DOK Installation

I am happy to report that the Installation service went very well today. It was a beautiful and moving thing to stand with my sisters in Christ and add to our numbers. Horton did a good job with a difficult task. Its not easy to stand in front of your friends and tell them personal and intimate things. She managed gracefully, with sincerity and laughter. Sally's music was, as always, beautiful. Ann and I read the Old and New Testament readings, and Cindy did all her priestly things, including the blessing of the new members crosses. I don't know that I have the right words to express how I felt at the altar. There is something so fulfilling about sharing the love of Christ.

Our reception afterward was a hit. We had berry trifle, brownies, french toast, grenadine sandwiches, tomato and cucumber salad, and cordon bleu crustini. I was pleased to see the crustini and the salad were well received. I believe they will be permanent additions to my recipe book.

Baking Day

Last night we had spiral pasta with pizza sauce, turkey pepperoni, mushrooms, and a little diced ham. Sprinkled a little Parmesan on top and it was good. I had 1/2 a box of whole wheat/high fiber pasta, and a box of tri-colored which I mixed up. I put some aside for pasta salad today, and served the Daughter's first without the meat. The high fiber pasta was the trick because for the first time in ages no one asked for seconds, or went foraging in the kitchen later in the evening! It was filling, and okay on the taste front. All in all, I would rather have some pizza.

Today is my first designated Baking Day. I am trying to decide what to do. I would like to put several things in the oven at once and get the best use of the oven heat. I think there will be brownies or oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin muffins, and perhaps some bread in the bread machine. I will freeze half of the goodies, so we have them later. I found out that the zucchini bread will definitely go bad if you don't keep it refrigerated! So maybe I will do a batch of that as well and freeze it.

Next week I will plan better. It kind of snuck up on me, this being the first week. I planned to go shopping for table decorations for my in-law's 50th wedding anniversary party but the Daughter woke up sick. I think its a UT infection. So she is guzzling cranberry juice and lemon lime soda, and I am doing laundry and working in the kitchen.

I am also dehydrating today. I have chives to dry and I think I will do some diced carrots too. That will be handy this winter for soup, and I have a bag of carrots just sitting there wishing someone would use them. Because of dental issues no one here can eat raw carrots unless they are grated up, and I am just not up to another grating day quite yet.

I will head to the garden tonight when Hubby gets home to check on the produce. I hope to find enough cucumbers and tomatoes to do the Tomato and Cucumber Salad for church tomorrow. My Cousin is talking about making pickles out of zucchini, which sounds like a plan to me because we have plenty of those!!

Of Peaches and Syrup

I am not sure my peaches turned out the way I intended. I was trying to make a light syrup, which I thought meant it would be slightly thick. Not so much. So, I added more sugar, and though the recipe said to stir until it dissolves, and then take it off the heat, I also added 1/2 a bag of light brown sugar, and let it boil a while. Finally I gave up on thick and put the peaches in freezer bags with some of the syrup and got them into the freezer. I have a quart and a half of the syrup left! Its going into the freezer and I will use it over some other fruit. Maybe for apple pie?

Today its been peaches and laundry. Mac and cheese for lunch, but we had eggs and toast (plus bacon for me), for breakfast. Its pizza night but I don't have a Chef Boy-ar-Dee mix so I think we will do something else.

I have decided to try something with my menu planning. Now I have assigned each day a certain type of meal.
Sunday BBQ/Grill
Monday Salad night
Tuesday Crockpot
Wednesday Church (make something to take for the meal)
Thursday Casserole
Friday Pizza
Saturday Baking Day and Leftovers Day.

I think this will make things a little easier. Time will tell.

The Farmers Market

Its a beautiful thing. Even early in the season, all those lovely vegetables and fruits, lined up waiting to go home with someone. I got Yellow squash 3 for a $1, cucumbers 3 for a $1, 5 lbs of little red potatoes for $4, 4 onions for $1, a gorgeous cabbage the size of a bowling ball for $2, and 14 ears of peaches and cream corn for $4. We will eat like kings this week!

The other great find of the week was at Kroger. They had grain fed sirloin beef roasts for $1.99 a lb!! For $20 I got 9 nice big steaks and a good 1 1/2 lbs to cut up as stew meat. That is cheaper than Angel Food (per pound) and with the Daughter not eating meat, those 9 steaks will feed the Hubby and I 9 meals with no problem.

So, now its time to put the food away!


UPDATE: Okay...I have 1/2 the cabbage shredded, with carrots and onion and the slaw dressing is cooling on the stove. I have 6 bags of shredded zucchini (2 cups each, pre-measured for bread). Honestly, this is my first foray into zucchini bread, but I am thinking I can flavor it any way I want (chocolate chips, peanut butter, fruit, etc). That should make good muffins in the fall too. Once I get the slaw put up I will start on the peaches. They are a little more time intensive since they have to be blanched, peeled and pitted, cut up, and the syrup has to be made. I may run out of freezer bags and containers.

So today looks like a productive day. Its just about 11 am and I have accomplished a lot. Still need to water the garden, later when it cools down, get the chives and carrots into the dehydrator. Then I am going to take a nap before church.


2ND UPDATE: Shew! The coleslaw is all in the freezer. I made 2 batches, because the head of cabbage was so large. Even so, with a huge cabbage, l lbs of carrots, and 2 medium onions, I have 6 24 oz. containers of freezer slaw. Still have not tackled the peaches or the corn...but I am wearing out! They might have to wait for tomorrow.

I have no idea why the time stamp is not coming up correctly. I am in Eastern time and I just posted at 2:37 PM EST. Strange.

Productive Weekend

Well, lets see. I have frozen 3 pints of beets, 4 quarts of strawberries, and now I have peaches to put up, zucchini to shred and freeze for bread and soup later and freezer slaw to make. Not bad huh? I will probably make more zucchini bread. The first batch was good, but I ran out of brown sugar and I believe it needs what is actually called for. The recipe can be found here.

The freezer slaw, a wonderful recipe, was posted by a fellow quilter named Andi on the MQResource website.

Here's a good recipe if you have some fresh cabbage you would like to save for another day:

1 med. head cabbage, shredded
1 carrot, grated
1 green pepper, chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 tsp salt

Toss together, let stand one hour

2 cups sugar
1 tsp celery seed
1 tsp mustard seed
1 cup vinegar
1/4 cup water

Combine in saucepan. Boil one minute. Cool until lukewarm. Pour over cabbage mixture, stir until combined. Freeze in covered container. Thaw about 45 minutes before serving.

I can vouch for it -- its yummy! I don't put the green peppers in because I don't like them, but feel free if they are your thing :)

Sunday we are having a reception after church to welcome our new members of The Daughters of The King. I am going to take a couple of different things: Zucchini bread with flavored spread (not sure yet which flavor but probably a cream cheese thing), Cordon Blue Crustini, and a cold tomato and cucumber balsamic salad. I think that will be good food to celebrate adding sisters to our membership!

I worked in the garden this evening. Becca and I have found a way to separate the green beans from the Johnson Grass... the bane of my gardening existence! There were even a few beans on Mom's half runners! We pulled a few more beets for Becca to take home, and several zucchini for me to shred up for the freezer. We have lots of green tomatoes, and several miniature cucumbers on the vines. Oh, there are a few pumpkins too. I look forward to those. I want to can them up the winter. the potato vines died away but we do have some small red potatoes. Hopefully they will rest easy until we are ready to take them out of the ground.

I also hit a sale at the JC Penny outlet and for $5.50 I got 2 dress shirts and 2 pairs of pants for the hubby, a pair of jeans for the youngest daughter and a pair of khakis for the oldest daughter! Pretty sweet! We (Mom and I) also found 4 pair of twill pants for my brother so he has some nice work clothes also. Gotta love a bargain!

Tomorrow is up early, hit the farmers market before hubby heads out to work, shred and preserve all day along with laundry and planting a few blue lakes in the garden up here. I hope that they will take. We should have enough time for them to grow before the season ends.

Ta-ta for now!

Rotating Taste Buds

I have heard that your taste buds completely "rotate" out every 7 years. This is why your parents tell you that you will like something better when you grow up -- you might indeed! This explains why I like squash now, tomato sauce stuff hardly at all, and onions are now friends. It also explains strawberries. I just sugared and Fruit Fresh'ed 2 1/2 containers of fresh strawberries... and man are they yummy!. They went into the freezer, along with 2 pints of blueberries. They will be wonderful when the snow flies. If I find more on sale I will put them up too. Now that we have the small chest freezer I can do that :)

Checking in

Well we are on Thursday and I thought perhaps it would be a good idea to check in and see how the menu is going. Frankly, after 2 days of barely being able to move, we haven't done so well! (I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and its been excruciating!) However, we have hit a few things. I fixed the steak and made a big salad on Tuesday night. We took bread, cheese, and salad dressing and made our meal of it at the drive-in (it was sneak peak at Eclipse night.) We did have BBQ, but we had stir fried veggies with it. I think that was Monday. That night the daughter had some stir fried veggies and cottage cheese with sliced tomato. Several days she has had fish nuggets as part of her lunch. Breakfast has been pretty much a wash, except for one day when we had scrambled eggs and toast. I had bacon also that day.

Tonight we are doing taco salad. I have tortilla chips, sour cream, and plenty of lettuce and tomato (for everyone else) I had a package mix to make spinach dip with sour cream (which I also had). That will be my sour cream on the taco salad. We will also have some California style veggies tonight or tomorrow because I have been using them to ice my shoulder. Wow it helps so much! Or I may just mark this bag and keep refreezing it to use on my shoulder and chalk it up to a $1.00 food loss.

That brings me to something I wanted to mention. The shelves of mix packets at the grocery store can be a real boon to someone on a budget. Gravy mixes usually use water (not fat) so you can have a bit of gravy and not blow your diet. They also help add flavor to beef stew, if you don't happen to have a packet of beef stew helper on hand. And, gravy is not just chicken or beef flavored. I have used gravy mix to do white gravy for biscuits and I have seen pork gravy as well. If you have the means you can buy "meat and bag" mixes also. They come with the bag, you add the meat/veggies and seasonings in the package and some liquid, close the bag with a tie, and bake. All the seasoning is there. We also use taco seasoning occasionally. This is a small investment (between $.33 and $1.00 each) that give us a break from the same old flavors.

Last night, due to my shoulder pain, I just couldn't make supper. My IBS was also acting up. Hubby made us "customizable rice" :) Basically every one got a bowl of rice and we added what we wanted to it. He fixed his with a beef bouillon cube and steak seasoning and I have to tell you it was fabulous. Mine was plain - a little salt and butter. The daughter loves cinnamon and butter on hers. It was not the healthiest meal we have ever had, but it was meatless for all and filling. That it helped my IBS was the biggest plus for me.

Tomorrow is Friday, and should be pizza night. We don't have a pizza mix, and I think I want to have a baked potato bar dinner. I have plenty of potatoes from Angelfood, some chicken fajita meat, gravy mix, sour cream, shredded cheese... possibly those CA veggies... LOL. The daughter wants mac and cheese. I am searching for a recipe that uses a Velveta-like product to make the sauce. If I find one that turns out to be yummy I will post it.