Food Waste Friday and True Food Conressions--Nov. 1, 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. (Thanks to Jo from Simply Being Mum for sponsoring FWF this week.)

This Week's Food Waste

Two Stalks of Celery

At least that's what I can remember. When I got the celery out to put into some chicken soup, two of the outside stalks were bad. The fact that only two of them were bad was actually quite remarkable because I have had this celery at least a month. I contribute this to the fact that I stored the celery with a paper towel to prolong its life.

This Week's True Food Confessions

Highlights from the week:

Last weekend we went to a cookout at my-father-in-law's house. This smoker was made by him from an old hot water heater. Two briskets, stuffed squash, and a pork roast were cooked in it for the picnic.

At the cookout, I got to try a new thing--black rice. It was in a Thai dish with fruit, nuts, mint and other spices and was quite good. I will share the recipe later.

Monday, work started on our kitchen and downstairs so the house is rather discombobulated making regular food prep difficult. We were thankful to be eating leftovers from the weekend some of the time.

This is our temporary refrigerator in the basement. One day I used the slow cooker down here to fix pork barbeque.

It was raining on Halloween, so we got no Trick-or Treaters. Ward and I took the opportunity to go out for dinner at the local pizza place. We couldn't remember the last time that just the two of us went out together and really enjoyed it. We had Halloween candy for dessert. And if we're going to have True Confessions, I broke into the bag of candy bars during the afternoon. However, I made it a whole week before I gave into the call of chocolate, so I consider that a major success. :)

Until next time...


But wait there's more,

This is a fire pit that my very clever father-in-law made from a dryer drum. A couple of these helped keep people warm during the cookout.

A Second Look--October 30, 2013

Ward feels invigorated by cold weather. I just feel cold. So at the first hint of cold weather, my instinct is to stay inside under a nice warm blanket. This week we had our first heavy frost, so the blanket instinct was in full force. However, I managed to pry myself out from under it and spend a pleasant time this afternoon under blue skies and a warm sun doing my Second Look. I had a lot of fun walking through crunchy leaves while looking at mostly either green or brown leaves on the trees. The fall show of colors seems to be subdued this year, but there are still many colors to be seen. 

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

A few blanket flowers managed to survived the frost.

However, this coleus didn't fare so well.

Small mud heaves from the frost. The one in the main part of the picture is about an inch long. Does anyone remember what these are called?

Japanese Maple Seeds. The rest of the maples we have form their seeds in late spring. This one drops its seeds the same time it drops its leaves.

If we're lucky, these pansies should keep blooming for another month or two.

Maple leaves just starting to turn.

A variety of tree states. Some have lost all of their leaves, some have leaves that have turned, some have leaves that are still green, and some are evergreen.

There is a lot of good leaf crunching to be had these days. Does anyone else go out of their way to walk on crunchy leaves?

Let the Fun Begin

or We will finally have level floors.

For years, or actually since we first moved into this house 16 years ago, the uneven floors in the kitchen have bothered me. They are structurally sound, but are uneven. Uneven enough that we've only had one choice for flooring--vinyl because it will bend easily over the ups and downs. I decided that it is finally time that they get leveled. Well when you start looking at floors, one flows into the other, moldings multiply, and cabinets have to be moved. In other words, a major upheaval. Four rooms of stuff need to be compressed into one with some overflow to the garage. All major appliances are out of commission as well as the water from time to time.The cats are in only the basement for a few weeks and they are not happy.

The actual construction/deconstruction began this morning. We're not sure how the food thing will work, but we've put some things in the basement. We still have one room of stuff to move including this computer. If you don't hear from my for awhile, I'm lost in the world of new-things-to-come.

Thankful Sunday--October 27, 2013

I am thankful for the first frost.

Last night we had our first heavy frost, and this morning I awoke to the sun glistening off the white crystals it left everywhere. It was a beautiful sight. Even though I don't like cold weather, frost is a sign that it is time to stop worrying about the outside and time to enjoy the the quieter things that you can do inside. I am thankful for this frost and its reminder that it's time to get out a jigsaw puzzle and spend some quiet time with my family.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Oct. 25, 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

Two Tomatoes

By the time I got to the rest of the fresh tomatoes that I mention last week, two more had become rotten. However, I was able to salvage the rest and instead of making a sauce out of them, we ate them with cottage cheese for several meals. Delicious. Here's hoping for no waste next week.

This Week's True Food Confessions

I Spy a Good Week.

 Can you find:

Sausage and egg dinner with cheese. We had breakfast burritos with whole wheat tortillas and salsa which made them particularly good.

Spinach ravioli with sauteed kale. Those leafy greens always seem like a lot before you cook them and they wilt down to next to nothing.  Even though it was a big box of organic kale, it wasn't enough even for the carnivores.

Sausage pizza. This was another one of the huge (18") pizzas from Aldi's. I forgot to take a picture until I had started to eat the last piece.

Grilled steak with roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed cauliflower.  We buy the steak frozen from Aldi's. It comes as 4 five ounce steaks and this serves as portion control for the carnivores. The potatoes were from Uncle Billy's garden and the cauliflower was a gift from Miss Landers. We are very lucky that we have others that like to share their bounty.

BBQ pork and spinach. I did this in the slow cooker and it was very good. However, even though I was the one who put in the spices, it was a little too hot for me. The others thought it was just right.

Chinese take out--Ward's favorite. This was another one of my migraine days and it just seemed like a good idea. And it was. Not guilt feeling here.

Meat loaf with rice and green beans--I managed to slip pumpkin into the meatloaf for a little more nutrition.  I cooked the rice in the rice cooker and steamed the green beans above it while the rice was cooking. A great feature on the cooker.

Until next time...