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.  

To dos, keeping produce fresh, bulk cooking and CVS

Hello - another illness bug came to visit me the end of February.  I was the only family member that had this one.  I did almost nothing for 5 days but I'm better now, and trying to get back on track.  

Today was a free day for me, no grandchildren or appointments,  so I wrote out a list of things that needed done at home and I added some more things as I thought of them,  

Because of the 2 bouts of illness in February and my husband being away helping his parents for a week,  we didn't use very many of the groceries we bought at the beginning of the month.
While we were sick, we mostly ate crackers, rice, jello, canned soup and easy to digest foods.



I store our clean, fresh produce in the fridge and I seal it in either plastic containers with tight seals or in plastic bags with the air squeezed out.
I've always thought our produce keeps a good while and this month, it really stayed nice.

These boxes hold mini peppers, celery and broccoli. 

Below are the receipts for when I bought this produce.  All were purchased the very end of January.  

Some was from Aldi and some was from a military commissary. 

More of the old produce- but still plenty fresh enough looking that I'll be using them,

A head of cabbage and 4 heads of romaine lettuce.  

I also straightened up the freezer and saw a lot of meat.  We didn't have much prepared meat so I pulled out ground beef and a roast.  

I cooked 1 pot of chili and almost 5 pounds of taco meat. 

The roast beef was cooked with pepperocini and beef broth in a slow cooker until very tender.  

I shredded it and then froze it in the broth and peppers it cooked in.  This makes a really nice hot sandwich filling.  

I ended up with 4 meal sizes of chili, 6 of Taco meat and 4 of pepperocini beef.  

Having meals started ahead of time is almost as good as having money or time in the bank.  They are really welcome on busy days.  

In the afternoon, I made a short  shopping trip to CVS

I used $10 in extracarebucks from last, some coupons from the CVS red box, $1 Xtra and $2 Fructis coupons from coupons.com 

After deductions, I paid $10.58 and got back $10 extracarebucks for next week.

Today is Andie's 5th birthday.  She was born a preemie and took a helicopter flight right after that to a big hospital.  She gave us all a scare but you would never know now she had a difficult beginning.  She is the tallest child in her class and smart as can be ❤
She's not lacking in the self confidence department either.

There was a Mardi Gras party yesterday afternoon at my parent's retirement home.  I took little Jackson and he celebrated like a Proud Cajun.  He put all those beads on himself.  

Let the good times roll ❤ 

New hair doo-dads, cooking, grands, etc.

This will be a post covering many subjects......

Have you ever noticed on EBay some of the crazy-cheap items that come directly from China?  I have ordered several and have only been a little disappointed with one.  

Link for the recipe for the Pickle cheese spread that I talk about at the end of this post.  But I'm on my iPad and the Blogger app likes to do things it's own way. 

Those pictures don't really show the actual size but this stretchy elastic all rolled up was about the size of a big cookie and the envelope was just big enough for it.
Seems things in the US are shipped in packaging much larger than needed.  I recently got a tiny bottle of nail glue shipped in a 10 by 13 envelope.
Stuff coming straight from China also takes awhile, 3 weeks at least or longer.
This elastic was a true bargain.  

EBay polka dot elastic lot

What the elastic looked like after some of grands played with it 😱

I bought it to make headbands for myself.  I had enough to also make pony tail holders.  I made mine on the small side because I have thin, fine hair.  

This was a very quick project, I just cut them to comfortably go around and stay on my head and then tied a knot.  The Pinterest tutorials said to sear the ends to stop fraying but mine don't seem to be the fraying kind.  

I'm happy to have so many new hair so dads for $3ish.  

I'm still happily using Impress press on nails.  I can usually get two manicures from each set.  They cost about $6 a set.  I think $3 a manicure is a great deal as a gel manicure in my town is about $40. 

I haven't wrote out a pretty to do list in months but I did this week.  It's just notebook paper on a clipboard that hangs outside our pantry.  The washi tape was from Dollar Tree and all these stamps were from a thrift store.  

I don't always get it all done but the list helps keep me on track.  

One of the tasks was bread baking.  I mixed up two double batches of sandwich buns and one double batch of cinnamon raisin rolls.  The bread machine does most of the work for me. 

We eat some, we share them with family and they keep in the freezer beautifully. 

I rarely buy store bought bread.  

I try to garden but I truly don't have the green thumb gift.  But 2 years ago, my brother gave us a potted Easter lily.  When it was done blooming, I planted that bulb in our front flower bed.
I was so surprised when it rebloomed last spring.
And I was even more surprised to see that over the year, it has reproduced and is growing up lots of lilies.

The past weekend was busy as all our 8 grands were here off and on.  

I didn't take any group photos but I did get them to all help make this handprint rainbow of their sweet little hands.  

The younger the child, the harder it is to get a good handprint.  My brother and our oldest granddaughter helped with the painting and printing of the 

3 youngest.  

I wasn't sure how many people would be here and when over that weekend so I did some meal prep ahead.
I made 2 fresh fruit trays as all the grands like fruit and so do the adults. 

I also made a fresh vegetable tray and some dip made of cream cheese, dried beef and dill pickles.  I was inspired by a recipe Cheryl posted on her blog.
I was going to make Cole slaw too but ran out of prep time.  

Some clever letter rearranging

This was in yesterday's Oklahoman newspaper.

I think it's fun and clever. 

Anyone know any more  of these?