Kitchen prep, supper, sewing and my husband's DIY

Hello everyone,  I had some questions on how I make our sandwich box.
Since I made another one today,  I took photos of just the divider dishes I use.

The clear glass bowl holds 1 cup and works fine for the tomatoes in the salad box. 

The Apple green double dish is something I got from my daughter when she decluttered her home

And the dark green oval bowls are old Tupperware.  

I think this shows the dishes aren't anything special.  They are shallow enough to fit inside the bigger boxes but other containers would work fine.  

Today's sandwich box and salad for tomorrow night. 

For supper, I made Dutch Farmers Supper with baked carrots and blackberry crisp.  

I prepped the vegetables by peeling and cutting them when I made the salad and sandwich box. 

The main dish is potatoes and onion,  simmered in water or broth until almost done. Then add green beans and diced sausage until heated through.  Season with salt and plenty of black pepper as desired. 

I used turkey sausage.  We think it tastes great and is much lower in fat than traditional sausage.  Turkey sausage does not seem to hold up to long cooking though, so I just simmer it until it's heated. 

dessert was Blackberry Crisp.  My daughter bought the locally grown berries in the summer and we still have several containers in the freezer.  I better use them soon as the new crop will be ready before we know it. 

I used a recipe from AllRecipes.com but I adjusted it a bit.  I did use 4 cups of berries as specified, 

but I cut the crisp part in half.  The 1 cup of sugar sounded way too sweet.  We like desserts like 

cherry pie to have some tartness. After we ate it,  I'm really glad I did cut half the topping,  the blackberries were really the star of this dessert. 

Blackberry Crisp

A little sewing project was patching knees on jeans that belong to our 3 year old grandson.  

My husband has been working on bar height benches for our daughter's home.  I found the plans for them on a blog called Simply Keirste

Eggs - First in, first out

some months we run out of eggs but sometimes we have a few left when I buy more.
I take our eggs out of the cartons and store then in the fridge in a plastic container.
I like to use the oldest eggs first so I take them out of the plastic container and put the new eggs on the bottom,
Then I mark the old eggs with a tiny dot and put them on top.

The dots make it easy to see the older eggs and use them first.  

Commissary Haul

Do any of you ever watch Haul videos on YouTube, where people video and describe everything they just bought from a grocery store or Dollar Tree or similar store?  I have no idea why they are so popular but they are popular.  I must confess that I've watched quite a few myself.

I have no plans to start making videos but I did take photos of our trip to the commissary on Friday.

Commissaries are grocery stores aboard a US military base.  They sell name brand and some commissary brand items.  Most of them are very nice and have great prices.
We have to drive an hour to get to either of the 2 commissaries closest to us.  We usually go about  1 time a month and we usually buy quite a bit.

My husband shops with me and he likes meat, which will be evident in the photos.
We are empty nesters but we feed company often and we sometimes share purchases with our family.


We budget $600 a month for all grocery and household items.  Occasionally we go over that amount but the last 2 months we have been significantly under.
I'm sure our budget sounds so high to many of you.  For most of our married life, our budget was much lower.  But at this stage, we can afford that much and it's what works for us.

So, here is what $378 bought this week -  I expect most of this will last close to 2 months. 

Lots of dairy- we like cheese and this should last much longer than a month. 

The Cooper brand cheese is only sold at commissaries, I believe.  

The Tillamook is slices for sandwiches.

The flavored Philadelphia cream cheese is nice in celery and on crackers. 

The yogurt drinks are not something we always buy 2 of the grands asked for them but in some areas,  I do try to spoil them. 

Produce - 3 pounds onions, celery, 5 pounds carrots, bananas, tomatoes on the vine

4 pounds of really nice strawberries, red grapes and my favorite kinds of yogurt.  

And eggs as always 

Donald Duck orange juice - hopefully a months worth 

A sack with 5 packs of yesterday's 93% ground beef. They packs are almost 2 pounds, frozen, and marked down about 20%.  I left them all tied up in a bag and put them in the bottom of the  freezer.  I think I already had a few packs bought before Christmas in the freezer and will use them first.  

Melanie at Comfy House asked what kind of roast beef I buy.  We like lean roasts and we really these Top Round cuts.  Sometimes we buy similar ones called Eye of Round.  

We bought 2 because they looked so nice.  Roast makes a good meal to feed a crowd too.   

Above is a pack of 4 strips steak that my husband will grill sometime,   3 packs of cube steaks to make chicken fried steaks, a pack of apple chicken sausage, and not shown is pack of Cajun chicken sausage.

We bought 3 big jugs of Snuggle fabric softener, 2 canisters of gravy mix, hamburger pickles, 

6 pounds of breakfast sausage, a big Cure 81 ham that my husband will slice and then freeze for lots of sandwiches, and some jalapeño beef sausages.

We have learned to keep some convenience foods in the freezer.  

We really like the Tyson chicken strips.  We bake them and they are a crowd pleaser.  We also like Marie Callander pot pies and some of Marie's dinners.  Another shopper told us the French bread pizzas were very good so we got a couple to try. 

The cheese sticks were free as my coupons exceeded their value.  I would of got more but there were only 2 in the freezer.  

Assorted canned goods and condiments 

Some baking mixes, more condiments, a huge bag of raisins,  squeeze fruit packs, drink mix and a big pack of tortillas.

I don't usually buy brownie mix but our son in law was recently craving brownies and was looking in our pantry for a brownie mix but there wasn't any.  I planned to just buy 1 brownie mix but they were all on sale and looked so good so I ended up buying 4. 

My  favorite crackers - they are not always in stock so I got 4 because they had a good supply of them. 

Most all of these health and beauty things were bought with coupons and cost very little. 
I like these Presto gallon size food bags to store produce in the fridge inside,  with the air squeezed out, of course. 

and an assortment of light bulbs. 
Not shown are 3 50 count Hefty plates,  2 of the bottles of fabric softener and a giant case of 48 packs of Ramen noodles for our oldest son.  

I didn't buy many canned foods, dry goods or baking goods as there are plenty still in our pantry.
I get most of our household cleaners and papergoods at CVS. 
I buy milk in shelf stable cartons at Dollar Tree. 
We eat chicken often but I got so much chicken on sale at the commissary right before Christmas that we didn't need to buy any more yet. 
We will need more fresh produce in a week or 2 and I will probably shop for it at Aldi or Sprouts, depending on what they have on sale. 

Pascal's Pancakes

Four of the grands stayed with us Friday night.  Their favorite breakfast is pancakes so I tried a new recipe from Afternoon Coffee & Evening Tea

Pascal's Pancakes Recipe

what makes the recipe different is it uses maple syrup instead of sugar.

I tripled the recipe for the 6 of us.  Two of the kiddos had seconds and there were about 6 pancakes leftover that went in the freezer. 

for a triple batch, I  used 3 eggs, 3 T maple syrup, 6 T cooking oil,  2 1/4 C milk (I added a little extra as our batter seemed too thick) 3 C flour, 6 t baking powder and about 1 t salt

Its a very  nice pancake recipe and I'm glad so glad Billie Jo shared it. 

Getting ready for the weekend..........With a wee helper

hello everyone,  since we still had so much fresh produce, I decided to use while it was still usable.

I made a big salad to eat as we want to over the weekend.
I also made a sandwich topping box and added the last 3  pickle spears in one jar and some olives from another big jar because I know my husband likes them.

I think my little "helper" likes olives too 😍

We drink a lot of iced tea, always unsweetened.  I make it in a coffee machine.  

I put one gallon of water in a pitcher, then fill up the coffee maker tank with part of it. 

I put 6 small tea bags in the machine and brew it one cycle.  

Then pour the brewed tea into the gallon pitcher.  It keeps stored in the fridge for 3 days before I think it goes bitter.  

I also made some peanut butter and jelly "uncrustables" sandwiches for the freezer.  

I prefer to use a thin layer of smooth PB of each slice of bread, then jelly on one side and after the sandwiches are assembled, I cut off the crusts.  That's just a preference, not a necessity.
Each sandwich is sealed in a sandwich bag and then I corral all of them in a big zipper bag before I put them in the freezer.

Our little Jackson likes them. 

And some days with an almost two year old along, even making a sandwich can sound like a daunting task.  

Hope you all have a great weekend.  

I'm already planning my next post - a big commissary grocery haul.