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Thursday, January 26, 2023

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers: Late-January Garden Harvesting

Friday

Friday
homemade pepperoni and mushroom pizza (using the end of the Costco mushrooms)
crabapple-applesauce (homegrown crabapples turned into sauce mixed with commercial applesauce)
mashed winter squash

Saturday (just 2 of us at home, so I made an easy meal)
chicken breast diced and cooked with canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs
brown rice
frozen broccoli

Sunday

Sunday
bean burritos, made with scratch flour tortillas and home-cooked, sprouted pinto beans
canned carrots

Monday

Monday
pot roast, potato wedges and gravy
honey-mustard glazed carrots
garden fresh kale and homegrown sprout salad
crabapple-applesauce

Tuesday

Tuesday
ham and eggs
garden fresh kale, sprout and cranberry salad
roasted pumpkin cubes
leftover potatoes and gravy

Wednesday

Wednesday
split pea, leafy green (frozen carrot greens, frozen celery leaves) and ham soup
dinner rolls (scratch, leftover from New Years and kept in the freezer)
canned pineapple

Thursday

Thursday
teriyaki chicken thighs with garden fresh Brussel sprout leaves and frozen turnip stem pieces
brown rice


Another week of dinners cooked at home. Not only does cooking at home save money, but I've grown to really prefer my own cooking. I can make foods exactly as we need them to be cooked, omitting ingredients that one or more of us can't eat while bumping up the vegetable content. Having a tummy that feels good after a meal is worth more than the leisure of meals out.

I'm trying something new. I'm sprouting dried pinto beans before cooking them up. I only sprout until they have tiny "tails". I've read that beans may be more digestible if sprouted before cooking. This was the first week I'd sprouted pintos for cooking, so I'm not sure if I can say whether or not they're more digestible. I'll be doing this once per week and see what I think over time.

Our garden is producing some leafy greens for us right now. If the weather doesn't turn horribly frozen, we should be able to harvest some greens several days per week for a few weeks.  We have mache, 2 kinds of kale, and Brussel sprout greens producing. In addition, the chives are coming up in a pot I put on the deck. Some years are like this, where we can harvest from the garden beginning in January.  

On the bad news side, we found some tiny bugs in the brown rice container. These are teeny, tiny bugs, small enough to fall through the mesh of a sieve. So, in addition to storing all of the brown rice in the deep freeze, we're also rinsing and straining the rice before cooking. I rinse about 3 times in a bowl of water, about until the final rinse has virtually no tiny bugs. A few bugs won't harm us, right? We'll be eating brown rice more often to try and use this up soon.

That's about it for our meals this week. What was on your menu?

Have a great weekend, friends!

15 comments:

  1. I made a lentil/brown rice/orzo soup in beef broth with tiny bits of beef. Pork tenderloin, scalloped potatoes, cauliflower. Baked chicken, baked potatoes. Apple/Chicken sausage and peppers in skillet. Spaghetti two days in a row. Pork stir fry with brown rice.
    Alice

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your meals look delicious, Lili. I was just commenting on my blog about eating meals at home being better than eating out. Great minds think alike. Your crabapple sauce sounds so good. Back where I grew up the crab apples were tiny about the size of a thimble. We also had choke cherries and they were tiny, but my friends mother would make jam out of them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Belinda,
      Great minds, yes!
      I've never seen choke cherries before. I've read of them, though. Jam sounds like a delicious use for them.

      Delete
  3. I'm becoming the same way about eating out. For instance, I've gotten really picky about salads. I don't want a salad that I can make at home, so it has to be special either in the ingredients or the dressing-something I don't readily make, like a salad with poached pears or a champagne vinaigrette. We'll buy seafood out, but regular meals? We just aren't doing that much anymore for some of the same reasons you mentioned.

    I am continuing to eat from our garden as well-lettuce! Somehow, it survived our mid-teens weather before Christmas. Everything I read said that the variety (black seeded Simpson) was cold tolerant to about freezing but not in the teens. I covered the plants that I could, but the majority were uncovered. They ALL survived, much to my shock. It is growing very slowly or course, compared to spring, but it has provided enough that I haven't needed to buy lettuce at the store. I picked bell peppers and jalapenos until Dec 23 and the teens temps. All of that has never happened before here. My broccoli looked kind of sad after the low temps with frozen leaves, but it has rebounded too, though the stalks are still small in circumference. I figure I'll have the first fruits of the spring with my overwintering plants! It's been a fun experiment. I've got to do some weeding soon!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lynn,
      I feel the same way, that restaurant meals need to be special in some way, not something I make at home. I will, however, go out for coffee with a friend or family member, using a gift card. It doesn't cost me anything (due to the gift card) and I enjoy being out for a little bit.
      I'm so glad for you that you are still getting produce from your garden!

      Delete
  4. We also don't eat out much, and when we do, it tends to be food that I wouldn't be likely to cook at home. I meet up for coffee with people fairly frequently, though. It's an inexpensive way to enjoy the experience of going out as compared with eating a meal out, and I enjoy the opportunity to linger over coffee and conversation.

    It's been a goofy week here due to our schedules. Not sure I remember all of what we've had--I know we had Thai-style chicken and polenta, baked potato bar, and tonight I'm making ham & bean soup with bread. My husband and I had leftover soup on Wednesday, as my daughter was in Honors Band all day (they fed the kids pizza) and wasn't home to eat. We enjoyed hearing the concert that evening and as always, I'm so impressed with the music that the director gets out of these kids. They only have one day to practice together and then put on a concert.

    Happy weekend, everyone!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kris,
      I do the coffee out when with someone else, and using gift cards. I agree, it is a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy being out with friends/family. I typically order a double espresso, which is a coffee drink I don't make at home. It's also about the least expensive thing you can order at coffee houses.

      That sounds like a fun evening, seeing your daughter and the school band play a concert. What instrument does she play?

      Delete
  5. We eat out some here especially since the rest of my family really enjoys it. Last weekend we met halfway between our house and my son's house for lunch. We had deli sandwiches that were the biggest I've ever seen at a reasonable price (or at least for these days). I had tuna salad which came on a loaf of sour dough bread. There was probably at least a pound of tuna on the sandwich. I had 4 lunches and one dinner from it. Not as cheap as eating at home, but a good bargain all the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Live and Learn, my DH likes eating out as well. He meets an elderly (more elderly than us!) widowed friend twice a month for lunch, which is especially good for the friend. So that gives DH that opportunity. Then maybe monthly, or sometimes more if we are traveling, we will eat out as well, usually lunch. As much as I enjoy cooking (I know, I'm weird like that-it's somewhat therapeutic to me) I do enjoy the break now and then myself. Living in a resort area, eating out during the season often requires a lot of waiting, so our eating out is often done in the off season. We have to hit the sweet spot though. In the off season, many restaurants shut down, so choices are more limited, which also affects our eating out. But seafood is our "go to" eat out meal, and it is good!

      Delete
    2. Hi Live and Learn,
      I think we all have our financial priorities. My own family makes some financial choices that many families wouldn't.
      It sounds like you and your family had a nice lunch out. All together in one place when you live a distance apart is worth a meal out.

      Delete
  6. These days I prefer home prepared meals, too. It is healthier and more enjoyable. However, my husband loves take out plate lunches, so to compromise I pack a huge bowl of toss greens loaded with toppings. That way, eating out is an option for me. I can bring the salad back home (which is kept in a cooler) if I choose to buy a take out lunch too. Sometimes we share one order takeout and the salad brought from home. So far, our salad was more satisfying than a takeout meal, probably because it costs so much less.

    I am interested to find out whether sprouting helps digestion of larger beans. My husband gets very gassy from beans. As always, your meals are so nutritious and wonderful.

    Have a great weekend,
    Laura

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Laura,
      You and your husband have found a great compromise. I've been known to pack a bunch of carrot sticks or cut up fruit to quick service restaurants (the kind without a waiter), so my tummy feels normal after eating out.

      We did the sprouted pintos again this weekend. I think it does help with digestion. I just started another batch to sprout today, to cook up at the end of the week. I'll keep you updated if I think sprouting the beans truly helps.

      Delete
  7. Yes, I've had the same issue with my stored rice in the past, bah. Yes, kind of icky, but like you said not fatal (and certainly not worth wasting good rice over....!) -- and nothing a good rinse and swish (several times over) can't cure....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ugh, I hate that others have had this unpleasant surprise in their stored rice. At least with rice, it can be rinsed until the water is clear. Can't do that with flour or grain meals. Not worth wasting good rice is right!

      Delete

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