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Thursday, October 20, 2022

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Week with Lots of Chicken Leftovers

Sometime late last week I roasted a whole chicken. These chicken get larger and larger each year. This one was huge.  Friday evening I cut as much meat off the bones as I could, then froze them in meal-sized portions. I simmered the carcass in the crock pot overnight, then picked the remaining meat off the bones and set the bones in a new pot of water for a second simmering overnight for bone broth. We used some of this stock and bone broth in soups this week and froze more. Once the bones were completely cleaned, I baked them in the oven until browned and pounded into bone meal for the garden. The smell can be overwhelming when baking, so I opened doors and windows and ran the exhaust fan. I'll probably freeze bones through the cool months to bake to dry once our weather turns door-opening warm in spring.

You may have noticed, we're eating more meat at dinner these days. I'll cook more beans again in winter. For now, we're enjoying some of the chicken and ground beef that I stocked up on this past year.

Friday

Friday
I roasted a chicken earlier in the week and had everything needed to make hash. I love hash! Cat had mentioned (in the comments) making hash a couple of weeks ago and it had been in my mind since. And now that I'm digging the potatoes, I once again can make it economically. Almost all of our potatoes are purple this year. The purple fingerling seem to be very productive in my garden, while the white potatoes not so much. So grateful for the green beans and salad greens to round out the meal.

chicken hash, using purple potatoes, celery, and sage from garden, and leftover chicken and gravy, plus store onions
garlic green beans
tossed garden salad

Saturday

Saturday
My husband made soup for us tonight. I find the ingredients for him and he puts it together. He toasted up the leftover scones, which I think really improved them.

chicken-vegetable-pasta soup
tossed garden salad
leftover eggnog scones, toasted

Sunday
I was in a period of fasting and prayer. I think my family had burritos and salad.

Monday

Monday
Since I needed to use up chicken last Friday, I put off making the pizza until Monday. I had some summer squash and some green beans, but not enough of either one for the whole family, so I combined them with garlic, onion, tomato, basil, and oregano. Those raspberries are ever-bearing variety. This variety produces two crops, an early crop (just before the main crop July-bearing canes we also have) and a mid-fall crop. We had just a few pears this year. I'm working on improving conditions for our pear trees so they will produce well again.

homemade pepperoni pizza
Italian vegetable medley
tossed salad
fruit compote of apple, pear and raspberries

Tuesday

Tuesday
This was an easy dinner night. One daughter and I put it together. Our September apples are dwindling now. We'll be moving on to the later apples (already picked and in the garage fridge) in about a week. In any case, apple wedges are an easy side. 

kale frittata
brown rice
apple wedges
tossed salad

Wednesday

Wednesday
The same daughter who I worked with on dinner last night made the meatloaf meal tonight. We love meatloaf in our house. I think it gets a bad rap. Meatloaf is delicious. The potato salad was made with our purple potatoes, our garden celery, onions, mayo, boiled egg, and a bit of curry powder. I have yet to grow early potatoes, so we don't get potato salad until after summer is over (when our garden potatoes are finally ready). I'm thinking of ordering some early-crop seed potatoes for this coming season. It would be nice to have some potatoes for dishes like potato salad in summer.

meatloaf and gravy
potato salad
tossed salad
garlic green beans

Thursday

Thursday
My other daughter made dinner for us tonight. The soup used garden celery, garlic, potatoes, carrots, carrot leaves, plus onions and leftover chicken in stock from the freezer. Surprisingly, the muffins tasted like blueberry muffins. Delicious! I ate 2, one more than I should have. She baked a large batch to freeze some for her own snacks and breakfasts as well as some for the family. She also made a rhubarb-blackberry pie earlier in the week that she was going to serve tonight, but we were all too full. The rhubarb-blackberry pie finished off our garden rhubarb for the year. Despite our long stretch of dry weather, I kept the rhubarb plants watered with kitchen waste water. I think that helped.

chicken and vegetable soup
blackberry muffins


Breakfasts this week included leftover scones, bacon (I saved the fat for cooking with), steel cut oats, Toasty O's cereal, toasted homemade bread, frozen blackberries, apples, milk, and yogurt. My sleep is wonky this year. I keep waking around 3 AM. One night I got up and started some crockpot steel cut oats at 3 AM. I cooked it on HI and they were perfectly done by 7 AM. My favorite add-in for steel cut oats is a little maple extract and some honey.

Lunches included tomato sandwiches, leftover pizza, tomato-basil soup, spiced fig-applesauce, tossed garden salads, chicken-apple-celery salad, eggs, peanut butter, apples, raisins, refried beans, sausage, homemade tortillas, bread, cupcakes and cookies. 

Here's something really cool about teaching my daughters how to cook from basic ingredients: when they get a hankering for something, they know how to make it themselves. One daughter saw the buckets of newly dug potatoes and said what she most wanted to make from some of them was potato salad. so she did. The other daughter wanted some muffins to use as snacks and breakfasts on the run. She found my rhubarb muffin recipe and modified it for blackberries. She used some of these muffins in our dinner on Thursday. When they have their own places, I'm confident that they'll be able to economically cook for themselves.

I finished digging the potatoes this week. I used muscles on my backside that I'd forgotten existed. Yes, I'm a bit sore and stiff tonight. Anyway, I'm looking forward to making a pan of oven-roasted potatoes for lunch tomorrow!

The garden still has celery, kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts (although very tiny), turnips, beets, spinach, mache, Swiss chard, green onions, carrots, lettuce, green (unripe) figs, a couple of pears, raspberries, and a small amount of green beans growing. I used some odds and ends to make sweet pickle relish for the year. It's been a very good year with the garden, even with me still needing to learn a lot more.

My meals are humble, using very basic ingredients and simple cooking processes. Humble meals make for affordable eating. Nothing fancy, but nothing lacking either.

Those were our meals. What was on your menu?

14 comments:

  1. We had a lot of chicken this week as well. Where I live it seems the chickens are much smaller than before. I purchased a day old rotisserie chicken (seems like rotisserie chickens are cheaper than fresh, raw ones lately) and we reheated it in the instant pot. We had scalloped potatoes and slaw. Next day was chicken pot pie made with leftover chicken. Then we had egg roll in a bowl. Next was leftover pot pie with fruit jello. Finally, we had chicken stir fry with brown rice.

    We often shop discounted food and last Saturday we found a lot. We found a huge beef roast that I divided in half. Many pork items and that rotisserie chicken. We also found a big bag of chicken legs that I divided up. We froze most of it and will enjoy those during the fall and winter.

    We're not sure what we're doing for Thanksgiving yet. But I know that my preparations will come directly from my freezer and pantry and probably will not include a turkey. We're not fond of turkey and it gives gout to several family members.

    Alice

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Alice,
      that's interesting about the sizes of the whole chickens in your area. I wonder if yours being smaller and my area's being larger has something to do with poultry in the midwest being culled due to fears of an avian flu this past year? I don't think that poultry virus reached my part of the US. Or not as significantly.

      It sounds like you got a lot of meals from that one chicken. Well done! All your meals sound delicious. I'm loving the idea of egg roll in a bowl. That's definitely doable for me with what I have. Thanks for sharing your meals.

      I'm so glad you found so much meat to freeze for future meals. It does sound like you could make a Thanksgiving dinner from what you have in stock. I could probably do Thanksgiving with what we have if we did a whole chicken instead of turkey, which we might just do, as I'm hearing there's a turkey shortage (but I've heard that every year for a few years now). I'd rather have chicken than turkey anyway. I'll see what my family thinks. I have canned yams, canned cranberry sauce and frozen cranberries, canned green beans, garden produce, chicken, everything needed for stuffing and potatoes, and canned pumpkin for a pie. Yep, I could do Thanksgiving without going shopping. We'd miss the whipped cream on the pie, though.

      Have a great rest of your weekend, Alice!

      Delete
  2. I love meatloaf, too. It's such a versatile dish. However, it seems like we haven't had it around here for a while. I'll have to check, but I don't think we have any ground meat, so I would need to go to the store before we can make it. I have reached the point that I can go out again with a mask after COVID, so maybe that will happen today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Live and Learn,
      I'm so glad you're done with the quarantine period! Enjoy your newfound freedom and the knowledge that you will likely have immunity for a while.

      Yep, we love our meatloaf, too. Like you said, it's so versatile. I can add all sorts of stuff to the meat mixture, or make it simple if I don't have time or ingredients for anything more.

      Have a great rest of your weekend, Live and Learn!

      Delete
  3. Your meals are so creative, diverse and delicious looking! It has turned really cool here but to bounce back for awhile this weekend for a bit. But we did get a killing freeze which pretty well ended any garden items. But, we still have lots of remnants that we gathered. With cooler weather, the menu evolved. Randomly we had, veggie soup x 2, venison stew, crockpot salsa chicken in tortillas with Mexican rice on the side, pork chops w/ collards and fried potatoes and turnips, bean soup, ham..which I had bought for 99 cents a pound this past spring. For treats we had fresh pears and apples, homemade chocolate chip cookies and blackberry cobbler...froze berries this summer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Linda,
      A killing freeze eventually does bring an end to our gardens, unfortunately. But it sounds like you preserved a fair amount of your garden's produce to enjoy through winter.
      Your meals sound tasty and warming! The salsa chicken in tortillas especially sounds like something my family would like. I will remember that with our abundance of chicken thighs. Thank you for sharing your menus.

      Wishing you a lovely rest of your weekend, Linda!

      Delete
  4. Meatloaf is one of my very favorite meals. All my kids also love (and make) meatloaf. I remember years ago when my older boy was probably 8 or 10 we were having meatloaf for dinner and he said he didn’t understand why people make fun of meatloaf because it makes a good dinner. It’s one of first things my dil learned to make for him when they first started living together. She didn’t know how to cook at all, but she’s learning. My son also does a lot of cooking.
    Dinners this week were-Dh made pizza Sunday. Monday we had a roast, Tuesday I made some frozen cordon bleu I got free from Ibotta. Wednesday was chicken and rice, and last nite I made myself a French dip. My Dh is gone for 10 days now hunting so not much cooking next week.
    Safeway has bone in chicken breasts for 99 cents this week with a digital coupon. We don’t really like them, but I bought a couple packs anyway. The store has them tagged wrong. They have them tagged at 99 cents, then the digital coupon comes off, making them 49 cents a lb! I bought the limit Wednesday, then went back in yesterday and they were still tagged like that so I got 2 more. I now have about 20lbs of chicken breast that I paid $10 for. My oldest dd also got some. She plans to can hers.

    Diane

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Diane,
      That was a fantastic bonus bargain that you got on the chicken breasts! I'm so glad for you.

      That's a sweet story about your son and meatloaf and your DIL learning to make that just because he liked it so much. And he was right -- it does make a good dinner (and great meatloaf sandwiches the next day if there's any leftover).

      Your meals sound delicious. I haven't had a French dip in a long while. Thank you for mentioning it. Maybe I'll make that sometime soon.

      Have a great rest of your weekend, Diane!

      Delete
  5. Add me to the list of people who likes meatloaf. My son doesn't care for it so we have it more often now that he's away at college.

    Meals were honey-soy sauce chicken thighs over rice, my "cheat " recipe for chicken tortilla soup--I made my own chips to sprinkle over the soup by toasting tortillas cut into strip with olive oil in the oven. The tortillas needed to be used up and that's a good way to do it. The soup is a combination of salsa, cheese, beans, chicken, and cumin in a crockpot. Pizzadillas (budgetbytes.com recipe), sheet pan supper with turkey kielbasa, and a tomato and venison soup with soda bread tonight. Crockpot to the rescue!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kris,
      Yum! Such tasty sounding meals you made. I'll have to remember the crockpot chicken tortilla soup you made. It sounds easy, frugal and with little hands-on work. Thanks for sharing your meals from this past week.

      I'm glad you can work some meatloaf dinners into your menus while your son is away at college. When I was young, my father's job would take him away from home a few days each week. My mom always used that time to make the meals that he didn't care for but the rest of us enjoyed. Win-win for all.

      Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Kris!

      Delete
  6. It's nice that your family pitches in with the cooking. Your daughters are so prepared to cook from scratch, which is still foreign to me. We made pizza, Chinese black bean watermelon rind stir fry (husband), ham hock with cabbage, artichokes, mochiko chicken, (take out), tossed salad with balsamic vinegar dressing, and today we tried a Mexican new eatery and had takeout.
    We both had Chile Relleno. Not a good value, almost $30 and we were still hungry. After shopping, we stopped by Wendy's to get two each complimentary senior coffees and frosties, 6pc chicken nuggets, large fries, and two chocolate chip cookies, all for $2.70 using two coupons. That was a super value.

    Laura

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Laura,
      You are the queen of the deal! Your meal for two at Wendy's cost about what 1 burger would cost. Did you have to sign up for notification of the senior freebies?

      Yes, I'm grateful that everyone is helping with the cooking. It's good for my daughters to cook and gain experience and my husband cooks on weekends as a way to give me a break without incurring restaurant costs.

      I've never heard of mochiko chicken before. I looked up some photos online and that looks really good. That's too bad about the Mexican restaurant and the meal not feeling like a good value. Oh well, now you know for the future.

      Have a wonderful rest of your evening, Laura!

      Delete
    2. Wendy's offer seniors a complimentary drink with an order, no coupon, either soda or coffee, before it was milk too. Maybe it depends on the store. The frosty is complimentary with an order (showing a tag that we purchased last December for the entire year). The coupons were high value, free nuggets with any purchase, so I bought a cookie, and free large fries with purchase, so another cookie. We ordered all that for the coffee and frosty.

      Laura

      Delete
    3. Hi Laura,
      Thank you for all of this info. I'll have to check our Wendy's and see if they offer something similar.

      Delete

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