34 Weeks of Clean - Week 6 - Oven and Other Odds and Ends

This week got me working just a little on my recipes.  I straightened up my recipe cards that were sitting out and put them back in the box where they belong.  I left out my recipe for cornbread on the magnetic recipe holder since I use it a lot.  I also took the green sticky note recipe that I had written for my blog down and wrote the blog post I had planned for Taco Soup.


Over last weekend I worked in my garden, taking out the dirt and putting new weed barrier in the bottom of the garden on the left.  The weed barrier was in better shape than I was expecting, so I may not replace it in the other gardens.  Clark (3) helped me move the dirt from the garden into a bucket.  We still need to clean out the garden on the right, but we are closer to being ready to plant when the time comes.

Monday, while I worked on my kitchen counters Clark and Quinn ran around in their capes pretending to be Batman.  The girls were working on finishing cleaning their room from the weekend and Kent was working on his room, too.

counter during

counter before

 Isn't there some kind of unwritten law that when you want to clean your counters you have to make a bigger mess first?  I chose to work on this counter, there are more that still need work.




 I turned the 20# of tomatoes on the counter into sauce and while the sauce was cooking I shelled the cowpeas that were sitting on the counter, from my garden in the fall.  There was about a pound of them.  Then I cleaned more of the counter.  The tomatoes made almost 7 quarts of sauce, which is now in my pantry.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of my clean counter, before I used the kitchen again, but it is much less cluttered now.

Tomato Sauce

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While working on the tomato sauce, I was also trying to help the girls get some organization to their messy room.  They now have a system of checking a set of toys in to get a different set off of their closet shelf.  So far it seems to be working pretty well.  They have their dolls, dress-up, stuffed animals and a few other small odds and ends that are available all the time.



 Here's the "rules" posted on their closet door.

Later in the week I cleaned the oven and stove top.

Click the button to find out the details for next week's cleaning challenge. 

Tomato Sauce

About a month ago I had the opportunity to take home some tomatoes that were headed for the trash.

 They were starting to mold and had small bad spots.  I wouldn't have purchased them, but they were FREE to me.  I diced them up.

 That's almost twenty cups of diced tomatoes.  Did I mention I didn't buy them?

They turned into five pints of tomato sauce.  Which was on my shopping list to get and I got to cross it off without ever going to the store.  We've already used one pint and it was better than the canned stuff.  Yippee!!!

Recipe Stash - Savory Sweet Potato Kugel

I've been bookmarking online recipes for a long time.  Some of them I have tried, but many of them just sounded good and I have never tried them.  This year one of my goals is to try at least one recipe from my bookmarked list each month.

Earlier this month I had two very large garnet yams in my pantry that I wanted to use.  I found this recipe that I had bookmarked and we tried it.

Savory Sweet Potato Kugel :  I used 2 very large garnet yams, 1 cup ground beef, 1/3 cup chopped onion, 1 cup corn, 2 eggs, and about 1 and 1/2 cups cheddar cheese.  It completely filled my 9X13 pan.  Click the recipe title to see the actual recipe.

It was good.  Most of the kids liked it and Jeff even said he would eat it again if I served it.  This is one recipe that will stay in my list, since we get a couple sweet potatoes a year and I like to serve them to my family members at least once, but several of them don't like plain sweet potatoes like I do.  The Savory Sweet Potato Kugel leftovers were good reheated in a frying pan with some butter.  I also saved the sweet potato water like the author of the recipe suggested and cooked rice with a few raisins for my breakfast the next day.  It was very good and didn't need any sweetening.

If You Were a Fly on the Wall Today

I'm up just after 6:30 am packing lunches, having my quiet time with God in the Psalms, checking my e-mail, correcting more of yesterday's school lessons.  Jeff, Ben, and Noah head out for their day.  It is "quiet" time in the house until 7:30.  Kent eats breakfast at 7:10.  7:25 am get Clark and Lissie dressed and started on breakfast.  7:30 - the kids start their before breakfast services and Kent has his time with me for his school assignments for the day.  8:00 - Kent begins his before breakfast services and Kaomi eats breakfast.  8:15 - Katy's time with me for her school assignments.  8:35 - Katy eats breakfast and I put Quinn in the swing.  The kids have free time and I get my breakfast.

At 9:15 the school bell rings everyone meets in the kitchen and we start with the Pledge of Allegiance, Bible time/song, and poetry.  The poem we have been studying is My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson, so we headed outside to look at our shadows and we trace around everyone's shadows on the sidewalk with chalk.  We come back inside at 9:43 and everyone tackles their mid-morning chores.  Katy finished quickly and started her individual work at 9:46.  At 9:58 Kaomi began her individual work and Kent started his at 10:00.  I got an activity box out for Lissie and Clark, then fed Quinn and listened to Kent's Independent History Study assignment.  10:25 - I checked on how individual work was going, put Quinn in the pack and play with a few toys, corrected some of the work that was waiting in my basket, and listened to Katy's Independent History Study Assignment.  10:48 - Close windows, pick-up Quinn and give Kaomi a spelling test.  10:58 - Try to get Kent to understand that I can't answer his question without seeing his problem in math.  Kaomi gets a break and Kent brings his math book.  Then I have to try to convince Kent that the question he is asking me is irrelevant to the answer he needs to find.  He doesn't need to convert meters into feet because the answer is supposed to be in meters.  I'm not sure I got though to him and I noticed he never completed that problem in math.  11:02 - I cleaned up the activity so Quinn could play on the floor.  11:08 - Kaomi worked on her reading lesson with me, Clark and Lissie are playing nicely, Quinn is in the kitchen.  I pick him up.  11:15 - I put Quinn back in the pack and play with a "new" toy and did grammar with Kaomi.  11:27 - I check on individual work and reply to a text from Mom.  11:30 - We all went back outside to to check our shadows and to trace them again.  11:45 - The kids work on their lunchtime duties, have free time, the girls help with Quinn while I make lunch, lunch time/recess, I feed Quinn, check e-mail and put Quinn in his swing again.   The kids go outside to play with the Beach activity box and water.  12:40 - I fix my lunch and enjoy the semi-silence.  I straighten up the kitchen a little and get the mail.

1:00 - Time to clean up the outside activity.  The kids start their afternoon jobs; I change Clark's wet clothes, read him a story and put him to bed.  1:15 - We start school for the afternoon in the living room.  We work on storytimes, History, History Narration, and science reading.  2:05 - We work on our science experiment.  2:25 - Lissie went for quiet time and the older kids filled out their lab forms for science.  2:35  I work on math with Kaomi.  Kent and Katy work on the last of their unfinished work for school and the corrections in the blue basket.  2:55 - I work on correcting the lessons from the day that are in my basket.  3:30 - Time for a break.  Katy and Kaomi have math homework and Kent needs to finish the corrections he was working on in math for homework.  We go outside to look at our shadows and trace them again.  Noah arrives home from school.  3:45 - The neighbor girl knocks on the door.  She needs help with some math homework.  4:00 - Lissie and Clark get up from their nap, so I start making snack.  Clark is fussing, so he gets to go back to bed.  Noah has a question about algebra.  Kaomi works more on her homework.  4:10 - I finish making snack and get Clark up again.  4:15 - I help the neighbor with her homework and hold Clark.  4:30 - Noah and Kent head outside to mow the yard.

5:00 - We stop working on homework and go outside.  Quinn is awake so I take him out with us.  5:20 - I send the neighbor girl home, feed Quinn, and most of the kids play in the backyard.  5:35 - Quinn went back into his pack and play while I tried to figure out alternative dinner plans, since I spent my dinner prep. hour on homework.  Ben arrived home from work.  I started dinner.   6:00 -Jeff arrived home and the kids worked on their evening obligations.  6:30 - Trace shadows again for the last time.  7:00 - Supper is finally ready.  7:25 - Jeff and the kids help clean up from dinner while I feed Quinn.  7:55 - I started getting Clark and Lissie ready for bed.  All the kids said goodnight and went to bed.  I prep lunches for tomorrow and Jeff kept Quinn from fussing.  8:35 pm - I sat down to feed Quinn again.  Jeff was finishing cleaning up in the kitchen and I started writing this post.  Ben took Quinn for a little while since he wasn't looking sleepy yet.

This is a fairly typical day for a Tuesday, Thursday or Friday in our home.

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Meals that I've Been Putting in my Freezer

I've been working on putting up some gluten free meals to be used later this month as well as after the baby arrives.

Today, I made the following meals for our freezer.

2 Meatloaves.
Beef Enchilada Casserole.
Taco Meat and a package of Tortillas for 1 meal.
Plain Chicken Breasts to be used as desired for baking or grilling.
Chicken Cassoulet for Crockpot, usually is good for 2-3 meals.
Chicken Nuggets for 1 meal.

I also have 2 cups of homemade red enchilada sauce in the freezer.

I've never spent a whole day making meals for our freezer before.  Thanks to my wonderful husband helping watch the kids.  Even though the day was long it was rewarding to get everything I had planned on accomplished.

I have plans to make tomorrow:

2 batches of taco soup for the crockpot (1 to be used this for dinner this week.) -done
Pasta meal (I've never frozen a gluten free pasta meal, so this will be a test to see if we like the way it works.) -done
Beef and Black Bean Taco meat -done

I also plan to make:

Sausage with veggies to be served with rice -done
2 Pizzas with Cheese and Pepperoni

       

Ratatouille

Ever since we've seen the movie Ratatouille Jeff has wondered what ratatouille is.  I decided to try making it and see how our family likes it.  I'm not a fan of eggplant, but am often willing to try something new, never knowing when I will like something prepared differently.  After looking several recipes over I found one that would work for us.

We tried this recipe.  I changed the sauce slightly by using only 1 clove of garlic and about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of onion, 1 yellow pepper and fresh oregano.  I also didn't use the vinegar or the pepper flakes.  I didn't have any yellow squash on hand, but I did have an eggplant so we layered tomato slices, eggplant slices and zucchini slices.  Kaomi and Felicity helped with lots of looking on from Kent and Katy.  The sauce smelled really good after it was all blended up.

It's pretty.

We covered it with the sauce and baked it first thing in the morning.  I thought baking it would help the flavors blend and then I wouldn't have to run the oven as long later in the day when it was hot.  We refrigerated it and rewarmed it in the oven for supper.  The flavors did blend, but it took almost as long to reheat it as it did to bake the first time.

We served it with these yummy gluten free rolls and a small bit of sausage.

I thought it was okay, it reminded me of my mom's zucchini parmesan.  None of the kids liked it, but they did a fairly good job of eating most of what I served them.  Jeff wasn't real fond of it either.  He thought it was very citrusy.  I thought it would have been better with a good serving of parmesan cheese sprinkled over it.

Over all the flavors were good.  It just doesn't seem to be a fit for our family who has people who dislike tomatoes and zucchini.  It's definitely not a good main dish for us.  Will I make it again?  Maybe, but probably not for a year or so.  I like to give everyone a chance to forget, so if I serve something that hasn't gone over well in the past they've had a chance for their tastes to refine.  I would also probably decrease the onion I added by half.


          

Kitchen Flop

Kaomi checked a cookbook out of the library and picked out a recipe for Russian Honeycake.  Unfortunately, we used our gluten free flour mix and I forgot that there was already baking soda in the mix.  It overflowed the pan majorly and all over the oven floor.  It actually tasted fairly good, but was extremely sweet.

The Hidden Art of Homemaking - Food

When God created us he gave us food to eat and enjoy from His garden.  We were created with the ability to taste all the flavors, feel the different textures, smell the tantalizing smells,  see the wide variety of food and be nourished with what God created.

Cooking can be an "art".

How fun is it to always open a package or can and warm it to eat?  Isn't it more fun to start with something fresh and make something out of it for everyone at your table to enjoy?

Pre-packaged foods can be great for when you are in a hurry, but they are seldom fresh and there isn't much art to opening a package.  For the few times I do use a pre-made meal I usually add some extra ingredients or a fresh vegetable or fruit.  I like to begin with the ingredients to make a dish, that way I can season it to the way we like it or greatly reduce the ingredients that aren't needed or liked as much.  I can also save money by making complete meals from scratch, because I am not paying for the packaging or labor to make it for me.  I also like to have a vegetable garden and it is fun to grow, pick and eat the food that grows.

Being able to incorporate yesterday's leftovers into tomorrow's meals can add a challenge, but be a great way to make sure you are using up everything you have, rather than throwing it wastefully in the trash.

I like to make my own chicken stock after I cook a whole chicken.  I cover the bones with water in my crockpot and add a couple of carrots and any other vegetables I have that need to be used up.  Then I let it cook on low for 18-24 hours and sometimes more.  Then I freeze the stock in 1 1/2 cup portions so it is ready when I have a recipe that needs it or I make rice or gravy and other meals that I can incorporate the chicken stock over then next several days.  This uses up my bones and costs pennies compared to a can of broth from the store.

Just by trying to serve a meal with a few different colors adds to the prettiness of it as well as providing a variety of vitamins and minerals.  It doesn't have to cost a lot to make those you are serving feel special.

The author wrote of how she shared simple fare with tramps and hobos who came to her door.  Making them feel special and giving them a Gospel of John to read as well.  There are other ways you could minister to people through food, too.  I made muffins and gave them to the family who was moving in across the street last summer; now we say "hi" to each other every time we are out.  I was making Christmas cookies in December and the Pest Control guy was at our house, so I wrapped up a couple of cookies in plastic wrap, sealed it with a Christmas sticker and placed them in a small paper bag to give to him when he handed our receipt to me.    When I wished him a Merry Christmas he was excited that we had thought of sharing with him.  I did the same for our mail lady who had frequently been bringing packages to our door.


What are some ways you have incorporated "art" into your food?



     

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