Tuesday - Cooking Together

Here is a note I sent to my church group - (if you are in my church group and didn't get it and want to be a part of it, e-mail me, sorry I missed you) 

Some of us talked on Sunday, but others of you weren’t there.  So instead of my initial request for YOU to e-mail me, I’m sending out an e-mail to everyone I can think of.  If you think of someone who may like to be a part of this please forward this to them.  Kelli, would you forward it to Shayna if you know her address?  Otherwise, I’ll get it from her on FB.

 

This is the note I passed out at the picnic explaining what we’re doing.

 

Let’s get together and do some cooking!!!!   Now that we are into another school year, wouldn’t it be nice to have some things in the freezer so that you can just pull it out and throw it in the oven or crockpot?  There will be crockpot meals, and oven meals, and even marinated meats for the grill.  We won’t be doing sides or desserts, but at least this will jumpstart our menu for the month.  You’ll go home with 30 meals and recipes for each one.  And a list to put on your fridge so you know what you have in the freezer, if you don’t forget to cross things off. J 

 

Please talk with Steph or Dominique if you would like to be a part of our group.  We will be compiling receipts and split the money between us. 

 

We are planning on starting around 8 or 9 on Saturday, September 28, 2013.  Please e-mail Steph if you want to participate.

 

So if you want to be a part of this (or if you want to come along for the fellowship without the expense) please e-mail me soon, so I can make the shopping list.

 

Below is a list of meals, please let me know if you want a half or a double of the recipes.  All will be 9x13 otherwise.  Also please pick out which you want to do.  If you can’t do 30, that’s fine, just give me the number you can do.  If you do 30 recipes, your cost will be $200 or under (for one 9x13).  It does depend on which recipes you pick.   My total for the 1^st thirty recipes came to $180, but I’m giving us a bit of lee-way for some mis-calculations.

 

1.       Wild Rice Chicken Dinner - $4.50

2.       Chicken Stuffing Casserole - $7.00

3.       Chicken Potpies - $12.00

4.       Chicken Manicotti - $7.00

5.       Chicken Broccoli Bake - $4.00

6.       **Chicken Curry - $3.00

7.       **BBQ Chicken - $2.50

8.       **Sweet Asian Chicken – $2.50

9.       **Teriyaki Chicken - $5.50

10.   Party Enchiladas - $8.00

11.   **Chicken Parmigiana - $4.50

12.   **Cashew Chicken Stirfry - $3.00

13.   **Chicken A La King - $2.50

14.   **BBQ Meatballs - $6.50

15.   Easy Lasagne - $11.00

16.   Hamburger Corn Bake - $6.00

17.   Spaghetti Pie - $8.00

18.   Spaghetti Ham Bake - $6.00

19.   3-Cheese Lasagne - $7.00

20.   Hamburger Goulash - $7.00

21.   Beef and Bean Burritos - $5.00

22.   Spanish Rice - $4.00

23.   Chili - $6.00

24.   Beef Fajitas - $12.00

25.   **BBQ Pork Chops - $6.50

26.   **Carribean Pork Tenderloin - $4.00

27.   Raging Garlic Stir-fry - $4.50

28.   Mustard-Oregano Pork Chops - $7.50

29.   Beef-Barley Soup – $8.50

30.   Loaded Potato Soup - $6.00

31.   Pizza Rice Casserole - $9.00

32.   Sloppy Joes - $3.00

33.   Scalloped Potatoes & Ham - $5.00

34.   Chicken Supreme - $3.00

35.   Chicken on Sunday - $8.00

36.   Chicken Divan - $8.00

37.   Parmesan Chicken - $6.00

38.   Chicken Noodle Soup - $5.00

 

** Needs a side, such as potatoes, or rice, so add about $2.00 for the total cost of the meal.  You won’t be counting this cost for the cooking day, because you’ll be making the sides later.

 

A couple of sides that we can freeze are

Twice-Baked Ranch Potatoes - $4.00

Freezer Mashed Potatoes - $6.00

Please let me know by Wednesday which recipes you want to do, and when you do that I’ll know that you want to participate.  If you don’t want to participate, you just don’t need to e-mail me back.    You would still be welcome to join us for some fellowship on Saturday though. J

Steph

Have you ever tried something like this?  I haven't but I thought it would be fun to get together and cook.  I honestly don't need meals in the freezer, because I'm home to cook, but others do and it's a lot more fun to do them together.

Habits are hard to break - hopefully, even good ones

I've been having a hard time getting the basement bathroom clean.  Half of us use it, I'm just not part of that group, so I rarely see how it looks. 

I've been thinking about getting into habits.  Bad habits are hard to break, but if that's true could not the same thing be said for good habits?    So today I started training myself in a habit. 

Here's my dilemma - when I'm doing the cleaning, I usually have two or four kids in my living room.  I can't leave them long.  I can hear them while I'm in the basement, but it takes too long to clean the bathroom.  I can't just go down there and clean the bathroom.  5 minutes is do-able, but not 15.

My washing machine is in the basement.   So every time I go downstairs to start another load, I will clean one thing in the bathroom.  I already have a routine for my bathroom cleaning - mirror, sink, shower, toilet, and finally floor. 

First load of laundry - clean the mirror and sink.  Second load - the shower.  Third - the toilet.  Fourth - sweep the floor.  Fifth - mop.  If I don't have five loads, I'll just pick up tomorrow where I left off.  I don't get it done but once a week right now, so even this would be better.

I'm making my basement bathroom a habit.

Keep pressing on,
Steph

Cooking Tuesday and Wednesday's Household - TOMATOES!!!!

Around here we've been getting a lot of tomatoes.   On Monday, I ran out while my school kids were here to watch the little ones and picked a five-gallon bucket.  Yesterday, I was out all morning with an orthodontist appointment, so I didn't get to them. 

But today....I had about 20 minutes to put them away.  This idea is from our pastor's wife.  Our freezer is filling up so I do need to find a day to make some spaghetti sauce, but for now this is a quick and efficient way of storing those tomatoes until I have time.  Hopefully, it won't be quite so hot when I'm canning spaghetti sauce.

First, of course, I put them in the sink to wash them. 

Then I cored them.

Last, I put them in a freezer bag.  Now you can see why my freezer is getting full.  One five-gallon bucket brought about 5 of these bags.  Praise the Lord for His goodness in providing our needs.


This is also under Wednesday's Household, because it's so important to keep up with my produce so that it doesn't rot in the bucket or on the vine.

Keep pressing on,
Steph

Project Monday - painting the trim around the house

The trim does NOT match.  I was having such a hard time figuring out what would work.  When I opened the can, I could tell that it wasn't what I wanted but I thought maybe it would be fine.  Up close it was fine, but from this view with a the color of the roof in sight - nope definitely not. 

So I went to Wal-Mart and found a pamphlet on exteriors - which I should have done first.  Lo and behold they had our roof color on there, or something similar and about 20-some colors that match.  I can more easily pick out of 20-some colors than I can out of their wall of different colors and shades. 

Carpenter and I found the right color.  So now, I will continue to paint our house this awful combo of colors as a first coat.  I am glad I didn't buy two gallons, but for all the places I need to paint, I think one gallon should do a first coat.   Then we will paint the trim again with the right color.

I just wish that my neighbors would read my blog so that they would know we aren't insane. :)  I'm going to try to make it as quick and painless as possible.   This is the view from the road, so everyone will see it while we finish everything up.

This is what I will be doing this week.  Painting trim whenever babies aren't at my house.

Keep pressing on,
Steph

Wednesday's Household - the beauty of it all

For the first time in about 15 years, things stay the way I put them.  If I clean a room, it stays that way.  It's nice.  It makes me want to do even more.

But the deal is I miss the laughter in the house, the busyness of it all, the "arguing" over the last cup of coffee.

The one thing that is nice, but is very different from homeschooling, is that the kids have much more to tell us.  Someone asked us if we just didn't talk a lot before public school.  We actually did talk a lot, but not with our kids, and them not so much with us.  I didn't have an answer for him, but my husband did.

Here's what he said: "We had so many shared experiences before.  We did everything together, so there was a whole lot of need to re-hash it.  Now everything they do is different from what we are doing, so they want to share with us.  And we love hearing their stories.

Some of the stories are scary, some are shocking, some are good - but my husband and I want to be a safe place to discuss these things, so we listen and talk about the things they face.  I'm so thankful that they do want to talk to us about these things.

Keep pressing on, and keep listening,
Steph

Cooking Tuesday - cucumber bread

Cucumber bread is taken from a basic zucchini bread recipe.  I was desperate for a way to use up all the cucumbers in our garden. 

One thing about cucumbers is their water content is much higher than zucchinis, so I let them sit in a strainer for awhile.  Also, it won't taste like zucchini bread.  It's good but we prefer zucchini bread.  Still, I think if we have an abundance of cucumbers, I would definitely make it again.

I made a triple recipe, so I think I'll freeze some of the bread. 

So find your favorite zucchini bread recipe and substitute cucumber for it.  One tip - take the seeds out first. :)

Keep pressing on
Steph

Project Monday -

Remember this?

It didn't work so well.  The jars if they didn't close properly were too tall.  And closing them properly was a pain.  Also they were also shifting all over the place.

So...

and then so that I could remember where each one went alphabetically, I put a little tag underneath.

Next step is to grab some paint sticks and cut them to length so that all of the rows don't shift when I take one out.  I think that will solve it.

Keep pressing on.  (as you can see I am organizing and de-cluttering again, now that school is back in session)
Steph