Saturday Work Day

Hello everyone! Today was work day on our little patch of Earth. Saturdays usually are work days outside for us, but today we accomplished so much. We are expecting a lot of company for Thanksgiving and we're trying to get our yard in order so we can all spend time outside.

First of all we planned to burn brush. Hubby called for a burn permit, which is required in our state, and gave our information. If we don't call in to burn brush and a fire starts and spreads...BIG FINE! We make sure we always call in a burn permit. Then we get things going. We run a water hose out back, just in case we need water. We get supplies loaded into our garden tractor and yard trailer, like a pitchfork and axe and chainsaw. Now this was about 8 am. We worked and worked for what seemed forever. Hubby asked me what time it was. It was 10:28 am. Holy cow! We accomplished so much during this time. I brought out one of my painting projects to work on while stuff was burning. I almost have the first one finished. Now I need to do the second one. Both of these things will go in our house and I'll give you pics of the before and after.

I packed lunches in my work cooler. Not just lunches for me and Hubby. The girls get some too! It was pepperoni and mozzarella rolls, soda and doggie biscuits for lunch today. Yum! Well, I can't say 'yum' for the biscuits, but they didn't last long.

We finished up around 4 pm. We're wiped out!

Hubby went into the house with the girls and I finished up a couple of rows of sanding between the cracks of our picnic pavilion. We're using polymeric sand. It is good stuff and shouldn't let the weeds grow between the cracks. That's looking really good!!! Pics to come.

Tomorrow will be more of the same. Up early, burning and a project.

I hope you had a productive day today.

Take care.

Busy Weekend!

This weekend I put food into the freezer. Woo hoo!!! What I do is pre-make food and put it into the freezer for using later. I like to do this every so often so we can have a variety of foods to warm up during the week. That way I don't have to do so much work during the week. This should last us about a month. I think you'll agree that I've really been busy!

I started on Saturday by making garlic and cheddar biscuits. Then I made Spanish Rice with rice left over to make Peppered Rice on Sunday. Then I made stuffed shells, gnocchi, cookies, banana bread. I pre-freeze the stuffed shells and gnocchi so I can put them into a container and they don't stick together when I pull them out of the freezer. It takes a little time, but it's worth it to be able to get just what I need out of the freezer.

Gnocchi

Today, I finished off by making the Peppered Rice, meatballs and cheater stuffed cabbage. In between making all of this, I made bread dough for dinner rolls, pepperoni rolls and cinnamon pull-apart. This just finished baking a few minutes ago. I'll break apart the rolls and slice the pepperoni rolls to put into the freezer for later. Pre-cooking foods is the way to go, in my book! It helps out so much.

Rolls

Cheater Stuffed Cabbage

Pepperoni Roll

I make all of this and then I portion it out so we don't have to eat so much at one time. It's just two of us and we both have special diets. So it's really necessary that we eat foods that we can control. For Hubby, we watch starch per his doctor. For me, we watch chemicals because this is what I've found to exacerbate my health problems. Even though I make some starchy items, Hubby can eat as long as we monitor everything with his glucose meter. And I just watch everything else to make sure I don't create any electrical problems for myself. The best part is I control everything that goes into our bodies with what I make. Pardon me, but health problems really suck! I have really been blessed by God with my knowledge of cooking. We are both fortunate for this ability!

Here is my recipe for Cheater Stuffed Cabbage, that's what I call it. We had this for dinner tonight.

1# ground beef
1/2# smoked sausage - sliced into 1/2" rounds
1/2 chopped cabbage
1/2 chopped onion
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 8 oz. can water
1/2 or 1 14 oz. can of sauerkraut, drained
Salt and pepper

Brown ground beef and smoked sausage. Add onions, cabbage, tomato sauce, the tomato sauce can full of water and the sauerkraut. This should be enough water because the cabbage and onions will give up a lot of water when cooked. Cover and cook on low, stirring every so often to mix ingredients. When everything is cooked, salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot. Makes 4 servings.

Note: I left some sausages whole for Hubby's sandwiches for lunch. If you like kraut, add the whole can. If not, you can use 1/2 can or omit the kraut, totally. There will be a flavor difference if you omit the kraut! 

I hope you enjoyed today's post. Take care.

Cooking for the Week

Here's what I do on Sundays. I know...day of rest. For me, cooking is fun. I don't consider it a chore.

I make dishes I can serve up quickly for the rest of the week. After two days, the leftovers go in the freezer for later. This helps out when I can't make something because of appointments.

White rolls. Here's my story with this. I've made bread for about 15 years now. I can never get it just right. My crumb is too coarse and the roll falls apart when you eat it. When we went on vacation, I bought a loaf of bread made by an Amish woman. It was heavenly! When I cut it, it was so light and airy I thought it would float away. Literally. It was moist, cut well and made great sandwiches. No dry crumbs with her bread. It had a nice shape. The top was rounded and high. Beautiful!

Now I had something to stack mine against. I knew it could be done and this Amish woman was a master of the bread baking. I went home and got out my recipe. I read the general directions for bread and I found no more clues. OK. I'm doomed to make lousy bread. Wrong! The thing I have never done is kneaded the heck out of it and get as much flour in it as possible before the dough rips. Bingo!!! It worked. I have light and fluffy bread rolls that are moist and tender and stay together. Ta da! 

 Croatian potato salad. It's simple and a lot less fat. Cook your potatoes like normal. Cut them and put into a bowl with some onions. I decided to use red onions for color. I usually use what's on hand and that is white onions. I love the onions from the garden and I chop the green tops into the salad for color. Waste not! Vinegar, oil, salt, pepper and about two tablespoons of Italian dressing for extra flavor. I give the Italian dressing a squirt, which is probably more than two tablespoons. The longer it sets, the better it is. I like it cold, but you can eat it warm, too.

 Pulled pork butt from the crock pot. Hubby loved it this time. It's usually pretty dry. This time, it was just right. It went great with the white bread rolls.

And, with some of the white bread dough, I made pepperoni and mozzarella rolls. You can cheat with this and used thawed, frozen bread dough. Roll out dough. Line up the pepperoni along one end. I used sandwich pepperoni. Add mozzarella. Roll. Rise. Bake. This time, I laid out the pepperoni and mozzarella over about 2/3 of the surface of the dough before rolling. It made a nice streak of meat and looks good for presentation. You can use any dry type of meat for this. Don't use cooked ham! It's too wet and makes a soggy heavy mess of the bread. Dry Virginia baked ham with cheese is good. The other Italian deli meats are probably good, too. Prosciutto, cappacola, sopressata, etc. Not cheap. Wouldn't a nice calzone be good with this dough? Hmmm.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my food prep for last week. Take care.

Have a simple day!