Halloween Activities

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Sheila

Halloween is not my favorite holiday; however the little kids are at the age that they really enjoy ALL of it. So this year, I decided to just go with it. We have been celebrating for 2 days now. First last night our church sponsored a trunk or treat. I came up with the idea to use a tarp and have the kid color finish for “under the sea”. It worked really well. The kids had a ball and got enough candy to last at least a month.

Kendall is a fairy, Lily a pop star diva and Zach is Super Z- the action hero

This morning Zach and I head to Winston to grab donuts for the “special snack” in Kendall’s class that I was in charge of.

Super Zach enjoying his donut early!

After the snack, we headed outside to watch an alphabet parade.

Finally, tonight Amanda and I will take the kids to several place to trick or treat!

Granny and the crew

Wordless or less wordy Wednesday

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Sheila

LIly’s cheerleading squad made a trip to a local farm on Saturday. Matt helped herd the girls. They made t-shirts and of course practiced stunts…

Oh My Sweet Potato!

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Sheila

Just because I thought it would be neat for the kids, I picked up a small 6 pack of sweet potato plants this spring. Over the spring and summer, both Matt and I have commented on how beautiful the flowers were. In fact, I liked the appearance so much that following the principle of beauty of square foot gardening, I was going to add a small bed up front for next year to grow again. Matt was not all that impressed and wanted to wait to see how much we were able to produce.

This week, we have had several night of freezing temps and our beautiful sweet potato plants were dead, even black, from the cold so I knew I need to dig up and see what we have……

I am truly amazed, for $1.68 we grew almost enough for several meals! I actually have most of the small ones in the oven baking right now so we can enjoy for dinner! I am so excited as this is the most veggie with the least amount of work!

Zach and Kendall helped to dig up the potatoes. next we made an assembly line for washing and sorting them. It took almost an hour to complete the process but both of these guys LOVED it! Now sweet potatoes are a definite for our garden next year!

Homecoming Queen

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Sheila

Last night was Homecoming for a local high school. Our good friends, the ones that can tolerate ALL of us for extended times, daughter Andrea was nominated for Homecoming Queen. So the plan was to tailgate and enjoy the game. It is COLD! I am talking middle of winter cold but we still braved the cold and enjoy watching Andrea WIN! I am most proud to know that the student body nominated and elected her! If you want to know more about her check out her blog at Teens on wheels.

North Davidson’s Homecoming Queen

It was cold!

The Pierces

Amanda and Andrea

What to Do with 120# of Chicken?

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Sheila

Day Zero- This actually occurred several weeks ahead of time for me. I started searching for a variety of chicken recipes that could easily be frozen. I discovered that the internet is full of ideas but I eliminated first the ones that required ingredients that I don’t normally cook with or just sounded like the same basic idea and second ones that didn’t sound like they would freeze well or be easy to complete. I printed these recipes up and made a stack to be addressed in the next step.

Day One- I will admit that this step took 3-4 hours to complete. I took my recipes decided if I wanted to double triple or just try it out. Next, was a list of the quantity of dishes. Third was the list of ingredient divided into two parts, items on hand and items that needed to be purchased. Finally I made a list of items to be purchased, including which store to purchase at and searched for any coupons I could find.

Day Two- Shopping. I purchased most items on my regular trip to Costco and Target but did make another stop the week we received the chicken to purchase the fresh veggies that were still needed.

Day Two and half- I again spread this out over 3-4 days of the week of chicken arrival. I clean and made space for the chicken first in our large chest freeze, then in one of our kitchen freezers so initial freezing will be easier for some of the items. We also located several crates that will make transporting to the chest freezer easier. I also clean out space in the fridge to be able to place at least one of the boxes to take a break on Saturday night to get the kids feed and in bed.

Day Three- I spent about two and half hours chopping up all the fresh veggies and even beginning to label some of the bags.

Day Four- Chicken arrived, the pick up was smooth and the easiest I have ever experienced. In total we spent 4 hours processing the chicken into the recipes you can find here. I am only counting time that we (Matt and I) were working with the chicken. I did have around an hour that I stopped to get the kids to bed and another 30 minutes that I took a shower while waiting for the crockpots to finish with the chicken to be shredded. By far, the best tip I have is the Kitchen Aid mixer will shred chicken in 2 minutes!

Total of 48 set meals not counting left overs, so easily 50 meals totally prepared in 10 hours or less. Now to see how long it actually last!

Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Sheila

To avoid our house!

Now to answer the other question that I heard several times. Below is the inventory of the items that we made from our 120# of chicken. I have linked most to recipe that I used. A lot of these are total new to us so my plan is to come back and make a quick comment regarding how we liked it. Then the next time we try this I will have a starting place as to what to fix and what to replace. I am a little disappointed as I did not have enough chicken to complete 2 of the meals I wanted to try so next time these may replace what is don’t like.

14 packs of shredded chicken
4 chicken and broccoli casserole (my recipe) this is a favorite around here and can be serve immediately or freeze for a quick easy meal.
Welcome school chicken pie– Awesome good, homemade…
4 Chicken Fried Rice
4 Chicken Cacciatore– I should have made only 2 of these but I hope they are good
2 Garlic Ranch Chicken– good grilled chicken. Worth repeating
2 Chicken Fajitas– I can’t figure out where I got this recipe I copied it to this page.
2 Creamy Chicken Italian-O not bad, smells great, taste average, may repeat.
2 Café Rio Chicken-yummy, it did not taste as good as it smelled but still worth repeating!
2 Pineapple Chicken– a lot of work for something that taste like Chicken
2 Garlic Lime Chicken– Matt’s favorite!
4 World’s Best Chicken– it taste like chicken, very moist but not anything I would say was worth the effort that went it to it!
4 packs of chicken strips that we will add a bottle of Italian dressing to and marinate for 3 day before grilling. Each bag should equal 2 meals.

This makes a total of 47 meals. My thought is that in reality this will be 50 meals or more including leftovers at least one night. I will add another post with the details of how long it took to actually prepare these meals and how I complete the task on a very busy Saturday for us.

Do you have an easy freezer chicken recipe to share?

First Fieldtrip for Kendall

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Sheila

Matt, Zach and I were lucky enough to attend Kendall’s first fieldtrip with her. We went to the North Carolina Zoo! Picture heavy of course!

walking in!

Kendall’s Kindergarten Class

We all enjoyed the talk about nocturnal animals. Zach was able to sit through the entire presentation even better behaved than some of the other students.

The exhibiit with most of the noctural animals

The only bee I want to be near!

(Zach) Bear in a Bear

Do we look tired yet?

How about now do we need a nap?

How We Re-stock

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Sheila

For the past several months, I have been on a mission to clean out our freezers. I can finally say that I did succeed. So now what? This month’s grocery budget or should I save overspending will show just how much we can spend in a month. But more about that later.

The first stop we made to re-stock the freezers was a local meat market. We ended up spending around $200 but purchased what I am planning on being enough meat when combined with our chicken order that we will pick up this Saturday to last approximately six month. We purchased chicken wings for our super bowl party in January, several packs of steaks, a couple of London broils, flank steak for use in some fried rice meals, cube steak and a pork tenderloin which Matt split into 4 separate roast before freezing. I did purchase 20# of ground beef which I divided up and froze most of the following out of:
2 meatloaves (this are uncooked but can be easily thawed)
2 Cheeseburger pies. (We have eaten one of these this week)
7 meal packs of Salisbury steaks. ( Matt will combined with frozen mashed potatoes for a really quick but hearty meal).
8 packs of already browned ground beef.
4 meals of stuffing for green peppers. We enjoyed one of these for Amanda’s birthday and a second is a left over meal. The other 2 packs are in the freezer.

Next stop was at Costco where not only did we purchase food to re-supply us but also we need to purchase several vitamins and medicines that I have not been able to coupon for in a long time. We also had to renew our membership which only ended up costing me $14 so I will continue because that works out to around $1.25 a month and just the convenience of buying in bulk is well worth that cost!

Finally we headed out to Target to grab an awesome deal on Starbucks coffee and to gather some additional items we need to make meals out of our chicken.

In addition to cooking above I have also added a Baked Ziti to the freezer and will be placing some Taco soup in tomorrow as well.

I did take a look at our overall grocery budget for the year. Including all the additional spending this month, our monthly average is $650 which is less than last year. My plan is to make a couple of small trips over the next several months but I would imagine that by the end of the year our spending will be at less than $600 a month!

The plan is to let you in on how we end up processing 120# of chicken on Sunday or Monday after it is completed.

Amanda’s Birthday

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Sheila

Amanda decided that she would prefer a home cooked meal instead of going out to eat for her birthday! Because of our work schedules we did celebrate a day late but it still was nice! She chose stuffed green peppers for dinner.