Real life meals this week and CVS shopping

Some of you asked about how the meal plan is going.  

So far, it's been so easy.  I just look at the list of possible meals and pick one each morning.  

Monday night was a casserole made with chicken and stovetop stuffing and green beans. 

Tuesday night we had grilled chicken,  a big salad and crescent rolls.  

Wednesday , my husband again grilled and below are the steaks.  They were bought at Aldi when all the steaks were half price.  They were a long way from their sell by date so we gave them a try and they were very good.  My husband seasoned them with Mrs Dash.  

I cooked a pan of baked carrots and salted cabbage with onions.  

Wednesday's  meal in the raw

Thursday  we had leftover grilled chicken and steak, with crockpot baked potatoes, canned pinto beans and leftover carrots
.
Baked potatoes are so easy in the crockpot.  I put a small piece of aluminum foil in the bottom, add washed potatoes and then cook on low for 4-5 hours or high for 3-ish.  you can wrap each potato if you like, but I don't as I think it is not necessary. 

I also did a little baking on Thursday - a pan of sandwich buns baked with my grandparents recipe

and a  coffeecake for breakfast. 

My dad and grandson really enjoyed coffeecake for a mid morning snack.  

isn't that a sweet photo?  My dad is 85 and Jackson is 21 months. 

Our breakfasts are usually a lot lighter than coffee cake.
One of our favorites is hashbrowned potatoes with Cajun seasoning and fried eggs.

I just peel and grate leftover baked potatoes and sauté them in a nonstick skillet with a little butter and Cajun spice.  Served with an egg and orange juice, it is a really delicious and satisfying breakfast.

this was my plate for Thursday night supper

Friday night, 2 grandsons are here.  Also,  the Inauguration parade was on TV and we really enjoyed watching all the military marching and full dress uniforms.  The college and high school bands were so good too. 

Anyway,  this was a real life meal,  tater tots with melted cheese and pigs in blankets (hot dogs wrapped in dough and baked)   We used Hebrew 97% fat free hot dog wieners and they tasted very good. 

That's a week of meals at our home.  We don't eat fancy and I am obviously not a professional food stylist or photographer. 
We've had reasonably balanced meals and I have not stressed for 1 minute about what to serve. 
I highly recommend using some sort of meal plan, whatever works for your home. 

CVS shopping. 

I started with $18 Extracarebucks from 2016 and a $25 CVS giftcard earned on Swagbucks. 

the total was $69 before deductions. I used newspaper coupons, CVS coupons,  and the extracarebucks and giftcard.  The 2 candies were on 75% clearance. 
I paid .91 cash and got back $16 in Extracarebucks, 

Homemade puppy toys

We've had our new puppy almost 2 weeks.  She is sweet and doing fine, but getting a puppy and all the gear we needed has not been very frugal.  She needed a crate, a collar and leash, dog food and chew toys and her adoption fee.

She is very playful and also  needed some toys to help entertain her.
I looked on Pinterest and saw many homemade dog toys.  I used long strips of fleece to make these because it's what I had on hand.  There are many similar tutorials using discarded t shirts.

Mabel has had lots of fun playing with these.  

If you want to make some,  just search for DIY dog toys on Pinterest.  

The grandchildren like playing tug of war with Mabel using the new toys.  

I don't recommend these fabric toys for every dog.  Our son once had a Staffordshire Terrier named Angel who would eat anything.  Angel once ate a whole sock and needed an expensive surgery to remove it from her belly.  These toys would never of been safe for her.  

Mabel just plays with these, so far.  And we will be keeping an eye on her.  

The past week ......

Hello.  I didn't mean to take a week off blogging.  But I was sick with a cold for 4 days, my husband was away at his parents for 6 days, and I was just off schedule.  But here are the highlights.


Our weather forecasters told us well in advance that an ice storm was coming.
Ice can be  the most destruction weather next to tornados.  If the ice is heavy,  it can can cause the entire power grid to fail and it can halt all traffic as roadways are just too slippery to use.
This is what we were concerned could happen-

Thankfully, in our area, we only had about a quarter inch of ice which was not enough to really harm anything.  

The trees and ground and all outside surfaces are encased with ice and it's quite pretty.  

It was just warm enough that the roads mostly were all clear and safe near us.  

Next week's forecast is for dry conditions and much warmer temperatures.  😄

My biggest household task was to work on our craft-computer room that just kind of became a dumping ground over the last few months.  😱

It took several hours but now it looks like this.  

A bit better, right? 

Now I can go in there and actually work on something. 

The closet - lots of assorted fabrics but  I didn't bother to refold them all,

Sewing table is cleaned and cleaned off.  

And I sewed up the mending pile- -a shopping bag that lost its straps, husband's holey shirt, sleeping pants that needed shortened and a ripped bath towel.

Lots left that messy room- a storage tub full of assorted smaller containers,  large bag of trash and a box full of recyclables.

Cooking- I didn't do much cooking while I was sick and while my husband was gone.  I had some leftovers and some frozen foods. 

Friday,  I cooked a small tritip beef roast in the crockpot with carrots and potatoes.  It turned out really good! 

We had  big salad with this meal.
I got the ingredients from the fridge.  All were purchased 2 days after Christmas.  I store most all produce in either plastic bags with most of the air squeezed out or in plastic containers with tight lids.
Produce most always keeps for 2-3 weeks when I do this.

The finished meal 

Dessert was chocolate pie- one grandson had whipped cream on top of his slice 

But the other grandson wanted his plain.  

Prep 2 meals at 1 time

hello everyone.  So far, I am continuing with the meal list and it is truly making my life easier.  Each morning,  I only have to decide which meal on the list to cook and I know I have everything needed to make it.

This week, I had a slow day and a very busy day.  So I decided to do 2 meals at once on the slow day.
I picked the Eggroll in a bowl and hamburger soup.

These are the ingredients I used- mostly regular pantry and fridge ingredients.

First I started cooking the 1 1/2 pound pack of 96% lean ground beef.  Once it was brown, I drained it and added the whole chopped onion to sauté together.

The carrots and potatoes  and celery were peeled and/or diced or grated.
For the hamburger soup, I covered the carrot and potato cubes in a bowl of water in the fridge until needed the next day.

Some of the carrots were grated for the egg roll in a bowl.

To make the eggroll in a bowl, just add the grated onions and grated cabbage (or cole slaw mix) to to the browned ground beef and a good splash or so of soy sauce and black pepper.  I also added water chestnuts and they were OK but I prefer to use more celery for the crunch instead of the water chestnuts.
It doesn't take very long to cook it until it's done and resembles the filling inside a restaurant egg roll. These are lots of recipes online for this tasty and economical dish if your want more in depth instructions.

I set out the crockpot so I could cook the hamburger soup in it the next day.  It was very fast to drain the carrots and potatoes and add them to the crockpot along with the cooked meat, canned tomatoes and a little beef boullion and black pepper.  

That pack of ground beef yielded enough meat for 3 meals so i labeled and froze that 1/3 and will it later for goulash or something like that.

I timed myself from start to finish and I was done with all this cooking, cleaned up and running the dishwasher after 45 minutes.  

Tonight I won't really be cooking at all. 2 grands are here and they want frozen pizza so I'll bake a Digiorno one and maybe cook me a Marie Callander pot pie in the microwave.  

So, that's my report so far on my meal plan.  😄

Cooking and fun with grands

hello everyone 😄

One of my current goals is to cook all our meals and use the meal plan I recently posted.
So far, it's going fine!

January 1- I cooked the traditional foods that most all Southerners eat on New Years Day.
Black eyed peas cooked with a little onion and ham served over rice & stir fried cabbage

January 2- 2 grands came over and I thought letting them help make pizza would be good. 

We don't have any premise sauce so I put a smaller than normal batch of my regular pasta sauce to simmer in a crockpot.  I ended up with 3 meal size containers of sauce to freeze for future meals and of course, some for the pizza. 

The pizza crust dough was made in the bread machine,  then it was put in an oiled bag and sealed to hang out in the fridge all day.  

When it was time to prepare the pizzas. I cut the dough into 2 small pieces and 1 big piece.  

The grands rolled out their dough and both of them ended up with heart shape pizzas. 

Then they put theirs on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper - because I knew they would be messy with the toppings. 

They added sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni. 

I also made one large pizza with the rest of the dough.  

See why lining their sheet was important?  It sure saved me lots of aggravation and scrubbing.  

The pizzas were delicious.  On the side, we had fresh mandarins and Oreos. 

They were so good, husband and I had the leftovers for supper tonight on January 3rs. 

All of the grands that are old enough to, love to craft.  On this sleepover, they each painted a $1 kit of 2 sun catchers  from Dollar Tree.  

We also did some Perler beads.  

This supplement is always in our Sunday newspaper and I think cover is the best one ever,
Throw kindness around like confetti

The last day on 2016

Hello everyone, 

All the Christmas decorations have been packed up and stored away for next year. 

But we didn't take down our 4 foot tree.  It is now decorated with winter themed things.  Come February, we will switch it to heart decorations. 

Mostly we enjoy the twinkle lights early in the morning or in the evening.  

every New Years, we display this New Years baby statue that I bought at a thrift store years ago. 

Last year I thought the statue resembled our grandson but this year, as JJ has grown, I think JJ and the statue are almost twins,  😍

I'm so glad I bought that funny little boy statue years ago but I never dreamed he looked like my future grandchild,  

From the new meal plan, for last nights supper we had "pork chop and potato casserole" from Allrecipes.com, with green beans, green salad and rolls left from Christmas.  

Grandsons Braeden and Gavin were here for this meal.  

Tonight's supper was soft beef tacos.  I cooked about 4.5 pounds of ground beef and seasoned it all with homemade taco seasoning,  Thr extra went in the freezer in meal size containers for future meals, especially when we need something in a hurry.  

The Oklahoma sunset was especially pink and pretty last night.  

We have a new calendar but it didn't have holes for  hanging in the top.  So I added a binder clip and that should hold it just fine.

I am sure blessed with cute grandchildren ❤️

Happy 2017 everyone.  

babies, packing up, meal plans and a puppy

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas season.  We sure did. 
With all the little grands buzzing around,  everything is exciting and fun. 
This is our youngest, baby RJ, 5 months old.  He is quite a little charmer

Now it is time to get our home back in shape and clean again. 

I did so many loads of laundry today and cleaned floors.  My husband packed up the outdoor decorations and I've gathered up the decorations used in the house to pack them away.  I didn't put our very many this year.

The circles under baby Jesus are 3 plastic canvas coasters.  I know when I put them out, there were 5. 

Oh where could the other 2 be? 

It that time of year when everyone makes resolutions.  I'm not sure I'm making any but I do want to get back to living more organized.  One of the main areas is meal planning and preparation. 

We've stocked our kitchen with 2 recent commissary trips and I worked today organizing the pantry and freezer. 

Below is tonight's supper while I prepared it - a salad big enough for 2 nights

- and salmon patties ready to be mixed together and sautéed.   

the tomatoes on the salad are the multi color grape size ones.  They are kind of ugly but taste almost like fresh picked home grown tomatoes. 

Below is our January menu- I don't think I will need to cook all these meals and I will just cook them as needed and as they sound good.  But I have all the ingredients to prepare every one  except for needing bell peppers for 1.  Some are recipes I just know and some are recipes I have pinned under cooking on Pinterest. 

my plan is to look at this list often and plan ahead and cook these yummy meals as much as possible. 

We are getting a new puppy!  She is a boxer-bloodhound mix and in a shelter right now.  We will pick her up next week after she is all fixed and such. 

She looks like a sweetheart to me! 
We haven't had a pet since we lost our precious Theo 4 years ago but we are ready and anxious for one now.  He was just the best dog that did everything we did and went everywhere with us. 
So I hope this puppy will be up for our busy home and all the love she will get from her 8 new cousins
I think we are going to name her "Mabel"