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 😱 

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 🇺🇸

August #6

Good morning 

I didn’t mean to disappear but last week was different than I thought it would be.  The 3 grands that live in our school district were here 3 days and then they went to school for 2 days,  and now, in person schools are already closed again because Covid rates jumped way higher in our town.  Our schools will be doing virtual learning for a while.  

My husband made a last minute and unexpected trip to his parents in Arkansas.  He is home now.  

Anyway,  the theme of 2020 seems to be plans change at the drop of a hat.  

So, here is my new to do list - notice the repeats of the meals because they didn’t get cooked last week.  

The empty circle doesn’t mean anything- I’ll write something in it later.  

➡️➡️➡️link for a new mask style ⬅️⬅️⬅️

My daughter asked me to sew this style mask.  The pleats are vertical instead of horizontal and it’s supposed to fit looser over the wearer’s mouth.  

I made just one and she tried it on and thought she liked it better so I’ll sew up a couple more this week.  

And if you follow this video and pattern,  the mask is fine but she says 2.6 inches and 1.8 inches 🤔 ( not exactly how Americans do fractions). So I just got as close as I could.  The video maker normally uses metric.   And I lengthened the elastic to 7 inches instead of 6 as specified.  

Speaking of masks,  this is how my daughter is keeping up with her family of 5 and their masks - who ever imagined we would need masks organization?  But we do! 

The bag is for masks that need laundered,  I think that’s a great idea.  

My husband picked these beautiful peppers and scrawny radishes this morning.  So I’ll be processing some of them this week.  

And last week was so weird, so I worked 2 puzzles,  with a little help from grandchildren and Nina.  

This one was a really nice puzzle with big, sturdy pieces.  I think it was a handmedown puzzle as when I buy puzzles,  I buy mine at Dollar Tree or Walmart and this was a much higher quality one.  

Hope you all have a good week.  

I’ll be staying home until virus  things settle down in our town

❤️ Rhonda 🏠