Friday things

hello everyone 

today has been a mostly quiet, rainy day.

I baked a batch of sandwich buns and an angel food cake- I used a Betty Crocker cake mix and it is delicious 

My buns recipes are in an old post I did in 2014 

https://ifyoudostuff.blogspot.com/2014/02/frugal-february-homemade-sandwich-buns.html

I picked up 3 of grands after school.  One of them has a birthday soon.  He has a friend with a 3D printer who gifted him this very nice turtle and shark.  

The turtle’s back comes off and can hold some little trinkets and his legs move.  The shark is flexible.  

They are really nice quality.  I’ve heard of 3D printers but don’t know anything about them.  I can’t imagine owning one but I do like these little doo-dads.  

We are having stormy weather and I’ve been keeping my purse, shoes and flashlight by the back door just in case we need head to our storm shelter in a hurry.

I told my grands why and to put their shoes there too,  

 🙄  It took me 15 seconds to make it safer 

Supper was chicken fajitas with rice and beans.  

and of course cake for dessert 

almost 15 year old granddaughter- she used to pose a lot more willingly ❤️

Have a good weekend everyone 

❤️Rhonda 

Thursday - time to do a better job

Hello everyone 

I took this photo of myself with the timer on my ipad camera.  It’s rainy and quite cool so my flannel shirt feels cozy today.  

Then I cooked breakfast. 

I saw this biscuit recipe from Laura@HarvestLaneCottage and decided to bake a 1/2 recipe of them.  

https://harvestlanecottage.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-very-old-biscuit-recipe.html

I followed her recipe exactly except I cut mine with a biscuit cutter.  

They use a lot less fat than most recipes but they were quite delicious!  

So if you like the idea of using less fat either for finances or dietary issues,  you might like this recipe too.  

I can vouch it’s a tried and true recipe.  

After breakfast was eaten and cleaned up,  I got busy in the fridge- mainly the produce drawer.  

The top layer doesn’t look bad but I was pretty sure there were some spoiled things underneath 


all of these vegetables are fine 

but this was 2 bags of cucumbers, a partial cabbage and some green onions that were 100% spoiled.  

I made the photo black and white because yall don’t need to see gross stuff.  

There was 1 bell pepper that had a short life left so I sliced it and an onion up and we will have fajitas soon.  

Then for supper tonight,  we had the rest of the chicken dressing and mashed potatoes, I added a can of green beans and sautéed the last of that shredded cabbage with a little butter and diced onion.  It wasn’t a fancy meal but it fed us and we are happy.  

I made a list of all our fresh produce so I can hopefully use it instead of letting it spoil.  

I wrote the menu list a few weeks ago and we’ve already had some of those meals but we could still have others.  

I still can’t get my Kroger delivery before Monday.  It’s fine but it is weird. 

My husband is still feeling so good!  

Hope you all have had a good Thursday 

❤️ Rhonda 

Wednesday highlights

Hello again 

we were wakened about 5 A.M. with a storm moving through and tiny hail hitting our back windows.  

We didn’t have any damage and the rain was a good thing.  

We watched a news channel out of Oklahoma City.  I think we have the best meteorologists here and they kept us informed about what was going on.  

On Wednesdays, I always look at the new Kroger sales and place an order to be delivered on Thursday.  

I have a small order in my cart but when I go to check out,  it tells me the quickest delivery is Monday 😵‍💫

I’m guessing Kroger is having some problems,  I do not think by 8 A.M., that they were already solidly booked with deliveries for the next 4 days.  

It’s not a big deal right now and I can easily wait until. next week for groceries if it has to be that way.  

But I’ll try to check out again in the morning,  maybe Kroger will have their act together by then.  

I’ve been sewing on strip quilt squares for a few months.  One of our extra bedrooms has 2 twin beds and I plan to make 2 matching quilts that are as big as bedspreads for those 2 beds.  

Today I started trimming them and got about halfway done.  

I don’t think I’ve sewn enough  squares but when I get them trimmed,  I’ll lay them out on one of the beds and figure out numbers.  

My husband is feeling so much better!  He always gets hiccups after anesthesia and those lasted off and on for about 36 hours.  

His back has no pain at all now.  

No cooking today as we ate reheated entrees I cooked yesterday.  

I gave our stovetop a much needed cleaning last night and it was so nice to see a clean stove when I was in the kitchen today.  

Good night everyone

I’m hoping for a good night of sleep without a noisy wake up call again.  But who knows?  spring is storm season

❤️ Rhonda 

Hello again and it’s not an April Fools joke

hello everyone

it’s been a hard few months here with my husband’s physical pain issues.  

But he finally got a big treatment yesterday and we are both hopeful he has turned a page and we can get back to living a more normal life.  

I’ve started some seeds indoors and hope to plant them outside by the middle of April 

My husband had this little greenhouse stored away.  It was advertised to be used outdoors but it can’t hold up to Oklahoma wind. 

it works great in our breakfast room area.

Most of our tomato and pepper seeds are planted in recycled food containers.  

I planted zinnias in the egg shells.  They are a little tricky to crack off just the end- I held the egg over a bowl and tapped around the end with a sharp knife until the end came off.  

and the opening is so small,  it takes a little fiddling to get the potting soil in. 

But I think the shells look cute and are something that normally just gets thrown away.

For April,  I want to spend less than $200 for groceries.  It shouldn’t be too hard as I’m starting with a full pantry, a lot of freezer items and $50 in credit at Kroger.  

I plan on sharing here what a buy and what we eat.  

inside our pantry - kind of hard to photograph as it is a narrow pantry with a narrow door

We don’t have a big deep freezer but we have 2 refrigerators and both have more than decent freezer storage space.  

I wanted to cook up some meals today.  I cooked a whole chicken and some plain rice over the weekend and I wanted to use them both up. 

I also had a bag of stuffing mix.  

So I cooked a casserole with 1/2 a bag of the stuffing mix cooked by the bag directions,  I also added diced chicken to the dressing.  the “gravy” on top was a can of cream soup thinned with 1/2 cup milk.  I baked the casserole for about 25 minutes. 

this is the carrots and celery sauteeing for the dressing.  (You all may call this stuffing but where I live,  we call it dressing). 

with the rest of the chicken and the cold. leftover rice,  I cooked fried rice.  

first I cooked about a cup of onions and carrots in about 2 T oil until the carrots were tender.  

Then I added about 1/2 of the bag of shredded cabbage and cooked it until soft.  

Next I added about 2 cups total of thawed corn peas and carrots, about 2 cups of diced chicken and about 3 cups of cold leftover rice.  

Keep cooking and stirring until it’s all hot and add low sodium soy sauce and pepper to taste.  

I also made a small batch of mashed potatoes to have with the chicken casserole.  

and I baked a batch of blond brownies while the oven was on.  

Hello again 

and I hope to be back to blogging and back connecting with you all

Rhonda ❤️

new to do list Monday

good evening everyone 

It’s chilly here,  is it chilly where you are? 

I made a new to do list for this week.  This pen and paper method is just what works for me.  

I like that planner I bought but I know I won’t  keep using.  

does anyone want a very slightly used planner? Go back a few posts to see what it looks like.  It’s a full size printed paperback book, not spiral bound or purse size.   

 I can mail it to someone in the USA requests it 

Supper was easy 

chili from the freezer on baked potatoes 

It was warm and very tasty on a cold day 

Hope you all a pleasant Monday

❤️ Rhonda 

a short weekend trip

Hello again

We drove down to Shawnee Oklahoma to an event one of our sons was involved with. 

Bobby works full time and has a family but he’s also a competitive barbecue cook and has own line of seasonings.

  

very tasty Spare Ribs all perfect to turn in for judging.  

The cooking is all done outside in the parking lot.  They all have trailers or tents,  an assortment of cookers,  lots of lawn chairs and lots of friendship.  They cooks are competing against each other but they also seem to have deep friendships.  

There was an indoor banquet after this cooking event to give awards for the 2024 cooking season.  

This big arena was full of cooks and their friends and families.

Bobby did very well.  

Bobby’s awards from last night 

We stayed in a hotel because we didn’t want to be driving home late at night.  

that’s our room and our stuff already unpacked.  It was good room,  clean and quiet and not crowded 

The complementary breakfast was great!  I started with oatmeal and then had some tiny scones that were fresh and delicious.  My husband had little omelets, smoked sausage, and toast.  

This was the Hampton Inn in Shawnee.  

The first day we ate at a Cracker Barrel.  The food was Ok- nothing spectacular though.  

But if you want to shop,  there were so many cute things in the Cracker Barrel gift shop.  

I enjoyed looking but didn’t buy a thing.  I’m trying to have less stuff in our home,  not more.  

The weather was cool on Saturday when we were outdoor.

But today it’s bitter cold with high winds.  

We even have a dusting of snow.  

I plan on staying home until it warms up some.  

I don’t like being in cold wind.  

Supper was a homemade pizza.  

I made the dough in the bread machine but it could also be done by hand or in a mixer with a dough hook 

when I cook with an actual recipe,  I will try to include it but sometimes I just mix up ingredients that we have and sound good 

I made the 1 pound amount of dough for our 1 pizza 

sausage, mild jalapeño, onion, homemade sauce from the freezer and green olives on part for my husband 

This was a great supper on a cold evening.  

That’s the highlights of our weekend

Thank you for reading 

❤️ Rhonda 

thank you for the warm welcome back ❤️

hello everyone 

Y’all sure surprised me,  I wasn’t expecting any comments but thank you all for reading and writing such nice things.  

I do hope to blog more so———

I’ll just tell you about last night and today.  

3 grands spent the night and it was slightly last minute.  It’s just easier to serve kid-friendly meals so we had pancakes with bacon and sausage for Friday night supper. 

They jumped right in.  Our granddaughter and her oldest brother made the pancake batter and she cooked all the pancakes.  

They wanted to play restaurant so they made a menu and took orders.  

we don’t always have this many choices but we had chocolate chips in the pantry,  blueberries and pecans in the freezer, so why not offer options? 

Supper was delicous and the kiddos had fun.  

Kroger delivered this morning.  

below totaled to about $60.  

Before they left this morning,  the boys took everything out of the lower kitchen cabinets for me.  

that corner cabinet has lots of storage space but it’s hard to get the stuff back out.  I’m thankful they could help today.  

I organized all the lower cabinets and got rid of a few things.  

I’m trying to have less stuff and I am making some headway.  

below is Inside some of the newly organized lower cabinets 

I really like cooking several main dishes at one time.  

I cooked 2 chicken breasts in the crockpot and shredded them. 

I removed half of the meat to use in fried rice, with the rice being left from New Year’s day’s traditional meal of black eyed peas with rice and cabbage.  

Then I added red beans, corn, onions, bell pepper, green chilies, canned tomatoes and chicken broth to make a Mexican-ish soup.  

we ate fried rice tonight and have the rest of it and soup later.  

I’ll blog again soon

❤️ Rhonda