From January to April

Here is a quick rundown of what has been happening in our household since I posted in January.

We had a little bit of snow.

I made some nut rolls for Christmas. I pulled this out of the freezer for a snack. It makes a pretty picture, doesn't it? Tastes even better than it looks!

I was not feeling well and had to sit around the house for quite a few weeks. So, I crocheted my brother an afghan. It is about 4' x 6'. I still have to send it to him. He has snow where he lives, so he'll get some use out of it this year.

I crocheted a baby afghan out of leftover yarns. I'll send this to my Mom so she can give it as a gift. It could be a baby afghan and is big enough for a lap robe. It'll be her call how she uses it.

I knitted a small batch of  dishcloths, a shawl for me and I'm working on a scarf for a friend. I only know how to stockinette and purl in knitting. Knitting drives me bats, but I like how it looks. I am going to teach myself how to do other stitches in knitting just like I did with crocheting over the past 40 years. I crocheted an egg basket out of plarn for a little girl who will have chickens soon. 

For my upcoming projects, I have enough yarns left over to make another baby afghan and a lap afghan.

We had some hail last weekend. It was about the size of mothballs. Luckily, it is warm out and the ice melted quickly.

It's been exciting around here, hasn't it? 

Hopefully, all will be back to normal real soon.

Cooking for Freezing

It's been a while since I've posted here. The reason is that I've had a short stay in the hospital and I couldn't get up and about very well until lately. What I'd like to tell you about is a real life saver for the family. Since I knew I would be out of commission for a few days, I prepared freezable meals that could be heated up by anyone in the family. Actually, it's just me and my wonderful hubby. He benefited from the preparation because he had to prepare the meals until I could stand on my own.

First, I prepared two rice dishes - peppered rice and Spanish rice. I divvied them out into quart bags and that gave me one serving for the day I made it and two servings to go into the freezer. This was for both of them which ended being 4 quart bags of sides. Rice freezes really well as a prepared dish or plain cooked rice.

I made a large amount of macaroni and cheese. We had one dish for dinner and I divvied the rest into glass loaf pans and put them into the freezer. This gave us three loaves of mac and cheese to reheat.

Then I made chili. One quart and one pint went into the freezer.

Next was chicken and dumplings. I made the first night's dinner with dumplings and the frozen portions were frozen without dumplings. I had one quart left to put into the freezer after the dinner. I taught my hubby to make cheater dumplings using store-bought biscuits in a tube, when it came time to eat.

I also made small meat loaves that cooked in about an hour. Hubby likes meatloaf for dinner and cold on sandwiches. This made it easy for him to prepare his lunch for work, too.

I made pizza shells with a quick dough recipe. I keep all of the fixin's on hand so hubby can make a pizza all by himself.

I made dozens of cookies that we could set out if company came to visit. Oh well, we didn't have too much company. The cookies were good!

In the freezer, I also had a steak, some hot dogs and hamburgers, kielbasa and a few other things that could be fried on the stove quickly.

This was enough food for us for about 3 weeks of eating. My WONDERFUL hubby was able to come home from work and throw something in the oven or the microwave for us for dinner.

Preparing food ahead is a really good idea even when you're not expecting to be laid up for a while. Frozen food comes in handy when you've had a busy day and don't feel like cooking. Throw a few things in the oven or microwave and you'll have really good meals without buying expensive TV dinners.

I hope you enjoyed this post.