In the Kitchen - Hello Fresh review and some homecooking

Subscription meals are very popular but I had never tried them.  

In September, I loosely followed a plan called “ShelfTember” and my goal was to use up ingredients that we’ve had for awhile.  I used up lots of oddball ingredients and freezer leftovers. I also did very little grocery shop in September. 

Near the end of September, I saw a coupon code to get your first Hello Fresh shipment at a big discount.  So, I thought we’d try it.  

Above is my 2 year old grandson sitting beside our delivery- it came by USPS.  

Near the top of the shopping crate is where these 3 bags were.  They contain the ingredients needed for each recipe.  

The shipping box was very insulated with several ice packs.  

The fresh meat was in the bottom. 

All the cold ingredients were very cold when delivered and they stayed fresh in our fridge until I cooked them.  

Hello Fresh sends very easy to follow recipe cards and nutritional information.  

Inside the brown paper bags, are the exact ingredients needed for a recipe. 

(At home, you will need to have basic cooking tools with salt, pepper and cooking oil) 

Below is the ingredients is for Sesame Beef Tacos.  

This plat contains 2 of the sesame beef tacos and we added Homemade refried beans from our freezer.  

This was our favorite of the 3 meals ( but we truly enjoyed all of them) 

We’d never cooked cabbage with our taco meat or had pickled vegetables on tacos. The Korean Red pepper flakes were a new spice to us, it is hot but mostly just spicy and delicious, 

This is our Sizzling Hoisin shrimp.  

My husband said “fabulous, absolutely fabulous” will he was eating,  

Our last meal was Creamy Dill Chicken,  the sauce was so good! 

We won’t be regular Hello Fresh customers but we did enjoy these 3 meals.  

I may order again we have a staycation or if we take a vacation and stay in a condo.  

The food is restaurant quality,  the meals are easy to prepare.  

I do plan on sending a gift certificate as a wedding gift for a couple of med school students that getting married this fall.  

An

This week, I baked 2 batches of sandwich buns and 2 loaves of pecan raisin bread.  

I also made some spreadable butter for the first time.  

I beat together 1/2 pound softened butter with 1/2 cooking oil in the mixer and then stored it in little Pyrex containers.  

So far, it’s great.  It is easy to spread on our morning toast.  

We cut what it probably our last watermelon of 2017.  

It was a really good one! ,

Have a wonderful weekend everyone ❤️

Slipcovers for potholders - and fresh peppers and watermelon in October

My first sewing project this week was to redo some much used potholders.  I made these years ago and have used them often but they are really getting worn out. 

First I laundered them all. 

Then I found some cute Debbie Mumm fabric in my stash to recover them.  

The potholders are similar but not the exact same size.  

So I cut fabric a little bigger and then drew around the old potholder.  

The drawn line is my stitching line, except I left the top open.  

I machine stitched the line and then turned the slip cover right sides out, inserted the old potholder and then turned under the top edge and stitched all the way closed.  

Now I have 6 “new” potholders for just a half hour of my time.  

Then I cleaned out my potholder drawer (where do all those drawer crumbs come from anyway)

and put them back in their place.  

My husband picked another peck of peppers -not really a peck but quite a few.  

Some of the bell peppers are purple, they taste just like the green ones. 

A real treat right now is watermelon in October. 

Watermelon is my favorite fruit and I thought we had ate our last one.  But we found huge watermelons at an Oklahoma City grocery store. They looked good so we bought 2.  My husband cut up the first one Monday night and it is sooooo good, 

The drink dispensers were bought on clearance at Hobby Lobby.  We use them when we have a big family meal.  

They are also nice for holding the Crystal Light drink mix we’ve been enjoying since I gave up diet soda.  I’m mostly drinking water and plain black tea but a sweet glass of sugar free lemonade and fruit punch taste really good too.  

I prefer to blog on my IPad but it just updated and the app I was using doesn’t work with the new IOS version.  I did research and didn’t find much help but I ended up buying a new app and so far, this draft has been very easy.  I hope it looks this good when it’s published.  

We will see!

Anyone else do blogging via Blogspot on an iPad and have any advice for me? 

lots of lists and sewing plans

Hello everyone,
I'm going to try my old way of list making as I have a lot of plans floating in my head and just one sheet of paper wasn't going to hold them all.
I am using a plain spiral notebook

On 1 page I wrote ideas for main dishes and desserts that we have the ingredients for.
I won't cook them in any particular order but this is what I plan to cook in October

this page is the tasks I hope to accomplish this week - I just put an X beside it when it's done

I have not been keeping close track of our grocery/household spending and I want to start.  

Our financial month does not run exactly with the calendar months, so even though this only the 2nd of October,  I have already done the majority of this month's shopping.  

I'll continue to keep track as the month goes on.  

The Aldi in our town has been remodeling and enlarging and it's really nice.
They will have a Grand Reopening this week and they mailed out $5/30 coupons for this Aldi.
We got a coupon in our mail and our daughter gave me hers.
So will go twice and spend as close to $30 on each transaction before the coupon is deducted.
I started this list of Aldi staples that I am hoping to stock up on.  I won't plan the list out exactly as Aldi sometimes runs out of things but this way I have a basic game plan.

On the dining table, is a stack of fabric and some patterns.
"Cut Out" on my to do list refers to cutting out things to sew.  Since taking this photo, I've cut out 2 tops for me and drew off a kimono pattern for my daughter.
I am hoping to sew several tops and 2 kimono tops and maybe a dress soon.  They may not all get done this week but I hope to get them soon.

It's hard to be cheerful after the dreadful story from Las Vegas. 
There must be thousands of people with broken hearts as the news of their loved ones is reaching them. 
I can't fix that situation but I can take care of my family and home.   So I am choosing to stay busy at home and not watch the news.