Monthly Archives: March 2009

Uses for dehydrated zucchini

dehydrating, food preservation

I posted about dehydrating zucchini and mentioned that they got quickly eaten up as chips.  I didn’t initially make them with the intent that they’d be used for a snack, and I don’t want to leave you with the assumption that it’s all they are good for!

Here are some other ways you can use dehydrated zucchini slices – they are good in soups, stews, or tomato sauce.  I’ve seen it suggested to dust them with cinnamon sugar, and they then taste like apple chips (slice them 1/4 inch thick, peel them and take out seeds to make this).   Even when eaten plain, they have a sweet-ish flavor, as the natural sweetness is concentrated by the dehydrating process.

 When sliced length-wise, they can be used in place of lasagna noodles when making lasagna, or to replace the eggplant in eggplant parmesan.  You can rehydrate them before using for the lasagna or parmesan, but I’d find them easier to handle by using them dried and then adding extra liquid to the recipe so they’d rehydrate when cooking.

If they are shredded before dehydrating, you can use them in muffins or quick breads – just add a little extra liquid to the recipe you’re making.

Like other dried vegetables, they can be dried and then whizzed in the blender to make a powder.  If you do this, you can easily add a nice flavor to your soups or stews, along with great nutrition, without any signs of vegetables (for kids who are averse to eating veggies).

I’d bet that you could candy them, but that’s just a guess – it’s the kind of thing you could play with by coating them with honey before drying them, and seeing what happened.  Because zucchini has a bland flavor, it can be used in a lot more ways than something with a much stronger flavor.

Avivah

Fixing the toilet

frugal strategies

The toilet in my kids’ bathroom hasn’t been working properly for several weeks, and it’s been annoying but manageable because there are other bathrooms they can use.  My husband had tried about three weeks ago with a neighbor to fix it (the neighbor had a powerful tool to use for it), but it didn’t help.  I really didn’t want to call a plumber, but wishing a problem like this will resolve itself on its own is foolish, and that toilet can’t be properly cleaned because it drains so slowly when flushed.  So last night I brought it to my husband’s attention again, and he was very gracious about my reminder.  🙂 

His first response was to say that I should call a plumber.  I told him if he wanted to do that, he was welcome to, and however he wanted to resolve it was fine with me.  I know that trying to figure out what the problem was really wasn’t something he wanted to do, after already spending so much time on it.  But I also knew he didn’t want to pay a plumber to do something he probably could figure out – I mean, it was kind of obvious to him that something was stuck there, and it was just an issue of how to get it out.  (We once called a repairman in on erev Pesach a few hours before a three day yom tov began, because the fridge wasn’t cooling at all.  He walked in, pulled the fridge out from the wall, pulled out a turkey bone from the cooling fan behind it, and told us his fee.  $60 for less than five minutes.  I was glad to have it working again and felt it was worth the price, but after seeing how simple the solution was to what seemed like a big problem, my dh was motivated to try to figure out what was going on himself in the future before paying someone else for it.)

He bought some bathroom tools this morning, and together with the kids (they’re active and helpful assistants! – they were having fun working the auger for an hour today) tried it again.  Finally he came downstairs and told me he’d have to take the whole toilet off to get whatever it was out, that it must be something rigid and hard inside, because anything flexible or soft would have come out by then.  So he totally took it out – and thought he found the problem.  Those of you with young children can appreciate how a not so tiny plastic clamp and large plastic screw could not only be thrown in the toilet, but someone would try to flush it down.   Those things were wedged in the pipe, and that’s what he thought was keeping everything from passing through.  He removed them and was very happy to have gotten to the root of the problem, but the toilet still wasn’t flushing properly.  He kept working at it, and found the shower head from their shower wedged in, still assembled in one piece!  (My ds10 when he saw that, said, “Oh, I was wondering why the water flow from the shower was different!”  Why doesn’t anyone mention these things to me when they happen?)  Getting it out wasn’t a small job because it’s round and really stuck in there; it perfectly fits the inside of the pipe.  Actually, it seems that all of the effort to push whatever was in the way through the pipes just further wedged this in!  Once he got it out, everything was as good as new!  (I know that if you don’t have children you can’t imagine how this is possible – the answer is a 17 month old plus a 2 3/4 year old equal these kind of fun situations!)

For those of you wondering, no, my husband isn’t a plumber and he’s learned most of the practical handyman type skills since we bought this house less than three years ago, out of necessity.  Home owners know how there’s always something breaking or needing repair, and it gets very expensive, very quickly, if your only recourse is to call a professional in.  The bigger your family, the more things happen as a result of regular living, and we have a lot of people very actively using our home all day long, every day!  It’s very financially worthwhile to figure out how to do the majority of your home repairs on your own.  We’ve gotten a couple of how-to books, and use the internet to research specific problems and how to fix them. 

You won’t be surprised that I’ll tell you it’s very gratifying to find ways to do something like this, to successfully resolve an issue that would have the vast majority of people dialing the plumber long ago.  My husband has a great sense of accomplishment after finishing this project!  The kids are already happy to see it flushing normally again.  And I’ll be so happy to go into Shabbos with the kids’ bathroom not only working well but properly cleaned.

Avivah 

Dehydrating zucchini squash and celery

dehydrating, food preservation, homemaking

Today was a nice productive day.  I started off by cutting up all those pairs of jeans so I could easily store the needed fabric for whenever I get around to starting a quilt.  The pile is significantly smaller now, which is good, since I was feeling a little overwhelmed with the amount of clothes needing to be put away for projects.  Then I sketched out a couple of designs for quilts for the boys’ room, and asked my ds15 how he liked them.  It’s good to have a basic design worked out because you really have to have a plan before you start.  Last week I cut out a bunch of squares, but realized that I was complicating things for myself by not having the plan in place first.  Fortunately my dd found the graph paper (it was missing last week when I wanted to start thinking on paper regarding designs) so I was able to do that today.  It seems like the kind of thing that can be done in little blocks of time. 

Then I went to the hospital with the kids, then to the post office to mail some organic tea to someone who generously sent me some heirloom seeds for planting in this summer’s garden, and back home.   We got a bunch of inexpensive zucchini, so much that there’s no way to fit it into the fridge.  And it’s one of those perishable veggies that don’t last long outside of the fridge. 

So we sliced a bunch up in the food processor to dehydrate.  We did it once before and it was very successful – the slices were so thin that when we dried them, they were like crunchy chips.  They ended up getting gobbled up as snacks the first day we made them.  You can also brush the tops of the sliced zucchini with olive oil and spices, and they are delicious when dried!

I bought a few bunches of celery from the reduced rack with the intent to dehydrate them, and I’m going to slice a bunch of that up and dry it tonight, too.  I’ve seen how useful having dried veggies to use has been so far in putting together quick meals when prep time is short, and it will be nice if we can add celery to the list of things I have on hand.  It’s nice to have a way to prep vegetables in ‘bulk’ and use them later on when we need them, and it’s nice not to need to rely as much on my refrigerator to keep things useable. 

Avivah

Visiting pediatric ward

homeschooling, parenting,

Today I went with my three girls to the pediatrics ward of a local hospital. Both of the older girls did service projects at their bas mitzvas, and together with their friends made items for the hospitalized children.  It’s a little embarrassing that it’s been over six months since the most recent bas mitzva, and 20 months from the one before that, and we’re only getting around to this now!  But the girls kept the things in their room, so I rarely saw them and so actually taking them to donate totally fell off of my radar. 

I finally made an appointment to go last week, and very uncharacteristically forgot all about it. I was more than a little embarrassed, but made another appointment for today.  I was thinking after our visit today how obviously we were meant to be there on this specific day and for these particular children.  It was really a good experience for everyone.  The girls were able to personally distribute all of the fleece blankets they had made, as well as some of the washcloth bunnies.  They were surprised by how appreciative and happy all of the children, from ages 6 – 19 were about them – they weren’t expecting so much enthusiasm. 

While we were there, a grandmother of one of the patients who received a blanket came over to thank us with a lot of emotion, telling us that we can’t imagine how much this means to her granddaughter and to her.  A little later, the mother saw us, and also very emotionally told us that last night was her daughter’s first night in the hospital (she had just been diagnosed with diabetes), and at night she was crying and crying because she left her ‘blanky’ at home and couldn’t sleep without it.  She said that we can’t imagine how happy the blanket made her daughter – we let each child choose the one they wanted, and it ‘happened’ to be that one of those we made was her favorite color and had her favorite animal – a monkey – on it.  And the girl told her mother that she wants to go back to her room (we met her in the playroom) to make her bed, and now she’ll be able to sleep tonight with her new blanky.   Her mother and grandmother were just so grateful.

The youngest child we gave a fleece blanket to was a 7 year old who has sickle cell anemia and was there for pneumonia.  That mother also thanked us again and again and told us how nice it was for her daughter that we came by, and was so touched at the idea that our girls made these things with the intent to give them away. 

As a mother, I felt so much empathy for the mothers sitting next to their children, obviously trying to keep a strong face for their sick children.  I spoke with both mothers that I saw, and as soon as I reached out to them, they reached out to hug me, too.  You could just tell that they were so glad to be able to get even a tiny bit of emotional support. 

As a parent, I think it’s important for our children to have the experience of reaching out to others in various ways, and going somewhere like a hospital and seeing sick children really helps a child appreciate the gift of good health and being able to be in your home with your family.  We spoke with all of the children a bit and even though it was initially a little awkward for my girls, just because it was the first time they did this, they were all really glad they went.  They felt so good about it that they said we should do it again! 

Avivah

Having an easy pregnancy

pregnancy

>>”Do you have easy pregnancies? I guess you must if you’re on number nine!”<<

I’ve been asked this question several times in the last few days.  Some have asked because they care; others ask because I think they want me to agree that it’s easy to keep having children when you have easy pregnancies. 

So I’d say that, yes, I definitely have good pregnancies.  To which women usually rush to tell me how that must be how I manage, that I’m so lucky, because I’d never be able to manage to continue having kids if I had pregnancies like them!  (Then I get the details about morning sickness, or complications they had at various points.)  But asking if a pregnancy is good or easy are to me two different questions.  To me, every pregnancy is good because it’s what brings my precious children into the world.  Having a good pregnancy is a state of mind and an attitude.  It’s about focusing on what you like and are appreciative for, and minimizing the amount of time you think or talk about the rest.

Having an easy pregnancy is something a little different.  But I’d probably say that they’re not exactly easy, but they’re pretty easy.  If you asked my husband this question, though, he’d be quick to disagree – he’d tell you I have difficult pregnancies.  I tend to downplay or ignore physical discomfort that I experience because that’s just how I am, but he’s one of the few people who knows that pregnancy can sometimes be pretty challenging for me.  He’s the only one who knows just how challenging. And he says that I hide it so well that it’s hard for even him to tell.  I don’t talk about discomfort much (I think focusing on negative things just makes you more aware of them), he just sees how much of an effort some things can be for me.  He said, either during my seventh or eighth pregnancy, that he can’t understand how I’m willing to do this again!  But it’s totally worth it to me.

Honestly, I have a lot of discomfort during pregnancy from intense sciatica and back pain, in addition to some other more minor stuff.  Calling it discomfort is pretty mild – at this point I can’t walk comfortably for more than a few minutes (well, I can’t walk even one minute comfortably, but I can walk a few minutes before I feel like I can’t take another step).   Occasionally I’m in so much pain that I think I can’t handle one more minute, but fortunately that’s not all of the time.  And it’s always by the end of the day, which I think is a blessing (that it gets worse gradually as the day goes on).  That way it gives you a chance to adapt to it, which makes it much easier to ignore.  (And a heating pad is a huge help – that practically speaking often gets me through the night.) 

I feel very grateful that this didn’t really start until I got to six months this time around – for one of my pregnancies, it started at seven weeks!  Whew, that was a tough pregnancy!  So it’s really only three months of discomfort, which is relatively not a lot.  I’m also grateful that it’s not so intense as to make it impossible to keep people from realizing how much pain I’m in – there’s no reason for a person to walk around looking pathetic! 

There’s so much in pregnancy that’s positive, and it’s how I think about pregnancy that makes it seem easy to me – I feel like I’m so lucky to be able to have another child.  It’s an amazing experience, to grow a tiny person inside of you, and if it means some discomfort along the way – well, I’ll take it with a smile!

Avivah

Yummy Hamantaschen

recipes

Our table was filled for hours yesterday with hamantaschen in the process of being made.  This year we used a new recipe, that came from a friend (thanks, RM!), and my kids said they think it’s a really good one.  I haven’t tasted them myself, but they look beautiful, and I trust my kids on the taste.  🙂

 I’m not sure how many this makes, since we made three times the recipe, and I have no idea how many there are.  It’s not a small amount.  As I said, they were busy with them for hours!  I think that just one time the recipe is a good amount to start with.

 Yummy Hamantaschen

  • 6 eggs
  • 1 c. oil
  • 2 c. sugar
  • 3 t. baking powder
  • 6 c. flour (add a little more if it seems too loose to you)

 Mix everything together.  Roll out dough until thin but not so thin that it breaks when you pick up a piece of it.  Using the open side of a glass cup, cut out circles.  Put a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle – you can use jam, pie filling, or make your own.  (We made lemon pie filling and chocolate, but the chocolate wasn’t a huge success.)  Pinch each circle into points on three ends (don’t press too hard or they will break, don’t press too lightly or they’ll come apart when they bake – you’ll get the hang of it), and place onto a cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until lightly golden.

Avivah

Purim costumes

frugal strategies

First of all, several of you have emailed me and asked questions – please don’t think I’m ignoring you!  It’s just that I have limited time to be at the computer, but I will get to it!  (I tend to answer questions posted to the blog faster than those sent to my personal inbox.)

Today my kids made hamantaschen, while I took care of some costume stuff for them.  I think at this point everyone is just about set.  Until last year, I sewed most of their costumes, and occasionally bought some of the pieces they needed from the thrift store.  I made the typical kind of costumes – clowns, queens, brides, kings, prairie girl – and was able to make some very nice things by repurposing expensive satins and velvets from prom dresses that I got at the thrift store.  Making costumes is fun and easy, because they can look great even if they aren’t perfect.  There’s nothing like high quality material to hide a mediocre sewing job! 

But as they’ve been getting older, they want to do something more creative, which is fine with me.  I told them as long as I don’t have to think of the idea, I’m happy to help them put together what they want.  But I don’t really have very much to do with it for the kids ages 10 and up.  They go through what we have and find ways to make what they want.  That leaves just the younger kids for me.  The older kids have been helping the 6 and 8 year olds think of ideas, so I haven’t even had to think about what to do for them. But as of last night, they hadn’t finalized what they wanted to do for them.

Yesterday, I responded to a post from someone in my community giving away a couple of homemade crayon costumes, and I called, since the sizes seemed suitable for my ds6.  It turns out it was an old neighbor, who was delighted to give them to me.  I picked them up today, and it turns out that they will fit my dd8 and ds6, which is great!  (And one day, they will be perfect for my two little ones, who are also close in size.)  They are made very simply – basically a colored piece of felt (one orange, one red) made into a long tunic, with black felt cutouts in the shapes found on a Crayola crayon, with RED or ORANGE down the front.  They stapled all of the black felt pieces on, which was a smart way to quickly put it together. But I wanted something that looked a little nicer and more durable, so I sewed all the pieces down.  It looks a lot better now.  We have a red long sleeved red tshirt in the right shade for my dd8 to wear, and my ds6 will wear a black shirt and pants underneath.  I was considering making hats for them to look like the pointed tips of crayons, but don’t think I’ll bother – I could probably find something else to do with my time. 🙂

I have plenty of costumes for the 1.5 and almost 3 year old in our collection, so I’ll pull out something for them the day before.  My ds10 made a half and half costume for himself, using clothes we already have – on one side he’s one thing, and on the other side, he’s something else.  He figured out an ingenious way to wear two pairs of pants and look like they’re one pair.  Dd12 has a dashiki type robe (Indian? – not sure), dd14 is putting together Pippi Longstocking, and ds15 is so far settling with a funny tie for the night, and will borrow what I got for my dh the next day (dh has to work until early afternoon, so he won’t be needing it). 

And me?  I don’t dress up.  I’m just too straight and boring, I guess.  Every year I think I should at least get a funny hat or something, but the day I actually do that, my kids will fall over in disbelief!

It’s nice to know that all of this is taken care of and out of the way! (Oh – and the cost of all of the costumes – free!)

Avivah

Preventing rashes when cloth diapering

homemaking

I have to be honest – I don’t love using cloth diapers.  I know lots of moms do, and rave about how wonderful it is.  Yes, there are aspects I like about it, but if all things were equal (cost, environmental concern, health), there’s no question I’d rather use disposables.  But all things aren’t equal, so this is something I’m willing to do to be a good steward of the money that H-shem sends us. 

After posting about paper goods last week, I mentally niggled at myself to get back to cloth diapering since I have all the supplies and it was wasteful not to use them (I mentioned in that post that I haven’t been using cloth in the winter, for several reasons).  One of the general concerns I had was that I notice more of a tendency towards rashes when using cloth, and felt that in the winter it would be more of a problem. But on Thursday night, I stumbled on a comment online that gave me a clue as to what the problem was, so I decided that after Shabbos, I’d use cloth again.  My disposable diaper supplies obliged my mental ruminations by running out just in time.  🙂

Lots of moms find that the chemicals in disposable diapers are a problem, but even though I don’t like the idea of chemicals against sensitive areas of my baby’s body, they’ve never been visible irritants.  I have the opposite situation – they get rashes from the moisture of the cloth.  I’ve tried to change them frequently to avoid them sitting in a wet diaper, which has worked, but this has led to its own problems – I was changing diapers very often (felt like all the time, actually) and creating lots of laundry. 

Now I’ve learned that the problem is cotton holds moisture against the skin, so you need to use a barrier that will wick the wetness away.  If I had realized this was the crux of the issue, I could have addressed it a long time ago, but I thought I was doing something wrong, and didn’t consider it was just the material.  You live and you learn.  Apparently, what can do is place a fleece liner between the cotton diaper and the baby, so that moisture goes through to the cotton, which holds it in, but the fleece doesn’t hold moisture, so the layer next to the skin stays dry.  This also has the advantage of solids not sticking to it as much as cotton, so disposal of messier diapers is much simpler. 

So I thought I’d give it a try. On Friday, I decided to make some fleece liners, but you don’t think I was about to run out and buy material for this, do you?!  You should know me better by now!   Anyway, saying I was going to make them sounds like a lot more work than what was actually involved.  Here’s what I used for fabric, and what I did.  As I explained in my last post, we had an opportunity to get a lot of clothing for free the night before, and one of the items my dd12 picked out was a nice pair of athletic pants for her older brother to wear when he plays basketball at the gym.  The only thing was, she didn’t check the size – they looked big, so she figured they’d fit him.  When we got home, we saw how very big they were – size 3x! -so I put it into a give away bag to pass along to Goodwill.  But later that night I read about the fleece solution, and so the next morning I went through the clothing I had set aside to give away to see if there was anything to use.  I looked at the pants and thought the outside material would make a good diaper cover (that nylon/waterproof kind of sports pants, you know?) for a future repurposing project, but then discovered the inside was fleece lined.  So I cut up the pants lining (there was a LOT of material!) into strips of material that fit the length and width needed, and that’s what I’m using for the diaper liners now.  Fleece doesn’t need any hemming or sewing, so all that was involved was cutting it out into rectangles.

I’ve only been doing this a couple of days, but so far it’s working well.  My 18 month old woke up from his naps with his bottom dry and with no signs of irritation, though the diaper was pretty wet.   Actually, when I started using cloth again, he had a little bit of a rash, but it’s disappeared!  I’m very glad to have found such a simple and easy solution to this.  

Now, to find a solution to the nightime soaking for my toddler, and I’ll be totally set!

Avivah

Free clothing and other fun stuff

frugal strategies

Late Thursday afternoon I saw something posted on Craig’s List, that someone had about a hundred boxes of stuff they were giving away, and were putting it out for whoever wanted to sift through.  I very spontaneously decided to head over that minute with three of my kids (ds6, dd8, dd12) – as I was driving there, I kept wondering why I was doing this.  I usually ignore this kind of posting, my dh had just gotten home from work, and I had a tight time schedule because my girls had choir practice just a couple of hours later.  And I knew that the chances of finding much were iffy (since people respond so fast to ‘free’ postings) since we would be getting there a while after it was posted and it was getting dark.  It really wasn’t logical at all.  But for some reason I felt like I wanted to go anyway.  I told my kids on the way there, that we would find whatever H-shem wanted us to find, and regardless of getting there late, it would be what was meant to be – I didn’t want them to be disappointed that they came along. 

When we got there, all that was left were maybe 15 – 20 boxes that were pretty picked over.  But since we were there, we looked around.  While I was looking, a woman came out of the building next door, which it turns out was the auction house that was giving the stuff away – it was leftovers from various lots that they had bidding on which were left over.  She told me that they had a huge room full of clothes on the rack inside, and I was welcome to come in and take whatever I wanted!  So you don’t think I said, ‘no, thanks’, do you?!

When I went inside, the manager of the auction house told me they had been planning to open a thrift store in this space, but after getting it mostly set up, were so busy they decided not to.  He had been planning to post the individual clothing items on Craig’s List the next day to sell, but so many people had come for the stuff he posted, that they on the spur of the moment decided to give all of this stuff away, too.  Since he decided this after most of the people had come, I ended up being the second person they told – there was only one other family in this large area going through everything while we were there. 

My kids had a great time – it’s so much fun when you can get whatever you want, without thinking of the cost!  We got so much stuff – some of it for use as it was, like the four pairs of top quality men’s sneakers (do you know how expensive good sports shoes are for teenagers?!), quilts/blankets (more blankets are always handy, right?) and pillows, and other clothing.  I found a couple of funky clothing items (traditional clothing from other cultures) that will be perfect for Purim – one for dh (though ds15 liked this one so much he wants to wear it), one for dd12 (who has been complaining she can’t decide what to dress up as).  Other things I got with the intent to repurpose them (I love repurposing!), like some old sheets and baby flannel blankets – I’m thinking of using them for quilting and cloth diapering. It was funny that it was the day after I posted about using rags instead of paper towels, and what I used for cleaning rags, because I found a box with a bunch of unused xmas towels – now I have a very full basket in the kitchen for mopping and cleaning with (around here, you can’t have too many)! 

I tried to be selective, because I keep in mind that even when things are free, my space to store things is very limited, and I’m going to have to find a place for everything.  So I didn’t just throw everything I could into a box to take home, even though I probably should have taken advantage of the opportunity and gotten more than I did.  I also got six nice pairs of mens’ slacks, even though they’re too big for my dh and son, because I thought it would be nice to pass them along to someone in the community here who would appreciate them (I already posted them on our online community board as free, but no calls yet), and a bunch of little girls’ leotards, which I bagged up to send to the local dance/ballet program, for children who might not have the funds to buy their own.  I also got a great book that I already have (the Reader’s Digest Complete How To book, or something like that), to pass on to someone else who will enjoy it – it’s super useful to someone who wants to do their own home repairs, etc.

There wasn’t a lot of kids’ clothing, but we did get some baby clothes, and the kids found some toys and I let them bring home two stuffed animals – one of which is a huge raccoon the size of my toddler (but much fatter) – he had a ball dancing around with it as if it were a dancing partner on Shabbos while we were singing.  Ds6 thinks it’s fun because it’s big enough for him to lay on.

My dd12 got lots of stuff, even if she wasn’t sure what to do with it, and ended up getting a nice amount of sweaters/tops my size – well, they will be my size when I’m my size again!  She got a bunch of blue jeans, because she has a book of crafts to do with denim material.  I actually saw some jeans and was seriously considering getting them to make a quilt with.  I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to use denim to make quilts for the boys’ room – the plain blue of the new flannel sheets is kind of boring, though it looks uniform – but we don’t wear denim so the pants would have to come from a cheap or free source like this.   But when I was there, I decided not to take them because I don’t want to overwhelm myself with waiting projects to do at this busy time of year.  That was probably a mistake and I’ll end up regretting it when I get around to doing the quilts, but at the time, I was really trying to keep focused (which isn’t easy at a time like this, when there’s so much but not necessarily of things you were looking for specifically).  But we still got lots of stuff.

My dd did get to choir practice quite late, but she felt it was so much fun going with me that it was worth it.  It’s nice to go somewhere like this and have the kids all enjoy it as much (more than, actually!) me.  My dd14 and ds10 were sorry they hadn’t been given the chance to come along, too!

I often think about how you don’t know where H-shem will send you bracha (blessing) from, but it constantly seems to be flowing into our lives.  You have to just keep your eyes open, be receptive to what He sends and the form it comes in, and recognize it with gratitude when you get it.

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

menu plans

Last night my husband did some kind of clean up of the computer system, so I couldn’t get on to post.  But my toddler has helped me put this here in a timely way, by waking up much, much earlier than usual this morning.  🙂  So today I’m enjoying being awake in a very quiet house with just him – I got a load of laundry in the washer, another in the dryer, wrote up my weekly menu, and it’s still silent.

Sometimes it takes me a lot longer to plan my menu than other times, but I started by pulling a couple of the meals that didn’t happen last week (due to being out one afternoon and having a lot of something left over one day from the night before) and stuck them in for this week.  So this took just a few minutes.

Sunday – breakfast – french toast (I think – I was up late and then on the phone for a long time with a few people, so I wasn’t there); lunch – sandwiches; dinner – chicken, kasha, green beans

Monday – b – low country cream style grits (perfect for making on a day when I have lots of time before everyone wakes up – it’s easy, but cooks for an hour); l – sandwiches; d – split pea soup, cornbread

Tuesday – b – hash browns, eggs; l – leftover split pea soup; d – chickpea and peanut stew

Wednesday – b – french toast; l – cottage cheese pancakes, baked yams; d – shepherd’s pie (using deboned turkey from homemade stock)

Thursday – b – pumpkin streusel muffins, l – pizza; d – salmon patties, rice

As always, breakfast is supplemented with milk and fruit, other meals are supplemented with whatever veggies I have on hand.

Avivah