The Week Ahead: Almost There

I think we've all been waiting with bated breath for 2020 to come to an end and we're very nearly there now.   I can't say that for us it's been a particularly horrible nor particularly good year.  It's been different, a kind of different I don't necessarily want to repeat whatever the lessons were this year.   Just before John's actual retirement date we started spending a lot of time at home, more than we ever had.   Add to that his actual retirement, the 'big' event of the year,  getting accustomed to being paid once a month and slightly less than when he worked, family in and family unable to visit and homeschooling and....Well, it was never a stable year, really and I'm glad it's coming to an end. Agreed?   

The Week Behind: Who's Tired?

 

Saturday/Sunday:  It says a lot when we get to the end of a family day and John congratulates me on not losing my cool or being twisted up in knots.   Everything went to plan.  All but the turkey breast cooked on Friday.  I warmed the sausage balls (will NOT be using that recipe again...need to make a note in the cookbook I got it from that it's not the best).   John and I had the kids table out in the kitchen, aka my sewing table, and had moved the pack n play to our bedroom so there was a baby napping zone.  He ran to town to get ice.  I laid out my platters and we had nothing to do for a bit over an hour except to wait on family.  

Gathering Fragments: Kitchen Magic

 

Sunday:  When John told the kids I'd make them pancakes this morning, I had no qualms saying "Of course.'   I immediately thought of the Whey in the fridge that Bess has given me.  It makes beautiful pancakes, all light and fluffy.  I remembered to add that little bit of baking soda since the Whey is from yogurt and has the same acidity that buttermilk has.

John made us Turkey sandwiches tonight.  He also added sausage balls to the plate and deviled eggs and pickles and it was a regular feast of leftovers but by no means did it use up all the leftovers.  He did use up the olives, pickles, deviled eggs and sausage balls.

I'll actually check the fridge tomorrow to see what else I might have and then the planning will commence.

Waste:  I tossed a partial loaf of homemade bread that I believe to be 2 or 3 weeks old.  I have plenty of croutons and breadcrumbs on hand and just don't need more this week.

1 cup of mashed potatoes that were too old to consider using.

Monday:  I cleared each shelf in the fridge this morning and here's what I have that needs to be used up:

Top shelf:  Whey and Buttermilk.   

Second shelf:  I tossed some mashed potatoes and put the stuffing that was leftover last week into the dog's bowl of scraps.

I put the chili I made yesterday and the chicken pot pie filling into the freezer for future meals.

I have: sliced apples and oranges.  

Small piece of cubed steak.

1 -1 1/2 cups turkey bits

a dozen slices of Tortilla pinwheels

Ranch dip, French onion dip and sour cream: all opened and all will need to be addressed this week or next.

a few pieces each of chocolate cake and Apple blondies

cooked brown basmati rice

cranberry sauce that is open

Baked beans

1/4 cup of salsa

single serving of chicken pot pie

Meat drawer:  4 uncut Tortilla rollups,  Half a Beef Kielbasa

Bottom shelf: cut up celery and carrot sticks

Veg crisper drawer:  broccoli heads, green onions

On the counter: 3 ripe bananas, an acorn squash

I come to this week with a plethora of things I should use and some that will possibly carry over to next week for use.

Immediate ideas: Stir fry rice with the rice, some of the carrot and celery sticks, and green onion.   I have chicken tenders in the freezer, so that would be a quick meal for lunch or dinner.   Orange slices will be nice as a side dish.

Unroll the four tortilla rollups and put chopped turkey on them, then roll them up and heat them in the oven with salsa.   I'd serve with a salad and black beans.

Some things can be translated into a quick lunch: chicken pot pie and the already cut tortilla roll ups.

The cake and blondies will be easy desserts to have this week.

The cubed steak will be served alongside eggs and biscuits for breakfast.   

The biscuits will use up some of the whey and buttermilk.  I'll make up an extra lot of biscuits and put those in the freezer for easy use.  I'll also be making Shabat bread this week and that will use another cup of the whey.  I suppose I could mix up one batch of dough and use to make rolls and freeze them.  Do I have that much freezer space?

Make applesauce with the apples.  I can use as a simple dessert or put in the freezer to save for another day.

I have an idea to use the French onion dip in a chicken pasta dish. Trouble is I have no chicken at present, but if I happen to have leftovers of chicken from Thanksgiving, I could use it in that dish.

Happy accident!  My stainless steel loaf pans just arrived and in the insert is a recipe for a Banana Pineapple Nut bread.  I was just thinking I was over the banana nut loaf and the chocolate chip banana muffins, so this might be worth trying as a new to me recipe.  That will use up two bananas.

I can use some one banana, 1/2 an apple and a couple of orange slices to make a quick fruit salad.  That might be nice with the Stuffed Acorn Squash I thought I'd make one night this week.  I have sausage and rice stuffing in the freezer already.

Planning of course, is only have the battle.   

John and I ate the tortilla rollups (and then tossed the remainder of the cut ones as they were soggy...I think I put 3-4 slices in the trash) and he ate the chicken pot pie and cranberry sauce.

I made Fried Rice this evening using some of the celery, green onion, the thicker stems from the bottom of the broccoli, and the last of the baby carrots (apparently a far more popular item than I'd thought they might be, as there were only 3 left).

I also had several packets of sauces in the fridge and used one of those to sauce our chicken tenders to go with our fried rice at supper.  We ate the oranges as our side for that meal.  

Tuesday:   Without execution a plan is NOTHING, right?   I've been busy in my kitchen and here's what I've done with some of the above leftovers.  As things have been completely used up, I'm putting a line through them, so you can see my full progress.

This morning, I used one banana to make Banana Oatmeal.  I cooked the banana gently in butter, then added brown sugar and egg and milk to the oats.  This is quite good and very filling.

I used two bananas to make a Pineapple Banana bread.  I am out of cinnamon and walnuts and didn't want to use pecans in the bread, so it's not a nut bread.   The recipe called for 8 ounces of pineapple.  I had 5 ounces too much for the Cranberry Celebration Salad I was making for Bess so I used the 1/2 cup that was over measure for that recipe.   This is a cobbled together recipe as you can see... When these were baked and cooled, I wrapped and put them in the freezer for future snacking.

I used the whey to make biscuits and pieced out the remaining whey with buttermilk for the cornbread for our Thanksgiving dressing breads.  That took care of all the Whey.

I doubled the biscuit recipe so we will have biscuits in the morning for our breakfast.

I warmed the baked beans and fed them to John with hot dogs for our lunch today.

And finally for supper,  I unrolled the four remaining Tortilla rollups and topped with the turkey that was leftover from our sandwiches on Sunday.  I mixed the last of the salsa with a can of cream of chicken soup and layered the tortillas and sauce in a casserole dish, since the chunks of turkey were too big to allow me to roll them up again. I topped all of this with some Colby Jack cubes I'd found (! just when you think you've gathered all the fragments!) that I grated and when it all came from the oven, I put chopped green onions over each serving.   There's enough of this left to have for lunch one day this week.

And so ends another productive day in my kitchen.  And my list is greatly reduced by now!

Wednesday:  Used the piece of cubed steak this morning. I reheated it as biscuits baked and served it alongside fried eggs.   John was pretty happy with his breakfast.  He's big on eggs with steak...Me, not so much.   Anyone else think eggs and beef steak are made for one another?

For tonight's dinner:  I'm making Potatoes au Gratin with the Kielbasa on top of the dish.  Then I'll steam some of the broccoli as a side dish.

I'll leave off here with my Gathering because we all know that the landscape of what we have will change dramatically following our holiday meals.  I'll start fresh on Friday with leftovers and things I know I must use up.

The Week Ahead: Full of Thanksgiving

When this is sent, I'll have had my family day.   At writing, I am sitting with my feet up, much needed after a day spent standing on them.  Cooking, baking, cleaning all ensued since early hours and didn't end until about 4pm.  I volunteered John to cook supper.  

The family is yet to arrive, the food yet to be eaten and the day yet to be enjoyed.  But somehow, when one week ends, I find I must start thinking of the week ahead.   I won't think of it at all starting tomorrow morning when I'm again busy and likely won't think about it again until Sunday when my son and grandchildren leave to head home.   I think it's better to have a plan now, rather than then.

Diary of a Week: Deeper Thinking

 

Saturday:  

This morning, John went off to the men's meeting.  I had the house to myself for two hours or so and I can say most certainly I have missed having even a small window of alone time.   Since this is Shabbat, I don't use these precious moments alone to work, though I did fold the clothes we'd hung to dry yesterday.  Tasks such as that are not distracting, nor labor intensive.  They don't require the whole of one's mind but at the same time because they require no thinking, it's easy to turn your thoughts off entirely and simply BE in that moment of smoothing, folding, putting aside into neat stacks and if you do think to be mindful of how grateful you are for the clothes and the man who puts them in the washing machine, for the machine that washes them and the grace of fresh air to dry them.   It's a good time to think of the drawers and closet that awaits them and to know that you have to chase away chill and to cover you so that you remain reasonably modest when you do go out.

Gathering Fragments: November Week 3

 

Saturday:  I thought I'd share what I know is in my fridge at present that I ought to use up this coming week:   Cooked rice, leftover mashed potatoes, most of a whole raw potato that was left when I was making oven fries Friday evening, a little tomato sauce from last pizza making, 2 hard boiled eggs, a bit of chopped raw cabbage.   I also have fruit juice awaiting jelly making which will happen this week.

In my cupboard I have some white cheddar cheese crackers that I found too salty to eat on their own.  I repurposed them by crushing them.  I spread chicken breast (cut into fillets by myself from a bone in  breast) with sour cream on both sides, dipped into crumbs and baked in the oven.  This was pretty good.  I still didn't care for the crackers but they were more palatable on chicken than they'd been when eating out of hand.  Note to self, don't buy that brand again.

Worth Sharing: Turkey Talk

 

Let's talk turkey.   

Talking turkey is a slang term, meaning, "Let's speak frankly and honestly.  Let's talk openly and directly."  Well, all I want to speak honestly about is turkey.

We Americans have all heard how Benjamin Franklin lobbied for the wild turkey to become our national bird instead of the Bald Eagle.  I kind of see his point.   We live in an area with a lot of wild turkey and it's not uncommon to see groups as large as twenty turkey at once in the fields this time of year.

The Week Ahead: Prepping, Playing and Enjoying Fall

I have a family weekend coming up next Saturday and I want to get a few things done to prepare for that.  But I don't want to come to the weekend worn slap out, either.   I've planned my menus and will do a little bit of prep every day so I don't have a lot of last minute things to do.  Let's just skip the chatter and go right to making my list of tasks for the week.

Gathering Fragments: November Week Two

Sunday:  This morning, instead of our more usual oatmeal, I thought of the single piece of Turkey Spam I had left yesterday after making Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.   Katie had also given me several items that were more than she could easily use up, including a half package of Muenster cheese.   I scrambled eggs for breakfast and added cubes of cheese and Spam to them.

The Week Behind: Life is What You Make It

 

Saturday:  A quiet morning at home which is just what I needed this morning.  I felt the residue of the week's hard tasks and tiredness.   I'd promised Katie we'd come help set up for her party.  I was surprised when it began to rain.   My weather app had said nothing at all about rain and here it was pouring outside.  We had two or three more good showers and then it started to clear.  

Indian Summer

 

Hello loves.  Come in and have your choice of coffee, tea or cocoa...Or perhaps you'd rather have iced tea or water.  It's been rather warm here but that is due to change this evening.  So perhaps a warming drink before you face a cooler night?

And what about a bit of music as we chat?   I'm listening to Melody Gardot, here.  And then Oblivion (Piazzolla) which will lend a lovely French background music.  If ever I go to Paris I shall be terribly disappointed if there is no one playing an accordion...And no it's not your imagination, it is the same song played by 15 different individuals and groups.   I've loved this song for years, having first heard it on a Secret Garden Cd way back in the late 1990's.  I find, 20 years later that the song is just as lovely as when I first heard it.  It makes my heart sing.

The Week Ahead: Go Forth and Make the City Prosper

All this past week long I've been remembering Jeremiah 29:7 in which the captives from Israel are told by the prophet to go to Babylonia and prosper.  "If the city prospers so shall you..." he said.   And I am  sure that advice is still true.  All we can do is go forth and do our best to prosper and make the nation prosperous,  as well.  We must pray for our current leader as well as future one and hold hard to God's promises.   That's all there is to it.

And that's about as close as you'll get to  political talk from me.

The Week Behind: Sweet November

 

Saturday: I was awakened about 7:30am by a call from Sam who wanted John to come help him pick up a buck he'd killed. This one was for us, which is much appreciated. It's being processed now. I'll get deer sausage, roasts and ground venison from it. I only know how much the processing costs, not how much meat I'll get but in about two weeks we'll have a bunch of meat coming in.

This fact has started me on a bevy of mental lists.

I need to defrost and then sort the freezer. As always I've crammed in the odd item that I meant to save. This is the place where I determine if I'm actually going to save it and make something of it, or dump it and let that be a reminder to me to stop pushing in a dab of this and a bit of that. I'm going to plan for 50 pounds of meat....We'll see if that is sufficient enough planning. Sam had said two weeks ago that he believes we'll need one more to get through the year and so his fourth deer will also be for us. Since we typically eat a half pound of ground meat twice a week...I'm thinking we won't need a second deer but then I can have it cut into cubed steaks, roasts and more sausage, so I can get good use from a second deer I think.

The Week Ahead: Frosty November

 

We had a lovely last week of October and the last day, on Halloween, we were awakened by a phone call about 7:30a.m. "Mama tell Dad to come on and help me. I've got y'all a deer!" Well there's good news to end a month upon, the promise of meat in the freezer. They loaded it up and took it over to the processors on the other side of the county. John said it took the two of them to lift the thing but when they arrived a man walked out, told them he'd get it and picked it up all by himself. Now Sam nor John are weaklings by any means, so they were more than impressed with this man's strength.