Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the End of October

Friday
Homemade pepperoni pizza, beet salad (using canned beets), sautéed garden greens, pumpkin cookies

Saturday
Refried beans and cheese, rice, homemade flour tortillas, carrot sticks, Cole slaw, fig and applesauce (pureed green figs in syrup with applesauce plus cinnamon/ginger)

Sunday
Spaghetti and TVP marinara, sautéed garden greens, steamed carrots

Monday
Kale, bacon and egg quiche, roasted carrots and potatoes, blackberry-rhubarb crisp

Tuesday
TVP & beef meatloaf, rice and gravy, pumpkin soufflé, autumn garden greens salad, blackberry-rhubarb crisp

Wednesday
Lentil-vegetable soup, garlic toast, no-egg pumpkin snack cake (this recipe)

Thursday
Easy chicken-Brussel sprout leaf (tastes like broccoli) Alfredo over cooked pasta, carrot sticks, leftover pumpkin snack cake

So, I found another way to use my less-than-popular-with-my-family preserved green figs. I pureed some figs with their syrup and mixed into applesauce then spiced up with cinnamon and ginger powder. This was very good and got high praise from my family. some thought this was even better than the cake I made with pureed figs.

The beet salad was simply drained canned beets dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, pinch sugar, pinch ground cloves, and dash black pepper. My family enjoys this and it's super easy.

We are almost out of fresh eggs. So I've moved on to using frozen eggs whenever possible. Last week, I thawed a 6-egg container of eggs (mentioned in this post) for some baking I was doing. These are eggs I froze in 2020 while egg prices were still low. Thawed eggs will keep in the fridge for about 3 to 5 days. So, I try to do whatever egg-using baking I can within this time period. I made an extra batch of pie pastry for the freezer (1 egg), a batch of brownies (2 eggs), and a batch of muffins (1 egg) during the previous week. That left me with the equivalent of 2 eggs that were thawed and needed using ASAP. Sunday afternoon I made a 2-egg quiche to serve for Monday's dinner. You read that right, a 2-egg quiche. That doesn't sound like much protein at all. So I "fortified" it with cheese and 8 slices of bacon (saving some bacon to break over the entire baked quiche at the last minute). Eggs have increased in price about 60 cents per dozen in my area. I have several dozen in the freezer from 2020, bought at the lower price. I'll continue using the frozen eggs while I watch for a sale. In addition, I'll use my no-egg and low-egg recipes as much as possible (such as the no-egg pumpkin snack cake).

I used some of the bacon fat to oven-roast carrots and potatoes to serve with the quiche. Very tasty!

On Tuesday, I stretched 8 ounces of ground beef with rehydrated TVP for a meatloaf that served all 4 of us. Meatloaf stretched with TVP is more crumbly than regular meatloaf, but we enjoyed it just the same. I used the fat drippings from the meatloaf to make a gravy to pour over both the meat and rice, flavoring the drippings with thyme, beef bouillon, onion powder, and black pepper.

One daughter made the lentil-vegetable soup for us (following a recipe that I use) and the other daughter made the easy chicken-brussel sprout leaf Alfredo (following some rough guidelines I jotted down). As much as I can, I'm trying to make sure my daughters learn how to cook mostly from scratch, so they can cook for themselves in their own homes some day and not spend a bundle on convenience foods. So when they cook for us, I try to find easy and relatively quick recipes. We'll see if it works this way for them.

The pasta in Thursday's dinner was plain old elbow macaroni. Spaghetti noodles and elbow macaroni are the least expensive pasta shapes in my area, especially when bought in economy sizes.

So, those were our dinners this past week. What was on your menu?

My Week -- Glorious Autumn

It's been a mostly beautiful autumn week, with a few warm and sunny days for talking long walks to see all of the gorgeous leaf colors. On one walk, I came across these remarkable mushrooms. I had no idea brightly-colored mushrooms existed in real life. Many of the yards in my neighborhood are littered with wild mushrooms/toadstools this year due to our very wet late September and early October.

So, last Friday, I did make the pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies. And then on Saturday, my two daughters helped frost and put candy corn eyes and noses on each. My frugality sometimes intersects with my sense of humor. As I was making the frosting, I teased my daughters that I was planning to make a pastel orange icing, you know, to save on food coloring because I'm cheap. My daughters joined the joking around and suggested we just put a thin scraping of icing on each cookie, so thin that some cookie crumbs come off the cookies and onto the knife. As you may have guessed, the icing was neither pastel nor thin on the cookies. It was a fun afternoon in the kitchen with my girls.

Also on Saturday, both daughters helped me pick all of the crabapples. This was a poor year for crabapples. Perhaps the blossoms were badly timed with wet weather and bees couldn't pollinate. That happens.  Anyway, we got all but the requisite few left for critters. (I always leave a couple of pieces of fruit on our trees for critters so they're not too disappointed when they come along later.) I simmered the crabapples in water to extract the juice while we decorated cookies. The kitchen-y smells were definitely autumnal.

Our crabapples are not only tart, but astringent. I've tried a variety of ways to use them. Mostly, I make jelly and that's always appreciated. This year, because there were so few on the tree, the yield of juice was only about enough for 3 or 4 small jars of jelly. Instead of making jelly, I decided to save this juice for adding to commercial apple juice to make a hot cider. 

On Monday, I finally got around to making the spiced cider in my crockpot. In addition to commercial apple juice and a couple of cups of the crabapple juice, I added lots of cinnamon, cloves, and some of the spiced heavy syrup from canning green figs. (Another use for this heavy syrup -- bonus!) The hot spiced cider was a hit with my family. I froze the last pint of crabapple juice to make spiced cider another time this fall.

We had a bit of orange frosting leftover from the cookies just sitting on the counter for a few days while I pondered how to use this up. In the meantime, it hardened to a crust on the inside of the bowl. By Wednesday, I knew I either had to use it or wash the bowl. I was baking a pumpkin pie for that night's dessert and thought, "why not." I soaked the inside of the bowl with the milk I'd planned on adding to the pumpkin filling until the frosting was soft enough to dissolve into the milk. I then mixed this sweetened milk into the filling, cutting back on the sugar called for in the recipe. I saved a bit of sugar and didn't waste the frosting. And, yes, the pie was delicious. 

In the garden

Over the weekend, I collected dill and lettuce seeds this week. Some of the dill seeds will be for planting and some will be for cooking. On Thursday, I picked and dehydrated the final batch of oregano, sage, and rosemary for the year.

With the crabapples and figs now harvested, I just have the 2 green pumpkins and 1 winter squash, some carrots, beets, turnips, and lots of greens left in the garden. I check on my pumpkins daily. The weather next week looks like it will turn cold enough to warrant picking them before Thursday. They may or may not ripen indoors. We'll see.

In a normal year, after harvesting the crabapples, I would move on to picking cranberries. However, this year, there are no cranberries at all. The spot where I once picked 3 quarts of cranberries has grown too shady. Last spring, I took a cutting off a cranberry vine and rooted it. This plant will go under and around the blueberry bushes once I top off that soil later this fall. 

Back when I was harvesting the last of the tomatoes, I noticed one of the plants still looked surprisingly healthy. Being a curious person who likes to experiment, I cut off the last 10 inches of a branch and plunked it into a jar of water. This branch has now rooted in the water. I plan to pot this cutting in soil and see what happens. I imagine it won't survive very long without long, warm natural light. I may put it under the lights which are currently dedicated for the radish greens. Gardening experiments are always fun and cheap entertainment.

Indoor gardening

I keep one jar of lentil sprouts in the just-started stage and another jar in the ready-to-eat stage at all times. We've all taken to making Cole slaw with both cabbage and lentil sprouts to have with our lunches. A fresh batch of sprouts takes about 5 days from initial soak to full-grown. So, I'd say sprouts are a very quick produce item to grow at home.

My radish greens continue to grow well under the lights. The longest leaves are about 3 inches right now. I think my most mature batch will be ready in another 2 or 3 weeks. After we enjoy the radish greens, I'll try some spinach under lights.

Free internet shows

I found 2 more historical farm shows that are interesting -- Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm. The cast and format for both shows are the same as for Wartime Farm. These historical shows are not only interesting, but they've expanded my view of what domestic hardship entailed in the past as well as provided a helpful tip or two. I can also appreciate the simpler values of times in the past. If you had food, weather-appropriate clothing and shelter, there was little more one could want. If the Farm series shows sound like they'd interest you, I've found episodes for free on YouTube, TubiTV, and Daily Motion. 

Our beautiful autumn weather is giving way to cold rains in the next day or two. The weekend looks to be very rainy. Should be a good time to check out more episodes of Victorian Farm.

What were the highlights of your week? Have you ever seen colorful wild mushrooms/toadstools before? I think these ones are poisonous, but they sure are fun to look at.

Cheap & Cheerful Meals for a cozy week in this post.