Cheap & Cheerful Meals -- Mid-November

Monday's roasting pan dinner

Friday
sausage pizza, beet salad, spiced fig-applesauce, chocolates

Friday is pizza and movie night, here, where I make a scratch pizza and we watch a free movie on the Roku. I was temporarily out of pepperoni, so I cooked up some Italian turkey sausage to top the pizza. Turkey sausage is dry and lean, and our current mozzarella is on the low-fat side, so I added a bit of cheddar cheese to add some fat to the pizza toppings. That little addition made the whole pizza very tasty. In addition to the pizza, I made a beet salad and some spiced fig-applesauce. The beet salad is a quickie to make. I use a 15-oz can of sliced beets (50 cents at Walmart), cutting the slices into matchsticks then dressing in vinegar, oil, salt, sugar, ground cloves, and onion powder to taste. I let it chill for 30 minutes while I finished up the pizza. And as I've described here before, the fig-applesauce is my homegrown and sweet-preserved unripe figs pureed with some applesauce and a bit of cinnamon and ginger to flavor. Our dessert was a chocolate out of the box of chocolates given to us last Christmas. Yeah, I can hardly believe that we didn't gobble up the chocolates before now, either.

Saturday
baked potatoes topped with greens in cheese sauce and bacon bits, roasted pumpkin cubes, curried slaw, pumpkin snack cake.

This was a busy day for us. We had a tree guy come out to cut up and remove the tree from our roof. After he left, my husband and I had a huge clean-up job to start in on. By late afternoon, my back was tired and I knew I still needed to make dinner. So I made something fairly easy with little hands-on time involved -- baked potatoes covered with greens in cheese sauce and bacon bits, along with roasted pumpkin cube, curried cole slaw and a no-egg pumpkin snack cake that I'd baked in the morning. For the greens, I chose Brussel sprout leaves. The tree removal was hard on the patch of Brussel sprouts, so I thought I'd better use some of the greens while I could. The pumpkin cubes came from another one of our small garden pumpkins. And like before, I washed and froze the seeds in the baggie with other squash and pumpkin seeds to roast up once I have a large amount. I was able to bake the potatoes, roast the pumpkin cubes, and steam the Brussel sprout greens in the oven at the same time, just putting them in the oven staggered, to reflect the different cook times needed.

I made these cakes for Monday, not Sunday.
Sometimes, I'm so hungry that I forget
to take a pic before devouring dinner.

Sunday
homemade flour tortillas. scratch refried beans,  canned tomatoes, cabbage in lime dressing, brownies

My husband made dinner for us today. I had some cooked beans in the fridge that needed using up, so I suggested he make something using those. He loves Tex-Mex meals, so that was the theme. My daughters and he prefer the flour tortillas fried (I like them soft), so for the 3 of them, they had fried tortillas -- a lot like those tortilla salad bowls that taco salads are served in. My daughters baked scratch brownies in the afternoon for our dessert. Some day, I think my daughters will reflect that someone was always cooking something in the kitchen during the years they were in this house. That's the way it seems. Earlier in the day, the two of them made a big bowl of popcorn for all of us, too. Someone is always cooking.

Monday
TVP and ground beef meatloaf and gravy, oven-roasted garden baby carrots and garden purple potatoes, garden tossed salad (radishes and their leaves, nasturtium leaves, watercress, beet greens, carrot leaves, lentil sprouts), pumpkin snack cake

I stretch 8 ounces of ground beef with some rehydrated TVP in the meatloaf. This serves four adults. The beef was 73/27, so there's always a lot of fat that seeps out of the loaf while baking. I surrounded the loaf with baby carrots and chunks of potatoes to roast in the fat from the meatloaf. There was still a lot of residual fat in the pan after baking. I used this excess fat to make a gravy to go over the meatloaf and vegetables. Waste nothing. I had about 1/4 cup of pureed pumpkin lingering in the fridge. This was just enough to bake a half-batch of pumpkin snack cake. I baked the batter in 2 small round bakers. After baking, I made a small batch of icing to frost the tops of each little cake. Two cakes served as small servings of dessert for our family of 4 for 2 nights. I continue to find leafy greens in the garden to use in salads. This last week, I found several rogue watercress plants. These are usually a spring thing for us. I picked lots of their leaves to add to a tossed salad. By the time I washed and tore all of the greens, I had enough salad greens for 1 family dinner and 2 me-lunches.

Making meatloaf gravy -- the fat from meatloaf often has zero zip or flavor. Even with rinsing the roasting pan with water to use in the gravy, at most I wind up with a tan thin paste. I stir some flour into the fat left after cooking the meatloaf, heat, and stir in liquid (rinsing from the roasting pan). To flavor, I add some dried herbs (this time I used thyme), onion powder, black pepper, and beef bouillon. If the gravy still tastes a bit flat, I add about 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar. Vinegar adds zip without increasing the sodium.

Tuesday
lentil-vegetable soup, French bread, pumpkin snack cake

We didn't use all of the gravy from last night's meatloaf, so I added the leftover gravy to tonight's soup. I was able to use more baby carrots in the soup as well as Brussel sprout leaves. Our Brussel sprout plants are still doing okay despite taking a hit from the tree removal. Each time I use the leaves in dinner, now, I have to rinse off the sawdust before washing the leaves. As you might imagine, sawdust is a bad thing to put down the garbage disposal. I had to unclog the disposal earlier this week. Now, when I rinse off the sawdust, I dump that rinse water outside. 

Wednesday
chicken divan (chicken, broccoli, cheese sauce casserole), garlic toast, steamed carrots, bar cookies

One of my daughters made dinner for us tonight. They each have 1 night per week. This not only gives me a night off, but is also strengthening their skills to take care of themselves. Sometimes they come up with an idea that they want to make. Other times, I check our ingredients and look for recipes that would be easy and quick to suggest. The chicken divan recipe called for basic ingredients: cooked chicken, broccoli, cheese, milk, flour, butter, mustard powder. A lot of quick and easy recipes call for convenience foods that I may or may not have on hand, such as cream of chicken soup. But this one didn't. And my daughter who made dinner today said that the recipe was very easy. I helped her by poaching a chicken breast earlier in the day while I was doing other things in the kitchen. But the rest was all "her".

Thursday
spaghetti in meat sauce, celery and carrot sticks

Thursday was my other daughter's night to cook dinner. I suggested spaghetti in meat sauce. I don't have a recipe written out for the sauce for her, but instead gave her basic instructions, using 8 ounces of ground beef, 6 ounces of tomato paste, minced garlic, onion flakes, dried oregano, salt, pepper. I asked her to save the fat from browning the ground beef. We'll use this meat fat in cooking at another time.


Breakfasts this week included toasty o's cereal, toasted homemade French bread, homemade yogurt, frozen and dried fruit (raisins, home-dried prunes, home-dried dried cherries, frozen foraged blackberries), milk, canned tomatoes, coffee, tea, milk. I was too busy with other things to make pancakes, waffles, muffins, oatmeal or even Cream of Wheat. It was a get-it-yourself breakfast week, so I brought out a box of toasty o's for the cereal lovers in the family.

Lunches this week included salads from the garden, toasted tortillas and cheese, leftovers, frozen and dried garden fruit, bananas, sunflower seeds, almonds, cabbage, carrots, celery, lentil sprouts, kale, brownies, bar cookies, bread, graham crackers, rice, macaroni.

What was on your menu this past week?

My Week -- Lots of Carrots

this year's carrot harvest

The tree is still on our roof. That says it all, right?

We worked hard on Friday, trying to get some of the tree mess cleaned up, having a rather impromptu Lumber Jill contest. Surprisingly, my two daughters are pretty good with an ax. I'm better with a saw. The three of us were able to cut part of the tree into fireplace lengths using a hack saw, bow saw and an ax while my husband worked up on the roof cutting off what he could. We hope to have the tree removed on Saturday, weather permitting. And yes, there appears to be damage under the tree, which we can't completely assess until the tree is off the roof.

I harvested all of the carrots this week (well, all but 2 carrots left in place to generate seeds next summer). These are carrots that I grew in 2 large pots, so not a whole lot of space. In total, my harvest was about 7 or 8 lbs. The square footage of the surface of these 2 pot combined is about 5 sq. feet -- just sayin' as a guide to know how much carrot harvest we can get from such a small area. Next spring, I hope to plant carrots in 2 large troughs, which would triple my harvest. The big advantage to growing carrots in pots this past year was that we had zero wireworm damage. 

After pulling the carrots, I cut off the green tops to wash for use in cooking and left the whole carrots to dry out (unwashed) overnight. The next day I sorted the carrots by size. I was able to use even those teeny tiny carrots that might otherwise be thrown out. Some of them were really itty bitty. However, I used them in a large pot of vegetable soup for lunch on Tuesday. I also set aside some young carrots for Thanksgiving dinner. The rest of the carrots are bagged up and in the fridge to be used as needed over the next month.

Also on Tuesday, I harvested our first batch of indoor-grown radishes to use in dinner. I am so pleased at how these radishes are doing. The roots are large and free of bug damage, while the leaves are tender enough for salads.

I peeled, cubed and oven-roasted one of our small pumpkins, as it was beginning to feel a bit soft. I set aside a handful of the seeds to dry to use for next year's pumpkin patch and washed and froze the rest of the seeds to roast with those from other pumpkins later this fall (when we have more than just a handful).

We had a tornado warning in a neighboring county this week. How crazy is that? I guess tornados are not completely unheard of in the Puget Sound region. My brother lives in the county where the warning was issued. He said it was very, very dark for most of the day, but that they never saw anything resembling a tornado. In my own county, it was extremely windy with strong gusts. So, I quickly moved all of our patio furniture into the garage. Our power never flickered, but my brother said theirs did.

The weather has fluctuated between mild and pleasant, with sun here and there, and stormy and cold with hail pelting the yard. On the mild days I've taken walks through the neighborhood. Feeling in a holiday mood, for one walk, I made myself a peppermint mocha (using peppermint oil, cocoa powder and sweetening in my coffee) to sip as I toured the neighborhood. I did spy one holiday-themed wreath on a neighbor's door. Something interesting -- some of my neighbors spring-flowering shrubs are flowering right now. I checked out my own yard and found that my rosemary bush has put on new growth, too. This is exciting, as I can take another small harvest from my rosemary for use later this winter. 

I spent some time in the pantry organizing and refilling containers. I like to do this a few times per year. I always find surprises and learn what we need to use soon and which items we may run out. We have lots of canned tomato products, canned tuna, canned green beans, flour, rice, sugar, oil, oats, peanut butter, and raisins. We are just now transitioning to using more of the pantry staples as our garden slows down considerably. There are still Brussel sprouts, kale, turnips, beets, and Swiss chard in the outdoor garden, with, as I mentioned, radishes in the indoor garden. I'll be starting some indoor spinach under lights this weekend to add to our winter veggies. Up to now, I have been using one light fixture for growing indoors. I just recently ordered my birthday, Christmas, birthday gift (I often tell my husband not to get me anything so I can later order something I need or want) of another grow light set-up. I'll be able to not only expand what we grow for the table in winter, but also expand the seed starting in spring for our expanded garden.

I didn't make any grocery pick-ups this week, but I am putting an order together to get over the weekend or early next week. This order will have the remaining items we need for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I spent some time on Thursday getting caught up on bills and going over the budget for the winter season. I'm sure you've heard this but heating prices are expected to increase for most of us. So far, it looks like electricity will see the lowest percentage of increase (averaging about a 6% increase over last year), while the biggest increase will come on propane (about 54% increase over last year). The increase on the cost of heating oil and natural gas fall somewhere in between, at 43% and 30%, respectively. So, I'm trying to maintain a low indoor temperature for this month in order to "bank" some extra in the budget to cover more expensive colder months. I also have our 2 electric space heaters available to use to heat one or two rooms that we might all be sharing during the day or evening when I keep the rest of the house cool. This would also be a good time to get the draft snakes out and put them at the base of doors that we seldom use. Have you thought much about how you might keep your own heating bills from skyrocketing too much this winter?

And now here we are, back to Friday again. This past week flew past, perhaps because we were dealing with this tree mess. I hope you had a great week. What were the highlights for you?

Cheap & Cheerful Meals in this post, here.