Stay Connected

Thursday, August 18, 2022

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers: Lots and Lots of Garden Produce This August Week


Forgive me for showing off. This is the soufflé I made on Monday. I used very young and tender grape leaves, finely chopped, in place of spinach. It was very delicious. And now I have another use for our grape leaves.

Friday

Friday
garden zucchini and Parmesan frittata 
brown rice with TVP/chicken gravy
garden green beans
mixed garden berries

Saturday

Saturday
Italian bean soup (with garden garlic, herbs, kale)
garden salad
scratch drop biscuits
fresh blackberries

Sunday

Sunday
refried beans, cheese and salsa
rice with salsa
garden kale
fresh blackberries

Monday

Monday
garden grape leaf and cheese soufflé
fresh apples
garden green beans
toast
blackberry pie

Tuesday

Tuesday
Salisbury steak with tomato and thyme gravy
brown rice
garden green beans
steamed garden  kale
leftover blackberry pie

Wednesday

Wednesday
tuna salad on garden lettuce (tuna salad for 3 -- 1 can tuna, TVP, 1 boiled egg, cooked macaroni, garden celery, garden chive blossoms, mayonnaise)
garden cucumber slices
crackers
steamed garden green beans
fresh blackberries

Thursday

Thursday
hummus
crackers
tossed garden salad (garden greens, garden cucumber, 1 boiled egg, scratch dressing)
steamed garden kale
fresh blackberries
chocolate pudding pie


Tonight we'll get back to homemade pizza for our Friday movie night. We've missed a couple of weeks of pizza and a movie Fridays this summer. Some weeks our schedules don't mesh. I am out of pepperoni, though. So I'll do an Italian sausage, mushroom, and basil pizza as I made a couple of weeks ago. 

I love looking at our meals and thinking about how much is coming from our garden, orchard, or foraging. I know that some of you must do the same. On Monday, without all of what we grow or forage, we would have had a plain cheese soufflé, toast, and pie crust (with sugar inside but no berries). Yes, I'm easily entertained.


Many of you have mentioned the peaches you've been enjoying. I don't live in peach country, so fresh peaches are a special treat for us. Fred Meyer has peaches at $1.99/lb this week. However, my daughter was gifted a peach this week by the lady she was cat sitting for. This lady left town and remembered she'd left a peach sitting out, so she texted my daughter and asked her to eat it. Well, my daughter brought it home for the four of us. So I cut it up and added it to other fruit for a really wonderful fruit salad to go with our lunches on day this week. Unless I find a great price on peaches, that will be it for fresh peaches for me this year. I hope you all enjoy the ones you can get.

Those were our evening meals for the week. What was on your menu?

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!


15 comments:

  1. We had a Chinese chicken with two different kinds of rice, one a broccoli/rice and the other a lentil, wild rice mix. Had leftovers another day from that. Homemade pizza twice, pork steak with mashed potatoes I had previously frozen, spaghetti casserole. There were sliced summer squash that I sauteed, fresh corn, green beans, fresh peaches. Good meals for another very busy week.

    Alice

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Alice,
      Yum! Your meals sound delicious!
      Have a great weekend, Alice.

      Delete
  2. I'm sorry you don't have inexpensive access to fresh peaches. We are pretty spoiled with all the fresh fruit growing in our area. My husband buys the seconds of peaches. We freeze a lot of them and they are a favorite of mine (more so than strawberries) during the winter months.

    Another busy and somewhat crazy week here, so not much in the way of cooking. Monday I made peanut chicken in the crockpot, served over rice. Tuesday everyone had somewhere else to be except for me, so I scrambled eggs and made toast for dinner. Wednesday to Thursday we took my son up to college, so we ate dinner from a drive-in hamburger joint in his area (we took it to a park to enjoy a nice evening outside). Last night after we got back, I threw together spaghetti, and tonight my husband thawed burgers for dinner (I was at a funeral across the state and didn't get home in time to cook--hooray for leftovers). We've eaten out a lot lately due to the traveling we've been doing, and while I enjoy that occasionally, it's getting to the point where I'm looking forward to cooking at home again. We've been eating green beans and are starting to get tomatoes as our veggies.

    Your souffle was impressive! I've only made individual dessert souffles--they sure are fun and are so impressive when they first come out of the oven! Maybe I should try a savory souffle. Thanks for the idea.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kris,
      Peaches grow on the other side of the mountains from us. I've looked into growing them on our own property, but we don't have warm enough summers. So, they're a luxury item for us. I'm glad you can get so much good fresh fruit where you are. We can grow a lot of berries here, and I realize that these may seem a luxury to many other folks. It all evens out, right?
      I agree with you on eating out a lot makes me long for my own home cooking. I hope you can have some time where you don't have to be on the go so much.
      Savory soufflés are fairly easy, I think. Like making a meringue, then you fold in an egg yolk and béchamel or cheese sauce before putting into the soufflé dish. My mom used to make soufflés somewhat often when I was growing up. They were an easy, from scratch quick meal to make for a supper dish.
      Have a great weekend, Kris!

      Delete
  3. I have been routinely getting peaches for under $1 a lb at Fred meyer, winco, or Safeway. They seem to be taking turns putting them on sale. I love peaches, but I have had my fill for awhile lol.
    We had pork chops, enchiladas, steak, and tuna casserole this week. I was out of town yesterday and part of today so we just had leftovers tonite.

    Diane

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Diane,
      I'm glad you've been finding peaches for a decent price in your area. They grow in Yakima, WA, but that's the other side of the mountains from me. If they've been on sale here, I've missed it. Drats! But I may check around this week. When my other daughter is done dog-sitting for the week, I'll have a car to go down to WinCo. (She's borrowing our car for the week.)
      Yum, I haven't made enchiladas in a while. Those sound really good to me.
      Have a wonderful weekend, Diane!

      Delete
    2. I was at winco last week and they were still 97 cents a lb, and all of the ones I have gotten there have been really good. I hope they are the same price there. Nothing says summer to me more than fresh peaches. Washington grows good peaches. A friend brought me some back from there a few years ago. Soooo good.

      Diane

      Delete
    3. Hi Diane,
      Thank you for this info. I hope to get down to WinCo on Tuesday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed they have a good price on peaches!
      Have a great weekend!

      Delete
  4. Your soufflé is beautiful. I've never made one and don't really have an idea of how to do it. I just know that it is easy to deflate - at least that's what it seems like in TV shows. Or perhaps that's just plot device. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Live and Learn,
      Thank you. Soufflés are actually fairly easy. I separate the eggs, whites from the yolks, whip the whites till stiff peaks form. Meanwhile, I make a white or cheese sauce, the mix a small amount (to prevent setting the yolks) of the sauce into beaten egg yolks before combining the rest of the sauce with the egg yolks. If I'm adding any extras, like mushrooms, chopped ham/bacon or chopped greens, I mix these in with the yolk/white sauce. Last, I fold the yolk/sauce into the whipped egg whites. A soufflé dish is needed for best rise. I scoop the mixture into a buttered soufflé dish and bake at 350 until done. Yes, they do deflate, but not the classic comedic fall. The white sauce, made with some flour for thickening, helps hold the soufflé's shape for a bit after removing from the oven. I hope that sometime you give one a try and let me know if you thought it was easy or not.

      Delete
    2. I made one once. It was doing so well til one of the kids came in, opened the oven, asked what was for dinner, and let the door slam shut. It’s real-that thing sunk lol.

      Diane

      Delete
  5. Such nice, healthy and economical meals for your family...! I love harvesting from the garden, though this has been a particularly challenging growing season. Squash vine borers decimated the zucchini, cabbage moth larvae going to town on the kale, and terrible germination for my greens beans (and the few that did germinate consumed by chipmunks). Even the borage was ravished! But, the tomatoes, peppers and onions are trickling in -- so last night I harvested some of these and made veggie fajitas dinner. We ate them rolled up in inexpensive store-bought corn tortillas combined with cooked pintos beans (from dried). Along with a quick side salad I whipped up from garden cucumber and onion, it made for a really satisfying dinner...!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi friend,
      I'm sorry to hear of your garden problems this year. That's always such a disappointment. But I commend you on using what is growing well. Those veggie fajitas sound absolutely delicious!
      Can I ask -- how do you use borage?

      Delete
    2. Thanks Lili...! As for Borage, the entire plant is edible, leaves AND flowers -- kind of like Nasturtium. Very different flavor than Nasturtium though (with the leaves a little more "hairy") -- Borage has a taste very similar to that of cucumber, so it's tasty as a salad green, and the flowers are the most beautiful blue color and look pretty as salad toppers and such (just like Nasturtium -- in fact the two flowers, orange Nasturtium/blue Borage, look really pretty in a salad together!). Easy to grow and will reseed itself too -- plus pollinators love it.

      Delete
    3. Thank you for the information on borage. I had no idea it was edible. I had some borage seeds in a multi-seed herb mix several years ago, but I never did anything with the borage. Now I know! Thank you!

      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