Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the First Full Week of Summer

It's stuffed grape leaves season. The grape leaves are still young and tender
 but large enough to stuff and roll

Our first really warm week of summer -- vegetables and fruits are beginning to produce for us, we've needed slushies and ice cream to cool off, and I'm eating lunch outdoors every day. 

Here's our dinner menu for this past week:

Friday

homemade pepperoni pizza, stuffed grape leaves (rice, garlic, dill, parsley filling), spiced fig-applesauce

Saturday

homemade flour tortillas, refried beans and salsa, carrot sticks, mixed garden greens salad

Sunday

Salisbury steak with mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli and turnip stem pieces

Monday

takeout sub sandwich split between us (daughter had another coupon for a freebie), three bean salad (no kidney beans, so I used pintos with the garbanzos and green beans), more spice fig-applesauce

Tuesday

curried lentils and vegetables over rice with homemade chutney, rhubarb pie for dessert

Wednesday

sliced ham (found when cleaning the freezers) cooked with BBQ sauce (also found in the freezer), garlic, and turnip greens, with rice (found in the freezer) and turnip stem, cranberry, almond, and orange (orange zest found in the freezer) salad

Thursday

toasted corn tortillas (discovered when cleaning out the fridge) topped with refried beans (found in the freezer), cheese and salsa, sugar snap peas (garden), garden salad, fresh strawberries, last of the rhubarb pie

I was finally able to pick a large bowl of strawberries this week. I used some in a lunchtime smoothie (along with other frozen fruit found in the freezer) and we had the rest at dinner.

When I mention using turnip stem pieces, they are what's leftover after I cut the leaves off the stems. Above is a pile of these leaves, all trimmed and ready to chop to cook.

These are the stems that remain. They're from turnip roots that are about 2 inches in diameter, so not terribly stringy.

And then this is what they look like after I chop the stems into 1/2-inch pieces. I use these pieces steamed and mixed with broccoli to stretch the broccoli that I have. I also tried them in a sweet and tangy slaw-like salad on Wednesday. The salad was soooo good. 

No turnips? You can also use the stems from kale leaves chopped and either cooked or raw in a salad. Other stem pieces I used this week were beet stems from the beets I thinned. I used the leaves in a salad, then chopped the stems into 1/2-inch pieces. These beet stem pieces were sprinkled over Thursday's salad. When you're trying to get as much food out of a suburban lot garden, you have to try and eat as much of each vegetable as is edible. Careful, though, some vegetables have plant parts that are not edible, such as tomato leaves.

That's what was on my menu this past week. What interesting foods did you have?

Shopping My Freezer This Week

my chest freezer "after"
foods I will need very soon (like Friday's pizza) are on top or in the hanging baskets on either side

While  I am putting a list together of what I want to stock up on before fall begins, I didn't go grocery shopping in a store this week. I've got enough milk and eggs to get through another 7-10 days.

I did, however, shop my freezers this week while I cleaned and organized them. I have a total of 4 freezer spaces, 2 fridge/freezers and 2 stand alone freezers (1 freezer is apartment size, the other is mid-sized). On Saturday I tackled the mid-sized deep freeze. Those with chest freezers understand the frustration of trying to find anything when the freezer is full. I routinely pull everything out, putting items on the garage floor while I search for that one needed item. 

under the pizza, my daughter's ready-meals
they had been scattered, I put them all in one box

Having had it with the frustration, I set out to organize that freezer first. I once read about a clever lady who used milk crates in her chest freezer to help keep it organized. I don't have any milk crates, but I do have lots of cardboard shipping boxes in all sizes. So, I used cardboard boxes to corral specific categories of foods. I have 2 boxes for meat, 1 for frozen vegetables, and 1 each for my daughters. My daughters sometimes buy or make foods for themselves to help themselves put together quick lunches. These individually packaged homemade foods tend to get jumbled in with the rest of the family's frozen foods. Separating them into boxes for each daughter will help them find what they want and remind them to use up the foods they already have before buying or making more.

to the left of the ready-meals is a box of frozen vegetables, easy to get to
we had 2 open bags of peas and 3 open bags of broccoli -- a pet peeve of mine to have numerous open packages of the same food

I also went through everything in the kitchen freezer this week. This is the least organized of my freezer spaces. All of the little tidbits end up in this freezer. And again, my daughters had a bunch of their own foods in it. I again, sorted out their foods and put them into small boxes for each of them. I also combined items with like ones as I found them. I had a couple of containers of frozen bananas for banana bread. I put them all into one container. I found bread crumbs and a square of cornbread. I combined those to use together when I make bread stuffing again. And I had a bunch of different types of meat fat in separate containers. I combined those into 2 containers. We'll just have to be less picky about type of meat fat used when cooking. I found a bag of marshmallows (I have no idea why we froze those) and two freezer bags with whipped cream. This stuff looks a little old, but I will try to salvage it in something.

the bottom of the freezer -- a box of meat (in the flour bag and other bag), some jugs of milk, and a bag of ice packs

I said I've been shopping my freezers. I found so many foods that were prepped and ready to throw together with other items. Foods like sliced cooked ham and turkey, refried beans, cooked rice, diced fruit, ice cream, cooked dry beans, and many others. I even found some shredded mozzarella cheese, something I was really needing for our Friday pizzas. I still have two more freezers to go. Even so, after organizing these first 2 freezer spaces, I have plenty to work with for meals and snacks, so much so I really haven't needed to go to the store for any shopping.

In addition to not spending new money at the store, organizing my freezer spaces means I am not wasting the money already spent on food. There is no savings in a freezer full of food that is never eaten.