Christmas 2023, Gift 3: Crocheted Christmas Tree Ornament

I can't take credit for this gift idea.  I saw an ornament like this on Pinterest and thought it looked cute, easy and quick.  And I was right on all accounts!

If you can knit a long row of stitches and bind off or you can crochet a single chain of stitches with any type of yarn you like, you can make these.

I just took a chunky yarn I had, crocheted a straight line and as I went I kept folding the chain I'd done over itself in a wavy type of line to make the Christmas tree.  When I had it the length I wanted (and the tree was big enough for my tastes), I finished the chain, tied off, and then went to work with the line I made.  I took another type of yarn I had in my stores in brown and then I made the Christmas tree on a flat surface so it was all lined up right.  I then took my crochet hook and went down through the tree in the middle so the hook came out of the middle of the bottom "branch" of the tree.  I then cut a length of my brown yarn so it was a decently long amount (better safe than sorry, I say) and knotted one end well so it wouldn't slip through the crocheted stitches that made up the tree.  I then just started slowly pulling the crochet hook back through the tree with the brown yarn in tow.  I'd stop between every layer and carefully put my crochet hook down (with the rest of the tree still on it) while I knotted the brown yarn in between the layers to create a "trunk" for the tree.  From what I saw on Pinterest you could also use beads for this, but I couldn't find my beads, so I just went with good old knots instead.  Once all the layers were done, the tree was essentially knotted together and done, but the ends of the tree looked weird just kind of hanging out in space, so I took a bit more green yarn and tied the hanging ends onto the branch above or below to make it look better.  I then crocheted a little trunk for the tree (not necessary if you aren't experienced enough to do that) and then tied a hanging piece of yarn to it and voila!  Tree ornament!

The time this took was nothing, honestly, as I'm decently fast at crochet now a days.  The biggest thing I had problems with was the green yarn LOVED to fray and separate on me, so I was having to be slow and careful to pull the yarn through the center of the tree.  Overall, though, I think it turned out cute and didn't take up a lot of time.  This went into a gift box with some of the cinnamon applesauce ornaments and another gift done!  Yay!

I am sure there are more in depth patterns for these online if you do a quick search.  I just eyeballed mine.

Enjoy!

Christmas 2023, Gift Two: Roasted Candied Nuts

This is a recipe that I made up years ago when I ran a recipe blog to help me cope with my kids various food intolerances and allergies at the time (I am truly thankful that today we only have to deal with the peanut allergy when it comes to food instead of the garlic, corn, oat and other things I had to deal with back then).  I made this around the holidays after thinking back on my time working in the college program at Walt Disney World (short version of that story:  I did not have an enjoyable experience) and the roasted candied nut cart they used to have at Epcot Center where I fell in love with roasted candied nuts.

I have made these a few times throughout the years and decided to make some to give away in small baggies as kind of a snacky type of gift for a few people with a few other gifts.  This was also a way to use up some nuts that had gotten buried in my freezer and I wanted to use up without me eating them all *ahem*.  

A few things I learned this year with this recipe.  One:  This recipe had always turned out well for me in the past with the previous ovens I had, but I think I over browned the sugar mixture on the stovetop the first time I made it and so when I went to roast them in the oven the outer edge nuts ended up burning on me (which will make a nut lover like me want to cry) and I hadn't even roasted them the full time yet.  So, do watch these when they are in the oven as nuts love to burn (which sometimes we just have to remember those lessons).  I made a second batch and was way more careful watching them and they turned out well, (however I still had to pull them after the first initial roasting) so, once again be sure to watch them as oven temperatures vary.  The last bit of roasting with the 300 degrees is basically to help candy the mixture, but if the mixture when you stir it after the first initial roasting, is sticking to a spoon and getting hard quickly like candy, feel free to pull the nuts as the candy mixture is set up and ready to go at that point.

So, here you go folks.  This recipe does not call for sugar, instead it calls for maple syrup and honey (when this was written was the start of people avoiding refined sugar), which lends it a wonderful flavor.  I also have started, when making this, to coat the final nuts in powdered sugar for added "snow like" effect.

Roasted Candied Nuts

• 2 Cups pecans or other nuts
•  1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 TBS honey
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• pinch to 1/4 tsp (depending on heat preference) Cheyenne pepper

Procedure: 

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

2.  Combine maple syrup, honey, vanilla and salt in a large saucepan and cook over medium heat until mixture reaches a near boil.  Add cinnamon and Cheyenne pepper, stir well and then add nuts to mixture.  Stir well till all nuts are coated with the mixture. 

3.  Bring mixture back to a simmer.  Pour nuts onto a well greased parchment lined baking sheet that has a rimmed edge (grease pan, place parchment on pan and then grease parchment...trust me this stuff is sticky).  Be sure to spread nuts into an even layer on baking sheet.  Place in 400 degree oven for about 7 minutes or until nuts start to smell nutty.  Stir nuts.

4.  Lower heat to 300 degrees. 

5.  Keep roasting and stirring nuts every few minutes until sugar mixture turns deep brown and clings to the nuts.  Remove pan from oven and let nuts cool on pan.  Mix nuts a couple of times as they cool (it'll stop them from sticking together as they cool).  You can also sprinkle a little more salt on the nuts before they cool (if you like a bit of a salty flavor), but be gentle with it as you don't want the salty taste overpowering your sweet.  Once cool, break nuts into individual nuts (or cluster sizes you like) and toss with powdered sugar (optional).

6.  Place in a bowl and store at room temperature and serve or place in an airtight container for up to a week or place in decorative containers of choice (small cellophane bags are really cute with this) and give away as gifts at the holidays.

Enjoy!!! 

Christmas 2023 Gift One: Applesauce Cinnamon Ornaments

This is one of those recipes that is so easy that it will blow your mind, but also comes together in a really pretty and rustic type of decoration.  I first made these ornaments years ago when my kids were small.  We'd just invested in a bigger tree than our little apartment tree we'd used for years and I had next to no ornaments to put onto it.  I wanted the tree to be pretty for the kids, but didn't have any money to spend for expensive boxes of ornaments.  I found this recipe and gave it a try.  And I loved it!  The ornaments will make your entire house smell like cinnamon, they look pretty on the tree and you can pack them away and use them year after year.  My old ornaments died years ago, due to the fact that Alvah decided he liked to eat them (PICA). Finally this year I thought back on these and decided to make them again to give some as gifts for his speech therapists and others.  So, let me show you how to make them!

Applesauce Ornaments

Ingredients:

• 1 Part Applesauce
• 1 Part Cinnamon
• Optional add ins:  A few dashes of nutmeg, cloves, other spices.  

Procedure:

1.  Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.

2.  In the bowl of a mixer, with a spoon (which is what I did this time) or other implement, mix the applesauce and cinnamon together to form a dough.  Go slow if you use an electric mixer of any type or you will be inhaling way too much cinnamon for comfort and you will have a cinnamon coating over your entire kitchen.  Once dough forms, mash it into a ball with your hands and, if you have a decent amount of dough, divide it into a few pieces so you don't have to roll out too much at once.  Put dough ball you are working with between two pieces of parchment paper (you can also use plastic wrap, but I have better luck with parchment paper).  

3.  Roll out dough to 1/8 to 1/4 inch thickness (thicker will just take a bit more time to dry out/bake if you prefer thicker ornaments).  Cut out with simple shaped cookie cutters (trust me, keep it simple.  This dough loves to break and is crumbly, so if you try to get too elaborate you'll be reaching for the eggnog wayyyyy too much to battle frustration).  Use a straw to cut a hole in each ornament so you ave a hole for string later on (after about three ornaments blow out the dough that will get caught in the straw to keep the straw open...it will help your holes cut cleaner).  Use a spatula to transfer ornaments to parchment lined baking sheets (less likely to break that way).

4.  Bake in 200 F oven for two hours or until the ornaments are well dried.  Remove to cooling racks to cool completely.

I used 1/2 cup of applesauce and 1/2 cup of cinnamon for my batch this time around and I ended up with about two dozen ornaments.  Not bad at all.  

Alternate method (non bake method):  Place ornaments on baking sheets and place somewhere out of the way that is dry for 3 to 4 days or until ornaments are well dried.

Christmas Cookie Recipes

Hello again, all!

Blogging delayed, again.  We've just been super duper mega busy around here.  I've been turning and burning getting things decluttered around the house (I am determined to start out next year with a fresh and free type of feeling if I can), getting Christmas goodies made and all the things.  I have to say I'm tired, but I feel good that the season so far has been a lot of fun for the kids, which is important to me.  We have the tree up with the son's favorite candy canes on them (well...for about an hour until he eats them all...I have to do the flavored candy canes in stages or he'd make himself sick just gorging himself on those).  Gingerbread houses are made (I'll share pictures of those on another post), the advent calendar has candies in it that the kids are having fun opening the drawers every day to get their Andes mint.  Today I'm working on getting some Christmas gifts made as I am SO far behind on that.  I am, literally, just starting home made gifts today, which yikes...not a great start.  Hopefully I can get it done quickly this week as I really want to get some relaxation time in next week to just enjoy the holidays before they are here and over.

Now, onto what I did pretty much all of last week.  Christmas cookies!  I thought I'd share what I made in case you need some inspiration this year, so let's get to it!  Links are provided for the recipes in case you want to make them :).

1.  Basic Butter Cookies

Butter cookies are, by far, one of my favorite holiday treats.  When I saw what the price was for one thing of the blue tinned Dansk cookies, I decided to find a recipe to make my own.  

Opinions?  These are delicious.  Mine didn't turn out very flaky, but I did roll them out and cut them instead of putting them through a cookie gun (honestly, I just didn't want to clean the cookie gun...did I mention I am tired?  Lol!).  I'm mainly the one eating them right now, which I might be okay with *ahem*.  

2.  Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

This recipe made a ton.  Like 53 cookies, ton.  Since I made these the right way a few years ago (be sure to chill your dough overnight for the best results), these have become one of my daughter's favorite Christmas cookies.  

These turned out really well.  I used the espresso powder that was optional in the recipe, and it helped to probably boost up my cocoa powder, which was ancient.  My husband and daughter really like these.  I think they taste like a brownie cookie.  Both my husband and daughter say they are better than brownies.  You can make them and decide for yourself *laugh*.

3.  Cashew Butter Blossoms

I made these last year and they were a hit with the family, so I made them again this year.  I took the classic peanut butter blossom recipe and just subbed out cashew butter for the peanut butter.  This recipe made no where NEAR the 48 the recipe said they would.  I got 23.  But I think I made my cookies a lot bigger than called for (probably closer to a tablespoon as I couldn't find my melon baller, which is what I normally use to figure out a rounded teaspoon called for in recipes...I'm determined to organize my kitchen drawers next with a better system so I can find things).  I'm glad I got a pic of these when I did as my daughter blew through them and they are already gone.

4.  Gingerbread Cookies

Technically this recipe is for a gingerbread house, but the first time I made a gingerbread house with the recipe, my family, especially Alvah, fell in love with the gingerbread.  If you hate the ginger scented cardboard that a lot of gingerbread cookies end up being, you need to try this one.  It reminds me of Pepparkakor (Swedish spice cookies).  Let's just put it this way.  One recipe of this stuff calls for one TABLESPOON of ground ginger and one TABLESPOON of ground cinnamon.  Yeah, that heavily spiced.  I made a double batch this year and we used 1/2 for the gingerbread houses and one half for gingerbread cookies.  Alvah has already taken at least one bite out of each cookie, so I think he likes them *laugh*.

5.  Sugar Cookies

My husband's favorite Christmas cookie.  I use his Grandma Molly's recipe for sugar cookies every year and these are always a hit.  I did notice this year that Crisco has changed...it contains more water to pad out the weight, I think, and as a result I had to add more flour to get the right texture.  I also added a bit of tallow to the frosting for the cookies as it too called for Crisco, just to make sure everything would turn out right.  It did, but processed foods, yeesh.  I don't buy many outside of chips for Alvah, and boy do I notice a difference in quality, quantity and price with those things.  Irritating to say the least.

And yes, before some well intentioned individual pops in and says that Crisco is not good for you and such...I know.  But, I only buy a little 16 oz thing of Crisco every year for Christmas baking, so I'm not too worried about it.

And there you go folks.  The Christmas cookies I made this year.  I'm still considering making some thumbprint cookies closer to Christmas so I can hopefully have some for my birthday (it's the week after Christmas) as I love those things, but we'll see how much I want to bake after the holidays are progressed further *laugh*.

Enjoy all!

Thanksgiving Recipe Ideas

Life has been hectic as usual around here.  Winter came in hard, although it did come in late, which was nice.  We've had bad combos of snow and ice the last week, making for some pretty hairy driving conditions and we've already had to shovel two feet of snow off of our deck, and it could probably use another shoveling already.  Life in the North.  What can you say *laugh*.

I do feel pretty darned good this year on my Thanksgiving preparations.  Since the earthquake it has felt like we've just shot from one crisis to another (not excluding the 2018 quake).  For some odd reason, even with my crazy welting incident a few months back, some horrible health issues my half sister is dealing with across the country and other stuff, I am still feeling pretty together this holiday season, which is nice.  Lack of anxiety sure does help to make you feel better about the holidays.  

This week I focused on getting some fun stuff done for Thanksgiving.  I made four different desserts (we'll choose which one to eat for Thanksgiving and then eat the rest over the coming months for fun desserts) and also some sourdough rolls to eat with Thanksgiving dinner.  The cranberry relish is already made up and in the freezer from previous holidays (by the way that stuff freezes AWESOME!  I am still using up cranberry relish from 2020 that still tastes great as soon as it is defrosted!  I am super duper happy about with it!), ready to be pulled out and defrosted the night before Thanksgiving.  The rolls are now in the freezer, ready to be pulled out on the big day.  Stuffing is also all ready to go.  Basically, on top of having some fun desserts to choose from (I've been using Farmhouse on Boone's recipe for sourdough pie crust and it is awesome!  I just mix mine all up in the food processor and it comes together great!), I already have done a bunch of things I always have to do for Thanksgiving (including getting the turkey into the fridge on Wednesday, so it has plenty of time to defrost before I put it into the brine the day before Thanksgiving).  Basically, at this point all I have to do on Thanksgiving is make the turkey, the green beans, the cheesy potatoes and heat some stuff up.  I'm thrilled as this will make my day a lot less stressful and a lot more relaxing :).

So, for fun, I thought it would be neat to share the dessert and treat recipes I have made for this holiday season so far, why I chose some of them and hopefully give you guys a few, actually pretty easy, recipes to make if you are trying to save time and sanity this holiday season.

1.  Mystery Pecan Pie

This is, by far, one of my favorite holiday recipes to make as it is SO good!!!  You would think that cheesecake in a pecan pie would make the pie incredibly heavy to the point it is inedible, but it is the exact opposite.  It makes the pie lighter, somehow, and less sweet, so it is the perfect pie to me as I love both cheesecake and pecan pie :).

This year I took a page ala Alton Brown on an old Good Eats episode and replaced the corn syrup (I am out) with Lyle's Golden Syrup (it is kind of hard to source in the US, but if stores don't carry it, Amazon does, which is where I got mine).  It came out looking so pretty and I can not wait to try it out :).

2.  Perfect Pumpkin Pie

I made this recipe because my evaporated milk is in a container that is currently buried under about a cubic ton of donations for the used store that were sourced from my bedroom closet and I was just too tired to dig it out.  So, I found this recipe that calls for sweetened condensed milk instead.  That I have in the pantry, so I went with it.  I have to say it came out looking wonderful from the oven.  It didn't crack or anything.  I forgot to take a picture before I wrapped it in tons of plastic wrap and aluminum foil for the freezer, but if you look at the pictures on the site, mine turned out pretty much just like theirs.

3.  Apple pie

Really, I doubt that one needs a recipe link since I just used some canned pie filling, added a jar of home canned apple slices to it and then sprinkled some additional cinnamon on top of it before adding the top crust.  It came out really nice, probably the prettiest from scratch pie crust I've ever made, but I forgot to take a picture of it before putting it into the freezer (I'll try to remember to share a picture when I serve it).

4.  No Bake Cheesecake

This recipe is really good and it only takes a few minutes to put it all together, and the ingredients are few and simple.  I've never tried to freeze it before, but I am going to and see how it goes.  My plan is to serve it with fig jam on top as one of my favorite appetizers is to take some home made Heavenly Fig Jam on top, so I figure that a fig cheesecake HAS to be good!

5.  Sourdough Cheese Crackers

I made these so we'd have snacks on Thanksgiving.  Have you guys SEEN the price on crackers lately???  No way, Jose for me.  Way out of my budget.  So, I did this instead.  They came out OKAY...biggest complaint I have is that they needed more salt and came out kind of bland.  I think they needed salt in the actual cracker itself (even 1/4 tsp would be enough I think), but I sprinkled Parmesan cheese on them while they were still warm and that helped to up the saltiness a tiny bit, which made them much less bland.

And there you go folks.  Some of the things I've made this holiday season.  My life has been hectic, so sorry about the erratic blogging schedule.  Hopefully that will improve soon.

Hope you guys are having a great holiday season and getting to spend it with people (or animals) that you care about.  If I'm not online next week, have a Happy Thanksgiving (for my friends in the US) and be safe and warm!

Enjoy!

Frugal Accomplishments for the Last Week

I keep thinking I’ll have time to think and get more blogging done, but then Alvah doesn’t sleep, I sleep as late as he does and the next thing I know I’m running around like a maniac all day and falling into bed exhausted at 2:00 am because rinse, lather and repeat. It has been even more crazy busy around my house than normal the last bit, so it’s been hard to find time to do much outside of household stuff.  So, anyway, let’s break down some of what has been going on around here!  

Probably should start with the pumpkin above.  I'm actually making a point to buy more pumpkins this year than in previous years because I have found that I LOVE pumpkin butter!  I really want to make a decent amount this year, so I am buying up pumpkins to do just that.  I have found that if I get one pumpkin per pay period, it doesn't lead to spending a ton on them.  This week we even got subbed out a Cinderella pumpkin for another type of pumpkin I had ordered (at no extra cost, which was nice), which is a really pretty decoration in our den now (I've seen YouTuber's use the Cinderalla pumpkin for eating pumpkins, so I'm hoping it will make good pumpkin butter!).

1. We started speech therapy a few weeks ago! Alvah is doing well and I’m thrilled to have speech therapists who know how to run LAMP, so he’s got a much better chance of getting ahead using it now. We are doing a combo of home visits and office visits to see which one he does the best with. He finally seems to be settling into the groove the last couple of sessions and he did really well on his session earlier this week. So, here’s hoping he gets forward progress accomplished.

I already feel better about speech with the LAMP emphasis, but also because I decided we weren’t doing feeding therapy this time around, so he’s not immediately hating his speech therapist. I figure at 6’2”, he can quit growing anytime now and I’ll be okay with it, so I’m not worried about him growing at this point, so he can continue to eat his ridiculously self-restricted diet and I’ll be okay with it until he wants to maybe expand it on his own.

2. I got the work samples done for both kids and into the home school earlier this week. Their contact teacher was happy with them. I apologized for starting late, but told her about my health problems back in August and she told me not to feel bad as like 90% of the families she overseas are behind due to health or other issues. I feel kind of bad that I feel good that I’m not alone in my inability to get the kids started early this year. Misery loves company, I guess *laugh*.

3. I took the kids in and got their flu vaccinations done for the year. Only my husband and I to go. Hopefully, even if I can’t find time to get one, my husband can get his done. With him working at the airport and around a bunch of different people and the public, I like for him to be as protected as possible, so he doesn’t (hopefully) bring home a nasty strain of the bug and then with the kids vaccinated, I at least feel like we got a few lines of defense in place against the flu. Alvah gets the flu horribly bad, so anything we can do to protect him at all, I do. 

 4. I actually took advantage of Prime Days last week to get Alvah a new pair of sneakers in the next size up (his toes are at the end of his current ones) and a pair of jeans for my husband as they were on sale for decent prices and were cheaper than I’ve found in about a year. Hopefully everything comes in the mail okay and everything fits *fingers crossed*. I used saved up credit card rewards from the ridiculous amounts of medical bills I had to put onto them to help pay for those items and some Christmas gifts for the kids. 

 5. Dividends came in and I used them to pay down credit cards with said medical bills on them. We did put a bit of money aside to finish Christmas shopping for the kids (which was good as I had not gotten anything accomplished in that area, yet) and to take a road trip down to Seward and see the Sea Life Center (my husband desperately needed to get away, so I’m very glad we did it for the sake of his stress levels) and the kids had an absolute blast. 

 It was only a one day trip, but we packed a lot into it and it was a good time. I made and packed all of our food and snacks, which definitely saved us a bunch of money (and I’m doubly glad I did it when we got there and we realized that most of the town was closed for winter already, so restaurants would have been hard to come by) and planned everything carefully so I knew exactly how much everything would cost. I’ll share a few pictures that I took while we were there in another post (it was downpouring when we were there, so I got a few when the rain would pause or when we were inside the sea life center and that was about it), but yeah, it was fun. 

 I was even able to save up my gas rewards from grocery shopping all month in September so we were able to get 1.00 per gallon of gas. All totaled we spent like 56.00 on gas to go down there and I came back with ½ of a tank of gas. My truck got WAY better gas mileage than I thought it would, as I’m always driving it around town and not doing highway driving. For a nearly 20 year old vehicle, it did great (which was such a relief to me as I was nervous about anything happening to it as I need it for driving to speech therapy now on top of driving Armina to and from work). 

 6. My husband hung up some outside lights he’d collected or been given over the years that he’d been meaning to hang up forever. The new lights have light sensors on them, which will save money in the winter as they’ll shut off when there is enough light to trigger the sensors. I would always forget, in the past, to turn off the back yard lights when it would get light out, so I’m super happy he put those up…they’ll do a MUCH better job than I would, that is for sure. 

 7. There was a delay when my husband went to pick up our grocery order early last month, so Carrs sent us a digital coupon for 10.00 off our next order. I combined that with a 20.00 off when you spend 100.00 or more coupon from their weekly deals (like that is hard to hit anymore with inflation) to get 30.00 off of my order. There was also an online order promotion going on last week on the app as well, so by stacking everything together, I was able to save 100.00 off of my order. I had to pick up groceries on Monday versus Friday, but it was worth maybe having to pick up a bit of supplemental produce or something next week to save that much money on groceries. 

 8. I have been working on doing yearly chores done around the house. This week I went and cleaned out my furnace with my vacuum cleaner and changed the filter on the furnace. I also cleaned out the cold air duct screen that I use to stop debris from falling into the cold air return on the furnace (it is just a big duct in front of my deck door in my kitchen that has a cover with decently large openings on it, so the screen makes a world of difference). Next week I’m going to clean my grill for preparation to store over the winter and to conglomerate and inventory the food storage/pantry. Feel good that I’m getting stuff done, anyway. 

9.  Made nectarines into peach-blackberry pie filling (I mixed the nectarines into a can of blackberry pie filling when I got it ready for the freezer) to make into cobbler. a while ago and put it into the freezer  When I cooked the peaches/nectarines, I made them with brown sugar, some cinnamon and some rum extract to make them fancy.  It was really good and we enjoyed eating it for dessert.

10.  Turned half a loaf of sourdough bread that was going stale into bread cubes, which I dried in the oven, and then put through my food processor to make bread crumbs.  By saving up my odds and ends of bread, I haven't had to buy bread crumbs for a long time now.

11.  Made a sourdough baguette to eat sandwiches on.  I used my cast iron 9x13 pan to make them and then sprayed them with water before putting them into the pre-heated pan.  They turned out well and I'm looking forward to experimenting more with doing things like that later on.

12.  Watched some of my favorite channels on YouTube when Alvah wasn't sleeping at night.

13.  I made sourdough bagels for the first time ever and put the majority of them in the freezer for quick breakfasts (or bagel sandwiches) later.

14.  We were out of English muffins and I thought for a moment of buying some because I was tired and really didn't want to make them.  Until I saw the price of English muffins at the store.  Yeah, I made English muffins.  Bright side, the sourdough English muffin recipe from King Arthur Flour makes like two dozen English Muffins, so we'll be set for quite a while (once again, the majority of them ended up in the freezer).

15.  I scheduled our bi-yearly septic clean out for the end of October (the nearest date they had).  I have budgeted and put aside money for it, so hopefully it won't be more than what I put aside for it *fingers crossed*.

16.  I took inventory of medicines and toiletries to see if there were any holes to fill.  I found a few, which I'm slowly filling so that we will hopefully have six months to a year's worth of that item.

And yeah, that's about it on the frugal accomplishments front.  I'm feeling pretty good about it, overall.  I hope your frugal endeavors are going well and you are all doing okay.  Take care!

Menu Plan for the Next Two Weeks

I really want to start sharing some of the things I’m buying every two weeks and then show what I’m going to make with those items, so you guys can get an idea of how I’m shopping now, but lately I’ve been so busy that I just plain haven’t had the time to put the groceries out and take pictures of them. I’m hoping to do better, but this time around, please enjoy the shot of the egg rolls I was able to get on sale cheap with a coupon (I'm hoping to make them last several meals, but if they are good my husband might just take some to work for lunch one day in the next few weeks...we shall see) to transition into what I’m making for dinner the next two weeks. 

 I’ve been trying to work in about four “fun”meals into the menu plan every two weeks, so that there’s a meal that I can pull out and have fun making and my family can enjoy something different from the usual pool of meals I can find myself pulling from. So, here is the meals I’m going to be pulling from the next couple of weeks. 

1. These first two meals are using up left over beef roast that is in the fridge. 

Asian beef shishkabobs (I’m doing an experiment to see if marinating rare cooked beef works to infuse different flavors into the meat...we shall see as I have some slices of beef marinating in the fridge right now for tomorrow) with rice and salad. 

2. Beef fajitas (cook up leftover chicken thighs with the beef to make chicken and beef fajitas), Spanish rice, refried beans and cornbread. 

3. Pad thai (I use almonds to make the nutty topping instead of peanuts) with shrimp and chicken. Egg rolls as a side. 

4. Manicotti (use leftover meat sauce from making spaghetti in the fridge), salad, garlic toast. 

5. Individual chicken pot pies (make a few for freezer if there is anything left over) with sourdough pie crust. 

6. German flavored pork roast, cabbage and apples, bread and butter. Sloppy joes with homemade mac and cheese, corn on the cob. 

7. Cuban sandwiches (pull Cuban pork out of the freezer), potato chips or oven fries, canned fruit (of some type). 

8. Swedish meatballs, over noodles (or home made mashed potaotes), cranberry relish (from freezer) with horseradish on the side. Cheese biscuits, creamy cauliflower soup. Sauteed greens (from freezer) 

9. Chicken Caesar Salad. 

10. Malibu chicken? 

11. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, Julia Child’s creamed carrots. 

12. Chicken carbonara, salad or green beans 

13. Hamburger Philly “Cheesesteak” sandwiches. Pavlova for dessert. 

14. Sourdough soft pretzels, bratwurst, sauerkraut.

And there you go folks.  My "tentative menu" for the next two weeks.  I am thinking of updating the list with a link to recipes I used a bit later and give you my opinion on how the recipes turned out, so hopefully I can get to that.

Enjoy!