Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Week with Lots of Chicken Leftovers

Sometime late last week I roasted a whole chicken. These chicken get larger and larger each year. This one was huge.  Friday evening I cut as much meat off the bones as I could, then froze them in meal-sized portions. I simmered the carcass in the crock pot overnight, then picked the remaining meat off the bones and set the bones in a new pot of water for a second simmering overnight for bone broth. We used some of this stock and bone broth in soups this week and froze more. Once the bones were completely cleaned, I baked them in the oven until browned and pounded into bone meal for the garden. The smell can be overwhelming when baking, so I opened doors and windows and ran the exhaust fan. I'll probably freeze bones through the cool months to bake to dry once our weather turns door-opening warm in spring.

You may have noticed, we're eating more meat at dinner these days. I'll cook more beans again in winter. For now, we're enjoying some of the chicken and ground beef that I stocked up on this past year.

Friday

Friday

I roasted a chicken earlier in the week and had everything needed to make hash. I love hash! Cat had mentioned (in the comments) making hash a couple of weeks ago and it had been in my mind since. And now that I'm digging the potatoes, I once again can make it economically. Almost all of our potatoes are purple this year. The purple fingerling seem to be very productive in my garden, while the white potatoes not so much. So grateful for the green beans and salad greens to round out the meal.

chicken hash, using purple potatoes, celery, and sage from garden, and leftover chicken and gravy, plus store onions
garlic green beans
tossed garden salad

Saturday

Saturday

My husband made soup for us tonight. I find the ingredients for him and he puts it together. He toasted up the leftover scones, which I think really improved them.

chicken-vegetable-pasta soup

tossed garden salad
leftover eggnog scones, toasted

Sunday
I was in a period of fasting and prayer. I think my family had burritos and salad.

Monday

Monday

Since I needed to use up chicken last Friday, I put off making the pizza until Monday. I had some summer squash and some green beans, but not enough of either one for the whole family, so I combined them with garlic, onion, tomato, basil, and oregano. Those raspberries are ever-bearing variety. This variety produces two crops, an early crop (just before the main crop July-bearing canes we also have) and a mid-fall crop. We had just a few pears this year. I'm working on improving conditions for our pear trees so they will produce well again.

homemade pepperoni pizza
Italian vegetable medley
tossed salad
fruit compote of apple, pear and raspberries

Tuesday

Tuesday

This was an easy dinner night. One daughter and I put it together. Our September apples are dwindling now. We'll be moving on to the later apples (already picked and in the garage fridge) in about a week. In any case, apple wedges are an easy side. 

kale frittata
brown rice
apple wedges
tossed salad

Wednesday

Wednesday

The same daughter who I worked with on dinner last night made the meatloaf meal tonight. We love meatloaf in our house. I think it gets a bad rap. Meatloaf is delicious. The potato salad was made with our purple potatoes, our garden celery, onions, mayo, boiled egg, and a bit of curry powder. I have yet to grow early potatoes, so we don't get potato salad until after summer is over (when our garden potatoes are finally ready). I'm thinking of ordering some early-crop seed potatoes for this coming season. It would be nice to have some potatoes for dishes like potato salad in summer.

meatloaf and gravy
potato salad
tossed salad
garlic green beans

Thursday

Thursday

My other daughter made dinner for us tonight. The soup used garden celery, garlic, potatoes, carrots, carrot leaves, plus onions and leftover chicken in stock from the freezer. Surprisingly, the muffins tasted like blueberry muffins. Delicious! I ate 2, one more than I should have. She baked a large batch to freeze some for her own snacks and breakfasts as well as some for the family. She also made a rhubarb-blackberry pie earlier in the week that she was going to serve tonight, but we were all too full. The rhubarb-blackberry pie finished off our garden rhubarb for the year. Despite our long stretch of dry weather, I kept the rhubarb plants watered with kitchen waste water. I think that helped.

chicken and vegetable soup
blackberry muffins

Breakfasts this week included leftover scones, bacon (I saved the fat for cooking with), steel cut oats, Toasty O's cereal, toasted homemade bread, frozen blackberries, apples, milk, and yogurt. My sleep is wonky this year. I keep waking around 3 AM. One night I got up and started some crockpot steel cut oats at 3 AM. I cooked it on HI and they were perfectly done by 7 AM. My favorite add-in for steel cut oats is a little maple extract and some honey.

Lunches included tomato sandwiches, leftover pizza, tomato-basil soup, spiced fig-applesauce, tossed garden salads, chicken-apple-celery salad, eggs, peanut butter, apples, raisins, refried beans, sausage, homemade tortillas, bread, cupcakes and cookies. 

Here's something really cool about teaching my daughters how to cook from basic ingredients: when they get a hankering for something, they know how to make it themselves. One daughter saw the buckets of newly dug potatoes and said what she most wanted to make from some of them was potato salad. so she did. The other daughter wanted some muffins to use as snacks and breakfasts on the run. She found my rhubarb muffin recipe and modified it for blackberries. She used some of these muffins in our dinner on Thursday. When they have their own places, I'm confident that they'll be able to economically cook for themselves.

I finished digging the potatoes this week. I used muscles on my backside that I'd forgotten existed. Yes, I'm a bit sore and stiff tonight. Anyway, I'm looking forward to making a pan of oven-roasted potatoes for lunch tomorrow!

The garden still has celery, kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts (although very tiny), turnips, beets, spinach, mache, Swiss chard, green onions, carrots, lettuce, green (unripe) figs, a couple of pears, raspberries, and a small amount of green beans growing. I used some odds and ends to make sweet pickle relish for the year. It's been a very good year with the garden, even with me still needing to learn a lot more.

My meals are humble, using very basic ingredients and simple cooking processes. Humble meals make for affordable eating. Nothing fancy, but nothing lacking either.

Those were our meals. What was on your menu?

How Would Your Life Be Different If You No Longer Had Internet Access?

I ask this question because of how I spent my day, today. Early in the day, we lost our internet. All 4 of us have limited data plans on our phones, relying on our home wi-fi for internet most of the time and saving the cell data for when we're out. Our home internet was restored just as we were sitting down to dinner (about 6 PM). So, I spent the better part of a day in non-tech mode.

A few ways my day was different:

• I read an actual hard copy of the Bible for the daily reading in our church. I knew where we had left off the previous day, so I just had to find my place and guess at how long the reading was supposed to be. Of course, I couldn't leave any comments about my thoughts or read other's thoughts on our reading. I'll catch up with my group tomorrow.
• I worked outdoors in the garden more than I might have otherwise. I harvested the last of the summer squash, green tomatoes, and tiny peppers and made 3 jars of sweet pickle relish. I also dug the entire 2nd bed of potatoes. Both daughters came out late in the afternoon to help with the potatoes, as it really was a big job. We harvested about 20-25 pounds of purple potatoes. This was more work than I would normally take on for the day. I otherwise would have dug about half the bed this day and tackled the other half the next. But today, I had all the time in the world without the internet beckoning me.
• I went for a longer walk than I'd normally take, because, why not? And I took my time really looking at all of the front yards, the flowers, fall decor, new paint jobs, fence installations -- all things I'd quickly walked past ion previous walks. I guess you could say I slowed down to smell the roses.
• My husband took the bus to the public library to do some work for the office. While this wasn't "my day", where he is for the day does affect my day.
• I played 3 games of solitaire with a deck of cards. I laughed at myself when I waited for the cards to be dealt, then realized I had to do that myself, no auto-dealing.
• We spent more time talking with each other.
• And now I'm more tired than usual after putting in a hard physical day.

My concluding thoughts about how I spent my internet-less day were that I was more productive, more physically active, and more intentional in exploring my surroundings and developing my relationships. I could have skipped the card games. It was mostly frustrating that I had to keep my piles of cards straight and deal them myself.

I'm glad to have access back. I get to write to you because I have internet tonight. But I do think I would be more productive without internet. But I also wonder how long that would last. Maybe I would find other ways to be less productive.

So, my question for you -- how do you think your life would differ without access to the internet?