Birthday pie

Within a 1-month period, our family has 3 days of birthdays. Our daughters in mid-March, then mine in mid-April, followed by my husband's, just 6 days after mine. That's a lot of cake.

We still have some cake in the freezer from my daughters's birthday. For me, another birthday cake would be cake-overload. So, traditionally, I've made a pie for my husband's birthday. It's always lemon meringue, as that was his childhood favorite.

Lemon meringue pie works well for this time of year, as I usually have lots of eggs still from Easter week stock-up, and it's not dependent on availability of any particular fresh fruit, and I've made enough of them that it's an easy variety of pie for me. (It helps that I have a very reliable recipe.)

There is one other aspect about baking a birthday pie instead of a birthday cake that I really appreciate. A birthday cake from scratch can take me several hours, start to finish. A birthday lemon meringue pie can be knocked out in about 1 1/2 hours, start to finish. Yet, homemade pies have that reputation of "extra effort", put into their making. So, I get brownie points. My husband gets his childhood favorite pie. And we aren't staring down another slice of cake for the immediate future.

Do you always make cakes for birthdays, or do you do something else?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for mid-April

Friday

Pumpkin soup (made from mashed potatoes in freezer, frozen pumpkin, frozen ham)
Scratch biscuits

Saturday (birthday dinner)

Chicken enchiladas (from freezer)
Mexican chicken and vegetable soup (from freezer)
Homemade corn tortillas chips (daughter made)
Scratch birthday cake

Sunday

Leftover enchiladas
Frozen green beans
Fruit salad (apple, banana, last of strawberries from making birthday cake)
Leftover cake

Monday

Leftover pumpkin soup
Pasta and veggie salad
French bread
Leftover cake

Tuesday

Hamburgers on
Homemade buns with first lettuce from the garden!
Apple wedges
Oven-roasted potatoes and carrots

Wednesday

Mexi-style beans and rice (with canned tomatoes and black olives)
Rhubarb-blackberry jello
Carrot sticks and dip

Thursday (simple dinner, spent the day in the garden)

Bean, ham and veggie soup
Apple wedges
Homemade bread with butter

Another week of simple meals. We had beautiful weather all week long, so I spent as much time as I could in the garden. Which meant not so much time for cooking. No matter -- dreary weather will return soon enough and I can spend more time in the kitchen, then.

You know, even on a warm day, coming into the house and breathing deep the aromas coming from soup in the crockpot, it really took me by surprise yesterday afternoon. I had a breif moment of thinking, "wow, who's cooking something? That smells amazing!" I had to laugh as it was my humble bean, ham and veggie soup.

I'm working at using up foods from the pantry and freezer these weeks. The fridge is constantly looking bare. But I think this is what it will take to get some organization taken care of in both the freezer and the pantry. The bonus is that to do this, I'm just not buying as much at the store this month, so I'll be saving a nice chunk of change, to put towards the stock up months to come.


Did you have a favorite meal this past week? What were the easy to make dishes on your menu?