July 25, 2013

Well, I got all gun-ho about keeping track of all the food I am eating, planning and preparing and then we came home from vacation in California and things got a little out of control.  We weren't home, we started eating out again for a week and killing our budget, but we are on track again.

To review that last couple weeks.  I started using my dehydrator.  I have now dehydrated kiwi, bananas, zucchini, and fruit leather.  The outcome:  The kiwi is incredibly tart, but ok.  LOVE the bananas.  In fact today I just bought some more bananas to dehydrate some tomorrow.  The zucchini chips...well, I do like them, but not a lot at a time.  4 Zucchini sliced in my salad shooter make one quart bag of chips. My instruction book says that I should not leave them on the shelf for more than one week, so I better get eating them.  I tried one with a little salt on in...I didn't care for it, but maybe that is because I don't like salt.

The fruit leather.  Well, Madalynn likes it.  I can't figure it out.  I have tried applesauce and banana, plain strawberry and strawberry and peaches.  It just comes out tooooo thin and tasting like paper.  It really just melts on the toungue.  When she finishes eating what I have already made I will try to make it thicker when I put it on the tray and see if that helps.  So far, the dehydrator is awesome.  It doesn't put out any heat.  The fan's motor is a little loud for my taste, but I am glad that it has a motor so I am not complaining, just frustrated with the sound.

Well, this last week we have eaten several meals with the lettuce from my garden.  The problem with leaving town is I couldn't keep on top of pulling the outer leaves off the plants and so they bolted.  Oh well.  I have planted so new lettuce for the fall and will be pulling up what I have planted right now and planting some new things for fall.  I spent sunday pulling things from the garden and prepping it for the week.  I am so glad that i bought a cheap salad spinner from IKea a little while ago. It was great for helping with the lettuce.

I also picked around 15 green bell peppers.  The main dish that we eat peppers with is chicken fajitas.  I really hate the time that it takes to make fajitas, but I love them.  (To anyone out there that says it takes no more time that any other meal...you are right.  I just hate standing in the kitchen cooking, and this just has too many things to watch to make sure they finish on time.)  So I made 4 meals worth of fajitas.  We took and froze the rest of the meals and put them in our deep freezer for sept-nov when I work too much and don't have time to cook.  The next month is going to be about making meals to big and freezing them.  The rest of the bell peppers that I did not use to make the fajitas I also froze sliced up.

(Sunday) In our fajitas I cook the chicken in strips in a frying pan with the fajita seasoning from the store.  I added a bag of onions I froze back in May, canned mushrooms sauteed separate adding minced garlic and bell peppers also sauteed separate.  I don't like my green peppers too cruchy so I cook them forever.  It was a good meal.

(Monday) Then the next day I made a crockpot broccoli and chicken.  It was YUMMY!!  Here is the recipe.  I have been wanting to make this recipe forever, but I never had cream of cheddar soup.  I bought a couple cans a while back and finally got to making it.  This is another meal that I would freeze and get ready for the fall.  It was great because Russ could add the broccoli and sour cream when he got home from work before me and it was all ready when I got home.

(Tuesday) Next day...I finally got the grill turned on again.  On my way home from Seven Peaks with Madalynn we bought hamburger buns and I grilled up some hamburgers.  It was great.  We made salad to go with it with garden lettuce, grated carrots from the garden, tomatoes (they are coming off my cherrySo tomato plant in heaps right now), olives, black beans and homemade ranch dressing.  It was a great meal.

(Wednesday) So, as is always the case with me...once I start something again I am thinking about it and I grilled up steaks.  I pulled out two steaks I bought a while ago and marinated them with some McCormicks Montreal Steak seasoning.  It was super great.  We got some cucumbers from Aunt Teri's garden..so we had salad again on the side.  So grateful for all the salads I have been having for lunch and dinner.  We are eating a lot more veggies and fruits each day.

(Thur)  Tonight we made stuffed mushrooms and stuff zucchini.  YUM!!  I sort of combined a lot of recipes and it turned out great.  The homemade spaghetti sauce that I made and canned a month ago is super tasty and full of lots of seasoning.  Russ doesn't want me to add back in the scooped out part of the zucchini next time and I think that he hopes I won't make them again...but what is a woman supposed to do with 20 zucchini.  I can only make so much zucchini bread this week.  Haha

So I should never get behind in my writing.  I still have so much to keep track of and no time or energy to do it.  I have to get to bed so that I get some sleep before Remington wakes up.  He is teething again and therefore having a hard time sleeping all night right now.  I am in the middle of playing for the RDA choreography conference right now and it is time consuming and energy zapping.  Hopefully i will have time to put down the zucchini bread recipe that I have finally found that my husband likes.  We have a lot to make in the next two days with all the zucchini coming off our plants.  I will also have tons of roma tomatoes coming off this next week.  Glad that i got that dehydrator.  It is going to make storing all my fresh produce so much easier.  I am also going to dehydrate some bananas tomorrow as well.

Now only can I talk about the meals that we are making, the fruits that Madalynn is constantly asking for for treats, but also the food that I am making for Remington.  Our magic bullet is certainly getting lots of use this time around.  I am soooooooo glad.  I am hoping to give him our first green beans from our garden tomorrow.  We will see.  Good night for now.