Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for Mid-June

Friday
frozen pizza (freezer stash)
eggs and mushrooms
stuffed grape leaves (freezer stash)
roasted turnip roots
sautéed turnip greens and garlic
scratch cinnamon rolls

Saturday use it up supper -- a variety of leftovers to be eaten
plus
sautéed kale and rhubarb pie

Sunday
spaghetti and meat sauce
Sautéed Swiss chard

leftover pie

Monday
ham, egg and vegetable (including turnips and beets from the garden) fried rice (freezer stash)
scratch brownies

Tuesday
chili (freezer stash)
vanilla-rhubarb sauce
cornbread (freezer stash)

Wednesday
ham and lentil soup (freezer stash)
cabbage, kale, and carrot leaf slaw
leftover cornbread (freezer stash)

Thursday

eggs with peppers and onions

rice

corn (freezer stash)

carrot sticks

Turnips

We're in turnip season right now. I harvested turnips twice this week. I use almost all of each turnip plant. We use the roots, chopped, tossed with oil, salt and pepper then roasted. We use the leaves, shredded and sautéed with onions and garlic. And we use the stems. I chop the stems into 1/4-1/2-inch bits and freeze them in ziplock bags. I add these bits to purchased frozen chopped broccoli to stretch the broccoli.

I made a batch of ketchup this week. I used the ingredient list on a purchased bottle of ketchup as my initial guide. Our purchased ketchup label wasn't specific about what spices were used, so I looked up an old recipe for ketchup for that info. I taste compared the small amount of purchased ketchup remaining in the bottle with my batch on the stove and adjusted different ingredients until it was just about right. Kind of surprising how much sugar I needed to add to get the taste right. Anyway, my family seemed to like my ketchup well enough.

One of my goals this past week has been to empty the small stand alone freezer so I can defrost it. The frost is so great that it's taking up space that I need to store some of the garden harvest. However, it sure seems like when I take a few things out to use in meals or stash in another freezer, more freezer stuff appears. I know that's not possible, but there seems to be an endless amount of frozen food in that freezer. Once I do get it emptied, it should thaw quickly (a day or two). Then I can fill it back up! The good news is we have way more juice concentrate that I had thought. When at Walmart a couple of weekends ago I noticed that frozen orange juice concentrate had gone up quite a bit since I stocked up in late 2021. It's now $2.14/can. In 2021 it was $1.39/can. I also have enough frozen butter to get us through a few more months. Anyway, I noted in our menus which items came out of that freezer.

The last few days I've been working on our Father's Day meal plans. I'll use several foods I have on hand. but I also went grocery shopping for some special foods. I bought frozen corn on the cob, a watermelon, some frozen roasting vegetables (baby red potatoes, carrots, onions, and zucchini), and two kinds of juice (blueberry-pomegranate and apple-cherry). I have some chicken-apple sausages in the freezer, pecans for baking a pecan pie, and tortilla chips and salsa. We're doing lunch on Sunday, so I'll also make coffee and tea. The weather looks less than lovely for Sunday, so we'll spend our time indoors. 

Do you have plans in place for celebrating Father's Day? How was your week? Any special meals that stand-out in your mind?

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!