Stay Connected

Friday, June 25, 2021

Cheap & Cheerful Menus for Late June


We haven't done one of these in a while. What's been on your menu lately?
Here's last week's dinner menus. Anything with an asterisk came in part or whole from the garden.

Friday
homemade pepperoni pizza
*fruit salad
*tossed garden salad


Saturday
refried bean tostados on
corn tortillas with canned tomatoes, cheese and
*garden lettuce
*fresh strawberries

Sunday (Father's Day)
burgers
potato chips
broccoli slaw
oven-roasted vegetables
*sundae bar/root beer floats (strawberry topping, hot fudge sauce, caramel sauce, nuts, sprinkles, chocolate chips, vanilla ice cream, root beer)


Monday
*tuna and macaroni salad over a bed of mixed garden greens
*fresh strawberries with strawberry yogurt

it's strawberry season

Tuesday
white bean chili
cornbread
*fresh strawberries

it's also rhubarb season
Wednesday
hot dog cook-out (used leftover burger buns)
*fresh strawberries
*rhubarb jello
leftover broccoli slaw


Thursday
*Featherbed eggs (our name for eggs with herbs, this time chives)
*rosemary rice
*tossed green salad
*strawberries
*rhubarb jello

You may have noticed, we had strawberries most nights. this is peak strawberry season in my garden. Every morning I go out and pick the strawberries for the day. I then move on to the pots and baskets with salad greens.


The rosemary is wonderful and prolific this year. I've been making rosemary lentils, rosemary bread, and rosemary rice with the abundance. The rosemary rice is cooked brown rice topped with a large handful of chopped rosemary, some garlic powder, and olive oil. It doesn't take much more time than plain brown rice, yet the flavor is amazing.

It's Friday, so we'll be having homemade pizza again while we watch a movie on the roku.
What's been cooking in your kitchen this past week?

13 comments:

  1. We've been using from the freezer and mostly from the one on top of the refrigerator. That has been stuffed full lately so it was time to use those items first and then the deep freeze.

    Loose bread ends were used, a container of black beans and a box of refried beans, frozen onions, frozen cabbage, bacon bits, tortillas. That helped a lot to move those things out. Then the deep freezer we used a beef roast for father's day. I know I used a few more things that I can't think of but I put strawberry jam and strawberry/rhubarb jam freshly made back in along with strawberries to freeze for smoothies. So I didn't gain any space there. My daughter wanted some BBQ wings from Aldi along with frozen pizza from there. So we used those this week (I had those in the deep freezer) and I just didn't care for those so we'll being making our own BBQ chicken and homemade pizza again. I just can't see using space in the freezer for something we don't like.

    Nothing to use from my dad's garden quite yet and only herbs from my vertical planter. We've been getting lots of rain (remember last week we were in a drought?) and I see we're getting rain for at least the next 8 days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ugh, Alice, this rain. Boo. I was hoping to get through the summer with a dry basement.

      Your strawberry rhubarb jam reminded me that my mom made a delicious blueberry rhubarb jam. I bet your is super tasty.

      Delete
    2. Hi Alice,
      Your meals sound delicious. I haven't had a beef roast in a long time, so that sounds especially good. Using jam in smoothies is a great idea. I mixed leftover strawberry ice cream topping (like jam, just thinner) into homemade plain yogurt to top fresh berries this last week and that was quite good -- not as sweet as commercial fruit yogurt. A packed freezer is not such a bad thing.

      I hope your rain comes to an end soon. What crazy weather! In our area, my son's town forecast is for 111 on Monday and my town 104 as a high. Seattle will be shattering all-time high temp records this weekend. But I deal better with excess heat than I do with endless rain. So I feel for you.

      Delete
  2. I really enjoy when you post things you are serving. You are always so creative!
    This past week some of the things we have eaten are: stir fry veggies with a little chicken over rice...our own veggies. Cabbage roll casserole..cabbage from our son's garden. Side salads with our own veggies. Red raspberries in a cobbler or in my oatmeal...our own berries. We really notice how much flavor the fresh veggies and fruit add to our meals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Linda,
      it sounds like you're making great use of yours and son's garden vegetables. I agree with you completely on how much flavor garden produce adds to meals. Just the simple thing of adding some berries to oatmeal or to top dry cereal makes breakfast seem special. I've been eating rice and lentils for my lunches all week, but to make that interesting, I added fresh rosemary mixed in and various garden greens for a salad on the side. Those would have been dull lunches without the garden touches of salad and herbs.
      Enjoy your weekend, Linda!

      Delete
  3. Your meals sound much better than ours have been this week! Your strawberries look wonderful. I bought 25 lbs of peaches from The Fruit Truck so that’s the fruit we’ve been eating this week.
    Father’s Day my husband smoked brisket. We had that plus hashbrown casserole, macaroni salad, corn and black bean salad (oldest dd), baked beans (younger dd), Hawaiian coleslaw, chocolate silk pie. My two sons were out of town for a wedding so just the girls were here.
    Monday used leftover brisket to make sandwiches on hoagie rolls, leftover baked beans and Mac salad
    Tuesday Dh out of town so I just made myself a big baked potato and sliced peaches
    Wednesday- Dh still gone I had hot ham and Swiss on toasted hoagie roll and Mac salad
    Thursday Dh was back. I made beef stew in the crockpot. Peach cobbler for dessert
    Tonite we are having blackened salmon in the air fryer, rice, and some sort of vegetable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Diane,
      Yum! Reading about everything you served this week is making me hungry.
      The Fruit Truck -- I'd never heard of them before. Is this the same as at myfruittruck.com? Very interesting. Do you shop out of the truck when it comes to destinations near you, is that how it works? What are their prices like? I'm very curious about this.

      Delete
    2. Yes that’s it. This was my first time using them. You can order ahead or just go to the truck on pickup day and I guess usually they have stuff to sell. You don’t pay til you pick it up. I got 25 lbs of peaches for $45 so certainly not a screaming deal, but cheaper than Walmart, and they are good peaches. Grocery store peaches are so hit or miss. I gave a few to my son and dil and asked him if he liked them. He said yeah they taste good but they are so juicy I have to eat them over the sink. I told him that’s how peaches are supposed to be lol. I would order from them again. The truck was right on time, the pickup was fast and easy, and the peaches are very good. The first one I ate wasn’t quite ripe, but I gave them a couple days and they are delicious. I am making some peach frozen yogurt with some of them right now.

      Delete
    3. Thank you for the information, Diane. This sounds great!

      Delete
  4. We took our son to his college orientation earlier this week. He will be going in Michigan's upper peninsula which is a 5 hour trip one way. It's a beautiful area so we made a mini trip out of it. We actually did pretty well on food costs, all things considered. We got the $20 meal from KFC on Sunday which was enough food for my daughter and I to eat for lunch the next day. We brought a cooler and food with us so we had PB&J a couple of times for lunch as well as what we call our "hiking lunch" which is Triscuit crackers (Aldi version for most foods) with cheese and sliced salami, and dried fruit. Breakfasts were provided by the hotel, and we would take a muffin and a banana for snacking on later. We also went to a local drive-in burger joint that is popular in the area. When we got home we had simple meals--spaghetti one night, leftover grilled chicken the next night. Tonight everyone but me is at a youth group cookout--I'm not feeling top form right now so I scrambled some eggs.

    We are also eating garden produce for most meals. We don't have tons of strawberries but we've had enough for dessert a few times. We have had a lot of lettuce and are now getting snap peas so have been having salads or using the lettuce on sandwiches. I made rhubarb muffins yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kris,
      What a lovely mini-family trip! And you did well with meals on the road. for road trips, we like to do the same, bring a cooler with some easy to make/assemble foods, then buy a couple of meals out. I'm sorry that you're not feeling well and hope you're back to your usual self soon.

      I am inundated with rhubarb these days. I'm still using last year's frozen and preserved rhubarb while my new rhubarb is going crazy. Maybe some rhubarb muffins should be in the works, here.
      Hope you feel better, Kris!

      Delete
  5. I love strawberries. Our strawberry season is over, but I did enjoy some fresh ones courtesy of a friend. I'm thinking about putting in a bed for them. We'll see.

    For the life of me, I can't remember what we had to eat this week. But I didn't go hungry, so it must have been okay.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Live and Learn,
      If you had a bed or could easily build one, I think you could find someone who would gift you with a couple of strawberry plants. You probably know this --they spread by runner in a season or two. But fresh strawberries from a friend are also a nice way to get homegrown berries.

      Ha ha! I'm sure whatever you ate, it was delicious!

      Delete

Thank you for joining the discussion today. Here at creative savv, we strive to maintain a respectful community centered around frugal living. Creative savv would like to continue to be a welcoming and safe place for discussion, and as such reserves the right to remove comments that are inappropriate for the conversation.

FOLLOW CREATIVE SAVV ON BLOGLOVIN'

Follow
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Be a voice that helps someone else on their frugal living journey

Are you interested in writing for creative savv?
What's your frugal story?

Do you have a favorite frugal recipe, special insight, DIY project, or tips that could make frugal living more do-able for someone else?

Creative savv is seeking new voices.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

share this post