June things

Hello everyone 

Sorry but I just haven’t had enough energy to blog and when I checked my blog earlier in the week,  many of my photos don’t show.  Have no idea why as I pay Google for photo storage.  

Can you see photos on my posts?

Anyway,  our entertainment this spring has been 2 nests full of baby robins.  We had 2 separate robin nests under our pergola roof and we have had so much fun watching them.  Both parents work so hard keeping the babies fed and protected.  And then once they are about 3 weeks old,  they all leave and live somewhere else.  

The photo is not great as I took inside our living room window. 

The babies have their mouths open most all the time.  

This is the birds in the first nest a day before they flew the coop.  

I rarely go into stores and prefer to order or do Walmart pickup for most things.  But I’ve seen a few IG posts about some Dollar Tree things.  

So I stopped there today.  

Centrum Mens vitamins - best by date is in 2024 and they are made in the US.  $1.25 is a super deal on these.  

I’ve worn this brand of press on nails and they are usually $7 or more a set.  

I was especially happy to find these for $1.25 a box.  

If this post works with photos- I’ll blog again soon.

Hope you are all fine

❤️ Rhonda 

May 8- to do lists

Good morning!  So far we’ve had a very mild spring with no need for the air conditioning and little need for the heater.  

But warm weather is here so now the grass and things outside will start growing.  

I said last week that I thought I would accomplish everything on that to do list,  well- 2 things didn’t get done.  

I didn’t finish one top I’m sewing and the hall bathroom paint didn’t get touched up.  I’ll try to get to those this week. 

Also I never made a sandwich toppings box but I did use those ingredients for something else. 

That’s what my lists look like as the week goes on. 

Here’s my new to-do list. 

Hope you all have a productive and pleasant week 

❤️ Rhonda 

May 5- freezer cooking and food storage

Hello 

When we visited our son in January,  I looked through a few of their cookbooks.  I found a slightly different way to cook beans, especially to I

use the beans in future dishes.  I bought quite a few dry beans during the pandemic and with meat so expensive, this seems like the perfect time to eat those beans 

I don’t know what cook book published this- I just took a few phone photos of the recipes I was interested 

I did red beans, just like the recipe except no garlic and I used 2 bay leaves. 

I’ve always presoaked dry beans and I’ve never put in the salt until the beans were cooked tender.  

But this method worked great! 

I think I ended up with the equivalent of about 10 regular size cans of beans with one recipe.  

While I had the 4 quart crock pot cooking red beans, I made a big batch of pasta sauce in the bigger crock pot, 

 also to put in the freezer.  

http://ahomewithasmile.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-ive-been-up-to.html

Above is a link to my first blog where I explained my method for making what we call Roma Sauce (other people just call is spaghetti sauce 😉)

Another task on my weekly to do list was to look over our canned goods and food storage, to kind of check dates, quantities and if we short on something important.  It’s truly hard to know how much to have on hand.

I straighten everything up in the sewing room closet and the kitchen pantry.  

For 2 people living in our household,  I think we have plenty.

That shelf has canned meat and tomatoes. 

Lots of canned goods in the cubbies- each shelf will hold 32 regular 15-16 ounce cans- plenty of soup, vegetables, fruit

And probably more fabric than I will ever sew up 

Kitchen pantry - 

I don’t think you can really see everything in the photos - but after straightening everything, the only thing I put on my future grocery list is olive oil.  

I’m just showing this in case it’s helpful to anyone.  

And because it’s Cinco de Mayo, we had a sort of Mexican inspired supper.

2 grandsons are here and we ate late, after their ball practice 

Our favorite kind of nachos

Tortilla chips topped with refried beans, a jalapeño slice for people who like them and any kind of cheese

Then bake or broil until the cheese melts and the chips toast a little.  

Serve with toppings like salsa, etc if desired 

These are so yummy! 

❤️Rhonda 

May 2 - washer issue and school pick up lines 😱

Hello everyone 

The appliance repairman came yesterday and fixed the problem.

This little screen that goes somewhere was full and crusted with “sediment”

It’s a tiny little filter but it was just full of packed sand.  And that’s why the cycles weren’t working.

He put a new one on.

I’ve done laundry all day and every load washed just like it was supposed to. 

It’s funny because I had an anonymous blog comment 2 days ago and they said their repairman cleaned out a bunch of sediment in their washer too.  

My town has a big shortage of school bus drivers.  So this spring,  the school district decided to rotate areas of service.  

It’s a big problem for people without vehicles or relatives willing to help. 

But I’m happy to pickup 2 grands who are without a bus for a week or 2. 

One of their parents take them to school and I just need to pick them up.  

I knew lots of people would be picking up kids but I was surprised by this line.  

I got there 20 minutes early and the pickup line was already 3 1/2 blocks from the school!  And there are 2 pickup lines on different sides of the school depending on the students last names. 

Once school let out, actual pickup went smooth and pretty fast.  

I’ve been busy today.  My big accomplishments were deep cleaning our bathroom and bedroom.  

No photos but I was behind on cleaning and it feels so much nicer and fresher.  

❤️Rhonda 

May Day 2023

Good morning ☀️ 

First here is this week’s to do list 

Sometimes I put so many things on the list, I know they won’t get done that week. But this week is a shorter list, and I do hope to accomplish all of it. 

We will see!

There are many stores to shop at in Branson Missouri. We only went to a Walmart twice to get groceries.

 We also went to two thrift stores in Branson. I am very selective about what I bring home anymore.

One of the thrift stores had quite a few rubber stamps. I looked through all of them and only bought this set of three. The set was five dollars.

Three skeins of cotton yarn, one dollar each.

I don’t crochet much, but I do like cotton dish cloths, and I like the colors of these yarns. 

I also bought about 10 cotton bandannas from the women’s accessories department.

 My husband likes to use bandannas for handkerchiefs, and 100% cotton ones are very hard to find. He was happy with this find!

I also bought him at a large coffee mug for a Quarter. All of the coffee cups in our rented condo were tiny  and he likes a big mug. 

Happy May Day, everyone🌸🪻🌷

❤️Rhonda 

April 2023 Highlights

Hello everyone 

April went by so fast! I want to blog one last time this month so I’m going to just post a bunch of things from our April 

Easter was fun.  We had a smaller family gathering with very easy food and some egg things.

  

Remember those little guys from what seems like just a few weeks ago?

Now they look like this….

They are 10, 11 and 14 now.  

Our youngest grand, Cora was here for a very short visit (like 36 hours) this month.  We were so busy the whole time but by evening,  she and cousin Jackson were both so tired.  

They were both waiting on their parents.  So these  2 finally laid down and watched tv and I don’t know how they stayed awake.  They were still excited and just happy to see each other 

Not good things this month- the hot water heater broke but thankfully my husband and stepson were able to replace it.  The old one was 9 years old. 

And the washing machine is not working right.  It’s about 2 years old but we bought a 5 year warranty as our appliances never seem to last long.  Repair person is coming tomorrow. 

We took a trip to Branson, Missouri- I guess it’s our favorite vacation place as we never go anywhere else.  

We like to see the live music and comedy shows that Branson is famous for.  

We stayed a full week and saw 15 shows and below are photos from a few of them. 

Hits of the 80s at the American Theater 

Acrobats from somewhere in China at the Mickey Gilley Theatre 

Clay Cooper with part of his cast 

The Haywood’s at Clay Cooper’s Theatre 

Back to the 6o’s, also at Clay Cooper

Country Jamboree at Grand Country Music Hall

There are lots of things to do in Branson like golf, water activities, fishing, arcades, so much shopping!  But we like the shows best of all.  

At home, we’ve started just a bit of gardening.  

And there are always things to do around our house, yours too I imagine? 

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new week’s to do list.  

Good night everyone 

❤️ Rhonda 

New to do list and more cast iron chronicles

Good morning

I made a new to do list and it’s a pretty simple one 

I’ve already started laundry, did the bills and budget and called Discover. (I hate to make phone calls,  I think it reminds me of when I worked in a office and would of rather been at home) 

Cast iron success 

  

I cooked an egg in a basket for my breakfast in our second smallest cast-iron skillet. As you can see, it didn’t stick at all.  

When we moved to the freezer into the breakfast room, I was able to see what was in there better. I found three packages of ground pork that was gifted to us. And I thought I would try to make breakfast sausage out of it. I looked up several different seasoning recipes, and kind of combined them to how I thought it would taste like we like. 

Homemade sausage uses a lot of seasoning! I mixed up 3 pounds of sausage and cooked them all this weekend because my husband likes to have biscuits and sausage in the freezer that can be easily reheated for breakfast.

This was not lean pork by any means, but it was crazy how much this sausage stuck to the skillet! I guess it was the spices that stuck, and burned on, I don’t know. I did get them clean afterward, but it was a very big effort. 

  

For now, I have zero plans to ever make homemade sausage again.

Also, I gave my stove top a very good cleaning since I took these pictures.

Now I need to get up and get some more things done

Hope you all have a great day

It’s going to be 85° in Oklahoma.

❤️Rhonda 

Hello- not an April Fool’s joke

Hello everyone, if anyone is still out there to read this neglected blog. 

I’m fine, everyone in my family is OK.  I’ve just been busy straightening out our home, regular housework and a little relaxing too.  

So I’ll just jump right back in here.  

One of the projects I worked on while daughter and family were living here was to clean and season 4 cast iron skillets.  It was a big project!

blog post where I talked about redoing the cast iron

I coated them with oven cleaner and let them sit in the sun in black trash bag.  Then I scrubbed and scrubbed with steel wool and an iron bristle brush.  It took multiple soakings and scrubbing to get them back to bare metal.  

Then they needed to be greased and baked in a hot oven.  This took multiple tries and It was a big effort but now I have 4 seasoned cast iron skillets.  

Even after all that work, I haven’t been cooking with them.  

So I decided for April,  I will cook everything I can in cast iron.  

Today,  I started the morning cooking myself some hash browns and an egg.  

  

Cooking 

And after-  the egg didn’t stick! 

For lunch I made a beef dish and for supper I made a chicken dish.  (We didn’t eat all of both recipes.  We like leftovers and the leftovers are  dished up in the fridge and will be reheated as desired) 

Anyway,  both recipes cooked nicely and the clean up was easier than I expect.  

So day 1 into my plan and so far, so good.

But I’ve always preferred cooking in nonstick, so come May,  if I’m not loving this cast iron,  I’ll buy some new nonstick cookware.  

We did get all our windows and 2 doors replaced.  The installers were great and the new windows and doors couldn’t be nicer.  I’ll share some photos soon.

One of the inside changes we made was moving our freezer into the breakfast room.  It has been in the garage for years.  

It’s better for the freezer to be in the house because it is  hard for the freezer to keep up during really hot summers and really cold winters.  

It’s more convenient for me to have the freezer right by the kitchen. 

The draw back is purely looks-  the breakfast room is much prettier when it’s not so full of appliances.  

But right now,  I’m liking convenience.  

I was reading Terri’s blog one night when I couldn’t sleep.  She talked about making chicken broth and it reminded me I had more than enough chicken bones and celery stalks saved in the freezer.  

Blue House Journal

Since I couldn’t sleep and my husband was out of town,  I started a batch of broth cooking about midnight.  

By then I was tired and able to go to sleep.  

I slept all night and woke up to a big crockpot of chicken broth.

  

I chilled the broth until the chicken fat hardened and was easy to remove.

Then I froze it 2 cup containers. 

Inside the freezer that is now in the breakfast room.  

Much of the USA had some unpleasant weather yesterday.  In Oklahoma,  we had so much wind all day,  50 to 70 MPH gusts which is really hard wind. 

I was nervous all day but thankfully our home had no damage.  Many people in Oklahoma lost their homes to fire.  Lots of trees fell and lots of power lines and poles fell too.  

We had nice weather today and next week’s forecast looks very pleasant especially compared to yesterday.  



April looks to be a busy month- one grand has a birthday, Easter, a vacation for my husband and I,  a very short visit from our son and family, another grand has 2 musicals in April.  

How is your April looking?  

I plan to blog this month too

Thanks for reading 

❤️Rhonda 

Still frugal February but I’m taking a blogging break

Hello everyone

I didn’t make a to do list this week. This is not a normal week with several family things happening.

And there isn’t really an opportunity to make blog post when extra things are going on, so I will be back after this week

Yesterday, to get ready for company, I baked a double batch of pancake and a batch of chocolate chip muffins.

I glazed part of the pound cakes , with lemon glaze, and part with chocolate glaze.

The chocolate chip muffins were pretty much devoured by some grandchildren who were here for an overnight stay. They ate them for dessert at supper and then they ate them with their breakfast the next morning before school. 

I baked pound cakes because I’m not sure when the rest of our company will be here and for what meals. Pound cakes  keep so I thought that would be the best thing to plan for a dessert. 

However, as soon as I tasted one of them, I knew I had made a boo-boo. I doubled the recipe and I doubled  all of the ingredients correctly………, except for the sugar.

It was not the worst mistake I could make. The cakes are still quite edible, but they are not as light or as sweet, as if they had the correct amount of sugar.

Oh well! We had some of the poundcake today with a few sliced strawberries on top, and it was still delicious.

There are plenty of peaches in the freezer so I may thaw those out when company is here and we will just call it peach shortcake

Hope you all are having a good week with no kitchen boo-boos. 

I’ll be back as soon as I can

❤️ Rhonda 

Frugal February 10- kitchen reorganized, no money spent

Hello everyone

Well, it was a big job and took a lot longer than I expected

  But I really think my work will pay off with cooking being easier and less frustrating.  

You saw I took everything out of the lower cabinets and also ripped out the old shelf paper and put in fresh - I used some shelf liner  I bought on grocery pickup way back during the shutdown. 

Over view of our kitchen- everything is where it is supposed to be and clean - except the floors need a super-deep cleaning and that’s going to happen soon. 

But one thing at a time, right? 

One of the most frustrating areas is the cabinet storage just over and under the mixer.  It’s in a corner and very hard to get things in and out.  

I’ve had grandchildren fish things out multiple times.  

So,  I tried to not use that corner space as much as is reasonable.  

I previously had cookware in the lower cabinet under the toaster.  

I decided to make it the extra stuff cabinet- stuff we use but not very often.

You’ll see I added a content list to most of the doors.  

The narrow cabinets on each side of the stove seem the most sensible place  to store cookware.

On the left is where that hidden space is. On the top shelf are our saucepans and to the left is nothing but the griddle that came with our stove top that we never use but I figured if somebody else lives in this house, they may want that built-in griddle. On the bottom is my medium-size Dutch oven And to the left of it are some ice trays and some extra drinking  cups 

In the narrow cabinet to the right of the stove are all our  skillets -  Nonstick skillets in the top basket and cast iron skillets in the bottom.

On the other side of the kitchen are two sets of double cabinets on top and bottom. 

This one has four pull out containers. One contains small Tupperware, one contains large Tupperware, on the bottom is a container of jars, 

and the red basket has a hand grader, a salad, shooter, and a vegetable chopper.

 

This cabinet has two crockpots and a rice cooker on the top shelf. On the bottom shelf is a basket of cupcake liners, egg coloring cups, little silicone cups, etc. 

Beside it are other large food containers.

  

Dishes in the left hand cabinet- on the top shelf are an assortment of disposables, because when we have big family meals, we use throwaways. 

This cabinet has travel bottles, straws, cups and glasses,  

a few cutting boards on the top shelf.  

One move that really cut out frustration was moving these big flat  things like pizza pans, cookie sheets, the biggest cutting board, muffin pans- to the pantry. 

They stand up like a library books, and they only take up a few inches in the pantry. But it is so easy to get one out and put the clean ones back.

Previously, they were in baskets in two cabinets and it seems like it was always hard to find the one I wanted and then to put the clean ones away.  

I did do some downsizing. My daughter wanted some things. 

There were some kitchen things that were things I’m not using, but I didn’t really want to get rid of like some nice pans and some extra silverware. I decided to store them on the guest bedroom shelf in case we hear of someone that needs these things.

And crazy as it sounds, we will have grandchildren going to college in a few years, 😱 and when they get apartments, they will need their own pots and pans and silverware.

And I have another container of things that I will put on the local Facebook Buy nothing list.

It’s Friday!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend

❤️ Rhonda