Pictures and Menus for this Week's Meal Threads

Monday:  I made Crockpot vegetable beef soup with a small piece of round steak that was on sale.
Tuesday:   Steamy soup as it was just coming to a boil before serving. It was not ready to eat on Monday.

Wednesday:  About 1/3 of round steak was removed from soup late Monday night when soup was done. I refrigerated the soup and the meat chunks, and later shredded and heated it to fill homemade tacos with cheese, onions, romaine lettuce, diced avocados and halved grape tomatoes. Frozen tamale casserole from previous thread served on shredded romaine, halved grape tomatoes and slivers of yellow onion.

Freebie: I fried the rest of the tortillas last night while the tamale casserole was baking and set them aside. After dinner I  added leftover tamale casserole to the tortillas I had fried and formed into tacos. Topped this off with some grated cheese, slices of avocado and halved grape tomatoes with lemon juice (lime would have been better with Mexican food but I didn't have any) squeezed over the top to prevent discoloration of the avocados. I put this in the freezer for another night.This recipe was inspired by a pictures a friend posted on her Pinterest board. I was going to follow the recipe but then when I saw half the tamale casserole was leftover I just couldn't resist and used that as stuffing for the tacos to bake later. And I also could not resist using the leftover avocado half! This will be a "freebie" for next week or the one after that.

Thursday:  Tonight we are having the Shepherd's Pie I made in the meatloaf thread of leftovers to which I will add the rest of the soup veggies that we had on Tuesday night because I didn't have many when I made and froze the pie a couple weeks ago.

Friday: Tomorrow night the menu is for pieces of chicken cooked in a barbeque sauce using the last of the soup broth. This will be served with raw veggie slices, homemade potato salad, and two deviled eggs.  Tomorrow, I will cook extra chicken so I have a base for another leftover thread.

Saturday: Perhaps Chicken Cacciatore since we are getting an Italian veggie pack with our Bountiful Baskets Co-op order Saturday morning. We will probably get another eggplant which we don't like.

Sooooo...... If any of you have any yummy eggplant recipes please add them to the comments below! Sure appreciate it!

Kathi~

Tasty Tuesday .......new leftover thread I can't wait to enjoy the vegetable beef soup I made yesterday in my crockpot. It is a gloomy, cooler day-------soup sounds just right along with some kind of homemade bread and a nice dinner salad. I am including some of my "freebie" meals from the freezer this week. I am determined to finish de-cluttering the house and re-purposing what we had to take out of the kitchen in order to fit the new oven. Already-cooked meals will be very helpful. On Wednesday I will take out some of the beef in the soup, shred it  and serve it in a couple tacos along with 1/2 of one of my small  frozen pans of enchiladas. I will fry up the rest of the tortillas in the shape of tacos  and fill them with beans and cheese to freeze for a "freebie" meal later on. It's a recipe I found on Pinterest through a friend. Although it calls for pre-made taco shells it will easily adapt to using homemade tacos. It's on my "Food" board. Thursday will find us eating the frozen Shepherd's Pie leftover from a thread a few weeks ago with veggies taken from the soup gently mixed in----because as I recall there were not many veggies added to that pie. Friday, chicken will be served---found a great sale on drumsticks which my husband loves. I divided them up into five nights of dinners for him. I have chicken breasts which I love that are frozen too. So, we will have some sort of chicken meal probably with roasted red potatoes which we need to use up (we have a couple hundred pounds from last year's garden. I will use the leftover soup for broth for a sauce to put over the chicken. Leftover spaghetti sauce from two weeks ago will be thawed and used to make several small lasagnas on Saturday, some of which I will freeze. We order from Bountiful Baskets Co-op and are getting, among other things, an Italian veggie lovers'pack. I will use some of those items for the lasagnas and a big Italian salad (think Olive Garden!) served with my Parmesan Balsamic Vinegar dressing. Later today: a recipe for Lasagna! Kathi~

Pictures of Meals From This Week

Monday's soup: in crockpot ready to slow cook

 Ready to serve

Tuesday's leftovers have no pictures: mug of chili made from last of chicken soup from the week before, with black beans and chili powder added. Sandwiches filled with leftover frozen cooked chicken and sweet broccoli salad with bacon (leftover frozen, cooked). I substituted what  I had on hand for what I did not have that were similar to the recipes I used.

Wednesday's leftovers: Chili Tortilla Pie---leftover broken chips, onions from our garden, sour cream, and
leftover chili from Monday, thickened and made spicier. Leftovers of this went well with eggs for two breakfasts.

Thursday's leftovers: Hungarian Goulash---leftover soup (strained, broth saved) and drop biscuits from picture above,  with added paprika and sour cream.  Strained broth from this dish was lunch for me  yesterday.

This was a short leftover meal thread---4 days. Some things don't lend themselves to many meals. But I actually only spent $3.71 (for pastured chuck steak which was $6.98/lb. for 3/4lb. at $4.71 marked $1 off because the "sell-by" date was approaching) for those four days (for the main entrees) from this week's food budget. So, that's still a great savings.

I still have Mexican dishes in my freezer from Christmas Eve leftovers and three or four meals from the meatloaf leftover thread. When I call a meal a "freebie" I usually mean that it frees me up to not have to cook one or more nights. I got this phrase from my husband's Aunt Chris. When she cleared the table and found something unused, like a spoon or knife she would call out, "A Freebie!" meaning she did not have to wash it. But, I guess it also is free in that I do not spend any money on it during the week I am serving it! I like "Freebies" even more now!

Friday: Tonight, Gyros made with natural ground turkey. Picture to follow IF I can break through the ice in our driveway with a long-handled tool so I can get to my car and the store. I am out of ground turkey in my freezer.

Tonight starts with an initial meal in a short leftover thread that will end on Saturday. Any leftovers, however, will be revived again on Monday with a soup of course! All that will be left is a little of the seasoned fully cooked meat so if there is any left on Saturday I will not put it in Monday's soup but serve it in the bowls with the soup since the soup will be the initial meal in another meal thread for a few days. Always think ahead about how long you are keeping ingredients so you never end up with something spoiling your meals-----or your health.

Have a great weekend!
Kathi~

Being Real
......come into my kitchen

I was going to wait to post pictures of my kitchen until everything was finished but then that goes against what I have said when I first started blogging. Will it encourage you more to see my kitchen "all dressed up for company" or as it is now, as it progresses through all the problems we have been having? I know I feel more comfortable when people are real and I can see their human frailties.
So, here goes........kitchen in progress.....

The first picture is our son-in-law hooking up the wiring for the oven and my husband, steadying the oven on the saw horses, giving advice, holding tools and shining some light in the dark oven hole. This is after they lugged the few hundred pound oven in from the bed of the truck, up several stone and wood steps and into the living room where they sat it on the floor. Sorry, no pictures of that. I was praying really hard and moving things out of the way at that time. The first clue I had that they were in the house were the manly grunts as the two of them carried the thing! Once it was on the floor I pulled tape off inside and outside of the oven and took out some of the things packed in it, while the guys figured out some wiring problems and called a few people. I was, at this point, getting pretty excited and thanking the Lord that neither of them (or the oven) were hurt!

The men regretted having put the oven on the floor when they realized how hard it was going to be to pick it up off the carpet! They sort of jacked it up by putting wood under it so it was at a better height to get their hands under and lift it while bent over. More prayers. More grunts. Quicker trip.

The oven and the men made it safely to the saw horses in the kitchen in front of the oven hole. It did not take long and the oven was installed, the breaker switched back on and everything seemed to work.

But neither did  it take long for them to discover that the oven would not fit into the hole! The cabinet was not deep enough.

The second picture is taken from the side showing how short it is from fitting all the way into the hole and the space on top.

The last picture shows the oven from the front. And in both pictures you can see the residue from the tape that was used to protect the finish on the stove.

It is usable as is, once we get the sticky, gray stuff off the stainless steel part. So, it is workable and beautiful even though it looks bad sticking out like it does.

My kitchen is very small. It became even smaller with the addition of the wall oven since it is sticking out. The rest of the kitchen became smaller also when precious floor space was used up when the needed shelf unit for the pantry items that were in our oven hole for a quarter of a century was set up.

I think it will be cute once all the problems get worked out. Still small, but cute!

I am disappointed that it all did not go well. I was discouraged that it has taken so long and yet still is not finished. I shudder to think about how long it could take until everything looks nice, as I picture it.

Certainly there are lessons to be learned from this minor trial.

I am reminded of the saying about being patient with each other because God is not done with us yet.  And we are not done with our kitchen yet. We are not shiny and perfect----and neither is our kitchen. But it is workable and that needs to be the focus. We are thankful for it despite the problems.

While I was trying to remove the gooey tape residue last night and again this morning I reflected on our human condition. I thought about how hard it is to remove the residue of the things that we think hold us together. The difficulty of removing from our minds what a godless society has taught us.  How our pretensions, the images we portray, what we do so that others will think well of us, are hard to rub off. It can be scary to be transparent, honest with each other. Not that I believe you have to give your whole life story to everyone or even every believer. But we certainly are to be more real with each other---imperfections and all. We need to learn how not to provoke others to covetousness or jealousy just as much as we need to guard ourselves from those things.

Just as we are to be real with other believers we ought to be even more transparent with God. I have always thought it was silly to not be totally honest with the Lord. He knows us better than we know ourselves, we cannot possibly hide from our Creator.  To try is foolishness. It is futile.

Since Adam fell and he and Eve tried to hide from God it has been the tendency of humans to do the same.
We are like little children who believe that because they put a blanket over their heads no one can see them. They can see no one, so no one must be able to see them. But God always sees us.

Seek God, read His Word, pray to the only One who can answer prayer. Keep Him always in your sight. He always sees you, make sure you always "see" Him.

Goodnight!
Kathi~

Quick Tip
...... got chickens?

When my husband came in from doing the evening chores
he showed me the can he uses to collect eggs every evening.
It had ten eggs in it!
TEN EGGS
We have a little over 20 hens and two roosters.
We had a few hens who had for the most part, stopped laying eggs
which is common in the cold and shorter daylight of winter.
Friends just gave us more hens who had totally stopped laying.
Over the several decades we have raised chickens we have never gotten that many eggs
 from that many hens in the winter time before.
My husband has started mixing chicken feed instead of buying commercial feed,
experimenting with ingredients and finding out about prices, looking for organic,
non-GMO grains.
We always allow our chickens to be free-range.
 They especially love scratching around in our garden.
We've made our own feed before at times when we could afford it and
they do lay better on a better-for-them feed. But not this much better.
He has noticed when he has fed them warm scraps, cooked up squash from our garden and other

things we couldn't finish that their egg production increased.
So, if you raise chickens for eggs and they have decreased egg production you
might try giving them some warm feed.
What my husband does is put the feed in a big pan he bought at a second-hand store
last week. He pours cold water over it before he goes to bed.
In the morning while he is having breakfast he puts it on low heat and then feeds it to the birds
making sure it is just warm and not too hot.
They go absolutely nuts over the warm feed and we can't help but wonder if this is the reason
their egg production has increased. It did so after he started adding the water and heating it up.
More eggs mean less food you have to buy and food you can sell,
 which means less money you need to spend.
And that's always a good idea!
Goodnight~