from last weekend

got a few things done over memorial day weekend last week.  i daily go through the mental struggle of loving this laid back domestic life i’ve had over the past two months (just learning how to be a mother and doing stuff around the house and garden) and the desire to rev things up a bit a lot.  for example, i’ve had the urge recently to literally bag up my entire closet, donate it to goodwill and then hit up every store in sight for a crazier, edgier wardrobe.  on top of that i want to walk into the nearest salon and say “have your way with me!” -  still considering both of those options.  but in the meantime i’m also very content with this slower paced mom-life (if only i could continue doing this and continue picking up my paycheck every 2 weeks. siiiigh.)

baked some chocolate chip scones that didn’t really turn out as expected but were edible enough

grabbed a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for dinner one night last week and after finishing off the bird, dropped the whole thing in a stock pot with some veggies and herbs and cooked it down into chicken stock

the beginnings of chicken salad

it was a bright sunny day, so i laid out all the cloth dipes for a nice bleach in the sun

the front porch right now

january grocery challenge: week 4

and so ends the final week of the january grocery challenge.  i should warn you that we didn’t exactly end the challenge on the best note:  i forgot to take pictures of half the week’s meals.  but i did throw in a “grand finale” meal from tonight that capped off the challenge well.

Day One

the meal:  after all the fantastic food at our baby party, we were too stuffed to even eat dinner.  but it was totally worth it

Day Two

the meal:  rice crusted quiche

ingredients used:  leftover brown and white rice, leftover artichoke hearts, steamed broccoli, a yukon gold potato, cheddar cheese, local eggs, parmesan cheese

Day Three

the meal:  pot roast sandwiches, deviled eggs, and leftover pot roast and elbow macaroni

ingredients used:  pot roast, cheese, homemade bread, elbow macaroni, deviled eggs (leftover from the party)

Day Four

the meal:  taco bell.  mmm, healthy.  the youth group had its monthly “last tuesday” gathering, grabbing dinner at taco bell and playing games in the restaurant.

Day Five

the meal: deviled eggs and grains mix with pot roast

ingredients used: leftover pot roast, cheese, deviled eggs, trader joe’s mixed grains

Day Six

the meal: brunswick stew, salad, toast

ingredients used: frozen brunswick stew, homemade bread, salad mix

Day Seven

the meal:  pasta and pasta sauce

ingredients used:  elbow macaroni, pasta sauce, parmesean cheese

Grand Finale:  1.31.11

the meal: chili over rice, corn bread

ingredients used:  last of the leftover brown/white rice, last of the grass-fed ground beef, kidney beans, black beans, last of the carrots, last of the pasta sauce, tomato paste, homemade corn bread, creamed corn, last of the sour cream

Overall, this was a really fun challenge.  we succeeded in forcing ourselves to use ingredients we already had on hand, be creative with what we made, and spend hardly any money on groceries this month.  not that i’d want to limit myself like this all the time (my grocery list for this month is a mile-long with all the ingredients that i can’t wait to buy again), but it was definitely fun to work with what we had.  sure, there were a lot of repeats, but i was never scared we wouldn’t be able to come up with something for dinner.

 

Weekly Grocery Purchases

- salad

- bananas

- butter

- applesauce

 

more grocery challenge stuff:  the why, week 1 recap, week 2 recap, week 3 recap

january grocery challenge: week 3

although the pantry and fridge are getting more and more bare, i think we ate really well this week.  here’s a quick recap of week 3 of the grocery challenge.

Day One

the meal: homemade pizza + salad

ingredients used:  trader joe’s whole wheat pizza dough, dried thyme, onion, garlic, artichoke hearts, cheddar and parmesan cheese, tomato sauce, homemade garlic scape pesto, salad, walnuts

Day Two

the meal:  breakfast for dinner

ingredients used:  pancake mix, local eggs, frozen blueberries, milk, chopped milk chocolate bar, cinnamon and cardamom

Day Three

Ross and I used one of his gift cards from Christmas and ordered a most excellent pizza from Papa John’s.

Day Four

the meal:  grilled cheeses + salad + pasta blend

ingredients used:  homemade bread, cheddar cheese, local egg, salad, trader joe’s harvest grain mix

Day Five

the meal:  beans and rice with an egg on top

this was the one meal that ross pitched a fit about – until he tasted it.  although i have to admit i wasn’t super optimistic about it at first either.  basically the meal was glorified beans and rice – i got tired of the 1/3 remaining boxes of white and brown rice in the pantry and just decided to cook them all up in hopes that i would incorporate them into meals.  the pesto, chicken, and some well-placed spices, not to mention the egg on top (mine over easy, and ross’s fried) made this a really tasty meal.  a happy surprise.

ingredients used:  white and brown rice, black beans (and i ended up not using the kidney beans), homemade garlic scape pesto, local eggs, parmesan cheese, and packaged diced chicken breast

Day Six

the menu:  beef pot roast over elbow macaroni

ingredients used:  our first crock pot meal in a very long time.  maybe even the first this winter.  a huge piece of local beef pot roast, topped with veggies, tomatoes, tomato paste and cooked on low all day.  then put over artichoke elbow macaroni.  delish.

Day Seven

Ross and I spent the night at his parents’ and ate a wonderful meal prepared by his mom and sister.  My parents were in town as well, preparing for the baby wilsie throwdown planned for the next day.  more on that little shindig later.

Weekly Grocery Purchases

- bananas

- container of salad

- cheese

- 2 containers of blueberry yogurt  (buy 1 get 1)

more grocery challenge stuff:  the why, week 1 recap, week 2 recap

january grocery challenge: week 2

Week 2 of our grocery challenge is now complete.  here’s how we creatively used (and even reused) what we had.

Day One

the meal: a thanksgiving inspired meal.  venison, mashed potatoes, and leftover cranberry sauce + salad + honey pudding bread

ingredients used:  cousin bry’s venison tenderloin (marinated and seared on both sides on top of the stove, then finished off in the oven for perfect tenderness), handful of yukon gold potatoes, sour cream, butter, cranberry sauce from thanksgiving (yes it was still good!), store-bought lettuce

for the (crumbly, hmm) bread:  all the baking ingredients you’d normally see in a zucchini bread type of recipe, but with 3/4 c vanilla pudding for upping the moist factor

Day Two

the meal: biscuit wrapped apples, corn, salad

ingredients used: u-pick apples from cville, homemade biscuit recipe, papa’s corn, salad

Day Three

[oops, we forgot to take a picture!]

the meal:  burgers with cheese, lettuce + corn + salad

ingredients used:  local ground beef, leftover hamburger buns thawed from the freezer, lettuce from salad mix, sharp cheddar, papa’s frozen corn, store bought salad, ketchup, mayo

Day Four

the meal:  lasagna

ingredients used:  ross’s mom brought us lasagna a while ago and what we couldn’t eat in one or two meals, we froze.  so this week we thawed out the rest and ate it over a few days

Day Five

the meal:  leftover lasagna, broccoli, homemade biscuits, green bean-pasta mix

ingredients used:  MIL’s leftover lasagna, frozen broccoli, homemade biscuits leftover from Day Two, half a can of cream of mushroom soup, 1 cup of mixed grains from Trader Joes, half a jar of papa’s green beans.

Day Six

the meal:  leftover green bean-pasta mix and grilled cheese with a fried egg + salad

ingredients used:  other half of canned cream of mushroom soup, remainder of jar of green beans, TJ’s mixed grains pasta, homemade Honey Oat bread, slices of cheddar cheese, one egg from the egg lady, store bought salad

Day Seven

ross and i treated ourselves to a date night dinner at Outback.  we had giftcards.  so it was free.  can’t beat that.

Weekly Grocery Purchases

- quart of milk (we’ve been buying Homestead Creamery milk, and when you return the empty glass bottle, you receive $2 back.  the milk costs $2, soooo…free milk)

- sharp cheddar cheese

- two boxes frozen chopped broccoli

- 5 bananas

- container of salad

 

more grocery challenge stuff:  the why, week 1 recap

thanksgiving recap

sigh.  what a wonderful thanksgiving break.  it was the perfect amount of holiday bustle combined with relaxation and having no agendas.

ross and i spent the break at my parents’ house, and enjoyed lots of quality time with the fam as well as a visit to see a friend’s new baby!

mom was in charge of decorations and had all the tables decked out before we had even arrived.

we divided up the cooking, doing some on wednesday and the rest on thursday morning, for a very non-stress meal.

as promised, here was our menu for turkey day:

old faithfuls:  turkey, spiral ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing – all prepared by my aunt and grandfather

other wonderful sides:

- sweet potato casserole

- homemade cranberry sauce

- my grandfather’s green beans

- mushroom, zucchini risotto

- apple pancetta goat cheese salad

- yeast rolls, sweet potato biscuits, and potato rolls

take a look.  i got a little bit of everything.

and for dessert:

pumpkin caramel cheesecake with a gingersnap crust, mini chocolate chip tarts and pecan pie tarts

we were all in comas for hours afterward, ending the evening with a walk down the road and a front yard bonfire.  hope everyone else’s thanksgivings were wonderful and relaxing as well.

the fall spirit

despite the temperatures that are screaming otherwise, we had a very fallish dinner tonight.

veggie chili.  no recipe really.  just sauteed onion and garlic, lots of beans:  kidney beans, great northern beans, black beans; with diced green chiles, diced tomatoes, some spices (and some brown sugar!), and a nice long simmer on the stove.

we put this over a mix of brown rice and jasmine rice and had a side of corn, green beans, and cornbread.  first time i’ve made a full-fledged dinner in a long time.  and we were stuffed.

you know what

Fig. restaurant where ross & i had the most amazing meal in charleston last year for our anniversary.  ross licked his plate. really. he did.

you know what? it’s been a long time since i’ve done anything resembling cooking on this site.  in real life, i’m cooking everyday, so why don’t i ever remember to write a recipe down, remembering all the tweaks i inevitably put on it, and snap a picture or two?  can’t be that hard.

which works out, since i’ve made

this recipe 3 times in the last two weeks and love it.

have been craving these brownies for several days.

and have an appointment at the cannery (our first trip ever!) to put up a few quarts of this on sunday

i’m on it.

and we cook sometimes too

i’ve tried to blog about something other than our garden; it just hasn’t worked out as well as i’d planned.  but now that the garden has started to taper off for the season,  i’m hoping to switch things up a bit.  for example, we actually cook sometimes.  i’m finally following through on my promise to show such an event.

i had never made wontons before – mainly because i was very intimidated by the whole process.  but it turned out to be really easy.

finely dice any combination of meat and/or veggies you’d like.  we used potatoes, zucchini, and onions from our garden and browned up some ground sausage.

i found these wonton wrappers in walmart, so they’re not hard to come by.  place a few teaspoons of your veggie mixture in the center of the wrapper.

brush a bit of egg white along all four edges, and then fold over diagonally to make a triangle.  press firmly around the two sides so they’ll hold the filling in.

here are a bunch of wontons waiting for to be fried.  we just filled a cast iron pot with a few inches of oil and heated it using a candy thermometer to gauge the temperature correctly.

pop the wontons into the oil once it’s ready…

…and take them out once they turn golden brown.

place on a paper towel to dry off

and voila.

aside from the time to heat the oil and wait for the wontons to cook, this isn’t a very time intensive process.  but we decided to make the whole package of wontons and then freeze the leftovers for later.  i can personally attest that they’re just as good – just reheat in the oven so they stay crispy.

abundance

i know some people with gardens are in that surplus stage where they’re being overrun with squash, zucchini, and tomatoes.

we haven’t quite gotten to that point here, but when i was home last weekend my grandfather loaded me down, literally, with his garden surplus:  a five gallon bucket of corn on the cob,  a bag full of yellow squash, another bag of miniature roma tomatoes, three containers of homemade strawberry jam, three quarts of jarred green beans, about 10 pints of last year’s frozen corn, a watermelon, and a cantalope.  did i mention my grandfather is 87 years old?!

so with all of his abundance, i’m hustling to make everything last (whether by eating it now or finding creative ways to freeze it for later).  on top of that, i harvested a renegade zucchini roughly the size of a child’s baseball bat that had been hiding from me.  enter my Cuisinart food processor to save the day.  With less than half of bat-sized zucchini, i made two loaves of zucchini bread and then with a small bag of potatoes from our garden, the rest of the zucchini, some of the yellow squash, a couple small onions, and a chunk of cheddar cheese i made a great shredded potato-veggie-cheesy casserole topped with French’s fried onions (literally i could put these on anything and ross would eat it – they’re magic).  we popped a couple ears of corn in to boil and voila, dinner was made.

didn’t get around to any pictures, but as a consolation prize i’ll post some pictures soon of some homemade wontons ross and i made two weekends ago. they were actually good!

tonight

1. buttermilk biscuits

2. some garden time

3. take more pictures of everyday life

4. ice cream

5. relax and enjoy the evening

 

 

images from orangette