Menu Plan Monday - 10/12

Well, this is how we're starting our week here in Colorado. It has snowed/iced off and on since Friday evening. This is what my grass looked like after we returned from church this morning. If Michael hadn't been here, there is NO WAY I would have braved the icy roads with the kids by myself to get to church, it was quite slick.

We had about 3 weeks of actual fall-ish weather and now we've skipped straight on to winter. Boo :-(

Here's what I'm planning for our meals this week:

Breakfasts will consist of cold cereal, oatmeal with honey/maple syrup and fruit and pancakes.

Lunches: Michael typically eats the leftovers from dinner the night before and the kids and I have quick fixes like, pasta, baked chicken nuggets, fresh fruit, veggie trays, cheese and crackers, sandwich wraps and any straggling left overs.

Dinners:
Monday - Crockpot chili, topped with cheese and crackers, and a side of fresh fruit
Tuesday - Meatloaf, oven roasted potatoes, green beans and bread with butter
Wednesday - Baked lemon pepper fish, steamed veggies, fresh fruit and rolls
Thursday - Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and fruit smoothies
Friday - Pizza night
Saturday - Baked chicken, steamed veggies, rice and rolls.
Sunday - The kids eat whatever I can scrounge up and Michael and I have a special take out dinner later in the evening.

Other goodies on the list for the week include apple crisp, gingerbread muffins and honey pumpkin muffins which will serve as our snacks and desserts through the week.

I think I just might turn into a pumpkin...

Do you remember this post and my gigantic pumpkins? Well, today was the day I tackled some of the preserving.

We had a regular size pumpkin from a pumpkin patch we visited and our 2 ginormous pumpkins. I chose to take care of the two smaller ones today (and we've since decided to sell the 76lb-er on Craigslist). I started this process just after lunch today and just now (at 9pm) closed up shop and I'm not even finished yet.

The average size pumpkin was definitely nothing special, but this guy was a bit challenging to cut into, even with my very best knife.











Here's the first batch in the oven baking.









Here are the other two batches waiting.






Today yielded me 15 pints of puree for the freezer and I still have about 4-6 more pints that are baked, peeled and chopped and ready to be pureed but I didn't have any more standing up left in me today (since I've been standing for the better part of the last 8 hours).

I also have enough pumpkin seeds to be roasted to last us a long while. They've been washed and I'll roast them tomorrow.
Updated 10/11
In other preserving news, here's what I have done and still have on the to-do list:
* Apple butter - done (2 pints and 8 half-pints)
* Apple pie filling - decided to just make a few batches of apple crisp instead
* Tomato/pasta sauce - (1.5 pints done and still have lots of tomatoes ripening, will probably have enough to make a few pints by the end of next week) DONE
* Jalapenos - done (half pint)
* Tomatoes; dehydrated - (have dehydrated a few pounds and will probably do the same with the stragglers that are the last to ripen once I've canned all that I can)

Cinnamon sugar shaker (say that 5 times fast!)

It's Kitchen Tip Tuesday time and I haven't participated in quite a while but I have a good one for you this week!

Here it is:
It's my cinnamon sugar shaker (a repurposed sea salt shaker). I keep it premixed so that it's readily available whenever I'm making cinnamon rolls, french toast, cinnamon toast, oatmeal, etc. Then there's no extra work involved in sprinkling it right on.

I use Rapadura/Sucanat/evaporated cane juice (whatever you want to call it, it's all the same stuff) and ground cinnamon. Our personal taste is approximately 3/4 sugar and 1/4 cinnamon. I like a LOT of cinnamon! Sometimes I mix it stronger than that. Just use a funnel and pour in your cinnamon and sugar, leaving about 1/2 inch at top. Replace shaker top and cap and then shake and roll it around until you have it mixed evenly.

Now it's ready for whenever you need a cinnamon sugar mixture!

Menu Plan Monday - 9/21

I didn't go back to my archives to check, but I think it has been several months since I've posted a menu plan.... I have a menu plan every week because we would never eat otherwise, but I just never seem to remember to post them.

We are having lovely fall-ish weather around here (today's high is 50) so I feel comfortable cooking warm meals every day and actually using my oven to start baking again since I don't have to worry about my house being a zillion degrees.

Monday:
Dinner out with friends then back to our place for the season premiere of HOUSE!!

Tuesday:
baking: Zucchini bread and dinner rolls
Shepherd's pie, rolls with butter

Wednesday:
preserving: apple butter
prep: thaw ground beef
Tuna salad sandwiches, veggie tray

Thursday:
Taco salad served with corn chips and homemade salsa

Friday:
Homemade pizza, veggie tray

Saturday:
baking: applesauce spice cake
Grilled cheese, tomato soup

Sunday:
Michael and I will get something from a restaurant (it's our new weekly tradition) in the late evening after the kids go to bed. The children will eat leftovers.

Also, at some point during this week or the weekend I'd like to get the preserving of my pumpkins done so I can start using the puree in my baking.

Be sure to visit I'm An Organizing Junkie for more wonderful menu plans!

You Capture - Up Close

I'm a little late getting this posted, but I couldn't pass up this week's You Capture theme - Up Close.

We did a homeschool science unit on caterpillars and butterflies and I purchased one of those butterfly house kits. You know the kind with the live caterpillars that you watch turn into a chrysalis and then emerge as butterflies... Well, it worked and let me just say, that God's creations are sometimes astonishing! This is of us releasing them after they all emerged!

Nevermind Eli's head in the background. Cropping it made some of the details too fuzzy, so this is actually my shot straight out of the camera with no editing.

The PUMPKIN - duh, duh, duh, duuuuh

Okay folks. Here's the scoop on the pumpkin who has been affectionately named Lt. Col. Pumpkin. It's an inside-joke-thing!

Here's what the pumpkin looked like on August 24.

Soon after that photo the leaves near the beginning of the plant started dying so I knew it only had a few more weeks before we would need to cut it. I started trimming off dead leaves and cut off one whole leg of the vine that was only taking nourishment from the main vine to give it as much time to grow as possible.

Finally, we decided that this past Thursday was the appointed day.

Here is "pumpkin day" in photos:

It's up to her chest lying on it's side!! In reality, we should have stood Lt. Col. Pumpkin up on his butt when he was still young, but alas, we didn't think about it until he was too frumpy to sit properly!





Family photo!
















Michael, our friend Jesse and Eli moving Lt. Col. Pumpkin from his home.













Lt. Col. Pumpkin weighed in at a whopping SEVENTY-FIVE pounds - you read that right, I said 75lbs. Holy moly, no wonder it took two men to get him off the ground.








We actually had 2 pumpkins. The smaller one was on a smaller plant and even though it was also lying on its side, it ended up looking fairly pretty and properly shaped.

However, the only thing I could think while taking this photo was "quick, get them off my glass top stove before it breaks!!"


Tune in next week for the next installment - Lt. Col. Pumpkin goes to work!

Comparisons

Jacob at 9 months (10/04)

(Photo quality is not great because it's from before the studio went digital.)






Eli at 9 months (2/07)

I thought it would be cute to have Eli's photo taken at 9 months in the same outfit Jacob had been wearing and with the same background.











Rachael at 10 months (we were out of town during most of her 9th month) (7/09)

Then when Rachael came along, I just knew I had to continue the "tradition" I had inadvertently started. So, instead of jeans, she's in a denim skirt and I added a red bow to make that very boyish shirt seem a little more girlie!