Stay Connected

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Week Before Thanksgiving

End of the week already! I am getting my preparations in order for the holiday next week. Making my list and doling out chores.

Friday

Usual Friday movie night. We watched The Score (2001), an action-crime drama, my husband's pick. It was good, but suspenseful. I bought the acorn squash at WinCo for 38 cents/lb. I bought 10 squash. So good.

Friday
homemade pepperoni pizza
mashed acorn squash

Saturday

This was the day my daughter baked the turkey-shaped cookies (link here in case you missed them). I spent the day decluttering and starting to clean for Thanksgiving. My husband made dinner. He likes to fry kale in oil until crispy. We each have our own ways to cook our basic foods. That gives us variety even when we're eating the same ingredients day after day.

Saturday
pinto beans
crispy, fried kale
rice and salsa

Sunday

I came across some frozen eggs in one of the freezers. I knew they were there, but didn't know how much I had. I thawed a 6-egg container this weekend to use in dinner. I suggested my husband make pancakes and scrambled eggs with this container. He also chopped up some of that huge kraut cabbage for making slaw. Not pictured -- the blackberry syrup, part of the batches I made in late summer and froze.

Sunday
scrambled eggs
pancakes and homemade blackberry syrup
Cole slaw

Monday

I checked around several stores this month for potatoes and ended up buying 3 bags of russets at Fred Meyer (Kroger), $2.79 each. We love baked potatoes, so I couldn't think of making anything else for dinner. This is a childhood favorite for my kids. It's how I got them to like kale. I normally top these potatoes with bacon bits. I had come across a container of pork cracklins' in the freezer, enough to top all four potatoes. Cracklins' are ham fat that's been diced and rendered until what's left is a pool of liquid fat and tiny browned bits. I strained out the browned bits and add to cornbread or use as bacon bits in soup or whatever. The liquid fat can then be used in cooking. I posted about rendering ham fat for use in cooking, here. Rendering fat is a useful skill to know for when times are lean. It's a way to produce additional cooking fat from scraps that may otherwise be tossed.

Monday
baked potato topped with kale in cheese sauce and cracklins'
crabapple and applesauce mix

Tuesday

Using more frozen then thawed eggs, my daughter made the Yorkshire pudding (and the rest of the dinner). Frozen eggs can be used for making scrambled, in quiches or frittatas, or in baking. For more info on freezing eggs, check this post.
Brussel sprouts leaves are edible! They are thicker and tougher than kale (but not in a stringy way, just more chew). I use them steamed, chopped fine and in quiches, and chopped fine and in soups. It's a way to get one more food item from the garden when it looks like there's nothing left.

Tuesday
meatloaf and gravy
Yorkshire pudding
steamed Brussel sprout leaves
crabapple and applesauce

Wednesday

My other daughter cooked tonight. I had processed another pumpkin this week (using my skin-on cooking/pureeing technique), so there's more puree to use and freeze. Both of my daughters really love pumpkin bread, so this was a natural choice for her to go with soup. The soup used potatoes, celery, carrots, kale, parsley, sage, and garlic all from the garden. It also used frozen turkey from last Thanksgiving, onion, and the liquid from straining cooked pureed pumpkin in place of stock. Very delicious!

Wednesday

Wednesday
turkey and garden vegetable soup
pumpkin spice bread (using aquafaba for half the eggs)


A hard day this week. I made chocolate-covered raisins to help and boost spirits. The raisins make it healthy, right?

Thursday

I took Farhana's suggestion for cooking greens (from the comments on Wednesday). Very tasty -- one daughter even commented on the kale.

Thursday
baked beans and hotdogs
rice with leftover meatloaf gravy
sautéed kale and onions Farhana-style
spiced fig and applesauce




I thought I'd share a photo of my favorite brown transfer ware platter. I have a bunch of different brown patterns that all seem to look good together, despite the differences.

I bought this at Tuesday Morning, a discount store chain that buys up surplus inventory, closeouts, factory overruns, and department store cancellations. You never know what you might find on any given day. Several years ago, my drive to get my daughters from high school took me by Tuesday Morning, so I would stop in occasionally. I found this platter and debated over it for about 2 seconds. I had to have it. I knew it would go with my fall and winter dishes (Friendly Village by Johnson Brothers) and would be the perfect turkey platter for Thanksgiving. When it's not in use, it is displayed on the hutch in the kitchen.

Friends, can I ask you to pray for my sister-in-law? Something terribly tragic happened in her family this week. I don't know how much privacy she or her family would want. So I won't go into any details, except she could use God's arms around her, my brother, my niece and nephew, her brother and his family. This is so fresh and devastating. My heart hurts for her. Thank you.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

31 comments:

  1. Prayers going out for your SIL's family, and for your family, too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Praying for your SIL and family and all involved.

    You and your family are so creative with meals! Making mental notes. Here, I'm preparing for surgery on Monday and trying to use up things that I doubt would be cooked or used next week. Trying to prep some things ahead of time and plan food to make it easy on myself and my family. I've already made cherry pie filling to freeze for one of our Thanksgiving pies and I may eliminate one or two of our typical sides to simplify.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Will be thinking of you Cat and hope all will go well with your upcoming surgery. You are smart to do some preplanning. Simplifying is certainly understandable and probably recommended for you post-surgery.

      Delete
    2. I echo what Lynn said. Keep us posted, Cat.

      Lili, I'm so sorry to hear about your sister-in-law and wanted you to know I prayed for her today.

      Delete
    3. Thank you, Cat.
      I said a prayer for your upcoming surgery. Rest and take care of yourself in your recovery. I agree, simplifying Thanksgiving would likely be helpful to your recovery. There will be many future Thanksgivings for more elaborate menus.
      My thoughts and prayers will be with you on Monday.

      Delete
    4. Thank you Lynn, Kris, and Lili for the prayers. They are very much appreciated!

      Delete
  3. Prayers to you and your family member, Lili. Also to you Cat for your surgery on Monday.

    Meals have been once again from pantry and freezer. My freezer is quite full but it also needed a defrost so I did that this week. I chose a cold day to do it so my food would stay cold. I have a routine setup for when I defrost that includes my van with all the seats down and a big table set up (freezer is in garage) and that's how I sort as I pull things out of the freezer. I didn't gain any space nor did I find any surprises. I thought I had more butter in there but there was none. I will need to stock up on that and find a place in the freezer to put it. I found all the items I plan to make for Thanksgiving including 2 whole chickens (I think there are 7 in the freezer) and lots of green beans. I'll be using applesauce from the freezer and I needed to find frozen butternut squash which I also found. I have 3 five pound bags of flour and one big bag of high gluten flour and I honestly don't know how to use the high gluten flour. I don't think it's used like AP flour. Suggestions would be nice.

    We had rice, steak, chicken/rice casserole, red thai curry soup, meatloaf, spaghetti, salads, baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese, and more that I can't think of.
    Alice

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Alice.
      Good job on the freezer sorting. For the high-gluten flour, I would use it in yeast bread-baking, especially French bread.

      This is from King Arthur Flour website: "chewy artisan breads and whole-grain breads with a hearty, lofty texture. It's good for breads that require long fermentation like no-kneads and great for dense, chewy breads like bagels, crusty rolls, artisan hearth breads, and pizza crusts — adding a toothsome quality and a bakery-worthy interior. Higher protein flour absorbs more liquid than other flours so when subbing in a recipe, add about 1 tablespoon or more extra liquid for each cup of High Gluten Flour to give dough the called-for consistency." Good luck!

      It sounds like you've got everything you need for Thanksgiving. Same here. I don't have a car right now and won't have one until Wednesday, so it's good I've got enough food at home and variety to make a big meal.

      Delete
  4. Praying for your SIL and her family, Lili. So sorry.
    Funny you should mention brussel sprout leaves, because I have a bunch of them to process right now. We pulled everything from the garden yesterday and I have a lot of things to process including leaves from all of the cruciferous veggies (broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts) including brussel sprouts. I wasn't sure how tough they would be, so you've given me an idea. I tried one last time to fix turnip greens for my family. They say they don't like them. Well, I added beet greens and spinach to make them more mild and the secret ingredient of a big dollop of bacon grease. They may not be the healthiest, but I think I have a winner.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, June.
      Great idea to mix other, milder greens in with the turnip greens, plus the bacon fat. It sounds yummy to me. I'll try mixing the Brussel sprout greens with some of the beet greens and see what we think. I'm out of bacon fat, but I do like onion and garlic on with greens.

      Delete
  5. I wish I could go back and easily edit, but I think you can read around my mistakes. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. And now I see, that I am posting from my husbands account again. Oh, well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. not a problem. I know who you are with either account.

      Delete
  7. Lili, I'm sending prayers for your SIL, her family and yours as well. Our family has known loss over the last few months, and it, and other tragedy, is amplified with the holidays approaching.

    I love your turkey platter, as well as the turkey plates I see in your meals. (From one dish lover to another!) I would have snapped up that platter as well. I didn't realize Tuesday Morning had such treasures. I've looked there before but have never seen anything like that platter before. I may need to make more trips there. My go to dishes have an apple and pear on them and are a perfect size for the dishwasher as they don't flop over in there. I use them in the fall and really most of the rest of the year as well. I have used them since I got married long ago, but of late they look like they have developed cracks. I'm not sure if it is from age and use, or the fact that they survived our house fire. They are a Royal Doulton pattern, so nice stoneware to begin with. I keep using them for DH and me, but probably wouldn't use them with guests. May need to use one of the other patterns I have (!) for more everyday use.

    Your meals look delicious as always. I have appreciated your comments regarding using the leaves from various vegetables, which I would never have considered before. Makes such good sense not to compost them when they can be eaten. What a great price on acorn squash. I thought a sale price of .59/# was good as usually .99 is about as low as they get here.

    Thank you again for this blog, and I'll be thinking of you and yours. Lynn

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Lynn. This has been such a terribly difficult couple of years for so many people I know. Two of my neighbors across the street lost a family member this year and this will be the first holiday period with that loss. I'm sorry for the losses in your own family.

      Tuesday Morning is definitely hit or miss. I often would stop in and see nothing of interest or value, or overpriced. I bought this turkey platter off-season that year. At TM not only was it discounted, but it had been marked down for clearance.

      That's disappointing when cracks and crazing happen to dishes. I've got quite a few like that. We still use them and think the crazing adds to the charm. It helps that our kitchen table also has a "rustic" look due to 35 years of daily use.

      Delete
  8. Je prierai pour votre famille, particulièrement votre belle soeur.

    Merci pour votre blog.

    Véro

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love that a community can come together and pray for someone - even though we don't know each other outside of this blog - We all need others and I will include my prayers with others on your SIL and her family's behalf.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Ruthie.
      I agree. This is wonderful that so many here would take time out of their day to pray for each other. So wonderful.

      Delete
  10. Hi friends,
    You are all such a blessing. I appreciate so much that you would pray for my sister-in-law and her family. I couldn't give details initially, out of respect for her/their privacy. I can now tell you some. My sister-in-law's mother was crossing the street one evening this week and hit and killed by a driver. Although she was 73 years old, she was a very young 73. The news described her as "elderly" and that could not be further from the truth. She was very fit, capable, and active. She'd lived with my brother, sister-in-law and family for many years. She was a mom, grandma, sister, aunt, and friend. And she will be dearly missed.
    Again, thank you for praying for my sister-in-law and their family. Blessings to you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How very tragic! Loss is never easy, but it must be extra hard being so very unexpected. Will continue to pray as I remember.

      Delete
  11. Oh Lili, I’m sorry for the passing of your SIL’s mother. So much shock when it occurs so quickly. I am a praying person and will pray for your SIL and the family. It must have been wonderful to have lived together, you gave a lovely description of her:)
    I used to receive your posts in my inbox. They stopped arriving so I usually look on the weekends. Explains why I’m late to comment usually.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, TEG.
      The email service that came with the blog ended several months ago. I'm working on adding a new email subscription service. It should be up and running just after the first of the new year. In the meantime, thank you for taking the time to check out my blog on your weekends.

      Delete
  12. I also see it shows me as anonymous. TEG

    ReplyDelete
  13. Oh Lili, I am so very sorry to hear the circumstances of your SIL's mother's death. She sounds like a vibrant woman. Such a loss for your family members and all who know her, and in such a shocking and unexpected manner. I know that pedestrian deaths are at an all-time high in the US. I've known, unfortunately, an increasing number of people (I think 3 now, from 30s-50s) who have been killed in a similar fashion to your friend across the country, several in hit and run accidents. It's heartbreaking. Just on Friday, one of our local young people who was working at a great job in NYC returned home here, after being struck there. She was discharged from a rehab center to return home with severe disabilities now. My husband walks a lot for fitness. I worry a bit about it and encourage him to keep his head on swivel as he doesn't always walk on our safe bike path. I'll continue to think and pray for you all in this sad situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lynn,
      I didn't know if I was just hearing of more pedestrian-car accidents, or if it was on the rise. That's so sad. I'm sorry for those you've lost to these sort of accidents.

      Delete
  14. My prayers to you, Cat, for your speedy recovery, and to your SIL and her family, Lili. So heartbreaking to bear when someone in our family is hurting. Your meals this week is made with love and support from your family to you.

    Laura

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, I missed reading your comment above. I'm so sorry your family is going through this. Recently I've been mourning too, the loss of our parakeet, a long time work associate, and my husband's surgeon who he had a routine appointment scheduled next week. I know life has its tragedies but it is never easy.
      Hope you have a restful weekend,
      Laura

      Delete
    2. Hi Laura,
      I'm so sorry for the losses you've experienced recently. It's so hard to bear when we lose someone or a pet. And intensified when it feels like losses just keep coming.
      Have a lovely rest of your evening, Laura.

      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