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~

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~

Spicy Soup and Drop Biscuits

See what it looked like after it cooked!
Not all the orange stuff is carrots, some of it is winter squash.
Just slightly spicy and really flavorful.

Drop biscuits are yummy and turned out great without a recipe.

Custard---strange-looking, not sure why, but creamy and good anyway.
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~

Quick Tip

I will buy liquid hand soap once according to the design and color of the bottle or I might really splurge to buy a decorator-type dispenser. Then when it goes on sale for 78 cents a bottle at our local store, I buy shampoo. I buy ten bottles for $7.80. If I have a coupon it costs me even less. This will last about one  year for use as shampoo and liquid hand soap for my husband and me.

I buy the shampoo to use as hand soap according to the colors I have used to decorate my bathrooms. Only a little dot is needed  to wash your hands and it is gentler than dish washing liquid (for hand-washing dishes) even though the dish washing liquid may be cheaper. The really cheap stuff is also only available in  anti-bacterial-orange and a couple other colors.

Every little bit of savings helps...........