Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Week That Straddles Two Months

I don't have a single photo for this week's Cheap & Cheerful post. The charging cord for my phone quit on me yesterday. I had taped the breaking plastic cable covering together with duct tape; but even that failed on me. All of my photos are on my phone and the battery is now dead. Anyway, I ordered a new charging cord Thursday morning. It will hopefully be here on Monday. Best part -- it didn't cost me anything out-of-pocket. This cord was for an Apple product. When I was in the checkout, I wondered if my old iTunes gift card might cover the cost. After a lot of searching and playing around, I finally loaded the balance of the iTunes card into my Apple account, then lucked upon the button that allowed me to tap into my Apple account to pay for the cord at the online Apple store. This iTunes card had been a gift that I never used up. So I was thrilled to be able to use it for a new charging cord.

Our meals

Friday
falafel

dolmathes

sautéed kale

toast

blueberries and raspberries over scratch cake topped with whipped topping

I'd been craving falafel for some time. I think it was really that I was craving something fried. I cooked up a pound of garbanzo beans and used about half of them in the falafel and saved the other half for adding to lunch time salads. This point in summer I try to use and freeze grape leaves as often as we can. In addition to making dolmathes on Friday, I also picked and froze enough grape leaves for a couple of batches in winter. I'll continue picking and freezing grape leaves as more reach the right size, neither too large or too small. I'd like to have enough of these leaves to make stuffed grape leaves twice per month for October through May of next year.

The whipped topping was something my daughters bought for Mother's Day to top strawberry pie. We'd had a half-container sitting in the freezer for a couple of months. Cake and berries sounded like good companions for the whipped topping.

Saturday
refried beans

homemade flour tortillas

garden salad

sautéed Swiss chard

raspberries

leftover plain cake

My husband makes the refried beans and tortilla meals in our house. I made the tortillas for many, many years and was happy to have him do them instead. He likes doing the same thing week after week, so this works for both of us. Always tasty.

Sunday
bean burger patties

rice

kale salad

rhubarb sauce

ice cream (finishing off several different flavors)

I've mentioned that we're still trying to use up the ice cream that had been sitting in the freezers for a couple of years. Whelp, we're still working at that. We are making lots of progress. I had the last slice of ice cream cake, while other family members had confetti ice cream, chocolate fudge brownie, and vanilla bean. There's just a small amount left now. Hopefully we can finish that over this coming weekend.

Monday
grilled hamburgers on homemade buns with homemade pickles and garden lettuce

mixed vegetables

sautéed kale

berries

microwave brownies

You know, one of the great things about feeling competent in bread-making is that on a whim I can decide I'll serve burgers or hot dogs and make the buns myself -- no need to run out to the store to get the buns. Plus, I can add some whole wheat flour to the bun dough, making these extra tasty and with a nit more nutrition. The dill pickles were from last summer. how did we manage not to eat the dill pickles this past year? I don't know how that happened, as I love, love, love dill pickles and I didn't make all that many to begin with. 

Tuesday
spaghetti and meat sauce

garden salad

trio of berries

2 nights in a row of beef. I've been extra tired and I was thinking a couple of days of meat in a row might perk me up. I remember thinking after eating dinner that this one tasted especially good to me.

Wednesday
sausage and kale frittata

garden salad

apples

mashed potatoes

blackberry pie

One of my daughters made this dinner (except the pie). I try to keep them cooking one night per week, you know, for their benefit. She did a great job. Again a meal that I thought and commented on how delicious it tasted. I work with them to plan the meals they cook, so we can use things in a way that uses what needs using and doesn't use ingredients that I want to save for another month. I harvest the veggies and fruits for them, so I know that I'm picking the parts that most need using. I've noticed a contrast between what I pick from the garden and what I pick from the store. In the garden, I pick the most aged and worn looking parts of a plant, so they don't get overlooked and go to waste, then allow the younger, more attractive leaves or fruits to be ready another day. In a grocery store, I pick the youngest, most perfect looking pieces of produce and leave the aging ones, because I can. It's perhaps not the best way to shop from the store's perspective, but I think it's what we all do -- take the best looking items and leave the not great ones. Anyway, I thought what a contrast that was from how I choose what to harvest in the garden.

Thursday
ham and gravy over scratch biscuits

garden green beans

apple wedges

blackberry pie

This was my other daughter's night to cook. And once again, I said several times how delicious it was. The ham in gravy over biscuits was comfort food at its highest level. Gravy over bread product is always my pick for comfort food. It reminds me of the meat and gravy open-faced sandwiches my mom would make, using leftover turkey or beef roast. There's not a restaurant meal around that can match the comfort of a meat and gravy sandwich.

Our early apples are just now ready to pick a few at a time. They're actually still a little tart. However, we have to stay two stepps ahead of the squirrels and raccoons with the apples. As it is, I find an apple or two that's been knocked off the tree every morning. I bring those in, wash, cut off the bad spots, then chop and freeze the apples, skin on. I'll use these apple pieces in crisps this winter.  

You may have noticed, we've added blueberries and blackberries to the raspberries, which only have a few left on the canes. It's nice when the three overlap and I can make desserts using a trio of berries. 

This was the first week of fresh green beans, too. We've reached that point in the season when the garden gives us a greater assortment of fruits and vegetables to work with. Very soon we'll have zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and beetroot. Our garden is a little slow this year, due to the cool May and June, for those of you who had a warmer spring and early summer and who've been eating zucchini for weeks now.

While we have all this fresh produce in the garden and orchard, I am trying to bulk up all of our meals with fruits and vegetables. We have berries and apples with breakfast, more berries, salad greens, and vegetable soups with lunch, and again more berries, apples, rhubarb, salads, and veggies with our evening meals. My husband (who I never could get to choose vegetables before) now says he likes how his digestion feels eating all of this produce. And I even catch him in the kitchen making salads for himself or finishing off the lentil sprouts many days. It's nice that we can inexpensively add all of this produce to our meals and snacks.

So that's what we ate this week. What was on your menu?

Have a great weekend!

And the Great Blackberry Harvest Begins

We forage for wild blackberries every year. Due to our cool May and June this year, the blackberries are ripening a couple of weeks late. But yesterday, in the late afternoon/early evening, my two daughters said they thought there might be some ripe berries nearby on their walking path. They took a few containers and brought home the first of our 2022 blackberry harvest, about 12 quarts. My main job with the blackberries is to wash and freeze them all. 

Last year, I posted a photo of one of the two giant bags of frozen blackberries we put away. These bags are the size of a standard bed pillow when filled. 

Here they are empty. I've set a dinner plate on top of the stack of bags to give you a sense of just how big these are. My family will be picking feverishly for the next 2 weeks to gather as many as we can. 

We eat blackberries all winter long in pies, crisps, yogurt, smoothies, pancake syrup, in oatmeal -- anyway I can think to use them. I have no idea what the value is of this much fruit. But I do know that I don't need to buy much fruit at all during winter because of all of the berries we forage each year.

My husband commented that my daughters "were out there with all the other poor people picking the berries." I set him straight on his thinking -- we don't forage blackberries because we're poor. We forage these berries because we're smart. I suspect that there are a lot of folks who turn up their noses at these wild-grown, freely available berries.  The way I see it, these berries are super nutrient dense. They are there for the taking. If we don't pick them, perhaps half or more will fall off the canes to rot on the ground and be wasted. I feel like they've been put in our area for consumption. If we're willing to harvest and use them, that is better than allowing them to go to waste. And we save money and boost our health because we're willing to eat them.

Obviously, I hope we fill two of these large bags again this year. I guess we'll just have to see how well we do in the foraging.