The Little Red Berry That I Love and Sunday's Midday Meal

This past Friday I found cranberries on sale at Walmart for 76 cents a bag. I bought 5 bags.  Need I say that I love cranberries? I've been adding them fresh to my breakfast smoothies the last few days. And on Sunday I decided to bake some cranberry and orange peel muffins. I knew I had some candied orange peel in the freezer somewhere. I got lucky and stumbled upon it quickly. To a plain muffin recipe I added chopped fresh cranberries, the last of the chopped and candied orange peel, and a little bit of almond extract. These are delicious and taste almost like cake. In addition to making cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving I am hoping to make a batch of cranberry jam. The rest of the cranberries will go into the freezer for muffins and quick bread throughout winter.

If you've read my blog for a while you might recall that I grow cranberries. Our cranberry patch died off when a new hedge was planted that over-shaded the tiny vines. I rescued a couple of still living but small plants a couple of years ago and transplanted those to a new and sunnier patch. Those baby plants are doing well and could produce a couple of berries next year. When our former cranberry patch was doing really well we harvested about a quart to a quart and a half each year. It would be nice to get back to that level of harvest again. For now, I have to buy my cranberry fix.

Our weather has been fluctuating between rainy/blustery and cold/clear. I had hoped we could do another cookout on Sunday, but the weather report looked breezy (which makes for a very cold outdoor experience). So I opted to make a pot of stew instead. I'm old enough now that I'd rather be warm indoors with a bowl of stew than cold outdoors roasting a hot dog over a fire. There was a time when I'd happily choose the chilly cook-out, just to be around the fire ring. Now it's comfort all the way.

Here's how our Sunday after church meal went.

Menu:

Beef and Mushroom Stew
Garden Slaw
Fresh Grapes
Cranberry and Orange Peel Muffins

I used my crockpot again for this Sunday's meal. I made a beef and mushroom stew. I cooked the meat with onions, celery, herbs, garlic, and carrots (without thickening) on Saturday, refrigerated overnight, then reheated in the crockpot on Low the next morning. About 3 hours before I knew we'd be home, I added a slurry of flour and water and a bunch of bite-sized garden potatoes, then set it on High. Just before walking out the door I reduced the setting to Serve. The potatoes were about cooked and the liquid had thickened. When we came home I dumped some frozen peas into it, and turned it back to High for 15 minutes while I changed clothes.

Earlier in the morning I made a cabbage, celery, and onion salad, washed the grapes, and baked the muffins. Those items sat waiting for us to return.

For an evening supper I made pumpkin pancakes, apple wedges, and breakfast sausage. My family seems to really like having pancakes for dinner, which works for me. 

Did you notice the plate under the pancakes? My daughter found a set of 3 of these dinner plates at a thrift store this past summer. They were taped together and marked $10.99 for the 3 plates. We've found a couple of other pieces in this pattern at Goodwill and Value Village. The dinner plates sell for between $27 to $41 online. $3.66 each is an absolute steal. I have a mix of brown transfer ware patterns. We use them all together, mix and match. I like that kind of look, where nothing really matches, but somehow the pieces all look like they belong together.

I also wanted to update you all on the snacks/beverages that I made last week. If you recall, I made tomato juice, pumpkin-applesauce, GORP with chocolate chips, roasted pumpkin seeds, and cocoa mix. Live and Learn asked what I thought would be gobbled up first. I replied that I thought it would be the tomato juice. As it turned out, it was the tomato juice that was finished before anything else. This was shortly followed by the pumpkin-applesauce, then the pumpkin seeds, and we now have a small handful of GORP (no more chocolate chips in it, though), and about half of the cocoa mix. When tidying the shelves in the pantry I came across a few small peppermint sticks. I put these in a jar right next to the cocoa mix. I think peppermint cocoa will be popular in my house by the end of the month.

And that's about it for my weekend.

How was your weekend? Anything memorable this past weekend?