Catching Up
...what I've been doing while still sick

I am glad to report that I seem to be over the flu. I am building up my strength slowly---more slowly than I'd like. But patience is a virtue the Lord keeps teaching me in different ways.

I was not able to go to the stores where I shop without getting sick until last Friday. I had felt well for two days. My husband and I went to the grocery store south of us one afternoon and barely made it through the store I felt so ill. Happily, I did well this time unless you count the blisters I got walking too much in too many stores, too quickly. We didn't need much since my husband had just done most of the shopping for us a couple days earlier. But the lists I gave him were short and only what we absolutely needed. Friday I fun-shopped for things for St. Patrick's Day meals and a few gift items and other things we needed.

Regarding cooking, I have been trying to conserve my energy, cook healthful meals, and  without much work. I managed to create leftovers from leftovers, freezer freebie meals and a couple of special dishes.

Below is a taco salad using leftovers from a chicken, black beans and rice dinner with sour cream and salsa mixed for a dressing.

 These below are what I made with a surplus of our eggs and some winter squash that needed to be used up.
Squash pudding with cinnamon-----essentially it is your favorite pumpkin pie recipe without a crust.
I made two, froze one and made a several-night dinner pan with some potatoes that needed to be used, a little mozzarella cheese, more eggs and leftover asparagus on the bottom right. This last dish was served the night it was made, as a side with chicken and asparagus, served the next night as the main dish with a Mexican salsa sauce and a big salad, throughout the week it was also served as an occasional breakfast.
The eggs in the old coffee tin were from our hens that day.

 Earlier in the week I baked chicken tenders with leftover Asian green beans, mushrooms and onions in a homemade cream sauce for dinner. Later in the week I stove-top cooked boneless chicken thighs with mushrooms and onions and steamed the last of the asparagus. That night, after dinner I combined these two dishes into a small lasagna pan and put it in the freezer for a freebie dinner or two.

Last week instead of tossing the over-ripe bananas in the freezer, peels and all like I usually do. I made a banana cake I had tried and loved years ago. I had a little more banana than the recipe called for so I increased the recipe by half again making three cake layers. The recipe is from The Better Homes and Gardens (red checkered) Cookbook----Banana Cake. I substituted wholesome ingredients for things we do not eat. We ate one off and on for a few days as a dessert, often with organic, plain Greek yogurt and raw nuts and seeds. Yesterday I got the two other layers out to thaw. I made the cake in the picture below for tonight. The frosting is peanut butter (the natural kind, salt-free---just peanuts) mixed with cream cheese, local honey, organic agave, organic coconut oil, butter. I love peanut butter on bananas so that was the taste I was going for. I just kept mixing until I got the right texture, amount of sweetness and the taste I wanted. Then I topped it with chopped pecans and organic dark chocolate chips. Can't wait to try it. 

For our larger midday St. Patrick's Day meal I made Guinness Beef Stew: beef cubed, one onion chunky-cut, one turnip, a couple handfuls of organic small carrots, Brussels Sprouts, quartered large mushrooms, celery leaves and three small stalks, cooked in Guinness beer, water, a touch of soy sauce (subbed for the Worcestershire sauce) Costco's Organic Salt-Free Spice. This slow-cooked all night in my 7 quart crockpot. I left out the potatoes and instead made Colcannon----a mixture of mashed potatoes, milk or cream and chopped raw organic kale  wilted by mixing it into the hot potatoes and served with butter. It was delicious! I saved some of the cooked potato pieces out to make Potatoes O'Brien with our own garden bell peppers in the freezer and organic onions. Served with our organic eggs and local natural sausage. But I think we are too full tonight and will have that tomorrow for a breakfast dinner!

So, this week I cooked three meals and refashioned them into several meals and we had one meal after I was in town all afternoon from our natural food store----Calmata Olive Rolls, Lemon Chicken Basil Salad served on the cut rolls with the store's  Brocoli, Bacon, Red Onion and Sunflower Seed Salad, and on the side sliced Bubbies fermented pickles (did you know that pickles were not originally made with vinegar but fermented as sauerkraut is----best pickles on earth without all the bad stuff too!) on the side with a small pile of Organic tortilla chips, with a small vegan brownie a piece and a tall glass of Outrageous Ginger Ale.

It was an easy and fun week. A good one in which to recuperate from my long bout with the flu.

 I love to cook for St. Patrick's Day. My husband's father was half Irish, half British and he loved the day. We celebrate it in honor of him/family tradition and in remembrance and celebration of history of who St. Patrick (the evangelist) really was. Google him! Quite a story!

Hope you have had a good week and maybe enjoyed some Irish dishes today. It's fun to try new foods. 

Kathi~

This is the Nightstand 
...that was re-purposed to hold my spices,
which was put in the empty oven hole,
 because there was no oven.
But now there IS an oven,
so the spices are moved to the new shelves,
and the nightstand sits under the table,
 holding tea towels, crocks and bibs,
among the baskets, jugs and more crocks.
.

More Pantry Shelves
.....re-purposed book case

This is a backless white bookcase we moved because it sat where the metal pantry shelves are now. It is on its side. On top is my large crockpot, some antique utensils and a copper tin w/salt and pepper shakers. In the copper tin are makings of cereal---nuts, seeds, coconut...  On the bottom shelf are two gallon jars of the cereal I make. In the middle are some oats, cinnamon sugar, coconut and organic cane sugar. The toaster sits with muffin tins and in the ceramic hen is butter often mixed with coconut oil. The new wall oven is on the other side of the wood wall on the right.

Next to the book case shelves I re-purpossed is the tea and coffee book case I got second hand also. The coffee pot and an antique glass coffee jar full of coffee sits just to the left of this unit. Below that area is a large drawer which contains baskets and other containers of all kinds of teas, coffees, herbs and some
vitamins.

Picture the white side-lying book case as black which it will be once the weather is warm enough to spray paint it. The Campbell's soup tin will be nailed up higher than it is now. And, no, the mugs (and the plates in the picture below) are not Fiesta-ware. Just Walmart knock-offs!


Below, just for fun is a shelving unit my husband built for me years ago. It houses all our glasses, dishes, mixing bowls, and pitchers. The top shelf is for unusual, colored glass pieces I have collected used over the years as well as the hand-blown glass on that and other shelves.

What have you got just sitting around that you could re-purpose to make your life more organized
and efficient???

Kathi~

Welcome to My Pantry.......ideas on storage and re-purposing


Top shelf: I have arranged things closest to where they are used. Here are spices in an industrial metal tray from Goodwill and serving pieces (espresso cups) I bought used. A magnetic spice bag holder (re-purposed office mail holder) on refrigerator wall behind shelves holding packets of stevia and bagged spices from our natural food store..

 Top shelf: baking items and custard cups because they are closest to my baking area. Plastic shakers filled  flour for dusting, cinnamon sugar and cocoa powder sugar (made with organic cane sugar).

Second shelf: oils, vinegars in a re-purposed wood crate so they don't tip over, staples in antique canisters         inherited from my husband's parents and glass jars we bought containing other food, canning jars with tart pans for lids, rice cooker. Small crockpot on counter next to shelves.

Third shelf: canned goods, some kitchen-emergency foods, jars, small recycling container.
Bottom shelf: large vinegars for household use, soup pot, bread maker, wines made by a
friend, empty jugs. Cloth bag of donations to the needy on floor next to shelving.

This is my pantry. Or, technically since it is not a room, these are my pantry shelves. When I  figure out where I am going to put the rest of my things I will post more pictures. Right now they are covering the tops of our counters and the dining room table.

So, what is a pantry? Okay...I Googled it. "Pantry" is from the Latin root word "panis" meaning bread. In Medieval Latin it became "panataria" which was a room where the servant who had charge over all the food slept. In the 14th century the French borrowed it, changed it to "panterie" denoting simply a bread room. Somehow the servant disappeared with the bread and it came to mean just a room where non-perishable food was stored. I wish the servant hadn't left with the bread, but, oh, well. I am thankful I now have shelves! Someday, I hope to have our originally-planned walk-in pantry with our freezers and other stored items inside.But for now this will do nicely and I am very thankful.

The shelves do not hold all that we need them to hold and they do take up precious space in our kitchen and due to our poor planning make the total use of one cabinet and one drawer difficult since they won't open all the way. Things can still be gotten to but with a little bit of agility and contortion.

Today I am working again on the reorganization of the kitchen, trying to figure out how I might re-purpose some free-standing small shelves and an old nightstand that were used in the kitchen before we got the shelving unit. This will be temporary and no longer needed once my husband has time to build a small island with shelves and we can afford a range top to replace the still-present old stove.

Re-purposing requires me to imagine the piece I am working on backwards, sideways, on its side or up-side-down or cut up and more than likely in a different color. I love doing this but with such a small kitchen this is a BIG challenge. I may end up putting the items in a different room or relegating them to my husband who always can use more storage in our basement-turned-garage. What I am striving for right now is simply reasonable-looking order so that it is easier to work in my kitchen again.

Right now I am working on a  white back-less bookcase previously used for canned goods, a soup pot and small appliances. I imagine it spray-painted black to match other items in my gold, red and black kitchen. I will put it on it's side on the counter top which is now too crowded with cereals---oatmeal, granola, my 7qt black crockpot and some other things. I will put the crockpot on top with a set of knives so they are out-of-reach for little grandchildren-hands. The jars of staples should fit nicely on the counter next to the bookcase. And I will put muffin tins, cookie sheets and other metal baking items in the cubicles.

Not sure about the repainted, re-purposed (yellow-gold) nightstand that held our spices in the oven-hole. It was one of two white particle board nightstands that were thrown in free when we got our youngest daughter's bedroom set which is made of nicer stuff. It was white with painted ugly metallic gold around the edges to try to match  the white bedroom set. I  took off the metallic gold drawer pull and painted the whole stand a yellowy gold, screwed a bright red wooden chili pepper that I found at Goodwill onto it instead of the ugly pull and used the whole thing for spices in the oven hole. My husband then installed a painted-to-match shelf to the top of that adding more room to store staples in our oven hole. I don't know if I will find a use for the nightstand-turned-spice storage unit.. I am hoping something comes to me while I am working on the above. The other ugly nightstand was put in one of the upstairs bathrooms. I spray-painted it white, replaced the pull with a metal (silver) decorative leaf  pull that I also found at the second-hand store. The drawer holds shampoos and the shelf holds rolled white towels.

My husband just came in for a minute before he and our son-in-law head out to work on a project and he had ideas for the nightstand unit. Wow, nice!

I hope this gives you some ideas regarding how to reorganize and re-purpose items you have. Doing the best with what you've got is so much fun!

More pictures will follow! 

Kathi~

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