically, that the man that bought the roses needed a pampering dinner. He doesn’t make much of a fuss about not getting special treatment, but he has been working extremely hard and needed some appreciation. So youngest dear daughter baked her first cake (chocolate wacky cake), and I frosted it.

Here is the Wacky Cake recipe:

3 cups of flour (being sure to level off the top of the cup measure after each scoop)

6 Tablespoons of cocoa

2 cups of sugar

2 tsp of baking soda

1 tsp of salt

Put all of these in the sifter and sifted them into a bowl. Then she stirred in the last four ingredients

2 cups of cold water

3/4 cups of salad oil (we used canola)

2 Tablespoons of vinegar

2 Teaspoons of vanilla

Stir it all together and pour it into your cake pans. We baked this at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Cool it and then frost as you choose.

The kids helped set the table, and iron a real red and white checked tablecloth. I do have a thing for table cloths besides they absorb spilled milk before it reaches the floor. :0) I started using tablecloths when the kids were much younger and the table over a carpet.

I took a  minute before the cake mixing started and made this garland. Yes, I was also on the phone and I am sure that my friend thought I was insane.

Here is the picture of the garland.

It took me about ten minutes, left over pink ribbon and scrapbook paper I will never, ever use for anything!  I cut out the hearts free hand with about four sheets of paper stacked together at the same time.  Using the straight stitch on my sewing machine I just sewed them onto the left over  cream seam binding and then the left over pink ribbon. Done! A heart garland to hang where my wooden words normally hang.

Our daughter wrote super quick place cards and put them on the plates. The guys set the table and carried in the super easy tamales(from the freezer section and steamed in the rice steamer). That along with the beans, rice, chips and salad made for a great meal. Everyone was happy and dinner was special. Did anyone notice the super quick garland? Nope!  Does it bother me, no! I called attention to it and everyone was happy. Blue moody feelings banished and everyone was pleased! Was the house spotless? Nope! Memories made and everyone happy! If we wait until everything is perfect then we will never create memories with our children or I am completely stressed and they are too.

What did you do special for Valentine’s day?

talk to you later,

Karen

Time flies!

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Hi, all I must apologize for not writing anything sooner. I have not been feeling well and there was a bunch of things that fell by the wayside and this blog was one of them.

I lost about a week to migraines. I am doing much better now and I will say this. I am thrilled that I made all of the freezer meals, what a great help it was to have some dinners completed. It has been working out great and the meals are good too! The only problem has been quantity, it appears that we are eating every bit of it. There is not anything left over for lunches. This is a good problem to have.

See you all later!

Karen

Organizing #3:Freezer cooking

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I have to be the first to say that plans change. Our plan of cooking with my mom on Friday has gone by the wayside. She has too much going on. So I started assembling the meals yesterday and put hers in smaller freezer storage bags since most of her meals are single or double serving size. I also added to our meals as the servings were for a family of 4 and we are a family of 6. Originally I was going to just have the meals for the times the kids were working! As if they weren’t going to come home hungry anyway.

I have roughly 12 meals of it finished and will finish up the rest today.  Just some pork and turkey meals today. I got a little distracted and didn’t follow the recipes precisely, I am hoping that this is not going to be a problem. I will take a few pictures when I am completely finished with all of the meals.

The cost of the food came in about $305 for 20+ meals or about $15 per meal about $2 per person.I am the first to admit that I am not a very good coupon or bargain shopper.  The other part to this is that one of us is allergic to cod and I had to buy a more expensive fish for a couple of the meals.  I believe that my savings will kick in when I am not running to the store for anything more than produce and milk, which will save gas, time and money. I bought more chicken and fish than needed for the menu plan and also had some pinto beans and ham cooked that needed to be bagged up and put in the freezer.  If this system works out, it will reduce our overall grocery costs and we will be less tempted to eat out or use frozen dinners.

This feels a bit like a huge gamble as the recipes are not our family favorites adapted for freezer cooking. On the good side the kids were very interested in the meals and thought that they looked good. They are teens, everything that looks like food  looks good, except maybe leftovers! We will see what happens when meal times arrive.

I spent a large portion of yesterday chopping vegetables and prepping the ingredients for the meals. The recipes are arranged according to meat; beef meals, chicken meals, fish meals, pork meals, turkey meals and vegetable soup.  I have the beef, chicken and fish meals completed and in the freezer.  Today is busy but I need to get these completed so that the meat doesn’t spoil and I loose all of the savings.