3 Good Things

In stressful times, I find I need to find some good things going on. Here are 3 for me for today.

1) Last night, I made meatballs and spaghetti for dinner. I used 12 ounces of 80/20 ground beef, adding seasonings and bread crumbs bread crumbs. From this, I made 16 small meatballs for the 4 of us. 

I drained and saved the fat, then deglazed the pan with water, saving the liquid. Tonight, I'll use the beef fat and liquid to make a gravy to pour over bean burgers and rice.

2) Since using a higher temperature setting on the automatic dishwasher I've noticed that everything stainless looks so much shinier, including the inside of the dishwasher door.

3) It's pretty clear that we won't be taking a vacation this spring or summer. So, I've decided to take some of our vacation budget for the year and inject it into the grocery budget. With some of that new grocery money, I ordered some extra foods online, including some all-purpose flour, peanut butter, raisins, crackers, and applesauce. 

Will You Keep a Vegetable Garden This Summer?

over-wintered radish greens
ready to harvest to add to soups

For the past 2 weeks, I've tried to get outside to the vegetable garden for an hour or two each day. I still have a lot of work to do before April begins. I'm filling a bed with soil and compost so I can transplant 2 blueberry bushes this spring before the growing season begins. Several years ago, we planted 4 blueberry bushes where we thought they'd do well. Turns out that wasn't a good spot after all (too far from the main garden so I couldn't keep an eye of the bushes for water and birds). Last spring, my husband built a raised bed near the vegetable and berry garden. I filled one-third of the bed with soil and compost, mounded to one side, then transplanted one of the blueberry bushes. It did well over the summer and winter, so this year I'm moving 2 of the other bushes over to that bed. The 4th bush will go near the other 4 bushes that we have planted and have done well over the years, but maybe not until next year when I can get a spot prepared. Anyways, I'm moving soil and compost for the blueberry bed.

I'm also preparing a potato bed this week. I've grown potatoes for the last 15 years, saving some from each year to use as seed in the next. Well, at the end of last fall, I felt like I'm getting too old to be out digging potatoes for hours in the cold and wet weather we have in fall. I thought I would be done growing potatoes. My plan for vegetable gardening was to only do simple plants from here on out. Guess I was wrong on that plan. 

over-wintered kale to stir fry or add to salads

Anyway, I've been thinking about how important this year's vegetable and fruit garden will be. I expect there will be some inflation on food in the coming months. If ever there was a time to vegetable garden, this summer is it. Gardening will provide my family with fresh produce even if I can't get out to a store for months or even if produce prices are higher than normal. So, I decided to grow potatoes after all this year. The problem is since I thought I wouldn't grow potatoes again, I told my husband to go ahead and use any of the potatoes that I dug last fall in cooking. Men love their potatoes, right? 

Well, thankfully, my husband doesn't listen to me. When I was cleaning in the garage 2 weeks ago, I found a bucket of seed potatoes from last fall! So, I've been working my tail off getting a bed ready for them. Since we weren't going to grow potatoes again (or so I thought), we put a walkway where the potatoes used to grow, so we could get to the raspberries without walking all around the garden.

In addition to raspberries, we grow a lot of strawberries each summer, here. I have 5 dedicated beds for them. Last week, I moved all of the strawberry plants out of one bed and into the other 4 beds, so I could use that one bed for my found seed potatoes.

six itty bitty tomato plants
from those seeds I started a month ago

I really thought I'd be taking it easier in springs and summers, as far as vegetable gardening goes. Despite the hard physical work, I am grateful that we have this space so I can grow a large part of our produce. I encourage anyone who has sunny garden space to plant a few seeds this spring and summer. There are so many things that we can't control with COVID19. Growing some of our own veggies is something that many of us can do. Not only could it save us some money on fresh produce, but also, by not buying as much produce ourselves, we could ease the possible tight supply of produce in the markets enough so that others who can't garden could find more affordable produce for themselves in the stores.

Talk About Bad Timing . . .

My dinner plan last night contained polenta. I had the chicken stock, milk, olive oil, garlic, rosemary, red pepper, and salt all at a boil when I took the corn polenta out of the pantry, opened the container, and found teeny, tiny bugs all over inside. I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or if there really were bunches of tiny dark bugs in the polenta. So, I took the container to my husband and asked him what he saw. Yep, lots and lots of crawling, tiny critters.

My seasoned liquids were all set for the corn polenta to be added. At that last minute, I made the switch to an oat polenta, using coarsely ground, rolled oats (ground in the food processor). 

I was thinking, this might be really gross. But as it turned out, it was actually quite good. I finished making the oat polenta just as if this was made from ground corn. I poured the cooked polenta into a pan to cool, cut it into triangles, floured and pan-fried, then topped with marinara sauce.


With the buggy corn polenta, I dumped it on the compost and gave my pantry a thorough cleaning. As far as I can see, the bugs were only in the corn polenta. To be safe, I am in the midst of freezing all of our grains in batches, as I make room in the freezer. 

My husband had thought we could just microwave the polenta and still use it. I don't feel that desperate just yet. I lost about 3 to 5 pounds of grains to the bugs. But I think we're going to be fine.


Have you ever had savory oatmeal before? I've always wanted to try something savory made with oats, just to see how we'd like it. Turns out -- we really enjoyed it. Just one of those instances when you don't know if you'll like it until you try it.

I Sometimes Go Overboard on the Substitutions

I was making a batch of brownies yesterday and wanted to stretch our butter, sugar, white flour, and eggs -- yep, almost all of the ingredients that go into a batch of brownies. So, I used oil in place of butter, reduced the sugar, replaced most of the all-purpose flour with sifted whole wheat flour, and used ground flax seeds plus water for one of the two eggs in the recipe. I also used the last tablespoon of carob powder for some of the cocoa powder.

The dough/batter was a bit stiff going into the pan. As they baked, I could see the oil bubbling up through the mass. The brownies never had that glistening, smooth look that one expects on the surface of a pan of brownies, even after baking. When they came out of the oven, they looked a bit like a dark chocolate concrete slab. In my attempts to improve the batch and fool my family members into eating them, I topped them with a couple of pumpkin-spice marshmallows, melting chocolate, and the last of some outdated cookie butter (something my daughter bought but didn't really like -- I thought it was okay, though). I swirled this all around as it all melted together. The end result was some not totally horrible bars, which in my family still gets eaten rather quickly.

Going forward -- substitutions are great and can save a recipe when you realize you don't have enough of one ingredient. But if you try to substitute too many of the ingredients at once, you may find that like me, you've made some frankenstein-esque rendition of a family favorite. Fortunately for me right now, I have a very captive audience for anything I cook or bake. These will get eaten.

Homemade Oat Flour to Substitute for All-Purpose Flour in Baking

The two foods that I can barely keep up with my family's consumption right now are homemade soup and homemade bread. I've been doing what I can to push other grain consumption, such as making more rice and baking batches of granola. Yet, bread still seems to be a favorite around these parts.

While I still have about 15 pounds of white flour (all-purpose flour made from wheat), I've been watching our family's use and have determined that we need to slow down on the white flour consumption. You all know that I bake just about every baked good that my family consumes, from cakes and pies, to breads and tortillas. In the past couple of weeks, we seem to have had a lot of white flour-only baked goods, which began to drain our supply of that flour.

When I bake yeasted bread, I use about a half and half (white and whole wheat) blend of flours. I had a thought the other day to turn some of my almost 25 pounds of rolled oats into flour, to use as a substitute for part of the white flour in making bread. Yeasted bread still needs some of the glutinous flours, so an all-oat bread would be out of the question for me. But I thought I could still use half whole wheat flour, then a quarter oat flour and a quarter of the white flour and turn out a loaf that my family would enjoy. (Homemade 100% whole wheat loaves are not as appreciated by my clan.)

I tried this out on a single, large loaf of French bread on Friday. It turned out great!

To make oat flour, I processed regular rolled oats in my food processor, much like I would for making instant oatmeal, only pulsing until it looked like a fine meal. 

I have the rest of what I processed stored in a container. I'll make a full baking of bread (4 loaves) this afternoon and use this 1/4, 1/4, 1/2 formula for the flours in the dough.

In the long run, substituting oat flour for all-purpose flour would be more expensive than simply using all-purpose flour. However, for my current circumstances of not wanting to venture out to stores while still having a lot of rolled oats that could be used, this is a good solution. It will enable me to stretch out our supply of AP flour for several extra weeks. And my family still gets lots and lots of homemade bread.

By the way, oat flour also makes great scones and muffins. 

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers While Rationing Our Supplies

We're in week 3 of living off of February's stock-up. We're beginning to run out of some of the fruit that I bought, but otherwise, I think we're doing pretty well so far. As we've talked a bit about, here, I've been trying to use both the exciting and not-so-exciting foods in the meals that I prepare. So, some rice and bean meals as well as meat or cheese meals.

I haven't posted what we've had for weekly meals in a while, so in no particular order or with dates attached, here's what we've been eating since early in the month.

rice, vegetables, and beans mexi-style
 topped with cheese

cheesy tuna and tofu noodle casserole

fried homemade tortilla and bean tostado ,
 slaw on the side

potato and veggie curry topped with cheese,
green beans on the side

homemade flour tortilla chips, carrot sticks,
bean dip

frozen pizza (bought by daughter a while ago),
carrots and green beans

meatloaf and rice smothered with
tomato gravy and carrots

bean burgers topped with gravy made with
meatloaf drippings,
brown rice, frozen spinach and onions --
I began eating right away, I was so hungry!

bean and veggie tostado, green beans

lentil salad on Romaine leaves,
pasta and marinara, carrots

tuna, tofu, veggie, noodle casserole,
sweet & sour slaw

beans 'n' greens with brown rice, sweet & sour slaw

We're eating well, or so it feels. At dinner last night, my husband commented that the kitchen is well stocked. I told him to hold that thought for another 3 weeks and we'll see just how well stocked we are. Although these meals mostly look vegetarian, we do have meat in the freezer. We're just trying to ration it all out. 

I'm excited for this year's garden! I picked a bunch of watercress and sorrel from the garden yesterday. Watercress is the green from last night's dinner. I'll use the sorrel in a pesto for tonight's dinner. I also used garden kale this past week (not shown -- a veggie and lentil soup). I've been working in the garden preparing a larger spot for planting potatoes. The rhubarb is up, but it is so, so tiny still. I'm planning on making a lot of rhubarb jello this spring, as that's such a palatable, reduced-sugar way to use rhubarb. I planted the snow peas on Wednesday and covered that patch with a plastic tunnel row cover. I'm hoping the row cover will help heat the soil and give us snow peas earlier than usual. We shall see.

That's about it for recent meals. What's been on your menu? Are you going to try limiting grocery shopping during this pandemic, or do you feel comfortable with your usual shopping routine right now? While the virus is now in every US state and I think every Canadian province, I understand that this will affect each of us slightly differently. I pray for health and safety for all of us.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Using Grocery Delivery Services

Our neighborhood roads have become eerily quiet in this last week, with the exception of delivery vehicles. If you feel that you are at risk to go out to grocery stores, then delivery is a viable option. Ill share my own experience.

As February was ending, it became to feel less and less safe in my area. I knew of a few people who had been sick for a while with flu-like symptoms. The flu season has hit hard for us, in addition to COVID19. I was also watching international news and the future for the US didn't look good. Anyways, I was apprehensive about going to my last 2 shopping venues. So, I chose to do delivery service for both of them. I used 2 different services, Shipt and Instacart.

I used Shipt for a Target grocery delivery. Shipt has a 4-week free trial. You have to call to cancel the membership before the 4-week end, or you will be charged $99 -- just beware. And I anticipate the phone lines will be busy in another 3 to 4 weeks. So, it may be wise to try canceling at your 3-week mark, instead of waiting till the last minute.

Okay, so for my Target Shipt delivery
Target has pretty good prices on their store-brands, for both non-food and food items. And the quality for those brands is very good. Our Target stores get a lot of business over the weekends and shelves can be quite bare of the basics by the end of Sunday. For that reason, I scheduled my delivery for late Tuesday afternoon. (If I do it again, I'll choose Wednesday mid-morning.) The other advantage to selecting a mid-week delivery is you're much more likely to get a time-slot. I was just checking weekend time slots this past weekend and they were all booked up, here.

My delivery person said she'd shopped for someone's order on Monday afternoon and said the milk had been completely cleaned out. By Tuesday afternoon, the milk had been restocked. However, the frozen orange juice that I'd wanted was completely wiped out by Tuesday afternoon.

When my shopper experienced no or not enough stock of one of my items, she texted me and asked if I'd like a substitute (giving me alternatives at the same time). The substitutes were not always the same price. So you may want to ask about the price difference on substitutions, if that isn't offered.

I was informed via text when my shopper was finished and would be leaving for my house. I readied my end by finding gloves, disinfecting wipes, and opening the garage. When my deliverer arrived, I took delivery in an open area of the garage. She put everything on the floor and I handed her a tip. Shipt does allow for an in-app tip, and in the future I will do that. I stood 6 to 10 feet away from her while she was bringing the items in, but did have to get within close proximity to give a tip. If I were sick, this would be too close for her safety and if she were sick, it could potentially risk infection for me.

After she drove off, while wearing heavy duty latex gloves, I wiped down every package with homemade bleach wipes. I placed items that needed refrigeration or freezing in the garage fridge and freezer. nothing came into the house at that point. I allowed the rest to sit in the garage for several hours, so the bleach could do its thing. After several hours, I brought the items inside (if you remember, we had a bit of a mouse problem last year, including in the garage), but I placed them all in a spot in the house where we don't go often. We just left those items in this spot for several days. When I did finally need to use some of the delivered items, I washed plastic packaging under running water before opening and produce with a bit of liquid dish soap and lots of water before using. After the fact, my son and DIL told me they had done something very similar after using delivery for groceries -- disinfecting, then washing well. My DIL is very conscious of household cleanliness, so I knew I was on the right track for safety, here.

For my Instacart experience
The other delivery service I used was instacart. Instacart serves many grocery stores in my area, but also Cash & Carry SmartFood Service (the restaurant supply). Instacart has a first-time free trial, nothing to cancel later. There is a service fee that is not waived. It looks like it's about 5%. In addition, a small amount is added to the price of each item compared to the store's usual price. Still, for many items, it was still less expensive for me to use Instacart for Cash & Carry than any other delivery option, because Cash & Carry's price per unit is so outstanding for institutional sizes on many items. The default for tipping on Instacart is in-app, so unless you waive the tip, you will be charged a tip of about 5%. For the service of having someone shop for my groceries and take the risk of being in public for me, a tip is an expense that is well-worth it to me.

My experience with the Instacart shopper is much like the one with Target's shipt. I used Instacart on a Wednesday morning. The shopper texted me as he shopped. I also received in-app chat messages. I had the app open on my laptop the entire time he was shopping and I could "see" when he picked up an item. In the case of needing substitutions, I was notified of possibilities by the app, which I could then approve. For the one item that I had not selected a substitution, the shopper messaged me with a photo of a possibility, along with price. I was able to approve that substitution via chat message.

Again, I took delivery in my garage and mentioned to the driver that I'd tipped in-app. I followed my disinfecting  and storage procedure for all of the items.

For both services, my receipts were emailed to me.

The one-time service charge for Shipt is about $10 (if I recall correctly). According to the Shipt website, you can also subscribe for just one month, for $14, unlimited deliveries in that one month. Shipt also marks up the cost of each item. Their website indicates that this mark-up ends up being about $5 for every $35 spent.

Is the shopping fees for someone else to do my shopping worth the expense? For certain circumstances, the expense is worth it. In my region, people over 60 and/or with medical vulnerabilities (or members of their household with the same conditions) are being asked to stay at home as much as possible. Having groceries delivered is another way to minimize exposure to coronavirus.

There are ways to minimize the service and delivery fees. There are coupon codes and/or offers for free trials. Bundling your shopping into one trip for a month reduces flat rates that may be assessed, such as Instacart's regular delivery fee (I think that's a $3.99 flat rate). 

If you schedule well in advance, you can avoid extra "busy delivery times" fees. Instacart does have a surcharge for extra busy periods. However, the customer is notified of this surcharge during the order placement. 

In addition, you can reduce service and delivery fees by just buying basic food items or ingredients for scratch cooking. As your overall grocery budget will be lowered by shopping this way, so will your percentage-based delivery fees. Buy only the foods or supplies that you cannot buy through a place like Amazon or other web store, such as fresh produce, meat, or frozen items. By making a minimum purchase through a web store, you can often get the shipping charge waived.

Key points on using grocery delivery services

• Disinfect as if these items could have been exposed to the virus. The Target items were delivered in plastic bags. I threw those bags out immediately. Cash & Carry doesn't have bags, as many items are extra large. I wore heavy duty gloves when going through all of our items and I used homemade bleach wipes to wipe absolutely everything down. I, then, left it all in the garage for several hours before bringing items into the house.
• Maintain distance from the delivery person, or opt for contactless delivery. Instacart offers contactless delivery as an option. With other delivery services, you can request the delivery be left at your door in the comment/special request section when placing the order.
• The shopper gets paid for their service. However, under our current circumstances, a 5% tip was greatly appreciated by the personal shoppers I used. Tip in-app to eliminate physical contact between yourself and your shopper.
• If you order from a web store and receive delivery via UPS, USPS, or FedEx, obviously there is no tipping, and in many cases, no shipping charge with a minimum purchase. Bonus -- with most deliveries through these organizations, it seems to be standard practice to leave packages at the door with no interaction between the driver/delivery person and resident. 
• Just like regular grocery shopping, comparing prices between stores and services can save a lot of money.
• Amazon Prime subscribers can use Amazon's grocery delivery (which includes both Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods), depending on area.

Have you used grocery delivery services before? What have been your experiences?

Birthday Eats

hot dog cook-out

homemade buns

some homemade condiments

veggie plate

dip made with plain yogurt, onion powder,
garlic powder, salt, and herbs

peas

Kool-Aid

s'mores fixins'

for the tea table

fresh-baked scones

tomato-basil soup

sandwiches and fruit cup

watermelon pickles

peppermint-dark chocolate patties

punch made with Kool-Aid and orange juice

Planning a Tea Using What I Have on Hand

I told you yesterday that one daughter wanted a cook-out for a birthday meal. The other daughter chose a tea. In addition to baking hot dog buns and graham crackers, I have been preparing foods that would work for a tea. Here's our menu:

cup of tomato-basil soup

scratch scones

banana bread and cream cheese sandwiches

egg salad and watercress sandwiches on homemade white bread

watermelon rind pickles

fruit salad

chocolate mint patties
tea and punch

I made the tomato-basil soup from canned tomato paste and frozen basil. The scones are an easy, but good, scratch recipe. I baked a loaf each of banana bread and white bread from scratch. Watercress is growing in our garden right now. The watermelon rind pickles are from last summer's canning. The fruit salad was made with a banana, an orange, and an apple. And the chocolate mint patties were made with melted dark chocolate chips with a couple of drops of peppermint oil stirred in to flavor.

With twins sharing  birthday, it's been a balancing act trying to met each of their expectations. Dividing up the meals and allowing each to choose what they wanted seemed like a good way to go for our current circumstances.

Happy birthday to my darling daughters! And for the rest of us -- happy St. Patrick's Day!

Be Resourceful

In these challenging weeks to come, I have realized that I'll need to be more resourceful than usual.

Here's an example. My daughters' birthday is tomorrow. As we are not going out for any sort of celebration until after this virus has lessened in my community (could be many, many weeks), I told each daughter to choose 1 meal on Tuesday, and I would prepare it. So, one daughter chose a cook-out, complete with s'mores. S'mores require marshmallows (check), chocolate (check), and graham crackers (not checked).

To ensure this daughter has her s'mores, I dug out my recipe for graham crackers and made a batch over the weekend. Here's how they turned out. 

I snatched one, you know -- for quality control. These are good! And they're part whole grain and egg-free. 

What ways are you finding to be resourceful these days?

By not going out to a store just to buy graham crackers for this cook-out, not only did I not risk exposure to a virus that could sicken me or any of my household members, but I also prevented an instance where I could become a mode of transmission for COVID-19. I am treating this as not just self-preservation, but looking out for someone whose health might be more fragile than my own. 


Great challenges produce great faith.

How I Determined What to Buy to Stock-Up for the Next Several Weeks

In mid-February, I began to see that the US might be hit hard with the coronavirus, too. I made my grocery list for the month of March and planned to buy as much as I could from that list by the end of February. As March neared, it began to look like we'd need as much as a 6 or 8-week supply. That's when I made the decision to use April's money as well as March's. So how does a person make a grocery list that covers 8 weeks?

This is how I approached it. I divided the foods that we eat into 6 categories: 1) fruits and vegetables, 2) meats and other proteins (includes eggs, nuts, and bean products), 3) grains and starches, 4) dairy products, 5) fats, and 6) extras. Then I inventoried everything that we had within those categories, guestimated amounts that we use in a month and multiplied by 2, then I decided how much was needed to fill out each group to get us through 8 weeks. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you may remember taking inventory and placing orders to reach your "fill-to" amounts of each ingredient. This is a lot like how I approached making this shopping list.

For fruits and vegetables, I took into consideration that I have a garden that begins to produce as early as mid-March. With that in mind, I inventoried all of our canned, frozen, dried, and fresh produce. Raisins and juice count.

For meats and other proteins, I could see that I have a lot of dried beans, a whole ham, a few cans of tuna fish, a bit of chicken, and a few dozen eggs. If need be, we could get by for a few months on the dried beans as protein, but I knew we'd want some variety as well as the nutrients that meat provides.

With the grains and starches, I knew that we had several pounds each of rolled oats, steel cut oats, barley, corn meal, all-purpose flour, and whole wheat flour. I would want to add some potatoes and brown rice to our starchy foods.

Although dairy products contribute protein to meals, I put them into a separate category, as dairy products contribute to calcium and vitamin D at levels that many other foods do not. I still had a couple of gallons of milk in the freezer and a couple of pounds of cheese. I knew I'd need to add significantly to the dairy supply in our house.

With regards to fats, I considered vegetable/olive oil, butter, solid shortening, and saved meat fat. I could see that our vegetable oil would run low, so that went on my list.

The extras included sugar (definitely a necessity when thinking about how to prepare garden-grown rhubarb, which may be our only fruit for a couple of weeks in late April/early May), spices, baking ingredients (like baking soda), vinegar, soy sauce and gelatin.

To determine amounts, I calculated and counted. I know that our family goes through about 1 gallon of vegetable oil every 4 or 5 weeks, so buying one more gallon would get us through 8 weeks. However, I don't buy oil by the gallon, but in large 35-lb boxes (about 7 gallons). So that's what I bought. 

I added 1 bag of potatoes and a 50-lb bag of brown rice for our starchy foods. (Remember, I buy food in institutional sizes to get the lowest price per pound. 50 pounds of rice will last 6 months for us.) 

For meat, I bought a 10-lb chub of 80/20 ground beef, a 10-lb bag of chicken leg quarters, and 4 dozen chicken hot dogs. There's not a lot of variety in the cuts of meat, but I can vary how it's prepared to add interest. I also bought a 5-dozen box of eggs for protein. 

The fruits and vegetables are perhaps the hardest category for me to estimate need. I thought about what amounts of fresh, frozen, dried, canned, and juiced produce we could possibly use in a month and doubled it. So I bought a lot of frozen juice concentrate (orange, apple, grape) as frozen juice concentrate takes up very little freezer storage space, keeps much longer than fresh fruit, but delivers more vitamin C than most canned or dried fruit. I also bought about 11 pounds of fresh apples, 2 dozen bananas, and some cans of pineapple chunks for fruit. For vegetables, I tried to hit the various nutrients that vegetables can provide, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, beta carotene, indoles (cancer fighters found in cabbage family), lycopene, sulfur compounds, and lutein. I also wanted to focus on long-keepers. I bought several heads of cabbage, a jumbo bag of carrots, several bunches of celery, jumbo bag of onions, a few heads of garlic, 6 pounds of frozen spinach, and 10 pounds of frozen peas. I already had about a dozen cans each of green beans and corn, a couple of #10 cans of whole tomatoes and tomato paste, and about a dozen cans of pumpkin. If this sounds like a lot of produce, I admit, my family plows through fruits and vegetables like you wouldn't believe. 

The one "extra" ingredient that I knew we'd run out of was sugar. So, I bought sugar as I normally do, in a 50-lb sack.

I spent all of March's and April's grocery budget plus all of Easter's special grocery allowance. 

I know, hot dogs are not the greatest food. However, to keep our spirits up and make the isolation feel less confining, we plan on having cookouts whenever the weather is nice. We also have my daughters' birthday this month and two other birthdays next month to celebrate. We'll do cookouts or burgers for each of those occasions.

As you already know, I tend to cook from scratch, making fairly basic meals. I actually think it is less daunting to put together a list of basic ingredients to last 8 weeks than to think of the individual meals that I would make for 8 weeks and form a shopping list from that 8-week menu plan. But that's just how I shop and cook.

Anyways, we're prepared, here. And if the virus is mediated well-enough and all of my preparations aren't needed, then I don't need to grocery shop for at least 2 months. 

Making Chicken Soup

Among other things, I bought a 10-lb bag of chicken leg quarters at Walmart to use in March. My primary thought was to use these for homemade chicken soup. A 10-lb bag contains between 8 and 9 chicken leg quarters, in my experience. 

I use 1 leg quarter per large pot of soup (about 1.25 gallons once everything is added). I prefer leg quarters for chicken soup because they are the least expensive chicken parts I can buy and dark meat poultry has more zinc than light meat. Zinc is often recommended for supporting the immune system. The extra fat in dark meat is a bonus, as I can use it to saute the vegetables as I put the soup together.

How I make chicken soup

For years, I hated making soup using bone-in meat. I disliked handling the slimy-feeling, warm poultry part just out of the hot broth, as I pulled meat off of the bones. Then I discovered that I could make chicken soup over 2 days and deal with the chicken meat, chilled, on day 2.

So, this is how I make it. I heat a large stockpot over Medium. I sprinkle a bit of salt  in the bottom of the pot (my mom always did this to prevent fatty meat, like burger patties or skin-on chicken parts from sticking to the pan). Then, I place the chicken leg quarter skin side down in the pot and brown on both sides. Once both sides are just barely golden, I cover with about a gallon of water, bring to a boil, cover, and allow to simmer for about 3 hours. 

After the stock has cooled for about 15 minutes, I remove the chicken from the stock, place in a glass dish, cover and refrigerate. Next, I pour the warm stock into a large container for the fridge and chill it over night, too.

The next day, I skim the fat off of the stock and use it to saute 2 diced onions, 3 to 5 diced large carrots, 2 or 3 chopped sticks of celery with leaves, and 1 clove of garlic, minced. If there wasn't much chicken fat, I add a little oil as well. While they saute, I pulled the chilled chicken meat off of the bones and chop. I add the chicken to the vegetables and pour all of the stock over it all. 

At this point, I decide if we want traditional chicken noodle soup, or a chicken, barley, and lentil soup, or an Italian minestrone type of soup. If chicken noodle, I add some crushed sage to the cooking soup, a bit of pepper, and salt to taste. In the last 6 or 7 minutes, I add broken spaghetti noodles to the soup.

If I'm making the barley and lentil version, I add a half cup each of dry barley and lentils to the soup just after adding the stock. I season it similarly to chicken noodle soup. The lentils add extra protein and the barley adds some carbs.

If I decide we want a minestrone-type soup, I substitute some crushed oregano for the sage, add some extra garlic, and some dry lentils. In the last 10 minutes of cooking, I add a cup of any shape pasta plus some diced canned tomatoes and their liquid.

The chicken soups have been pretty popular with my family these last 10 days. I plan on making a large pot at least once per week. I freeze a quart or two of each batch, so we can homemade soup most days of the week.

Making the soup over 2 days has made the job seem less of a chore for me. I think we all have to find ways to make our work a little easier. I just thought I'd share this about the chicken soup in case it helps anyone else.

Thermometers for this Virus

Last month, when I was shopping for March, I bought a new thermometer for our household. The one in the photo on the right is our old, digital, under-the-tongue thermometer. It's very reliable and accurate, but it takes time and effort (needs thorough cleaning after each use) to use. I thought we'd want a non-invasive thermometer so that we could quickly check our temps.

I am currently 12 days into staying at home all of the time. My husband is 8 days in. And my daughters are 5 days in to this home isolation. I knew we'd want some sort of thermometer for routine temperature checks during the initial 14 days for each of us. As far as we know, none of us has been exposed. But our immediate area has been particularly hard-hit with this virus, and no one can be certain of their exposure. 

The thermometer on the left is a digital temporal thermometer. After depressing the button, you place it against your temple, between your eyebrow and hairline. Temporal temperatures have the lowest rate of accuracy, as your skin can be warm from being in a very warm room (like the kitchen when cooking) or when wearing a hat, or your skin can be cooler than your internal temperature when you first come in from very cold outdoor temperatures. However, I do like this thermometer for quick checks, as they are completely non-invasive and the reading only takes seconds. When someone in our family has registered as being "hot" we follow that reading up with the old, digital under-the-tongue thermometer. The combination of the two thermometers has given us the best of both types.

Do You Know What This Is?

These are our leafy greens for May and June! Yep, I planted curly kale, Lacinato kale, and Romaine lettuce in soil-filled cells under a light about a week ago. Still no sign of the tomato sprouts, but I'll give those another few days.

It may still be very chilly here, but my indoor starter garden is doing well. I keep the light fixture and planting cells on top of the dryer, where they get a lot of bottom-heat. I think that helps the tiny plants grow.