Playing With Pumpkin

I bought a pumpkin at Aldi a few weeks back.  It was a nice big pumpkin that had a nice carving side on one side.   However, things were just busy.   That jack-o-lantern never got carved.  

So here it is, November 1st, and I look down at my kitchen floor and realize that I still have a pumpkin.   You know I hate to let anything go to waste, so I started looking back through some things I had pinned and began deciding what I was going to *do* with this huge pumpkin.

While I looked and decided, my three year old was busy happily fishing the seeds and guts out of the thing.

Then I washed off the seeds and set them aside to dry.  I will roast them tomorrow.

Then I cut the pumpkin in half down the center and laid it down on a baking sheet and baked it for about 1 1/2 hours.

After it cooled, I began peeling the skin off and pureeing.  I also chunked up a small amount to try roasting with some herbs.  Savory pumpkin sounds interesting.  I'll let you know how that goes.

My small amount of pumpkin chunks and enormous bowl of pumpkin puree.

With the pureed pumpkin, I made up a double batch of pumpkin butter.  I enjoyed the apple butter I made last year on toast, so I'm hoping I will like this one as well.  Pumpkin is new to me.

While I was at it (and hungry apparently), I mixed up a batch of these pumpkin cheesecake muffins.  I also had some cream cheese I had taken out the freezer and then didn't use, so I figured it was meant to be.

The ones on pinterest look much better, but mine still tasted great!

After all of that was done, I still had a bunch of pumpkin puree left.   I filled two quart sized freezer bags to freeze, and then I filled another small container to keep in the fridge.   I'm thinking pumpkin pancakes over the weekend!

I can thaw out the frozen ones later on and make bread or more cheesecake muffins or anything.  Pumpkin soup also sounds intriguing.  Since this was a large pumpkin and not a small sweet pie pumpkin, I will not be going the pie route as I would have to add a LOT of extra sugar.

I said today to some friends that I didn't think I wanted to see another pumpkin for a very long time, but you know if I find them marked down ridiculously cheap at Aldi, I'll probably grab another. ;)

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So Much Spaghetti Sauce...And Some Tacos

On Thursday, I went to El Rancho because they had some great deals on meat that I wanted to take advantage of.  Sometimes getting paid once a month can be tough, but one upside is that you have all of your grocery money for the month already when the month begins.  Knowing this, and seeing the prices this week, I decided to stock up on meat for the whole month (perhaps longer!).

I bought chicken breasts, country style pork ribs, sausage, and tilapia.  All of those went straight into the freezer.  I also bought 10lbs for ground beef.   I kept that thawed, and this afternoon, I cooked it.  ALL of it.  At once.  In a *really* big pot.

Once cooked, I separated it into two pots, and one portion I added some of my homemade taco seasoning (thanks Pinterest!).  That made enough for 4 packs of pre-cooked and seasoned taco meat to go into the freezer.

The rest went back into the really big pot, and was turned into a huge pot of spaghetti sauce  (just added a few jars of spaghetti sauce--I had 4 and I probably needed 2 more so I improvised with some sauce/paste and seasoning).

We ate some of the sauce tonight...over bows.  My daughter thought the bows made better accessories...

While we ate, I boiled some lasagna noodles, and when we were done, I assembled three big pans of lasagna  (one pack of lasagna noodles perfectly made 3 pans with 3 layers of noodles each).  We had some bows left over, so I set some sauce aside to go with them for leftovers tomorrow, and had enough for one more big bag of sauce for the freezer.

The lasagnas should each feed us two meals, and I'm thinking the sauce might as well, so in less than 4 hours time, including a dinner break, I turned $18 worth of meat (it was on sale for $1.79/lb.) into 10-14 meals.  Including the cost of cheese and sauces, the cost averaged out to about $2.50 per meal (before any sides), or roughly $0.63 per person, since there are 4 of us.  We couldn't even eat that cheap at Taco Bell, and don't even get me started on restaurant lasagna prices!  *shakes head*

With all of this in my freezer, and all the other stuff that was already in my freezer  (I've been doing an awful lot of cooking lately, just haven't had an awful lot of time to blog about it), my goal for tomorrow is to come up with a menu plan that will get us through the entire rest of the month using what I have on hand in the freezer.  I've been struggling to menu plan lately, mostly because my freezer was bare and I've been trying to decide what to cook!  But now my freezer is full, so I should have no trouble at all!

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FREE E-Book Full Of Freezer Meals

I love books.    I love FREE books even more.   I love new freezer ideas.  So I am always happy to come across a free ebook like this:

 

Make and Freeze Recipes: Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze, and Use Quickly and Easily

Please make sure the price still reads $0.00 before clicking "buy".  Amazon prices are known to change without warning. 

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Dishing It Up Recipe Hop: Freezer Mashed Potatoes

Its August, and back to school time is here!  School starts on Monday, and I've spent a good bit of time putting stuff in the freezer this week!

The Dishing It Up theme for the month of August is freezer cooking, and my friends over at Thrifty Texas Penny, Pary Moppins, Deals From MS Do, and Dearly Domestic will all be bringing you some of their freezer recipes as well!

PLUS, we will be giving away two $5 Amazon codes this month!   One blogger that links up a recipe will be selected at random to win the first one, and one commenter will be selected at random from one of the recipe links (also selected at random), so after you check out my recipe, leave a comment, and click through the linky to visit the other recipes, and leave them comments, also!  If you have a freezer recipe, link up!

My recipe this week is Freezer Mashed Potatoes.

Last week, I was shopping around at the 99CentsOnly store.  I *really* like that place because they sell produce, BUT it can be a dangerous place to shop, too.  It can get you into the mindset of "oh, it's just a dollar", and those dollars sure can add up quickly!

I go there when I'm int he mood for salad though, because I can usually find some hearts of Romaine and Spinach there.   This time, I was surprised to see 5lb bags of potatoes.  For $0.99, I grabbed one because it's been quite a while since we've had potatoes.

When I got to the register, I noticed that they rang up only $0.60, so I asked her to scan it twice, and I went and grabbed a second bag.

Having potatoes is a little tricky when the rest of your meal is coming from the freezer.   They take so long to bake, so much oil to french fry...Then I remembered that just the other day my oldest was asking to have mashed potatoes.  I used to find great coupon deals on the boxed kind pretty regularly, but haven't seen any in a while, plus also we've been getting away from boxed foods altogether, so we've had a mashed potato famine around here.

They sat in the pantry a few days while I tried to decide what else to do with them, until I finally say, forget it,  I'll just mash them all!  And I did!  Well, my husband helped.  ;)

I put all of them in a big stock pot and boiled them until they were soft.  Then we drained them and mashed them.  I had to separate them into two of my big mixing bowls since there were so many.

We added in some salt and pepper, and some milk and butter.   I didn't measure, I just adjusted and stirred until the consistency looked right.   I left the skins on, but you can peel them if you prefer.

We ate some with our meal that night, and then I spooned the remainder into muffin cups.   Muffin cups make a great serving sized portion of these  (you can fill them halfway for kids, or heaping for husbands!) and then you just have to thaw and serve!

I ended up with 2 shy of 4 dozen after we'd eaten our fill with dinner.

After I froze them, I popped them out of the muffins tins and bagged them in freezer bags.   These will come in super handy during the school year!

Here are the other freezer recipes that have been shared so far this month.  Don't forget to add your own if you have one, and hop around leaving comments on the other recipes to increase your chances of winning!

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Dishing It Up Recipe Hop: Freezer Meals--Pesto

Its August, and back to school time is in full swing.   My husband begins his inservice today (he teaches high school), and the kids start next Monday the 27th.   I've got 10 more days to get prepared for the start of school, and I plan to be putting some serious meals into the freezer during that time!

In fact, the Dishing It Up theme for the month of August is freezer cooking, and my friends over at Thrifty Texas Penny, Pary Moppins, Deals From MS Do, and Dearly Domestic will all be bringing you some of their freezer recipes as well!

PLUS, we will be giving away two $5 Amazon codes this month!   One blogger that links up a recipe will be selected at random to win the first one, and one commenter will be selected at random from one of the recipe links (also selected at random), so after you check out my recipe, leave a comment, and click through the linky to visit the other recipes, and leave them comments, also!  If you have a freezer recipe, link up!

My recipe this week is homemade pesto sauce.   I've never actually made, or even eaten pesto sauce, if you can believe that.  However, pretty much the only thing that actually grew well in my garden in this Texas heat was my basil plant.   In fact, I was trying to keep it confined to a smaller pot to keep its growth in check, but one day my husband decided to move it to a bigger one after we decided that said larger pot's previous inhabitant was done for.   That thing took off, I tell you.  Why it's nearly as tall as I am!  Not that that's sayin' much. ;)

So I began looking for recipes that used basil, and I kept hearing people rave about pesto.  It sounded like a terrific end of summer recipe, and very freezable!  I like that. =)

I had all of the ingredients on hand except for the nuts.  I had seen several recipes online, and no two were alike.   The majority of the recipes called for pine nuts, but said that those were not the most frugal of choices, and gave several ideas for substitutions.

Being the frugal person that I am, I figured that the most inexpensive way to buy what I needed would be in bulk bins, and the only store I know of in my area with bulk bins is Whole Foods.  I had a dentist appointment on Monday, and had to drive right past that place, so I decided to stop in and pick up what I would need on my way home.

When I got there, I had to blink a few times just to make sure I was reading the label correctly.   Pine nuts cost $34.99....per pound?!?!?   Um...NO!   I opted for the sunflower seeds at $2.79/lb, and actually walked out of Whole Foods spending less than $2.  That's gotta be some sort of record, right?

So anyways, back to the pesto....After wasting a whole lot of time on pinterest extensive research, I have come to the conclusion, that everyone makes their pesto differently.  I finally settled on using this recipe as a jumping off point.   I attempted doubling it, but as I'm not really a measurer of things in the kitchen.  I just kind of eye-balled it until things looked right.

My ingredients waiting.

I used about 4 cups of basil, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, roughly 1 cup parmesan/romano blend  (its what I had in the fridge), a big heaping tablespoon of minced garlic, as I was all out of fresh.   I also added a bit of salt and pepper, and a little bit of lime juice (not only for flavor, but it has the added benefit of keeping it from browning).   I filled up my blender and pulsed it a few times..mostly to make room.  Then I added some olive oil, then some more olive oil....then some more olive oil.    They say to just keep adding until you get it the right consistency that you like.   It still looked pretty thick to me, but hubby said it was supposed to be, and it tasted pretty good, so I stopped with the olive oil, and poured it into some containers.

I froze two of these, and I kept one out in the fridge.  I haven't used it as part of a meal yet, but we had spaghetti last night, and had some of it on toast as opposed to the usual garlic bread, and it was pretty tasty!

Now, if only I could get my girls to eat it!  I made the mistake of putting a small bit on the fingertip of my 3 year old, and then turning my back.   I ended up with a fingerpainted dishwasher.  =/

Here are the other freezer recipes that have been shared so far this month.  Don't forget to add your own if you have one, and hop around leaving comments on the other recipes to increase your chances of winning!

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Dishing It Up Recipe Hop: Freezer Meals--Corn Dog Muffins

Its August, and back to school time is in full swing.   The kids here don't go back until the last week of August, so I plan to spend this month getting as much food into the freezer as I can (plus also entertaining quite a few houseguests!), and I'll be sharing some of that food with you.

In fact, the Dishing It Up theme for the month of August is freezer cooking, and my friends over at Thrifty Texas Penny, Pary Moppins, Deals From MS Do, and Dearly Domestic will all be bringing you some of their freezer recipes as well!

PLUS, we will be giving away two $5 Amazon codes this month!   One blogger that links up a recipe will be selected at random to win the first one, and one commenter will be selected at random from one of the recipe links (also selected at random), so after you check out my recipe, leave a comment, and click through the linky to visit the other recipes, and leave them comments, also!  If you have a freezer recipe, link up!

My recipe this week is Corn Dog Muffins  (click for original post)

Here are the other freezer recipes that have been shared so far this month.  Don't forget to add your own if you have one, and hop around leaving comments on the other recipes to increase your chances of winning!

Read more...

Dishing It Up: Freezer Meals--Pizza Pockets

Its August, and back to school time is in full swing.   The kids here don't go back until the last week of August, so I plan to spend this month getting as much food into the freezer as I can (plus also entertaining quite a few houseguests!), and I'll be sharing some of that food with you.

In fact, the Dishing It Up theme for the month of August is freezer cooking, and my friends over at Thrifty Texas Penny, Pary Moppins, Deals From MS Do, and Dearly Domestic will all be bringing you some of their freezer recipes as well!

PLUS, we will be giving away two $5 Amazon codes this month!   One blogger that links up a recipe will be selected at random to win the first one, and one commenter will be selected at random from one of the recipe links (also selected at random), so after you check out my recipe, leave a comment, and click through the linky to visit the other recipes, and leave them comments, also!  If you have a freezer recipe, link up!



My recipe is homemade pizza pockets.

Ingredients:

Pizza Dough  (I used the recipe from my bread machine book, but you can totally get the store bought kind!)
1 jar of pizza sauce
Pretty much whatever you like on a pizza!  I used pepperoni, italian sausage, and cheese.


I followed the bread machine instructions to make the pizza dough.  Once it was done, I rolled it out semi flat  and used a glass to cut circles.

Then, I rolled out the circles even flatter, placed them on a baking sheet, and put the toppings on.  Then I covered them with a second circle of dough, and pressed them closed.

After that, follow the baking instructions for your pizza dough, then eat them, or bag them up and freeze them.

My bread machine dough recipe makes enough for 4 thin crust pizzas, so I make these up the other night when we were already making pizzas for dinner, just to use up the extra dough and sauce/toppings.  I already had the table all floured up and I already had the oven heated up, so it wasn't much extra trouble at all.

My daughter, the one who hates pizza, until we go to make pizza and then all of a sudden she likes pizza until it is baked and she takes a bite, and then she remembers that she doesn't like pizza....well she saw me bagging them up and putting them in the freezer.  She asked "Are those for my lunch box?"  I said "Are you going to eat them?"  She thought about it for a second and said "Um....no!"   LOL

Here are the other freezer recipes that have been shared so far this month.  Don't forget to add your own if you have one, and hop around leaving comments on the other recipes to increase your chances of winning!

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Corn Dog Muffins

I saw a blog post recently that contained some easy lunch ideas.   One of the ideas was so intriguing, i just had to try it out!  You see, my kids love corndogs.   Personally, I've never been a fan of the batter on the store-bought kind.  Plus, those are pretty expensive.

I used to buy the cheap Jiffy cornbread mixes.  They were the cheapest and our favorite, but I've recently been trying to make more things from scratch, and I found this recipe that we all LOVE!  I just had to try these out with our favorite new cornbread!

Here they are before I baked them.  The recipe said it made 12 servings.  I almost doubled it, but didn't have enough butter.  I'm glad I didn't because I actually got 22 muffins out of it.

 

 I thought that the hot dogs were going to show on top, but the batter baked up all around them.  My girls saw them in the oven and thought I was giving them cupcakes for lunch.  As if!

They were sooo good!  My oldest actually had three of them!  After we all ate, I bagged the rest up and froze them for later lunches.

I've frozen this particular cornbread before, and I know it thaws well, so I'm hoping the hot dogs fare well, also.   I've frozen whole packages before, but never after cooking them.  Anybody done this?

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Basic Potato Soup Recipe (Freezes Well)

I made this potato soup for my family for the first time ever a few weeks back and we all thought it was delicious.   It also freezes really well!  It is very versatile, and you can make any additions to it that you would like.   I'm going to tell you the basic 5 ingredients that you definitely need, and then a few additions that you might like to make, plus I'll tell you what I put in mine!

Here are the 5 basic ingredients:

3 1/2 cups peeled, diced potatoes  (I used some leftover baked ones from my fridge, so the cook time was shorter)

3 1/2 cups chicken broth

5 tbsp butter

5 tbsp all purpose flour

2 cups of milk

(season to taste!)



Additions you may enjoy:

celery
onions
cheese
ham
broccoli


When I made my soup, I had some ham as well as some broccoli in my fridge, and also some cheddar cheese.   I also had the broth that had cooked off of my ham when I made it, so I substituted ham broth for the chicken broth.

Directions:
In a large pot, bring broth and potatoes to a boil  (also any onions/celery/ham, etc.--anything you add except cheese goes in here).  Simmer until potatoes are tender.  Add desired seasonings to taste.

In a small saucepan, melt butter.  Stir in flour, stirring constantly for about 1 minute.  Slowly whisk in milk (whisk out any lumps).  Cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly, stirring often.  (about 5 minutes)

Remove from heat  (if you are adding cheese, add it now)

Stir into pot with potatoes and heat through.


That'ts it!


You could add any meat/vegetable combination you like and I think it would turn out great.   Let me know what you like in your potato soup!

You know I'm never one to leave a recipe alone, so I may have to try a different combination next time, and I did just buy a 10lb. bag of potatoes!  ;)

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4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Day 10

I put of a lot of things into my freezer today.  I got a lot accomplished in general today!

I'll start with over the weekend..Saturday I added 8 chicken fajita wraps to my lunch stash (didn't snap a picture, though).  These were really delicious, and I calculated that it cost me roughly $0.36 each to make them!

Sunday I did nothing.  Absolutely nothing.   Ok well, I popped a few potatoes into the microwave to bake, but that's about it.

Today, I attempted to make up for that fact, and I think I did!  Along with a ton of housework (laundry/dishes/mopping/vacuuming), I broke out my bread machine and made some dough.

The first thing I made was ham and cheese pockets.  I used the bread machine recipe, and it made 16 pockets.

Then I made dinner roll dough using a recipe in my bread machine cookbook.   I used all purpose flour instead of bread flour, since I have found that 25lb. bag on clearance.  I had to add a little more flour to the dough because it was a bit soupy looking while rising in the machine, and I had to work a bit more into when I rolled them out because it was still very sticky, but after they were baked, I thought that they were the lightest and fluffiest rolls I had ever made.

I let 8 rise, and baked them to go with dinner, and I rolled out another tray of them and stuck it straight into the freezer without letting it rise.

I will place these into a bag and then take out what we need for a meal and allow them to thaw and rise for several hours the day I intend to use them.

I also bagged up my huge bag of flour to store in the freezer.   I filled 4 gallon sized freezer bags and still have some flour left even after baking all of this today and everything I baked last week!

Dinner meals are the theme for the coming week, and I am thinking I will sit most of these out  (I do plan to make some pizza dough--possibly go ahead and make pizza pockets--on Friday).


I've just got plenty of dinner's already in the freezer, and I freezer cook dinners nearly everytime I make a dinner meal, so those are constantly being added to, and this week I'm mostly eating from the freezer.

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4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Day 9

I skipped a day in this freezer cooking challenge, but that's ok.  My freezer is getting rather full!  Last night whil I wasn't cooking, I was at the elementary school watching my daughter and all of the other Kindergartners recite the poems they had memorized this past month.  She's really enjoying poetry, and she did a wonderful job reciting her poem.   My 2 year old was even asking when it was going to be her turn because she had a poem, too!  Not a shy bone in either of those two!

This morning, I had plans to do a big catch up day on freezer cooking, but I also had a goal for the week to continue following along with the cleaning missions from the FlyLady, and I must admit that I'd not accomplished any of the kitchen tasks since Monday.  I started my day by washing some large dishes that were in the sink and hand to be washed by hand, and got my 2 year old to dry them.  Then we kept on cleaning stuff.  We both had a damp rag that we kept dunking in the sink full of soap water and I believe we scrubbed every surface and appliance in that kitchen.   I even rearranged some things....ok I think I moved everything around except for the toaster!

Then it was lunch time and I said to myself...ok, after lunch I'm putting this one down for a nap and I'm getting to cooking, but by that time I was exhausted and couldn't bear the thought of dirtying my freshly cleaned kitchen, so I took a nap, too.

I really didn't think I was going to get any cooking done today at all, but my nap and the half priced very large Frappuccino that my husband brought home energized me just enough to make one dish.   After dinner, the girls wanted to have movie night, so we left them stay up and watch a film we'd checked out from the library, and while they were watching, I put all my ingredients for freezer burritos (I found that online but pretty much had it all put together in my head already.  I used black beans instead of pinto beans, and the ground turkey I'd found marked down at Aldi that I'd already precooked.  I also forgot to add the cheese....) in a big pot on the stove to heat up.

Once it had cooled off a little bit, and we had the girls all tucked in, I got my husband to help roll them up.  He's much tighter tortilla wrapper-upper than I am.  Mine always flop right open for some reason???   So he rolled them up, and I wrapped them up!

For some reason, one of my bags only had 7 tortillas in it, but I had the perfect amount of filling for 15, so it was perfect.  

I even figured up the cost per burrito based on the reduced prices I paid for the ground turkey and torillas, and it came up to just $0.44 each.

There are two types of frozen items I buy from Aldi...$0.35 bean burittos, and $0.69 beef/bean of chicken chimichangas.   My husband says that these are MUCH better than the cheaper burritos (thus worth the extra to him), and probably right on par with if not better than the more expensive chimichangas.  Of course, he ate one fresh, so we'll have to see if his opinion changes once he has one that's been frozen, but I think we've found a winner!  Plus, I never dreamed they would be so easy to make!  I even tried it and thought it was delicious, even though I normally do NOT like beans!

I've got one more pack of tortillas left thawed out, as well as some cooked chicken still left in the fridge, so I'm going to try to put something together and get those used up tomorrow.  I also plan to make some pizza pockets, and ham and cheese pockets over the weekend or on Monday, so I'll post about those on Monday!

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4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Day 7 --PB&J Pockets

Today was one of those days around here.  It began with me deciding that getting up at 4am to do grocery ads just wasn't happening, so I slept in until 5:30, at which point my husband was awake and I still didn't get the ads done.   Then my daughters woke up and they did not wish to cooperate this morning.   Then we left to bring one to the bus and genius me managed to lock me and the toddler out of the house.   I had to end up climbing the back fence (into the neighbors yard first since our fence is too high) and thankfully I'd not locked the back door when I put the dogs out!

Then, just moments later I found the toddler attempting to fill up my brand new watering can.....in the toilet!

I was already a bit distraught because my grandmother had to be taken to the emergency room yesterday for a possible stroke, but they have ruled out that, and ruled out blood clots...they've pretty much ruled out everything it could be and are about to send her home with no diagnosis as to why her blood pressure was through the roof and her extremities were numb and tingly.  

Plus, I was feverish.   I was not feeling the whole cooking/cleaning/homemaking business today, so we went to the library and stayed for a long time, played on the computers, read books, colored, did puzzled, found movies.  Then, when we got back I took a nap!

I had already planned an easy dinner for tonight thankfully:  breakfast!   After my daughter did some homework, they went outside to play.  They were playing so well on such a lovely evening that I just let them play outside for a long time while I made dinner, and some freezer stuff.

Now for this fill your freezer challenge, Money Saving Mom is making lunch recipes all this week.  I decided to forego lunches yesterday since I was making my huge pot of soup, but I did want to get some lunches into the freezer.  Yesterday, she made peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.   Now I've tried making uncrustables before, and my daughter wasn't really a fan of the bread texture after it thawed, so as I was perusing recipes online yesterday, I noticed a PB&J recipe that used biscuits!  We all love biscuits, and I just happened to have made a big bag of homemade bisquick....and oh look, I'm making biscuits with dinner!

It was perfect!  I made a double batch of the bisquick, and after I rolled out a pan of biscuits..

I rolled the remainder of the dough out into flat circle(ish blobs) and spooned on a bit of peanut butter and a bit of jelly.

Then I folded them closed and sealed the sides with a fork:

Then I baked them (at the same time as the biscuits!) and let them sit and cool:

My daughter was very excited about these.  We tossed one into the lunch box for tomorrow and 7 more into the freezer  (well, ok they are still on the counter waiting on me to make room in the freezer, but they'll get there!)

Then I cooked up two packs of that cheap ground turkey from Aldi.  I stuck them in the fridge, along with the remaining chicken from my soup, and they will get put into a burrito of some sort tomorrow!  I've already thawed the three packs of burrito wraps I had stored in the freezer (and I took out the frozen pizza dough too, so pizza pockets will get made hopefully Friday!)

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4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Day 6--Chicken Noodle Soup

Today kicked off week 2 of the Fill Your Freezer Challenge, and lunches were on the agenda over at Money Saving Mom.  I did not start on lunches today, though I did spend a good amount of time browsing recipes, hers and others that I googled, and have a few plans in mind.

Today, I made soup.   Lots and lots of soup.   When we first moved into our house, my grandmother gave me this ginormous stock pot.   I was not sure what I would ever need to cook in a pot so big, but then I began freezer cooking, and let me tell you that is my favorite pot ever!

So I thawed out a whole chicken, bought on sale for $0.59/lb.  $3.50 for the whole bird.    This morning before I went out to Aldi, I started it in a pot of boiling water.   I let it get up to a good boil, and then turned it off and let it just sit in the hot water while we were gone.   It still continues to cook this way.  When I got back i turned it on low and let it cook a little bit longer.  Then I pulled the chicken up out of the pot  (I didn't let it get too cooked so it fell apart.  I wanted it to come out in one piece so I wouldn't have to be fishing bone out of my soup base!

I pulled all the meat of the chicken, separating the white and dark meat, because I prefer dark meat in my soups, and I didn't need all the meat for the soup anyhow.  So there is now a container of cooked and shredded white meat sitting in my fridge waiting to be used, also.

Then I tossed the dark meat back into the pot along with some celery, corn, green beans, mixed veggies, and my homemade stewed tomatoes from last week.   (The great thing about soup is you can pretty much toss in whatever you have on hand...I used frozen celery & green beans, fresh corn, and canned mixed veggies!)  I let it all simmer on low and about an hour before dinner time I tossed in some ABC noodles I had in my pantry.

We all ate, and I thought I would have 3 more containers to freeze....turns out I have 6!

Obviously I recycle all of my margarine tubs, but I find they are perfect to hold one night's worth of food for the 4 of us and usually have a lunch left for my husband to bring the next day.

These are all sitting around on the counter cooling and will go into the large garage freezer tonight.

You might say that it's too hot for soup, but honestly we all just love soup!  It doesn't really matter what the temperature is, we eat it year round!  

Tomorrow I plan to get some lunches into the freezer, but I think I need to rearrange it first!

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4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer Challenge: Day 5

This is Day 5 of Money Saving Mom's 4 Weeks to Fill Your Freezer Challenge.  While I haven't been following her plan as far as what I've been making, I have been filling my freezer!  In fact, one of my goals this week is to reorganize my inside small freezer so I can see what's in there

Her challenge took the weekend off, but I did not.  In fact, Saturday I got a head start on her plan for today:  homemade baking mix!  I did not use her recipe however, mostly because I did not have all of the ingredients.   I told you about this post over at Practically Virtuous for homemade Bisquick.  I have been meaning to make some for a long, long, time now and I just haven't had a chance to until Saturday night.  

I made a pan of biscuits using this and it was delicious!   It is now living in a ziplock bag in my pantry.  Ithought I had a picture of that but I must not have gotten one.  (Coincidentally, MS Do just posted a recipe for homemade Gluten Free Bisquick last night for anyone who might need a gluten free version of this.)

Saturday night I also bagged up my frozen and battered squash.  I got two big bags:

I didn't put anything into the freezer on Sunday.   Today, I made a double batch of cornbread to go with my red beans and rice for dinner, and the recipe that supposedly made 12 servings filled up an entire muffin pan and I had enough left for another.   I used a round cake pan for the remainder and we ate that with dinner tonight, but I have 12 extra corn muffins, two meals worth that are going into the freezer tonight:

I'm pleased with my progress this week, and I've even been able to maintain keeping up with the laundry and dishes!

For the rest of this week and next Monday, freezer lunches are on the agenda (<---that has her list of recipes that she plans to make as well as a pre-made shopping list if you'd like to take up the challenge).  Lunches are always something that I've struggled with so I am glad for some inspiration on those!

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4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Day 4

Today on my agenda was using up the large tub of expiring yogurt I had purchased yesterday, as well as finishing up freezing some produce that I didn't get to yesterday.

This has been a bad kitchen week for me, to be honest.  Normally when I try new things, they work out perfectly, but then again I don't usually step too far out of my cooking comfort zone as I have this week.

Last night I told you about my partially failed squash experiment.  Today, the first thing I tried I think worked out even worse!  You see, last night I went online searching for recipes using yogurt, and printed out a few.   This morning, I asked my 2 year old which one we should make (maybe that was my first mistake!)  She voted for waffles, and since I skipped waffle making day yesterday and intended to catch up with regular waffles, I thought why not give the yogurt waffles a try!

She had a great time helping me stir, but the batter turned out really lumpy and even a wisk didn't help matters.

Then it didn't really get along with my waffle maker...it never really did get "cooked".  It felt totally soggy and I had the hardest time getting it off of that thing.  Plus..it was nasty!

I added a bit more flour to the mix (and some sugar!) and finished this off by making pancakes.  Those were edible, but not great.  Very dense.  I do not personally care for yogurt, and I thought that they had way too much of a yogurt taste, but my daughter scarfed down two of her own and then finished mine off.  I've got three more leftover of these in the fridge...not enough to freeze, but maybe somebody will eat them.


After she ate and I got the syrup cleaned up off of her, I put her down for her nap, and decided to try my hand at another of the recipes that I had printed:  Apple Spice Muffins.

These turned out much better...not mouthwatering, but good.   I'll not likely be buying yogurt for cooking purposes anymore.  I've been wanting to try it for some time, and now I've satiated my curiosity. ;)

After school, I bagged these up (haven't frozen them yet, but will freeze whatever is left in a day or two), and chopped up a pineapple that was getting overripe.

Then after dinner, I told my girls I had a special project for them to work on after they ate.  My oldest one was so excited to get started that after she ate, she went over and fed her sister!

I had sliced up the rest of my squash from the farmers market and mixed us up a big bowl of flour/cornmeal to coat them.  Then we all got to work.

It took us 6 baking sheets, but we got them all coated and I sat them in the freezer for the night.  I'll put them in freezer bags in the morning.

Then, after all of that, we set a timer and the girls worked together and cleaned up both of their rooms (which were absolutely trashed) while I caught up on folding 5 days worth of laundry!

It was a busy day, but I'm glad to have it all done, and looking forward to a relaxing weekend!

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