If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

Saturday, September 12, 2020

September #2 - mostly kitchen stuff

Hello 
It’s still just weird around here.  Our little county is now in the Red Zone as classified by the virus numbers.  I’m normally optimistic but this seems to have no end in sight.  

So, we are just staying busy with home stuff, staying at home or in safe places,  and staying busy.  

Here’s my current to-do list


More peppers- my husband’s plants are just producing so much! 
So this last batch,  I sliced the bells into strips along with onions and froze them in meal size bags.  They will get sautéed like fajita style veggies and be eaten on fajitas or any kind of Mexican meal.  

I also diced more jalapeños and froze them too.  

I made a double recipe of the cheddar carrots recipe I shared in my last post and they were so good!

I also made a double batch of Mexican Wedding Cookies/Russian Tea cakes/SnowBall cookies.  I didn’t add the chopped nuts or roll them in powdered sugar.  
Instead,  I made flattened balls of the cookie dough and dipped some in sprinkles, some in mini chocolate chips and topped some with pecan halves.  
They brought big smiles to everyone I shared them with.  

My husband needed a knee X-ray in Oklahoma City this week.  It was near the military Commissary we like so much.  We haven’t shopped there since  March 1st so we went after he had the X-ray.  
The Commissary is huge and I feel very claustrophobic wearing masks, so we only shopped a few aisles and the meat department.  
Their meat prices were so low and they have very nice quality.
Ducky smells the meat.  😀 I like the brown paper sacks so I always them up and reuse them for many things,  
They had these boxes for $30 filled with an assortment of fresh meats.  
  
I didn’t add up the price tags exactly but they would of been more than $40 if bought individually.

I cooked the 4 rolls of ground beef when we got home and seasoned them for taco filling.  

To make room in the freezer for the new meat purchases,  I did a little rearranging.  
I also took out 2 whole chickens and cooked them in a slow cooker.  Then I shredded it and seasoned it for chicken taco filling.  



It’s cooked chicken seasoned with tomato sauce, onions,  cumin, red pepper and garlic to taste.   

A bonus of cooking whole chickens is all the broth - about a 1/2 gallon!  I’ll chill it, remove the fat on top and then freeze in meal size containers.



To save space,  I re-wrapped some of the meat into freezer paper or zipper bags and it takes up much less space then when left of the original trays. 


Two of grandchildren are attending their school everyday like normal.
Three of them are doing in person school 2 days and week and virtual school 2 days a week.  
And three of them are doing only virtual school.  Some of the virtual classes are really good and I commend the teachers.  This situation is probably the hardest on them as they must be so flexible.  
Anyways,  here are 3 siblings all watching a class for 1 of them.  But they were all interested and ready to learn. 


Hope you all are fine 
❤️Rhonda 🇺🇸
Living the red zone 😱 



































Tuesday, September 1, 2020

September #1 - peppers

Melanie  (she blogs here at Comfy House  ) asked me what we were doing with all the peppers my husband has been raising.  

I’ve been cooking with some of them
This morning we had hash browns with 1/2 an onion and a whole pepper diced with the potatoes and an over easy egg on top 


I’ve canned sliced jalapeños with onions and carrots earlier this summer.
This weeekend,  I canned just diced jalapeños.  


Many peppers are in the freezer.  Most have been diced or sliced,  put on a lined tray and into the freezer overnight and then put in bags to use later.  


The strips are so good sautéd with onion and used as fajita vegetables. 

Inside our freezer - if you want to see what we will be eating this fall and winter—-

If you’re wondering if I’m a chef with amazing knife skills.....
No I am not.  I used a Mueller chopper bought on Amazon.  It chops great but is a bit tricky as the top plate comes loose too often and it takes a lot of work to clean but it does chop lots of veggies way faster and more precise than I can manually.  


Below are carrots cut with the 1/2 inch size blades.  I used the 1/4 inch blade for peppers and onions.  


I plan to cook this carrot recipe later this week,  it has several steps but is very tasty

And one more photo inside our freezer 


And that’s probably way more than most of y’all want to know about our peppers 🌶 

❤️ Rhonda 🇺🇸