January 04, 2010

Our meals on the Pantry/Grocery Challenge

It's getting late and I wanted to make sure I posted what we have had to eat the past couple of days.  I will warn you that it may be rather boring but it is primarily for me as I want to keep a record of what we ate this month.

Saturday, Jan. 2nd we ate leftovers. My DS and DH left in the afternoon to drive to a basketball game and didn't get home til late.  They ate at a fast food restaurant.  I dined on eggs and toast.  I love eating breakfast for supper every now and then. 

On Sunday I made up a batch of chili and put it in the crockpot to simmer while we were at Sunday School and church.  I used ground pork instead of ground beef.  I do that every now and then and the flavor is a little different but just as tastey.  When we got home from church the chili was ready and I made some grilled cheese sandwiches.  It makes a large amount.  We like to dip the sandwiches in the hot chili.  We also had some mandarin oranges.  Later on in the afternoon I baked chocolate chip cookies.  I have about 4 large coffee cans full of chocolate chips that I purchased over the holidays.

I froze the leftover chili into two separate packages.  One will make nice leftovers for my DH and I when our son is gone some evening.  The other half I will use to make chili mac before the end of the month.  Chili mac is simply chili stirred into macaroni or other pasta and heated in the oven with some grated cheese on top.  I take leftovers and freeze them for use in later weeks.  My DS does not like leftovers. If I freeze them and serve them again in a couple of weeks he doesn't consider them leftovers.  Go figure.

Breakfast is cereal or whatever anyone wants to fix for themselves and Sunday suppers are usually leftovers.  My DS had some Kraft Deluxe Mac and Cheese for supper last night. I like having the evening off from cooking a meal.

Today my son turned 17.  I had some bacon wrapped sirloin fillets in the freezer purchased last fall on sale ($1.67 each).  When these go on sale I stock up for special occasions.  We had these along with corn and baked potatoes.  I forgot to put the tossed salad on the table and well, I was a little embarrassed that I forgot it.  We had birthday cake and ice cream for dessert. 

During the day for lunch my DS eats at school.  My husband is home for lunch 3 days out of the work week and packs his lunch the other 2 days.  He either eats leftovers or has a PB & J sandwich (he loves these) or a meat sandwich, tuna salad sandwich or egg salad sandwich.  I have either soup or a salad at lunch.

I always have apples on hand and this week we have bananas also.  I also have plenty of carrots and salad mix on hand.  We have juice along with canned oranges and other canned fruit for anyone that wants them.   In the winter I generally prepare what my mother referrs to as "winter salads."  These are carrot salad, coleslaw, waldorf salad or a simple tossed salad. 

I am not a gourmet cook.  I am a simple cook that can make a meal out of leftovers from the fridge.  I try very hard to have on hand fresh fruit and vegetables and fruit juice and always milk and cheese.  My family only eats basic fresh fruits and vegetables and nothing exotic, which is fine with me.

Tomorrow I will be baking bread as our beloved dog, Griffey, was able to get a loaf of bread off the counter and she ate it wrapper and all. Darn it!!!

It is very, very cold here and by the end of the week they are predicting temperatures at minus 10 degrees without a windchill.  I am spending my days doing housework and checking all the water faucets to make sure that the pipes don't freeze.   This is homemade soup and stew weather and I am sure that we will be having these sometime this week.

3 comments:

Tammy said...

This was not boring! I love breakfast for dinner sometimes, too. It's a very frugal meal, covering all your basic food groups, and you can even eat cereal or oatmeal if you want!

I have never had pork in chili. Sounds interesting. Italian pork? I LOVE,LOVE,LOVE chili! My family won't eat leftovers either, so I also freeze them and tada, there there the are, a new and improved meal! When I lived up Norh, we made Skyline Chili. It's just chili poured of spaghetti, topped with cheddar cheese, diced onions, sour cream, whatever you haveon hand pretty much. Sort of gives it a new twist. Also, I sometimes make nachos.

Happy belated birthday to your son. Wow. 17. Are you getting "empty nest syndrome"? Is he a senior? Has he started applying for colleges?

That darn Griffey! Must be related to Buddy- or maybe Buddy blooged him the other day!

I also love soup and using the crockpot.Check out crockpot365.blogspot.com She's got lots of great recipes!

BLW-It's ging to be 4* here tonight! Us Southern folks don't know how to handle this weather! It's been a LONG time since I have been cold all the way down to my BONES!!!!!

Martha said...

In Iowa pork is plentiful. I grew up near Buffalo, New York and we didn't have pork that often as it was quite expensive. Not so in Iowa. The pork I used in the chili is ground pork and we find it next to the hamburger in the grocery store and is similar to 85%
lean ground beef or ground chuck. Ground pork has been as low as 79 cents a lb. When that happens I buy as much as my freezer can hold. It is not seasoned. You can use it in any recipe that calls for ground beef. Perhaps I should post pork recipes from Iowa.

My in laws lived in Cincinnati for a few years so I am quite familiar with delicious Skyline Chili.

As to the weather in your area, we are in a balmy 20 degrees right now and we are under a storm warning. We are to get another snow storm tonight and then the temps are going to be dangerously low tomorrow hitting new records.

My son is a junior in high school and he has a couple of colleges he is looking at. I don't believe I will have a problem with empty nest as I adjusted pretty quickly when our oldest went to college in 2003.

As to your cold weather, I would keep an eye on your water pipes. I go to our basement and run water into our washing machine 3x a day to make sure that the pipes aren't frozen. Our pipes froze twice before and I caught it. I just got out my hair dryer and blew the hot air on the pipe and after about 10 minutes or so the ice melted and the water flowed freely. Also, good luck getting Buddy to go outside to take care of business. This weather is crazy!!

Tammy said...

Recipes with ground pork would be interesting. I've never looked here, but we have an organic farmer that sells locally, so he probably carries it- I've never looked for plain ground pork.
P.S. Buddy needs a Snuggy!!