Cheap & Cheerful Meals This Past Week

I didn't record what we ate, but I can remember most of it.

Over the weekend. . .

Entrees

rice and black beans

scrambled eggs

Side dishes

cooked carrots

cole slaw

brown rice

hashbrowns

green salad

During the week. . .

Entrees

baked ham (two nights)

ham, peas, macaroni and cheese casserole

bean, rice and cheese burritos

black bean pie (bean burger mixture baked in a pie pan)

Side dishes

sweet potato souffle

green beans

broccoli

fresh strawberries and bananas

brown rice

macaroni and broccoli in olive oil and garlic

green salad

Desserts all week

chocolate ice cream

brownies

vanilla pudding

caramel popcorn

The only desserts that I made was a large batch of vanilla pudding when it looked like some milk might turn sour soon. Someone else made the brownies and caramel corn, and the ice cream is from a purchase of buckets of ice cream in spring. The ham was in the freezer for a year and a half. It was mostly okay, but parts of it tasted more porky to me. The strawberries and salad greens are from the garden. I thought I also cooked some snow peas from the garden this week, but I don't remember how I served them. 

I'm already thinking toward the 4th. I've asked one daughter to work with siblings to make dinner that night, as I've got projects that I'm working on, and frankly, I need a break. She agreed. All they'll have to do is come up with a couple of side dishes. I have hot dogs in the fridge, and I'll buy buns. I have a bag of potato chips and everything needed to make s'mores. Sounds simple enough, right? For those of you in Canada, will you be doing a cookout on Saturday, for Canada Day?

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and if you're traveling, stay safe.

Successes With Making Yogurt After a Long Break

I hadn't made yogurt in at least a year. I just lost interest in making it, and my family wasn't eating it as readily. But in cleaning out the freezers, I found a few containers of homemade yogurt to use as starter. Combine that with early in the month I had picked up a gallon of whole milk. So . . .

The other day I did make yogurt, again, and had several areas of success that I thought I'd share.

• using old starter --the starter in my freezer was about one and a half years old, and it still worked! Who knew the starter would stay viable for so long?!
• chain yogurting for years -- the starter that I used this week is a direct descendant from my original container of Yoplait, bought in July of 2012. I think that's incredible. I never expected my starter to last for all of these years. Every few batches, the day after making yogurt I pack several small containers to use as starter for future batches, and keep in a 0 degree F freezer. It just keeps on going.
• incubating part of the yogurt for less time, to have some of it ready sooner -- I like to leave the yogurt to incubate overnight, but one daughter was asking if any would be ready for her to pack in her lunch, before morning. In that moment, I was thinking, well no, as I'd be leaving it in the incubator overnight, and then it would need to set up in the fridge for several hours. And then it occurred to me that I don't have to leave all of the jars in the incubator overnight. I could take one out after 3 or 4 hours and refrigerate, but leave the other 3 jars to incubate the length of time I prefer, for flavor and thickness. While this doesn't seem like such a monumental thing, it was to me as I was thinking outside of the box and doing one thing with part of the yogurt and another thing with the other part. When I think outside of my own boxes it makes me feel like I am opening up new opportunities for myself.
• adding milk powder to add extra nutrients to the yogurt -- two of my kids are not eating as much as they should (for completely different reasons), so I wanted to add a few extra nutrients to the foods that I prepare. I added dry milk powder to the heating milk. This isn't new or novel. A lot of yogurt-makers do this to thicken skim or low-fat milk in yogurt. But I've not done this before, and I was pleased with how well it worked. No noticeable change in texture or taste, except it is slightly thicker.

For anyone interested in my original attempts with making yogurt, this post covers what I did in July of 2012, along with a couple of follow-ups to that post.