Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

Geez it's hot!  It's not bad outside, I think it's like in the mid-seventies, but the way our upstairs bakes in the house due to the exposure to the full sun, the last time I checked it was 80 down in our stairway, which is about five degrees cooler than my upstairs is.  I nearly ate ice cream for dinner.  Bright side, at least the kids rooms with their two fans running each (ceiling fan and window fan) their rooms aren't terrible.  The living room and kitchen, though, is, especially after I did some baking earlier this evening.

Anyway, money saving went so very very well this week.  I'm still overwhelmed by the kindness of others that was bestowed upon my family this week and then other stuff happened too!

1.  First up there was grocery shopping.  I had hoped to get meat this month, but wasn't sure how it was all going to work with the sales and things, but then I saw that Carrs had value packs of chicken on sale for 5.00 each as part of 5.00 Friday this week, so I knew I wanted to stop by yesterday and get chicken.   I finally saw that the Care Credit payments had cleared the bank, so I went online to see how much I was going to have to shell out to pay off the one chunk we had to pay by the 23rd of this month.  When I went online and checked Care Credit had actually applied our regular monthly payment onto that amount FIRST so it was already paid off!!!  I was thrilled as I had 75.00 budgeted out of the insurance check to pay that bill off, so I now had money in our regular budget for meat!

We ended up getting to Carrs kind of late last night due to a full day and I ran in to grab what I thought was just going to be chicken, but I found some great stuff!  For one, I had planned on having to run to Eagle River to get hamburger because it's the cheapest place to buy hamburger around here normally, but as I was perusing the hamburger seeing if there was any marked down packages, I found they had hamburger on markdown for 3.49 lb just on regular sale!  That beat the price I would have paid going to Eagle River, so I grabbed two value packs of hamburger.  Then I stumbled on some mismarked  packages of steaks that had been marked bone-in thin cut pork chops and they were cheap.  I flagged down a meat guy, my conscious nagging me, and showed him the packages, but the guy told me to keep them and said it was their fault for not marking them correctly.  I had grabbed the last three that were there, so I really wondered how many people had taken advantage of the not properly marked packages during the day.   I also got a couple of packages of pork steaks on reduced and even got my daughter Ball Park hot dogs on 50% off (I even had coupons for those!).  Overall, I spent 80.00 on meat and managed to pretty much fill the freezer up again.  It feels GOOD to have meat staring back at me when I open the freezer instead of lots of empty holes :).

I do find it pretty funny that one of the few lamb roasts I have left that I got for like 1.49 stares back at me when I open the door with the original price tag showing *laugh*.

2.  When I was digging in the recesses of the pantry to see what I had and what I needed to use up, I ran across a bunch of evaporated milk that I had.  I had thought I was out a couple of times and would go and buy another flat and yeah...I wasn't out.  So, I moved one flat upstairs onto the counter to remind myself to use it (since it has a use by date for this year and I like to keep close to those when I can).  I had some baking and things to do today so I made up some dehydrated milk and then added evaporated milk to the jar as well so help the taste of the dehydrated milk along (in the jar up above there).  It worked out really well and I honestly think it made everything just taste a little bit richer.  Neat trick!

3.  My husband went over to help my brother-in-law get the last of his stuff together to move tomorrow.  He came away with a bunch of different items, including more canned food stuffs and (honestly I'm kind of excited about this one) a small freezer!  I'm so looking forward to having the extra storage room in the freezer especially when it comes to vegetables and things :).  Thank you Clinton and Nicole!!!

4.  I have been harvesting raspberries from the yard obsessively to save them from the hornets, birds and slugs and so far I'm getting small harvests, but they are adding up slowly but surely.  I'm hoping to have about a freezer bag full by the end of the month as they are finally starting to ripen in decent numbers.  Here's hoping!  I also harvested what I could out of the rhubarb plants as the slugs were just decimating the one that sits down in the underbrush.  Out of two plants, one of which has been bolted since pretty much the beginning of summer, I got a big freezer bag full of rhubarb to use later on.  I'm happy as I think with what I still have in the pantry and now what I have in the freezer, rhubarb harvesting should be good for the year :).

I also got a few rose hips harvested, but I'm going to wait to harvest those in earnest until the kids are back in school because that way I won't be hurried about it.

5.  The daughter managed to outgrow all of her jackets, so I went onto Land's End to see what I could find for clearance sales for last year's jackets.  I also found a code for back to school for 30% off your order.  I managed to get a winter jacket for less than 30.00 after shipping.  Not too shabby!

6.   I ran into a good deal on cabbage during the week, so I picked up two heads of green cabbage and two heads of red cabbage to shred and start on the journey to sauerkraut (did it as part of my normal shopping this week).  We eat it enough that if my cabbages get to a good size I might still process the cabbages from the garden into sauerkraut as well, but we'll see how it goes later on.  For now, I can at least get sauerkraut going in the pantry to can up in a couple of months!

7.  My mom is sending me some sulfate free goat's milk soap to try on Alvah.  My younger sister is VERY allergic to sulfates (sulfa) so she can't do the sulfates in regular soap, but she found this stuff really helps her out, so they want me to try it with Alvah.  Here's hoping it works well on him.  I've found that switching to more and more sulfate free products does seem to help him a bunch, so I'm hopeful this will help him as well.

8.  I used up some free samples this week, including ones for toothpaste as I am waiting for a sale on toothpaste before I buy it (MAN toothpaste is expensive!!!).

9.  I realized that I had to make some clothes for the son and went and quickly found some nice fabric to make what I needed out of materials I had on hand.  This is going on my monthly goals this month, so I'll fill you in more about that one later.

And now onto a garden update!

This was "thin the garden" week it seemed.  I went out and tried to clip the larger leaves off of the bottom of the cabbages to one, use them to make freezer slaw before they got really tough, and for two to give slugs ONE less thing to crawl up into the cabbages with.  I have been having to weasel my small fingers down into the cabbages where they are forming heads and snatch slugs out with my fingers to then squish on the ground.  So far it seems to be helping (that and the hot weather we've had the last couple of days) and the mold and mushrooms the garden was growing are much less as well.

I took the rooster and tried to get him to hunt slugs, but instead he hunted my lettuce plants and tried his best to eat one whole before I went to grab him and he flew into a tree (NOT my happiest morning last week I have to say), but the one thing that came out of that was I really looked at the green lettuces I had planted in the root vegetable bed and found that since they were "head lettuce" (which I normally don't grow) that they had REALLY deep roots and the roots were actually pretty darned big!  So big that they were impeding the growth of other plants, like my beets.  So, I took my trowel and cut three of the out of the ground this week and we'll use them happily in salads for the next couple of weeks.  I left one which doesn't really have anything around it that it would hurt by being there for now, but once the other lettuces and spinach come up better here I'll cut that one too to give everything else more room to grow.

The turnips were seeming to be growing great, but as I was battling slugs this week I looked close at them.  One half of the bed are growing well, but the other half were just too densely packed together so the turnip roots were really small and not really growing well.  So, I thinned out a bunch of the turnips this week too to help them grow better.  By doing that, a side benefit, the rat tailed radishes seem happier and are producing more, so yay!

I also found, quite by accident, that by not adding onto the trellis for the peas that the peas just went "ah well" and bent over and just started wrapping back down over the trellis I have instead of bending and snapping (which was my fear).  Turned out to be quite the blessing in disguise as I found accessing the peas through all of the other things I have planted requires me to basically do the splits over the bed to get to the middle peas as there's really no where to stand, so another layer of trellis might have gotten pretty hairy for me to pick from.

The pole beans are FINALLY vining out in a few places.  The bush beans I'm worried might be developing a blight as a few of the plants aren't looking good, but we'll see how it goes.  This has NOT been a good year for a garden...well with the exception of carrots and cabbage...those seem decently happy, although they are still behind where they would normally be this time of year.  I'll fight it to the finish, but I'm thinking I might just have to resolve myself to the fact that I'm going to have to go to the U-Pick farms to get more produce in this year.  We shall see how it goes!

And there you go folks.  My week in a nutshell.  How about you?  Did you have a good week?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

First be prepared for a lot of posting today.  I am hoping to get the "Frugal Friday" post up today, as well as the monthly goals for this month and I still need to write up stuff I did last month (I kind of like the monthly recap as it hammers home to me that while the goals might not have been completely accomplished I did manage to get other things done :).

Since a lot of people have been asking, I wanted to start off with an Alvah update :).  He's still sleeping at night (yes!!!!), but my dear daughter decided as soon as he started sleeping at night she was going to be a complete pain in the tushie and not go to bed, no matter what I did, until about one am.  I finally told her last night that she had better go to bed at the actual "bed time" that the parents are always going on about or there would be consequences.  One, she was going to be completely thrashed when school starts in a couple of weeks.  And two, if she didn't go to bed, on time, keep her lights off, her TV off, her books closed, her voice quiet and you know...go to BED, that she wasn't going to live to see her next birthday.  It was either that or the whole, "If you don't go to bed RIGHT NOW and go to bed when I tell you to, you are going to lose your TV out of your room, your favorite toys and your lamp!".  Since she already lost the ability to watch her kindle after 8pm (it gets plugged in out in the living room now as she proved herself untrustworthy to have it in her room at night), I think that MIGHT have gotten through to her a bit more.  I'm still fighting to get her to bed before eleven, but at least I made progress.   She's always been TERRIBLE about sleeping from day one of her life, but now that Alvah is actually going to sleep at night, she better get used to an earlier bedtime because mom is going to get sleep.  Period!

As for everything else with Alvah, now that the meds are regulating a bit he's had a few temper tantrums, some of them bad, but the hitting and self harm is WAY more under control than it used to be, so that's definitely a good thing.  We went to the psychologist this week and we talked about tweaking meds to get something for anxiety on board (because he does have that going on for sure), but we're just going to let everything just regulate and settle before we try anything else for now.  Here's hoping everything remains good.

When it came to the menu last week we ended up being so busy that a couple of nights the menu plan went out the window and I had to punt, but overall I did pretty good with it.

This week, now that back to school running around is over with (I hope) I'm hoping to get back to a more consistent menu instead of rushing to throw something on the table because we ended up spending hours out of the house running errands and everyone is starving to death when we get home.  Here's hoping!

The highlight of the week was definitely the biscuits. I finally got light biscuits!  They turned out so good!  Not the cheapest with all the butter in them, but I think I might try halving them with some beef fat I have in the fridge when I make them for dinner tonight (since it's also cold fat). 
 

So, onto this week's menu!

Wednesday:  Tacos (used up some leftover taco meat I had in the freezer)

Thursday:  Pork chops in creamy BBQ sauce (I found some ANCIENT pork chops buried in the bowels of the freezer as I was getting close to the bottom of everything.  They were badly freezer burned so I was hoping that the BBQ sauce mix would help to mask the nasty freezer burned flavor...it didn't really work that well, but we got through the meal), apple sauce (the last bag I had frozen, mashed potatoes, salad.

Friday:   Fried chicken, oven fries.

Saturday:  Sausage gravy and biscuits.  Fruit cocktail.

Sunday:  Steak salad (use leftover steak from dinner Tuesday that is in fridge)

Monday:  Crock pot spare ribs in honey mustard sauce, baked potatoes, salad

Tuesday:  Blueberry waffles (use blueberries from freezer), sausage links.

Desserts:  Beignets with lemon curd (leftovers from fridge), vanilla pudding, home made ice cream (use some of the cream in fridge) with strawberries (we are seeing an uptick in temperatures this weekend with the wonderful glorious SUN shining, so I'm figuring on cold things for dessert are definitely appropriate!).

Snacks:  Grapes, apples, home made crackers and cheese (note:  Make crackers...didn't get to this last week), bread and butter or bread and butter with jam (note:  Make bread).

Breakfasts:  Leftover waffles and sausage, scrambled (or fried) eggs, English muffins, granola, yogurt with jam (or granola...whatever the preference), oatmeal.

Notable mention:  My daughter made individual pizzas for lunch Wednesday (seen up top).  We'd gotten a kit that made four pizzas super cheap at Fred Meyer a while back.  I pulled them out of the freezer, defrosted them and we tweaked them a bit.  I used my own tomato sauce (since the stuff that came with the kit looked old in the package) and we used some pepperoni for my husband's pizza from a little baggie we had in the freezer (once again their pepperoni looked kind of old).  Overall they turned out well and the daughter had a lot of fun "making lunch" :).

And there you are folks.  Our menu plan for the week.  How about you?  Eating anything good this week?

Shopping Goals: August 2017

First, I just have to say that this week I have been completely blown away by the generosity of others.  I feel truly, truly blessed and am overwhelmed with gratitude. 

I was able to meet my shopping goals last month, which I honestly didn't think I'd be able to do with our extremely limited budget, but I made it.  Some of it through downright miracles (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!). 

For instance, I was online a few weeks ago.  I follow a range of pages on Facebook just because I have a lot of different interests.  One of the pages I follow and really like is Tillamook Dairy Farmer (Facebook link there folks, like him up!) as he shows pictures of his beautiful and happy cows a lot and also goes through dairy farming and how it is done.  It's pretty cool.  That and we love Tillamook cheese so that helps *laugh*.

Anyway, a few weeks ago he posted up a rebuttal to an article in a local Oregon newspaper where someone called Tillamook cheese "mediocre".  Now anyone who eats Tillamook cheese knows that's not true (my completely biased opinion as I really do like Tillamook cheese better than other cheeses out there), and he did an open letter showing all of the different awards that Tillamook has won over the years.  Honestly, this was in the middle of "Alvah going nuclear" and I was kind of ticked at the tone of the article in the newspaper and so I wrote the truth on Tillamook Dairy Farmer's Facebook page. 

"You want an endorsement for Tillamook cheese?"  I wrote (okay I'm paraphrasing here since Facebook doesn't work on my laptop like at all), "I have an autistic eight year old son who has a very limited diet of things he'll eat and Tillamook cheese (and yes it HAS to be Tillamook) is one of the few "real foods" he'll eat.  If that isn't a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is.  Thank you for being one of the few sources of nutrition for my son!"

I didn't think anything of it when I wrote it.  I was telling the truth and definitely sticking up for Tillamook cheese because I want it to stick around for a long, long time (man the idea of it going away and Alvah losing that source of nutrition actually makes me panicky).

Out of the blue I get a Facebook private message from Tillamook Dairy Farmer after I had posted up my response to the article.   He asked if he could send Alvah some cheese because he "deserved the best".  And he sent me the above cheese this week;  a five pound BLOCK of medium cheddar and some vintage white cheddar (for the rest of the family)!  I never would have thought someone would be that nice to someone just leaving a random comment on their Facebook page.  Not looking for publicity or anything else...it was just an act of pure niceness (although he's getting publicity anyway just because *laugh*).  So, if you are on Facebook, please look up Tillamook Dairy Farmer and like him up.  He's a really nice, great person (obviously if sending cheese to an eight year old is any indication of his coolness level) and really does try to keep things on the positive, which I appreciate :). 

That is how my week went.  I got a text from my sister-in-law as she and my brother-in-law are moving their family to Montana and asked if I'd like the canned food they weren't going to use.  I, with a really grateful heart, said "Of course!  Thank you!" and she dropped off a bunch of stuff, including canned vegetables (which were on my shopping goals for this month) and even some baking mixes for things like cookies and things...stuff I don't have normally and am really looking forward to having in the pantry for something cool to make (thanks, Nicole!).  The food is definitely appreciated!

Then a friend e-mailed me and asked if she could send me something and I said "Sure, thank you" and I got a box with crafting kits in it (which will make some wonderful Christmas gifts) and so much more (thank you from the bottom of my heart Jacki!).  This week has made me cry, honestly, but in a really, really good way.  God is good and there are great people in the world and I'm really lucky to stumble into them it seems =D.  Thank you all! 

As for everyone else, don't downplay what you do just coming here and reading me ramble on about my life.  Even advice and comments have helped me so much over the last couple of years of hardship and struggle...you wouldn't believe how much you all reaching out to me has done for me.  Sometimes (sad though it seems) this blog has been the only social life I've had from time to time. Thank you for being there and just reading, e-mailing and commenting and everything else you do!  Thank you!!!

But yeah, ahem, now that I'm teary eyed and properly sappy, let me get on with the goals for last month.  

My friend Stephanie sent me a message letting me know about a sale Fred Meyer had on toilet paper last week and actually matched up some coupons for me to use with the sale, so I was able to get cheap toilet paper, so that got marked off my list (thank you, Stephanie!).  I shopped around and found that Carrs had the cheapest price on potatoes around at .49 lb, so I went and got a 10 lb bag of potatoes, which will hopefully last a bit.  If there is one thing I've learned from rationing cookbooks and things?  Potatoes and bread are AWESOME at filling out a meal and will help to fill you up.  I've found myself reducing the amount of meat in recipes more and more and upping the potatoes and things to help fill out the meal...I try to go with potatoes more than bread as I can mix other veggies in with it...masking veggies in bread isn't so easy *laugh*. 

Carrots...I got some baby carrots for 1.31, a smaller bag and they tasted like plastic, so I've been pulling the last of the carrots from the garden last year out of the freezer and SLOWLY using them up instead of buying new until, hopefully, the new carrots are ready to harvest.  It's working so far, so we'll see how far we get.

Vegetable oil I ended up getting one bottle of it, but I could honestly use more just to have on hand, so I'm going to roll that goal over onto this month.  And I've got vanilla extract steeping which will be ready in two to six months (depending on whose blog I read), soooo we'll see how it tastes in two months *laugh*.  In the meantime I'm trying to make my vanilla extract last and using the imitation vanilla for everything else.

This month in the garden, in an ideal world, I'd be rolling in radishes, still collecting lettuce and the peas should be producing like mad.  So far I'm battling slugs on the lettuce, which the rooster ignored the slugs and went after the lettuce when I tried to get him to take notice (great minds think alike, Jeanie *laugh*) and then I had to bribe him out of a tree (turns out Icelandic chickens can fly pretty high and LOVE to roost in trees...should have read THAT blurb before trying that stunt...oopsie) with some treats.  If these wet conditions happen next year I'm seriously going to consider borrowing someone's duck for slug control.  The radishes are producing, but not super great (too cold and wet) and I'm watching for powdery mildew on the peas like a hawk since it's so wet.  I do have flowers on the bush beans, but the pole beans are barely growing, so at least I have bush beans growing and spinach and lettuce are sprouting and starting to grow.  We'll see how it goes. 

Bright side the carrots, turnips and cabbages are LOVING this weather, so hopefully I'll be able to harvest a few turnips this month at least and maybe some carrots.  I'm going to harvest some of the outer leaves from the cabbages, hopefully tomorrow and turn them into freezer slaw before they get super woody and tough (and free up some space for the heads to form bigger on the cabbages too).  Waste not, want not :).

Things I need from the store this month are varied, but needed, so let's get to that shall we?

Regular Stores:

• Toothpaste (we're down to sample sized tubes...I didn't realize we were that low!)
• Vegetable oil
• Eggs (the chickens are going through hard molt...it looks like a down pillow exploded in the coop right now and when they molt no more eggs for the winter, so processing time is nigh... I'd like to get extra eggs to make some ice cream and things with here this month)
• Vaseline (works as outer barrier to help protect the son's skin from further irritation)
• Meat (big time.  We're down to a turkey, some pork roasts and some packs of chicken thighs and that's about it...definitely time to start shopping sales to fill up the freezer a bit more.  I'll fit what I can into our normal grocery budget to make it all work.  At least meat is back down into reasonable prices category again so I should be able to get SOME variety of meat into the freezer).
• Seasonal produce (we should start seeing things like apples come into season.  I would like to put up more applesauce.  I've also got to get some sauerkraut started here soon whether my cabbages are ready or not, so I might just putting my cabbages into cold storage later and using store bought cabbages for the sauerkraut...we shall see.  Past that I'm just going to see what is on sale cheap and see if I could use it or not and work it into the budget)
• Sandwich bags (the little sandwich bag system I started with the son's snacks works great AND double benefit with this extreme humidity is that the entire bag doesn't go stale in two seconds flat).

And yeah, that's about it for shopping goals.  I think.  Which that's still a pretty big list to fill, but I'm sure I can do it :).

I hope your week was half as awesome as mine!  Got any shopping goals worked out for this month?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

 Before I do anything else I have to share awesome news!  The new meds Alvah is on are working!  And not just working but REALLY working!!!  Like, "I'm in love with Risperidone" type of working!

The first night he slept six hours straight.  The next night it was NINE glorious hours!  I actually woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at five thirty wondering what to do with myself for a few hours until he got up.  Last night he slept for another nine hours.  I am actually getting SLEEP!  Wonderful, glorious, awe inspiring sleep!!!

On top of the normal sleep patterns his mood has improved a TON.  He only starts getting cranky and things when his pill is starting to wear off, so the last hour or so starts to get a TEENY bit rough, but not even close to how he was with the self-abusive behaviors.  He's even running around in clothes.  Willingly!  That's huge for him as clothing usually bugs him really bad. 

I found that the autism is also just exasperating the eczema something fierce as well.  When he has his pill down him and it's working good, he doesn't itch much and the eczema starts to tone itself down a bunch, but when the meds aren't at full strength he starts to itch his skin off again. 

I'm really excited about going back to speech this next week to start doing some serious work with him now that he's not so "turned up to 11" like he used to be.  I'm thinking we might start to see some serious progress with him in the coming months if his mood and concentration hold out here and he continues to improve.  I'm beyond thrilled!

My mother-in-law came over today and kept an eye on the son while I cleaned the chicken coop and put down new bedding (boy did it need it!).  While she was waiting she cleaned my den, which I appreciated, was embarrassed by, but appreciated all the same.  Thanks, Stacey!

So, let's get onto the money saving end of the week shall we?

1.  Thank the Good Lord my husband got paid yesterday.  We were scary low in the bank, so it was a relief to have that come in.  With the holiday pay on the check and the back tool allowance that we'd had to complain to a few people to finally get, we were able to get the kids gym shoes (no luck finding anything at the used stores) and I was able to get my daughter a new pair of Sketchers (which she loves as there is TONS of pink on them) for 22.00.  She's been wearing her old gym shoes the last month because they were a bit longer in the foot than her other sneakers were, but her toes were JUST at the point of me wanting to get her shoes that fit her better, so it felt good getting her shoes that fit her well again. 

Also after a couple of months of stalking my poor insurance agent and her stalking the home owners insurance people the insurance score was finally applied to my policy and we got a refund check in the mail today.  This will be used to get my husband a new muffler for his truck and to get the last part of the one dental bill we have to pay by August 20th or face penalties.  Luckily, Care Credit had been applying payments to the promotional balance that was due first the last four months (which surprised me as they haven't done that before), so the amount is down below 100.00 that is left.  Once the payment for the month is applied (since I pay all of the non-mortgage bills out of the first paycheck of the month right now I'm waiting for the payment to go through completely) than I'll pay the rest of the bill off.  We still have, what, four dental "chunks" to pay by April of next year, a couple of them pretty substantial, so we'll see if we can make it all work. 

I'm also taking 25.00 from the check and ordered my daughter a decent scientific calculator from Amazon (calculator was one of the things on her school supply list this year), an oil filter for my husband's truck and then some Christmas gifts from the kids (doing an order of just add on items on Amazon can really pay off if you keep track of your 2 to 3.00 items.  I managed to get my daughter like three things for Christmas and my son one out of the order AND I got a Method dish soap refill to fill up my dish soap bottle when it's empty that SHOULD refill the dish soap like twice). 

2.  Shopping went well this week.  I spent a bit more than I have been to get the kids the rest of their school supplies for the year.  Some items I just reduced the amount that the kids are going to take into school with them and I'll pick up more later in the year.  Like my daughter was supposed to bring in 48 pencils.  I had 32.  It'll do.  She was supposed to bring in two reams of college ruled paper.  I am sending in composition notebooks instead because that's what I have, it's paper and it'll be fine.  After going through everything that I had from saving from previous years and from things people have gifted me in the past (thank you!) I only had three items to get for my daughter, the calculator included and the son I'm just going to send in the supplies I know his class will use (glue sticks, blunt tipped scissors, crayons, etc) and calling it good, even though his teacher wanted me to send in a full school supply list last year.  I just know some of that stuff they aren't going to use, so I don't see the point in buying it.

Highlights of shopping this week included getting leggings for the daughter for 3.75 a pair (they were on sale for 4.99 and I had a "Best Customer" coupon for so much off of children's clothes so it came out to 3.75 a pair.  I got three pairs as she's definitely getting into the wanting trendier clothes phase of her life...my baby is growing up *sniff*), getting grapes on sale for 1.87 lb (Carrs actually HAD them when I went shopping on Friday.  I was thrilled!) and getting apples for .99 lb (personalized price).  I also got a dozen eggs for 1.29 (a coupon you can load on your card this week), since I'm not getting eggs yet from the two chickens that aren't broody anymore and I'm starting to wonder if they are done for the year as I keep finding feathers in the coop.  Either the broody hen is really plucking her feathers out or the chickens are starting their hard molt for the winter.  We shall see.  I also got a four pound bag of sugar with an electronic coupon you could load onto your card this week and it ended up being 1.00 and some change (I WANT to say 1.18 or something, but I don't have my receipt in front of me and I don't feel like looking up the ad online and freezing up my ancient laptop right now *laugh*).  Sugar will definitely come in handy with canning jelly and things in the coming months, so yay for getting it cheap!

Then there was Fred Meyer freebies.  My friend Stephanie contacted me and told me that Fred Meyer was doing freebies this week was part of the Kroger summertime event they are doing and so I went online all week and collected my freebie coupons (thanks, Stephanie!).  Unfortunately, Fred Meyer didn't have some of the freebies I had loaded onto my card (Kraft snack trios, etc), but I did manage to get a free container of Quaker Overnight Oats, a Stur water flavor thingie (those little containers are normally 6.00 and some change!  I was appalled when I looked at my receipt to make sure everything free had come off *laugh*) and a free Calypso lemonade. 

3.  We went to the library to return a book Armina had taken out last week and when she was crossing the street (not a busy street and I park right in front of the library...Alvah hates the library and would throw a fit if you dared to try to take him near the building so we had to wait in the car while she ran to drop the book in the return) I realized something.  My little girl wasn't so little anymore and well...it was time to start worrying about more bigger girl issues (there...that was nice and neutrally put right?).  I always hated the "beginner big girl clothes" and wanted to make something actually comfortable for Armina to wear (I mean let's face facts once that process starts you never get rid of it, do you?), so I went online and looked for a pattern to make her some female under armor.  I found the pattern up top on Etsy for 1.26 with cheap shipping, so I ordered it (all of the free online patterns I could find were for more elaborate things and I wanted basically a little kid's sports bra type of thing).  It's a bathing suit pattern from the 60's and hasn't even been cut!  I was impressed.  So, yeah...I'm going to be expanding my sewing expertise here...wish me luck.

4.  I made angel food cake and with the left over egg yolks I made lemon curd to use as a filling in beignets for tomorrow's breakfast :).

5.  I went and checked my e-mail today and found a message from Tiny Prints, who got bought out by Shutterfly (who hasn't been really?).  In the message they had a code for a free welcome gift to Shutterfly from Tiny Prints for 10 free thank you cards and the part that caught my attention was 10 free cards with FREE SHIPPING!  I was dubious, but went onto the site, picked a thank you card with four spots and found pics from my Shutterfly account I already had and made up the card.  And, surprisingly enough, once I stacked the codes I got 10 free cards WITH envelopes and free shipping even to Alaska!  I'm seeing the daughter sending out thank you cards for Christmas gifts in her future this year :).

6.  I opened my Jo-Ann Fabrics ad today and found another free code from Shutterfly for a free notebook.  No free shipping, but at the same time I thought about it and I'm hoping to be able to save a few dollars in the next month to cover the shipping.  I am going to scan one of my daughter's drawings that she's really proud of, put a nice little inspirational message onto the notebook and give it to her for Christmas as a journal.  I think she'll really like it.

7.  I talked to my husband about the old Firestone fridge we brought over from storage last year and instead of trying to get it actually running I asked if he could perhaps just put it out in the shed over winter so I could just use it as a cold, insulated storage container for vegetables.  He thought it was a great idea as that would allow him to work on the fridge on and off to get it working as well, so hopefully he'll get to clean the shed before winter like he wants so we can do that.  It'd be nice to have a place to store some carrots, potatoes and things in cold storage into the winter months.  If we can make it work putting in a big garden next year would definitely be more viable!

8.  I collected the material that was left over from making unpaper towels to use on another project.   IF I do it well, I think I can get by with very little to not waste of fabric.  I'll share more if it actually works *laugh*.

I know there was more, but I can't find my list right now, so let's get to the garden update!

Well, first up, the slugs are back.  BLAHHHHH!!!!  I've just been plucking them off the plants, placing them in a glass and feeding them to the chickens.  Circle of life and all of that.  Honestly I don't see anything like beer traps and things working on a year like this as we're just getting too much rain for it to be effective, so I'm just going to pray that my plants are in good enough shape to survive the onslaught and killing them with extreme prejudice when I find them.

So, what do you do when you want to plant new seeds and slugs are around?  I mean last year I had an entire bed destroyed by slugs and birds, so I have to admit I panicked a bit when I first saw our sluggy wuggy evil nemesis.  This year, I decided I'm being smart, or smarter anyway, when it comes to how I'm doing plant rotation and using natural camouflage to my advantage.  I took Jeanie's advice (Get Me To the Country) and planted my peas in between where my other peas were already growing so they could climb up the existing peas.  This not only saved me from having to tie the peas initially to the trellis, but it also kind of masked the growing peas from the slugs and birds so they didn't know new seedlings were growing.  I planted lettuce and spinach again this week in the rain so I knew the birds weren't watching (me, paranoid after last year?  Oh you betcha!) and I planted them around where existing plants were growing (or going to bolt in the case of the lettuce), so that the bugs would be, hopefully, more drawn to the nice sugary juices of the older plants, the birds wouldn't see the seedlings growing as well so they wouldn't pluck them out of the soil.  So far, they're sprouting, so we'll see if I've gotten smarter or I'm just wasting my time *laugh*.  The very out of focus pic above is of the TEENY WEENY little lettuce seedlings sprouting.

I also ended up fertilizing the garden, once again in the rain.  We've just had SO much rain this summer that the nutrients in the soil are getting washed out, so when I saw the peas turning yellow and the cabbages JUST starting to develop heads I was like, "Yeah, fertilizing is going to happen despite the rain".  So far it is helping, so I'll be doing that regularly for sure.

My bush beans are still pretty tiny, but it looks like they are sprouting flowers, so I'm hoping that means the beginnings of beans.  I've never grown beans before, so I'm like, "Huh?  Is that as tall as they get or am I confused here?"

The rat tailed radishes have gotten decently tall, but I have to say so far the production is kind of sad this year.  I think it's just too cold and wet for them to do super like they did last year.  Sad as I was hoping they'd do well, but at least I'm getting enough to snack on so far, so hey that's something :).

The turnips are actually starting to develop turnip roots!!!  I was so thrilled when I parted the mass of green leaves and found some nice beginning turnips bumping up out of the soil.  I might be able to avoid buying turnips this year!  That'd be awesome :).

And yeah, that's my week in a nutshell (well unless you want to read about the disaster that was the first part of my week...then you'd have to read here, but it's doing better, thank goodness!).

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

 Well, welcome to "Epic Total Fail" week here on "The Make Do Homemaker".  At least it felt that way.

It started Sunday night with Alvah melting down into a puddle.  Shrieking the shriek that any parents knows...the one where you would actually stick a poker into your eye red hot if it was assured the child would stop said shrieking.  Yeah...that shriek.  While doing everything in his power to hurt himself and others.  This went on for seventy two hours. 

We have no idea what set him off, but it was just awful around here.  I got a MAX of two hours of sleep each night as an escape from the tornado of doom that was his moods.  Watching him hurt himself...I would have walked through acid, broken glass, red hot coals...anything to help him stop hurting himself.  Nothing worked.

Tuesday we went in for an emergency visit to the psychologist and I must have looked awesome because as soon as we walked in with the screaming, hitting mass of fury that was my son she just shouted to be heard with an upset look on her face and said, "We're starting Risperidone!"  I just nodded like the desperate parent that I was, not remembering what Risperidone was (she had mentioned it I did remember that much) .  She even asked me in a moment when he was calmer how I was doing and I answered her honestly.  If we didn't do something to help him soon I was going to end up getting committed with depression because I was at the end of it, all the while fighting tears.  It was not a great moment.

We had to wait another 24 hours as all of the pharmacies in the area didn't have Risperidone in dissolvable tablet form, so that added another 24 hours to the ordeal.  BUT, and this is a big BUT with a massive silver lining folks, the medicine came in and we started him on it last night.  Within 20 minutes of giving him the pill there was an IMMEDIATE improvement.  No more self harm episodes and it was like I had my happy and well adjusted kid back.  I was amazed, astounded and so SO grateful!

But yeah, it got bad enough that my husband even ended up with chest pains from stress at work one night.  It was bad.

On top of the son, running (and I mean RUNNING) to take care of the chickens and things in the morning before having to constantly field the son, so housework hasn't gotten done this week (got a bit done today since the son was in a better mood, but honestly I'm just exhausted right now after all of...everything...so I'm going slower than I'd like and then on top of everything else I just failed utterly with the menu plan this week it seemed.  The husband and daughter were just not impressed with whatever I served (with the exception of fish and chips one night, which I did as an act of desperation to not hear little side complaints from the peanut gallery...wiped out most of my cooking oil to do it too), which didn't help my mood much in all honesty.  Tonight my husband admitted everything seemed to taste better when he'd have it for lunch a few days later, so maybe he just wasn't in the mood for that stuff that night (made me feel better after the fact anyway).  At least they ate what was put in front of them, I guess.  Better than not.

So, yeah, this week was rough through the first half.  Got a bit of good news when I went and checked on the chickens this morning too.  Turns out that not having any eggs in the coop at all, or even the scent of an egg being laid, snapped two of the hens out of being broody FAST.  They were up and running around today.  I even had to run down on the fly, convinced the chickens were being murdered or something with the racket they were making and it was just the two hens and the rooster talking to each other (he was REALLY lonely being all alone out in the run without company).  So, yay for uppers to help save a week!

Right, so now after the multitude of things that happened this week, onto this week's menu!

My husband's birthday is this week, so we'll be having angel food cake for his birthday (sadly when given the choice he did choose that out of the choices and said, "Well, at least I can have my favorite cake since that's the only present we can afford right now"...it was a true statement, but I still felt sad that it was true).  The daughter and I are also going to make him some sugar cookies, hopefully, although everything is hinging on how well the son's behavior meds work and how good of a mood he's in here (not to mention how well he sleeps).

Meat is getting kind of sparse in the freezer, although we still have plenty of chicken, so I'm going to be working more and more of that into the menu plan...hopefully without it being too monotonous.

Bright side is that the garden is producing some now.  I harvested a few rat tailed radishes this week so far and a couple of decent hauls of peas and even a few handfuls of raspberries in the last couple of days (a few seen above in one of my "mini hauls" after the inevitable "Can I have some, mom?" moments *laugh*).  We are SO tight on money right now that I am so, so grateful I put in a well sized garden (for the space I have available).  Every bit of food helps right now.

So, onto this week's menu!

 Wednesday:  One dish roast beef (London Broil) with roasted veggies (carrots from freezer from the garden last year, peas from garden, potatoes from fridge), bread (menu before we ate seen above there).

Thursday:  Bratwurst, sauerkraut (from pantry...I only have one jar left after this!  Eek!!!  Grow fast cabbage!), bread.

Friday:  Hamburgers, french fries, salad

Saturday:  Meat pie (use leftover beef roast with more veggies from freezer for filler.  Use home made biscuits placed on top for "top crust").

Sunday:  Sausage gravy and biscuits (use leftover biscuits from night before), fruit cocktail.

Monday:  Waffles, sausages, fruit cocktail (left over from night before).  This is dependent on son's mood.  Here's hoping!

Tuesday:  Easy to stuff manicotti, garlic toast, salad.

Desserts:  Angel food cake with chocolate frosting, beignets (use puff pastry...bake in oven instead of frying...I KNOW it's not the same thing, but it'll work and preserve what is left of my cooking oil) with home made lemon curd, rhubarb dream bars

Breakfasts:  Leftover desserts (I know it's going to happen *laugh*), granola by itself or in yogurt parfaits, oatmeal with pancake syrup or jam or jelly (from pantry), toast, English muffins, victory pudding (use pancake syrup instead of maple syrup).

Snacks:  Boiled eggs (one of the hens laid teeny tiny eggs before she went broody, so I boiled those four and a few other regular sized ones for snacks), cheese and crackers (note:  Make branch bread), yogurt, apples, raspberries (getting a few right now).

And there you are folks.  Our menu for the week.  How about you?  Eating anything tasty this week?

Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap and Garden Update

 Right, so I have to start with this.  *Clears throat* ready?  You can sing along if you want!

*Sings* "Oooohhhh!  One little, two little, three little broody!!!"

 Okay, I'm done, but that needed to happen *laugh*.  If you can't laugh, you cry.

Anyway, I've heard of "togetherness" but these hens are driving me nuts.  I have a clucking evil mass of chickens glaring at me from the one area they've all jammed themselves into when I open the coop (usually if chickens are broody they do NOT jam themselves into an area together, so my chickens are even baffling other chicken owners...cute), I'm getting no eggs, the coop smells so foul I went out and bought bedding to clean the coop from top to bottom this week (broody hens create some raannnnkkkk foul messes and yay me I have three of them...I've been scooping the mess into the compost pile, but it ain't cutting it) even though I really couldn't afford bedding right now.  I just can't believe the way these chickens are working out (or not in this case).  I get one solid week where at least one chicken isn't broody and then the chickens domino at different rates and go broody one after the other.  In this case they went broody within three days of each other.  The amount they are going broody is nuts.  We don't have time to process the chickens right now, so I'm kind of stuck with an evil, clucking, foul mess making, mass of chicken flesh that is costing me an arm and a leg to feed and are costing me a fortune just keeping the coop and nesting boxes clean (since that is where they are insisting on staying).  And the poor rooster is super loud and boisterous right now because he's running outside all alone and wanting company...at least he goes to bed at a decent hour so he's not driving the neighbors crazy.  Fun times *sigh*.

Anyway *shakes head* sorry.  I have a sinus headache about a mile wide today and am really tired after not sleeping much last night, so the whole chicken situation isn't as funny as it really should be.

So onto the not "frugal fails" portion of the week!

1.  I put some vanilla extract to steeping.  A reader had suggested this in my monthly shopping goals post and I kind of was like, "Nah, I can get vanilla decently cheap at the bulk store, so I'll just do that instead of making it."  Yeah, then I WENT to the bulk store.  30.00 for a bottle smaller than the one I had bought, geez, like three years ago for 6.00 and some change?!?  And they went UP in price from there.  I just about had a heart attack.  I got a huge bottle of imitation vanilla extract for less than 5.00 and will use that in baking, reserving my gold plated bit of vanilla extract I have for things like ice cream making until the steeping process is done.  I'm hoping the extract comes out okay.  I ended up using some vanilla beans that were pretty dry from sitting around in the spice cabinet (a year past their "best by" date...I had bought 15 of them really cheap on Amazon, but had only used two for a recipe I was making, or canning...can't remember which...so the rest had just kind of sat in the cabinet), but I split them all, put them in a pint mason jar and ended up using rum vs. vodka to make the extract since that is what I had in the house.   So, hopefully at the end of two months it'll taste good and work alright.  Fingers and toes crossed as I would hate to waste the vanilla beans and the rum on a failed project.

2.  My father-in-law made my mother-in-law rip out all of her raspberry bushes!  I wanted to cry when I went over and saw that at their place because he decided that the bushes were attracting ants (with no berries on the bushes that one baffled me).  I didn't bank on being able to pick raspberries at her place and all, but it was nice to be able to do so, so no free raspberries this year from there :(.  I looked around the yard this week and did find that the raspberries we have growing wild around the yard are producing decently well.  Mind you they are still REALLY green, but I might get as much as a quart from them this year, which would be nice.

In the meantime I went into my freezer and found the one lowly bag of raspberries I had carefully saved from my mother-in-laws bushes last year and tried to figure out something that I could make with them as there wasn't enough in the bag to make jam out of.  I THINK I came up with a solution that might work.  I'm going to make the raspberries into juice and then mix it in with the peach juice I still have in the freezer from when I processed peaches.  Raspberry peach jelly doesn't sound too bad does it?  Anyone ever tried that flavor combination before?  Any advice?

3. 

I had gotten a free thing of unsweetened ice tea and when I was using it kind of fell in love with the shape of the container.  So, when it was done, I washed it out really good and tried to figure out a way to remove the REALLY good glue they had used to put the label onto the container.  I tried everything from soap to alcohol and my husband finally took some WD-40 to the glue and THAT finally worked.  It seems like "reuse" part of the recycle pledge can be tough sometimes.  Sheesh. 

Anyway the pitcher makes an awesome container for Tang or orange juice :).  I'm happy.

4.  I rearranged our living room furniture this week.  It's amazing how you do something like that and it feels like a whole new room after a while.  It really does cheer you up to do something like that when life starts to feel a bit overwhelming :).

5.  I took advantage of a deal that Rifftrax.com was putting on for their 11 year anniversary.  They had a 20% off site wide sale (which I actually think might still be going on today, actually) with a certain code and then if you put in another code (you could stack them) you got a free audio riff of a movie we own, so it was like getting a free movie almost.  We had credits at Rifftrax, believe it or not, from the Kickstarter I donated to with them?  Yes, the 1.00 donation I did.  We owned a bunch of the riffs they had on their "free shorts" that they gave out to everyone that donated, so we ended up with credits for the riffs we owned.  So, for a 1.00 donation I actually MADE money on the transaction (which I feel kind of bad about, actually *laugh*).  I used the coupon codes to get enough shorts (they start a .99 each) to fill a DVD and got the free audio riff and got them for pretty much free.  This will really come in handy when we want something new to watch.

6.  My husband stumbled across a new to me YouTube channel that I've become somewhat addicted to.  You should check it out.  It's called "18th Century Cooking" and is by a living historian.  It can be found HERE.  I am seriously going to try the fried chicken recipe.  It sounds neat :).

7.  What do you do when you have to use up some marshmallow creme that is going grainy and separating on you?  You make Mississippi Mud!  I do it the "not quite as rich" but easy way.  Take your favorite brownies (I used a mix I had in the pantry) and bake according to package directions.  When hot straight out of the oven, smooth over a small container of marshmallow creme and then let cool completely.  Once cool top with chocolate frosting (or chocolate glaze if you want a crunchy finish), cut into small pieces (as the finished dish is pretty rich) and enjoy!  We're eating the one I made a couple of days ago slowly, but it'll get there as now the marshmallow creme is used up.

8.  The fireweed is in bloom!  For those who have NO idea what fireweed is, I snapped a picture for you :).  It's a plant that grows wild up here and not only can you make juice and jelly from the flowers when young you can harvest and eat the greens as well.  And the chickens like to eat the flowers and greens too, so double win for free food stuffs.  I harvested a few blossoms from the yard, but not many so far.  It's been rough getting things done out in the yard with the son unit this summer, so I just do what I can.  I checked on the rose hips while I was out, but they weren't ready to harvest yet and I'm not too concerned about picking them earlier than needed so far this year as the mold and slug problems haven't kicked in and gone after the wild rose bushes...yet at least.

9.    When the chickens ran out of grit in the coop (see the note about the chickens NOT leaving the nesting box area...grumble) I was going to run out and get chicken grit when I happened to be on one of the poultry groups I was a member of on Facebook and someone mentioned that buying grit was way more expensive then buying traction sand from our local lumber yard and the traction sand was the perfect size for chicken grit.  My husband has a few bags of traction sand he keeps in the back of his pickup for additional weight in the winter to help with traction, so I went and stole a bag once I asked him if it was okay.  The traction sand is lasting a LOT longer and it definitely saved me some money!

10.  I darned some socks and mended a hole in a shirt this week.

And now onto the garden update!

We've been eating salads constantly and finally used up the last of the "super huge harvest" of lettuce I got from the garden a few weeks ago, so I went out last night and harvested some more lettuce.   This week I harvested peas, lettuce and chard from the garden.

I was so thrilled to finally be able to harvest some peas (yayyyyy!!!).  I harvested them a bit early once I found that if you picked them small enough that the pods weren't stringy yet so you got an almost edible pod type of taste to the peas.  I also picked some that had peas in the as well, but I am pleased that both ways taste really good :).  I'm not really sure about the breed of peas being any quicker growing, honestly, as until they get WARM they don't seem to grow any faster than any other breed of pea I've grown.  I think next year I'm going to stick with the cold and heat hardy breed I planted last year as they took off right away.  So far, though, the production with this breed is definitely proving itself, so we shall see :).

I harvested a FEW tiny little barese chard plants last night as well just to thin them and see if I could get them to grow more.  They are still REALLY tiny, like spinach sized plants, and I'm thinking that I might be harvesting them here, planting more spinach and just buying some Alaska grown chard at the store later to put up for winter as so far there is NO WAY I'm going to get enough out of these plants to store for winter.  Disappointing to say the least, but this year has really put a damper on everything growing well.  I mean even my cabbages are taking forever, compared to how they normally grow up here, to form heads and are JUST starting to form them, so here's hoping they get a move on here.

We finally got some decent sunny weather here the last few days (of course the clouds are supposed to move back in tomorrow), which is all the rat tailed radishes needed to shoot up in all directions and start producing radish pods.  I should be able to start harvesting some of those in the next couple of days (as they are still a bit small right now).  I am looking forward to getting more of those this year as they make really good relish!

I have to say that I am happy with the way the plants are growing, especially since I've only been able to feed the garden a couple of times (due to the constant rain) and the fact that I haven't been able to combat any insect problems as once again the rain prevented me from putting insecticidal soap on the plants and had it do any good.  So, yeah, at least the garden is doing really good for essentially taking care of itself this summer :).

And there you are folks.  Some of my frugal adventures this week.  How did you do?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

Okay, soooo I didn't post up the menu plan for last week.  Why?  Well, because I didn't have a menu plan last week (which in all honesty was really HARD to deal with since I was constantly winging what I was doing all week).  Why?  Well...exhausted...busy...exhausted...take your pick there *laugh*.  It just seemed like such an insurmountable task to make a menu plan last week, which honestly I'm sure I wasted more energy and brain cells coming up with one meal after the other all week, but we got through it.

Alvah had another spectacular day at speech therapy today (two out of three appointments so far have been really good, so I'll definitely take it!) and had a good meeting with the psychologist this morning as well.  We're going to keep him on the meds he's on now but upping the Stretera to twice a day to see if we can get the rest of his outbursts under control and maybe help him sleep better too (at this point I'm not sure I am holding out much hope for sleep...it's been REALLY rough on that front for a long time now, but the last week or so has been really bad with like two hours of sleep a night...not fun).  We shall see how it goes.  Honestly at this point I'll deal with lack of sleep if we can get him concentrating on the world around him and not hitting himself constantly in frustration.  I'd be golden at that point.

Right, back to the menu plan.  The highlight of last week's menu plan was probably yesterday when I made a pork roast in the crock pot with oven fries and salad as the sides (with four different types of home made dressing to choose from) and made strawberry shortcake for dessert (I used the frozen strawberries from the freezer from earlier in the year to make it...I was going to save the strawberries for jam, but I have a TON of strawberry jam and preserves in the pantry, so I am good for this year I think, so I thought I'd make us a treat :).  I have to say I've never made shortcake from scratch before.  My mom always bought the shortcakes from the store (which always made me sick to my stomach...I'm not sure why, but they really get to me...probably because they are glorified Twinkies), I always just bought an angel food cake and served the strawberry shortcake on that instead and then the last few years I tended to just have it on regular cake because angel food cake was kind of hard to make (well I thought it was...I need to try my hand at making it and see how it goes).  I thought for sure that shortcake would taste like...well...like the store bought shortcake that I don't really like and got to my stomach.  Turns out, after my husband pushed me to check it out a bit, that shortcake is basically a cross between cake and biscuit (or a light and fluffy scone for those of you abroad) and I figured I'd give it a shot for dessert last night.  And it was REALLY good!  I am so making that again in the future!  And it really did go perfect with the whipped topping and strawberries.  I was impressed (seen up top before I tucked into it ;).

I also tried my own variation of red beans and rice and even my husband admitted that it was pretty good (and the daughter even liked it), so I called it a win.  I need to try making it again and write it down as I didn't really do traditional red beans and rice (I used dehydrated peppers and things so I needed to veer from the traditional formula to have enough moisture to rehydrate things) and share it as it's still a frugal recipe, but does fill you up really well (a bonus shot of it is seen above there to stand in for the menu plan that wasn't for last week *laugh*).

By the way you'll notice a considerable lack of recipes calling for eggs at the moment.  For the third time in as many months I have broody hens.  This time all three of them were good for about a week and then did the domino effect again and they all went broody within a couple of days of one another, so I have no eggs at all this time where before they managed to stretch it out so I could at least get one egg at time out of the coop as two of them would be broody at once).  I've tried everything to break them and keep them producing eggs, but they don't seem to be getting the memo (ice cubes, putting them in a make shift cage to get air under their bellies, dunking their bellies in really cold water, collecting all of the eggs...well I'd do that one if I was GETTING ANY, etc).  I'm about ready to just cull them and put them in the freezer and just BUY eggs again.  I'm getting really frustrated with the whole "raising chickens" thing at the moment.  Especially since broody hens BLOW through feed like nobody's business.  They peck around and get greens and bugs when they run off of their collective imaginary eggs, but they're still blowing through the feed like it's going out of style as they tend to make a bee line straight for the feed dish when they decide to jet off of their nesting spots.  Just...ugh. 

So, yeah, I have three hens and had to go out and BUY eggs this week (at least I got some cheap at Fred Meyer).  I gave a dozen eggs (well ten eggs because I grabbed the wrong container of eggs...it was a long week what can I say) to my mother-in-law before the hens went broody on me and then I got a call from Shani out of the blue and she told me she was staying in Alaska.  Some shenanigans happened with moving in with her daughter and she can't do it until her house sells up here now.  Which with the market the way it is right now, due to everyone not knowing if the legislature is going to try and kill the majority of the state the way they are going, she hasn't even gotten a bite on the house.  So, she has sold everything she owns pretty much (both vehicles, her bed, etc etc) at this point and now she's stuck here until...whenever, she is worried the cancer has progressed bad in the last months due to the amount of nausea and pain she's in and she can't go to California until September to start treatment as that is when they'll have the scanner she needs to figure out how progressed her cancer is.  Basically, the only thing I could think to do was to drop off the last dozen eggs I had (which three days later the chickens are all broody now).  I hope that at least cheers her up at this trying time in her life :(.  At least when I told Shani that the chickens might be chicken dinners here soon she just laughed and said if they aren't giving you eggs they should be good for something right?  I love that woman!

So, anyway, onto this week's menu plan!

Wednesday:  Leftovers

Thursday:  Chicken Teriyaki, rice, garlic peas, salad

Friday:  Pork roast with pantry friendly fig sauce, mashed potatoes, apple sauce, salad

Saturday:  Chicken in mushroom sauce, left over mashed potatoes, salad

Sunday:  Waffles (blueberry for husband, chocolate chip for daughter, plain with pancake syrup for son...whatever for me), bacon, eggs

Monday:  Fruity Meatballs, garlic toast, salad

Tuesday:  Fried fish, rice, salad

Desserts:  Renaissance Apple Pudding (believe it or not this was a recipe that was popular during that time in history.  I want to give it at try as the ingredients are simple :), strawberry shortcake, Mississippi Mud (doctored brownie mix to make it work), mincemeat cookies (made and are pretty good!)

Breakfasts:  Granola by itself or with yogurt, banana nut muffins, English muffins, oatmeal, toast, cranberry orange breakfast bread (mix from pantry)

Snacks:  Beef jerky (getting low, but still have a LITTLE bit left), strawberry milk (I mixed the strawberry powder that was left over at the bottom of the can of freeze dried strawberries...which there was actually a decent amount of powder...with some sugar and voila!  Way better than store bought strawberry Quick ;), apples, watermelon (got one cheap at Carrs last week when I went shopping...it's really good!).

And there you are folks.  Our menu for the week.  How about you?  Eating anything good this week?