Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Aug. 2, 2013

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

This Week's Food Waste 

Nada

although I did have to cut some bad places

out of several tomatoes to save them. 

This Week's True Food Confessions

A Sampling of food we enjoyed this week. 

Let's see, I'm too tired now to make this post especially witty or enlightening--and I might need more interesting subject material if I were going to do much of that. So for now, I'll give you the facts, just the facts. (Anyone out there remember Dragnet?)

--Ate out once on the weekend after I came home from working on Sunday. A good choice as far as I was concerned because I was really tired. A good choice as far as Wally and Ward were concerned because they had been hoping all day that they could convince me to go out for Mexican.

--Ate a lot of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. Nothing better. Okay, maybe homemade ice cream is better. Or chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven are better. Or corn on the cob is better. Maybe I should rephrase the opening statement: We enjoyed a lot of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes this week.

--No new recipes this week, but we did try salmon burgers from Costco. They were very good. No one liked them better than beef burgers, but would be happy to have them often since they offer nutritional benefits that you don't get with regular hamburger.

 Did you try anything new this week on the food front?

Until next time...

 

A Second Look--July 31, 2013

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

While some tiger lilies are still blooming, many are dropping their petals as you can see behind and to the right of this one.

The hydrangea are still going strong.

These two begonias were both yellow when they were planted. However, the one on the right was exposed to more sun and turned orange.

While some day lilies are done blooming, a few colors are still making a show.

The ever-faithful spirea.

These celosia are all volunteers from last year.

One of the sparrow eggs has hatched. When this baby first hatched yesterday, it had no down on it. I have seen a lot of growth in just 24 hours

I found four more eggs in the bluebird nest. That makes three clutches in one season. This is an unusual but not an unheard of occurrence.

Quilts

Quilts from museum exhibit

I love quilts. So when the neighborhood museum opened their exhibit on quilts, I hurried in to see it. On display were many quilts made by local quilters. Some of the quilts were old and some were new, but all of them were beautiful.

 As I was perusing the exhibit, I thought about the quilts I grew up with. I had one with a flannel backing for the winter and a lighter weight one for the summer. I slept with one of those two quilts every night for years. They were made by my grandmother for me and all of the work was done by hand. However they looked different than the quilts I was seeing in the exhibit as neither one of my quilts had a particular pattern with regard to color or shape. My grandmother used whatever inexpensive source of fabric she could find whether or not they matched. Those quilts were very representative of much of the way my family was (is)--very practical.

I also remembered another quilt of my youth--one that I started as a teenager using squares of fabric cut from old jeans that I had. I pieced several squares together, but never got much further than that until a couple of years ago when I got it out and decided that I was going to finish it. I got additional fabric and made it big enough to fit a twin bed. However, I ran out of steam. Maybe someday I will finish it. In the meantime I like to look at it and remember the different jeans that are represented and what was going on in my life when I wore them.

Now, I have a new quilt interest--barn quilts. These are large quilt squares painted on wood and hung on the side of barns or other outdoor structures. I see them occasionally in my travels and it's always fun to find them. Also, Uncle Billy has started to make them and if I can figure out how to hang one, he will make one for me.

Did I mention, I love quilts? See some of them below.

Part of the quilt exhibit at my local museum.

Quilts made for me by my grandmother. Left: Winter, Right: Summer

Lucy checking out my in-progress quilt.

Some of Uncle Billy's Barn Quilts.
(Patterns in a clockwise direction: Lemon Star, Bear Paw, Rolling Star) 

Another one of Uncle Billy's Barn Quilts. (Pattern: Indian Maze)
 (Picture from Shelley at Intermittent Farm Report.)

Thankful Sunday--July 28, 2013

I am thankful for blueberries.

Wally picking blueberries in Uncle Billy's patch.

I am thankful that something that tastes so good is so good for you.  We've been picking recently in Uncle Billy's blueberry patch and have had plenty of fresh blueberries to eat. Yum.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--July 26, 2013

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

This Week's Food Waste 

NONE

  Hooray! 

This Week's True Food Confessions 

  

This week was more organized than last week, so we only ate out once. I think we were more successful  because we had something to focus us--produce from Uncle Billy's garden. We used the new potatoes to make a hearty soup with the roast we had last week and other fresh vegetables to make sandwiches. We were eating blueberries by the handful and every morning for breakfast. Also, we had a spinach pie one night and another night we had a tuna and squash casserole that was very good. This was a good way to use squash and tomatoes that we had and I've included the recipe. You can play with this recipe many ways, but here's how I made it. I think the fresh tomato on the top sets it apart from the standard tuna casserole. It was a hit with everyone here and you may enjoy it at your house.

Tuna Squash Casserole

--2 6 oz. cans of tuna drained

--2 medium size squash--one crook neck, one zucchini

--6 oz. of dry egg noodles cooked according to package directions

--1/2 cup no fat Greek yogurt

--1/2 low fat mayonnaise

--1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

--1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

--1 tomato chopped

--Preheat oven to 350° F 

--Cut squashes in 1/2 inch pieces and cook until tender-firm. (That took me about 5 minutes in the microwave.)

--Mix yogurt, mayonnaise, tuna, thyme, and 3/4 cup cheese together in a large bowl.   Add noodles and put into casserole dish. 

--Bake covered for about 30 minutes or until you just start to see bubbling around the edges.

--Take out of oven and add the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese and tomato on top of that.

--Bake another 10-15 minutes.

--Enjoy

Until next time...