Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Week Before Thanksgiving

oven fries baked in beef fat

Friday (One daughter now does the pizza on Fridays. She wanted to master making pizza from scratch, so I suggested she take over Friday's dinner. She's now a pro.)

scratch pepperoni pizza
cabbage, kale, raisin salad
steamed carrots (saved the residual water to add to my breakfast smoothie the next day)

Saturday
bean and cheese burritos in homemade tortillas, salsa on the side
sautéed beet greens and onions
sautéed spiced apples

Sunday (My husband made dinner for us. He has a couple of things he makes regularly for us, soup being one, burritos including the tortillas being another.)
chicken and vegetable soup, using frozen chicken in stock from last week's roasted chicken
scratch biscuits
apple wedges

Monday
BBQ beef bowls -- beef simmered in BBQ spices, a little tomato paste, vinegar, and brown sugar, topped with cheese, all on top of brown rice, with shredded radish leaves dressed in avocado oil, salt, and chive blossom vinegar on the side, along with avocado slices and chopped yellow tomatoes
sweet potato oven fries baked in a mix of beef fat and vegetable oil
carrot cookies

I had some fat that I cut off of the cut of beef I used in the BBQ bowls and set aside until Tuesday. On Tuesday I cut the fat into small dices and rendered fat to use in cooking. This fat was then used in oven fries on Tuesday and Thursday. I froze the last bit of rendered fat after using what I needed to make the fries.

Tuesday
tuna melts on scratch French bread, yum!
roasted pumpkin cubes
oven fries baked in beef fat
sautéed Brussel sprout leaves, kale, and cabbage sprouts in ham fat (cabbage sprouts are the baby plants which grew at the cutting spot from harvesting cabbage heads) 

Wednesday (My other daughter has wanted to make eggs Benedict for a while, and this was the night she tried them. The English muffins turned out great and the Hollandaise sauce was perfect. We have some leftover Hollandaise -- any suggestions for using it?)
eggs Benedict on homemade English muffins with scratch Hollandaise sauce
frozen peas
stewed prunes

Thursday
leftover cooked ground beef patties in gravy from the freezer
oven fries baked in beef fat
beet leaves mixed with Swiss chard sautéed in ham fat
roasted pumpkin cubes
sautéed frozen apple chunks, using up last of spice cider for the liquid

Preparing for Thanksgiving

Our fridge is beginning to empty out after doing my big stock-up at WinCo a week ago. Empty is how I want it going into the prep for Thanksgiving, so this is a good thing. You know how this is. I wish there was a rent-a-fridge just for a holiday, or an expandable feature to temporarily increase the capacity of the fridge you have. I need space to thaw some frozen meat and store casserole dishes as they await baking on Thursday. I will also need space for leftovers on Thanksgiving. I'll do a good cleaning of the fridge in the next couple of days, and that will hopefully identify more than can be used or thrown out. No grocery shopping this week, not even to pick up bananas.

In the garden

Unless we have a very mild rest of November, I think the Brussel sprout leaves and Swiss chard are done for the season. If winter is mild, both might come back briefly in spring. I still have some kale, radish leaves, beet roots, and turnips in the garden. I'm also down to my last homegrown pumpkin (out of 8). This last one is the largest. I think I can get 3 meals out of this one. I still have 2 large purchased Jack o' lantern pumpkins to cook and puree. With each passing week we use more and more purchased vegetables.

My favorite meal this week -- honestly I loved many of them. But if I had to choose one which surprised me how much we all enjoyed it was the BBQ beef bowls. All of the combine flavors and textures made this really delicious. Taking a bite of the tangy radish greens (dressed in an oil and vinegar) along with a slightly sweet bit of BBQ beef and a creamy bite of avocado was awesome.

Did you have a favorite meal this past week?