Monday Menu Planning and #Everybitcounts

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Sheila

The return-to-work countdown is on! I have less than 2 weeks. I am going to focus on getting as much stored up as possible in the next 2 weeks. I also want to try several different recipes so that I can see if they work. I am also going to be trying to get ahead with several easy breakfasts. We are putting away a couple of pancakes at a time when we make them. I am also planning to make omelet bags on Tuesday morning while making breakfast!

Breakfast- Saturday- Pancakes Sunday- Cheddar cheese sausage balls and eggs. Monday- Homemade bagels Tuesday- Omelets Wednesday Thursday and Friday- find it oatmeal, cereal and milk, French toast sticks, bagels, breakfast burritos and pancakes.

Lunch- Saturday-BLTs Sunday-Don Juans Monday- Sumer lunch Tuesday- Summer lunch which included squash, zucchini, cantaloupe and strawberries. Wednesday- Eat out as we will be back to school shopping. Thursday- Leftovers or sandwiches, Friday-salad.

Dinner- Saturday-Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza. Sunday- Baked Potatoes, Monday- KFC bowls Tuesday Philly Cheese Steaks Wednesday- PF Changs for my birthday Thursday- Cube Steak and lots of sides Friday-Sloppy Joes.

Every Bit Counts Challenge- It made sense for me to include this with Menu planning as they are both food related.

Friday August 5th-Salsa
Saturday August 6th- Pancakes and Sausage Balls
Sunday August 7th- Forzen bananas
Monday August 8th- Tomato Sauce

Official food preparation count: 58
Breakfast count: 22
Spaghetti Sauce: 25
Salsa: 3 full batches (I would honestly like to make 2 more of these but we will need to wait until I get another batch of Wax Peppers in)
Tomato Sauce: 13 1/2 cup portions and 2 1 cup portions (I would like to have 12 cup portions before moving to diced tomatoes)

Menu Planning on Tuesday!

Posted on August 2, 2022 by Sheila

The focus this week and for most of the month of August will be no food waste! I am working hard to find ways to use what we have and are growing but also to save a little each day for the future.

One explanation- we have been getting breakfast at Biscuit King on Saturday morning which allows us to get outside and get a couple hours of work in prior to it getting unbearably hot.

Breakfast- Saturday- Biscuit King Sunday- Sausage and eggs on the Blackstone as we did not have electricity. Monday- Smoothies Tuesday- Homemade Everything bagels Wednesday- Breakfast burritos Thursday- find it in the freezer, which includes muffins, French toast sticks, bagels, breakfast burritos and pancakes. Friday- Banana muffins

Lunch- Saturday-BLTs Sunday-Greggs Monday- Leftovers Tuesday- Summer lunch which included squash, zucchini, cantaloupe and strawberries. Wednesday- Eat out as we will be back to school shopping. Thursday- Leftovers or sandwiches, Friday-salad.

Dinner- Saturday-Cheddar Bacon Burgers. Sunday- Roast Beef sliders Monday- Spaghetti with homemade sauce. Tuesday Chicken Pot pie Wednesday- Insta pot hamburger helper. Thursday- Pasta salad Friday-Steaks and baked potatoes.

Friday Catch-Up

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Sheila

Things got alot crazy around here this week. I knew that we would be fairly busy with Zach having baseball camp 3 days and Vacation Bible School 5 nights with a pool party for a sixth night. What I did not count on was adding in the 659 pounds of meat that needed some attention.

I received a text on Tuesday morning that our meat was ready. I was very thankful that Matt had cleaned out and started the old chest freezer on Saturday. After a couple of phone calls I was able to arrange some help and began working on making meals with the meat.

This week I have been able to make and freeze, 14 packs of Salisbury steaks which did not include our dinner today, 2 pounds of Taco meat and 10 packs of taco meat, 10 packs of sloppy joes and 2 additional batches of spaghetti sauce and 2 batches of Salsa. Here is the official meal total: I am at least halfway to my goal of 100 meals in the freezer.
Official food preparation count: 45
Breakfast count : 15
Spaghetti Sauce: 20

The other big event of the week was our purchase and bringing home of 6 chickens. The chickens are approximately 2 weeks old and currently hanging out in the living room under a heat lap for the next week. As you realize I have not been able to get the chicken story and how we have prepared for chickens up yet but hopefully I will be able to get this accomplished in the next couple of weeks.

I have 19 days until I return to work. I will be only working one job so hopefully this will make things a tad less hectic in the fall.

I am continuing to recover from my outpatient surgery. I did overdo things on Sunday and spent most of Monday resting and recovering. I hope to return to normal activities by next Monday but we shall see as I am currenting struggling.

I was able to spend a good couple of hours working in the garden beds this week. I have pulled up and replanted one of the beds with pumpkins. We are continuing to get lots of good tomatoes, several squash, a zucchni and a couple of small cucumbers. I am hopeful to increase the cucumbers and we also have apples and pears starting to ripen on the trees in the back yard.

Looking forward to a less busy and more normal start to August!

Monday Musing

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Sheila

No menu plan for the week. We are all volunteering at Vacation Bible School this week. We are provided a meal each day so that makes life a little easier.
One of the you tube channels that I real enjoy is Three Rivers homestead. She has a challenge starting in August called “Every bit counts.” The idea is that you find time each day to preserve one thing and that way it does not become overwhelming. I know that once I start working again in August even this will become difficult, so I am going to start this week and end on August 19th. My plan is to share weekly and how I am doing with this challenge. Last week, I made and frozen 15 helping of spaghetti sauce. Today, I put packs of mini applesauce muffins in the freezer. I also made a huge batch of gravy that we ate for lunch. I was able to put 2 smaller containers in the freezer to use for breakfast bowls in the future.
On Saturday, we were able to complete the chicken coop and started with the fencing to finish the area. We will hopefully get our new pet chickens this week. I am going to plan to share all about the chickens in blog post this week.
We also have obtained a large 250 galloon water barrel for both the chickens and for watering things in the greenhouse. We did attach a gutter system to the barrel We need to first fill and empty to remove all the remaining chemicals that are in it. Slow progress but this will hopefully eliminate the need to use county water next year for the garden or chickens.
As I mentioned above, we all are involved in VBS this week which runs from 6 to 8:30 Sunday to Thursday. Zach is attending the local baseball camp from 8:30 to 11 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Lily is working Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Yeap we are back to a busy schedule.
The garden is continuing to bounce back and we are getting a good supply of tomatoes and yellow squash currently. I am hopefully to freeze enough spaghetti sauce for the year (24 containers) and make another batch of salsa before the tomatoes slow down to eating and saving as diced tomatoes.
I was able to locate enough frozen basil to use in the spaghetti sauce that I don’t think I am going to replant this year. I will likely plan to grow in the green stock planter next year and replenish our supply then.

Thursday Thoughts

Posted on July 21, 2022 by Sheila

This is supposed to be our least busy week of the summer. The reason for this is simple. I had outpatient surgery on Monday. I wanted to give myself a full week to recover and this has turned out to be a positive thing. I did not leave the house after returning on Monday until this morning.

Today, I had to take Lily to the orthodontist office in order to get a new top retainer made. This was an expensive process. Hopefully, this will be the final time it needs to be completed. Lily lost her retainer while packing to come home from Oak Island last week. When she received her retainers over two years ago, she was informed of the $35 fee to replace. She did pay this portion today but due to changes in technology it was $150 to replace the retainer today.

I also headed to the nail salon to get my manicure and pedicure today as well. I have been budgeting this for once every three weeks along with a dog grooming appointment every month. I think this will definitely be items we keep in the budget.

The garden is starting to produce, and I am planning on an entire garden/food preservation update for tomorrow.

We purchased a small chest freezer that was delivered this week. This is actually going to be kept in our dining room and used as our convenient freezer. It has items such as chicken nuggets, waffles and pancakes. We have been able to move and arrange the other freezers so that we have one large chest freezer that is empty. It is currently defrosting and will be cleaned and ready for our cow that is currently being processed.

Our awesome friends provided an awesome dinner last night which was greatly appreciated.

We have purchased the final 27 pavers needed to complete the chicken coop. The goal is to get the pavers placed and the top of the coop finished on Saturday so that we can possibly get chickens in the next week.

I am looking forward to not leaving the house again until Sunday to go to church!

Menu Plan Monday

Posted on July 18, 2022 by Sheila

Things are never dull around here! Last week we were at the beach so no menu planning that way except to decide what meal was going to be eaten out. This should be the least busy week of the summer. The focus is to eat our fresh veggies from the garden in addition to attempted to completely empty out a freezer in anticipation of our whole cow purchase. I also realized that I need to plan our at least some lunches with most of us home at least part of the day.

Breakfast- Saturday- Old Bridge Dinner (last morning of vacation) Sunday- Biscuits and bacon or jelly. Monday –Cereal, Tuesday- Sausage muffins Wednesday- omelets Thursday- apple sauce muffins or blueberry muffins depending on what I am in the mood for. Friday- freezer breakfast which includes muffins, French toast sticks, bagels, breakfast burritos and pancakes.

Lunch- Saturday-McDonalds (traveling) Sunday- Longhorn Steak. Monday- Chinese, Tuesday- chicken bacon ranch frozen pizza, Wednesday- salads, Thursday- probably chick-a -filet, Friday-sandwich

Dinner- Saturday- Left-over shrimp and sausage with sautéed squash. Sunday-Spaghetti with homemade sauce, Monday- Chinese. Tuesday Cheddar and bacon burgers with fried squash. Wednesday- Taco Rice and homemade salsa. Thursday- Tortellini Alfredo Friday-Some type of chicken

Monday Menu Planning

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Sheila

This describes Zach completely! I will admit I stole this off Facebook this morning!

One of my long-standing goals for each summer is to meal prep for the following year! Last year this was off the table due to not having a stove and in 2020 we were receiving school lunch deliveries every day, so I did not need to do much meal preparation at all. This year I am going to set a goal of 100 prepared recipes that we just need to thaw heat and eat. Some of these like Salisbury steak, and taco meat will have to wait until after we receive our cow but with having some extra time today. I wanted to get started as well as use up some various items in the fridge. This should allow enough flexibility to eat what we feel like and also speed most dinners along. If I am able to store more that 100 than that is even better. One more side story, I needed to get a baked ziti in the freezer to use on our beach trip this summer. When I checked the freezer and cabinets for spaghetti sauce, I realized we were completely out. As I was scanning the internet, I did find a bolognaise recipe, so I decided to make that in the crockpot to use for the baked ziti! After making the baked ziti, I still had almost 40 oz left so that was the reason I decided to go ahead and make the million-dollar spaghetti pie. Today, I have made 2-million-dollar spaghetti pies, 2 chicken/broccoli rice casseroles and prepared the baked potatoes for Wednesday. (Washed and wrapped- we are going to add cheese, sour cream and sloppy joe mix to the top). I also went ahead and made up the dry ingredients for baked oatmeal. This makes it very easy to make breakfast.

Official food preparation count: 9
Breakfast count : 8

Breakfast- Saturday- BLT sandwiches (Matt made bacon on his new Blackstone.) Sunday- Eggs and sausage (on the Blackstone) Monday – Cinnamon Toast sticks from Sam’s Club. Tuesday- Peanut butter baked oatmeal (I also need to prepare another 12 bags to use during the school year). Wednesday Gravy biscuits (I found frozen biscuits and need to use the milk) Thursday, Friday- find your own with what we have. I did buy cereal and pop tarts so this should be easy!

Lunch- Saturday-Grilled Italian sausage with onions and peppers Sunday- Lunch at friends. For the week, Lunch will either be sandwiches/ roll up or quesadillas or left overs or hot pockets.

Dinner- Saturday- Lily was at work, Kendall and Zach were at Haley’s so I had chips and salsa Sunday-Tortellini Alfredo, Monday- Broccoli and Chicken casserole. Tuesday Pasta salad Wednesday- Baked potatoes with sloppy joe mix. Thursday- Grilled Chicken Salad Friday-Dinner at Red Robins for Kendall’s birthday.

Happy Summer!

Weekend Wrap Up

Posted on June 26, 2022 by Sheila

This weekend was supposed to be a slower than usual weekend however we still managed to get a lot accomplished.

Decided on our next house project. We installed a new kitchen floor in March 2020. The floor has begun to split and we have lots of pieces that no longer fit and it is becoming a hazard. We have been talking for several months about replacing the floor. We are not certain which direction that we want to go. Matt and I talked and decided for the short run (less than a year) we will simply remove the new floor and return to the wood planks underneath. The current plan is to re-adjust the plank and attempt to nail in place. This is definitely not a permanent fix but solves the problem and will at least give us a presentable floor. We are going to undertake this project next weekend.
Ordered the wood to finish the chicken coop and for the fence along the back edge of the yard.
We have been watering the garden using county water for over a week now. It takes around 20 gallons a day to water so I am very hopeful that we will get some rain in the next 24 hours.
Placed a down payment on our cow order. We should receive the cow some time the first couple weeks of August. Now we are focused on trying to decide what meat cuts we want. I am also working on emptying one of our freezers. My goal is to get this accomplished by the end of July. However, it is fairly difficult when at the same time we are beginning to get in our summer produce. Check and balance is all I can hope for.
We ended up going to Costco on Friday night to use our reward check, I was very proud that we only ended up spending $26 out of pocket. But that was short lived as we also went to Sam’s today. We spend $260 of which over $200 was on food. I did stock up on Slim Jim’s (3 boxes) Hot Pockets (which the kids have been asking for) Biscuits and Pop tarts for breakfast in addition to some treats.
We managed to only eat out one time this weekend. Matt has been practicing cooking on his new Blackstone. He cooked two meals yesterday in addition to breakfast this morning!

Let’s get this week started on a good note!

Monday Menu Plan

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Sheila

Menu planning is going to look a little different during the summer. Instead of just sharing what we are eating, I am planning to also share what we are doing in terms of food preparation and storage as well. My goal for this week is to continue to work on cleaning out the deep freezer as well as slower, time permitting start to re-stock some convivence food and of course the ultimate goal of not wasting food. This morning I have already frozen the remaining strawberries from the fridge. I made a large pot of rice to use with several meals this week. I did have a long talk with the kids yesterday about reducing the amount of eating out that we have been completing. I need to step up my game for breakfast and make sure that we have something plan to grab before heading out especially with taking Zach to camp.

Breakfast- Saturday- Sausage crescent rolls with donuts Sunday- Left-overs Monday- Blueberry baked oatmeal (blueberries from garden) Tuesday- banana muffins and maybe apple sauce muffins? Wednesday sausage and eggs Thursday- breakfast pizza, Friday- Special treat likely! Which means Biscuit King unless I decide to try a breakfast casserole.

Lunch- Saturday-Hot Dogs Sunday- Applebee’s For the week, Lunch will either by left-overs or sandwiches/ roll up or quesadillas . Today- Monday- I made egg salad with the last boiled egg and eat it with pretzels.

Dinner- Saturday- Left-overs Sunday- Bacon and Tomato sandwich Monday- Taco Rice Tuesday Pasta salad Wednesday- Sloppy joes. Thursday- Pork stir fry with veggies from garden over rice Friday-Tortellini Alfredo

5 Things Friday

Posted on June 17, 2022 by Sheila

The schedule- Months ago when I started to plan for my summer break, my thought process was that I would schedule as many medical appointments as I could this week and get them out of the way. This would free up several weeks of time instead of needing to go out once a week to a different appointment. I did not take in account how tired I would be after the wedding festivities. I had schedule 1 or more appointments for each day. Adding in some services such as land clearing and septic pumping that I needed to get done and car sharing that occurred made this week crazy busy! I am hopeful that next week and the following weeks, I will be glad for more time but at this point, I am exhausted and really need a break.
Menu planning- Did not happen this week at all. I have managed to get food on the table every day and no one starved. I may start some planning next week but if not we still have a ton of convivence foods! My logic is that we are cleaning out the freezers and making room so why not!
Gardening- For the first time in years, we had to water with our hose this week. I have expanded the garden but we managed to empty out both 55 gallon drums of rain water. It has been very hot and very dry but it was dishearting to hook up the hose. We did get a storm last night so that will eliminate the need to use the hose at least for the next couple of days. I am praying for a nice soaking rain over the next week so that things will even out! I have moved several plants to different areas just to give myself some more space and hopefully get a better harvest.
Chicken- Matt agreed to allow the kids to get some chickens as pets. We had an area behind our house cleared this week in order to make room for the said chickens. I am expecting a delivery of the first part of the coup this afternoon. I want to make this a pretty and useful area as well so I have been spending lots of time thinking and planning the landscape around the chicken coop.
Weather- It is extremely and usually hot. In fact, this has added to my exhaustion this week. I need to get out and get any yard work done prior to 9 am or after 8pm in order to even survive! I am so looking forward to sitting by the pool this weekend!

Teens Tots and Everything In Between

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