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| Thursday's dinner ham and beans, baby green salad, steamed kale with cheddar, toast |
Saturday
bean and vegetable soup
buttered toast
apple wedges
raisins
Sunday -- Easter dinner
baked ham
sweet potato casserole
green bean casserole
curried pea and peanut slaw
French bread with herbed "cream cheese" and butter spread
watermelon pickles
rhubarb custard pie
Monday
bean and grilled onion chimichangas
carrot sticks
leftover green bean casserole
leftover sweet potato casserole
chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting
Tuesday
ham sandwiches on homemade French bread, with a spread of leftover herbed "cream cheese"
cole slaw
leftover chocolate cake
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| Wednesday's dinner baked beans and ham, spinach and onions, rice and ham gravy |
Wednesday
baked beans and ham
small cup of leftover bean soup from Saturday
frozen spinach sauteed with onions in ham fat
brown rice with ham gravy
leftover rhubarb pie
Thursday
leftover baked beans and ham combined with leftover refried beans from Monday
buttered toast
steamed garden kale with salt, garlic, and cheddar cheese
spring green garden salad of watercress, sorrel, chard, and chives in a homemade orange vinaigrette
rhubarb pie
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| this week's Swiss chard from the garden |
Other Meals This Week
Easter breakfast
Using my crockpot, an overnight breakfast casserole. I stole a couple of slices from the Easter ham on Saturday evening and added an egg, potato, onion, milk, and cheese filling. Many crockpot breakfast casserole recipes call for commercial hash browns. For this recipe, I used whole potatoes that I shredded in the food processor. No complaints. Using home-shredded, fresh potatoes worked just fine.
Breakfasts
Most days we have steel cut oats, cooked overnight in the crockpot. About a year ago, I bought a huge bag of steel cut oats -- 25 pounds. This is a lot of oats! I figure we have enough left to last through summer and maybe into fall. To the cooked oats, we each add our own toppings, which include, raisins, peanut butter, butter, jam/jelly, bananas, sugar, and milk.
Some of us have toast, topped with butter, homemade jam/jelly, cinnamon & sugar, peanut butter, or bean spread.
And I also bake muffins from scratch. This week, I made a batch of rhubarb muffins. I used up some pancake mix and corn muffin mix that I had in the pantry, plus garden rhubarb, and topped with the crumb topping from rhubarb pie-making over the weekend.
On the weekends, one or two of us might cook up an egg to go with breakfast. The eggs are simple, just fried, scrambled, or egg-in-the-hole. If anything is added, it is greens or herbs from the garden (such as chives), plus milk.
Lunches
Meat-based leftovers are usually saved for another dinner. But bean-based ones are often up for grabs when making lunches. Otherwise, we have bean spread, peanut butter, or egg salad on home-baked whole wheat sandwich bread or home-baked French baguettes. Whole eggs are also available for frying or scrambling. With the sandwiches, family members also choose from raw carrots, raisins, bananas, juice, frozen fruit, homemade yogurt, any greens from the garden, cole slaw from the March-purchased heads of cabbage, and any home-baked cookies, muffins, or snack cakes we may have. Sometimes, there is cheese available for lunches, depending on what else is still in stock and plentiful.
I vary the bean spreads each time I make a batch, so that there is always something new to try (and encourages us to eat the less-expensive beans in comparison to other sandwich toppings). This week, I made a pinto bean spread with salsa, fried onions, and some cheese powder which had begun to harden into clumps. The hot dogs which were available for lunches last month are now set aside for weekend cook-outs around the fire ring.
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| part of my afternoon snack yesterday -- bean spread on home-baked baguette, topped with chives |
Snacks
The least expensive snack foods are not snack foods at all, but some of the foods that I prepare for suppers, such as fruits and vegetables from the garden or foraged, baked or mashed potatoes, toast, leftover baked or refried beans, homemade tortillas, and leftover rice and gravy. We'll also snack on snack cake, cookies, muffins, peanut butter or bean spread on bread or by the spoon, popcorn, carrot sticks, raisins, and any fresh fruit.
I make yogurt once every 3 weeks and bake bread about once per week, alternating between whole wheat sandwich and French baguettes. I found some rye flour in my pantry and will begin a batch of sourdough caraway-rye bread this afternoon (it's a 2-day process).
About the Meat Fat . . .
Remember the conversation about using meat fat the other week? Well, we've been using the beef fat from the meatloaf, chicken fat from making the chicken pot pie, and ham fat from the Easter ham for our cooking this past week. The level of oil in the vegetable oil bottle has only gone down a little. On Wednesday, I rendered the fat from the fatty bits of the ham. Doing so gave me enough cooking fat for a few suppers. In addition, I simmered the meaty bone in the crockpot, and then skimmed more fat off of the stock. Plus, I still have 2 sticks of butter hidden in the freezer. I bring out one stick at a time and have discouraged the use of butter in baking for the time being.
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| this week's kale from our garden |
About Our Vegetable Supply . . .
I know that when reading my grocery shopping list it appears that we have little in the way of produce. I still have fruit in the freezer from last summer, frozen veggies purchased in fall and winter, plus now our vegetable garden is in production. Just the other day I harvested a large bowl of Swiss chard, a medium-sized bowl of kale, a mix of baby greens and herbs for salad, and a large bundle of chives for the fridge for adding to cooking throughout the week.
