I am finally feeling like I am caught up to my summer! I am starting to get some items in the freezer and canned up in preparation for next school year.
This weekend I pulled the sour dough starter out of the refrigerator and made a batch of loaf bread and a double batch of bagels. I want to try and get a couple of batches of pizza dough made this week as well. I have probably 5 loaves already in the freezer and this is one of 5 or so batches of bagels. I would like to get another 5 batches of bagels in the freezers along with another 5 loaves but time will tell if that is possible. I don’t see that happening this week as we have the County swim meet on Friday and Saturday, everyone has eye appointments on Wednesday, I have 2 doctor appointments and my mom has at least 1 this week. Next week is also busy as our church is hosting VBS with everyone volunteering to work in the evenings.
For dinner on Saturday, I was able to pull out and make the remaining steaks from the cow we purchased two years ago. Steak is a treat and always appreciated. When looking for the steaks, I found 16 pounds of hamburger from our previous cow as well. I let it unthaw for 2 days before canning 8 pounds/ pint jars for future use and made the remaining 8 pounds into taco meat. I used 1 pound to make taco rice bowls for dinner this evening and will have 8 easy and quick meals in the freezer as well. I would typically the taco meat but I am out of pint size jars and instead of purchasing I put in the freezer for now.
That brings my current total up to 20 meals! This is 1/5 of my goal but this summer it just feels awesome to get things accomplished!
I am also working on not wasting food by repurposing leftovers! I currently have 2 jars of spaghetti sauce in the refrigerator, I want to wait until I have at least jars to water bath can at a time. My goal for the summer was to get 52 jars canned. I am seriously doubting this but I will do what I can and see what happens!