Preserving and Canning Chicken

I love being prepared... 

I love having yummy things on hand to throw together a dinner or lunch for my family!  

I have always been scared to pressure can because of all of the horror stories I have heard from my mom about pressure canners blowing up!  

HOWEVER, I am here to tell you, it's so easy to pressure can AND there is never going to be anything blowing up, if you follow the directions.  

For the past 2 years, 

I have been buying chicken, salmon, ham and strawberries from Zaycon Foods and have loved how quality the meat and fruit is AND how yummy as well.  

However, while I love pulling frozen chicken breasts from the freezer, there are many days when I haven't planned ahead and it's dinner time and so many recipes that have chicken in them don't get made up because I don't have time to defrost the chicken.

 However, thanks to a pressure cooker, 

I now have dozens of pint jars on my shelf, for those quick and easy dinners and soups AND I love having jars of chicken to grab and make Chicken Salad Sandwiches for lunch, or to add to a pasta salad.  

Canned chicken is delicious and is truly a staple at our house!   

ALBEIT, while it is yummy, 

it definitely looks like a "Science Project" 

when you look at the jars, 

OR, as my kids call it...
SICKEN! (wink)

I have canned chicken fresh out of the box after I have purchased it,  
OR, I'll individually package the chicken and put it in my freezer and then after the busyness of the holidays are over and we are in the long, cold month of January, I'll pull out my pressure cooker and defrost some bags of chicken breasts and can a bunch of chicken up then.

SO easy...

you just take your HOT pint jars

fill with sliced chicken chunks leaving 1 inch of head room

add in 1/4 tsp salt

put on sterlized lids and rings
(you do NOT add any water to the jars!!)

Put jars in pressure canner

(follow directions on your pressure canner, for how many jars you can put in it, for what water to add to the pot and for how long to let pressure build before you start timing your canning).

After canner builds to 12 pounds of pressure
let it cook for 75 minutes for PINT jars.

(watching so it stays at a consistent 12 pounds of pressure)

Let pressure canner drop pressure and cool,
Open the canner and pull out the jars and 

VOILA,  
you now have jars of yummyness to enjoy all throughout the year!  

Congratulations!  
Now you have one more skill in your life to be prepared AND knowing how to process and preserve your own foods is a great self-reliance skill, so you can take advantage of great sales on chicken when they come around!

Enjoy being thrifty and frugal!

Soup...fresh from our garden!

Beets, Cabbage, Carrots, Potatoes and Onions...

all from our garden, 

all in one pot of soup...

the taste...absolutely delicious!!

SOUP...
it is truly one of our family's favorite things to eat.

I love the thrift of soup!
I love taking random things, putting them in a pot, simmering so all of the flavors combine together and serving up bowls of comfort and nourishment for my family. 

2011

I decided to try my hand at making "Borscht" soup after picking our garden veggies.  I found a few recipes, but some had ingredients that I didn't have on hand and so I decided to create my own recipe, by using things I had and definitely did something I always do with soups, that of sauteing the onions, garlic and celery together before adding in the rest of the ingredients. It turned out WONDERFULLY  

Harvest Time 2012

we made another batch of this yummy soup and my 10 year-old Ethan begged us to make more, so we did! 

This is my FAVORITE soup!

Red Beet Borscht Soup
8 oz. pork sausage
1 large onion (or 2 or 3 small onions) finely chopped
2-3 cups cooked beets (I shredded part of them and diced the rest)
4 stalks chopped celery
3 cloves minced garlic
3 carrots peeled and finely chopped
3 baking potatoes peeled and finely diced
1/2 medium head of cabbage, finely chopped
(1) 8 oz. can tomato paste
(1) 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
4 cups chicken broth
4-5 cups water

(steps for soup)
Saute together, sausage, onions, garlic and celery until onions are tender.   
Drain
Put this mixture in a  large stock pot and then add in the water, chicken broth, cabbage, carrots beets and potatoes, bring to boil and cook until veggies are tender (about 20-30 minutes).
Then add in tomato paste and diced tomatoes, bring to a boil and simmer another 15-20 minutes.(salt and pepper to taste)

Ladle into bowls and serve with a dollop of sour cream on top.  

Perfect served with some kind of a crusty Artisan or French Bread.  

LOVE the beautiful red/purple color of this soup!

Enjoy, a very hearty, filling soup that is nourishing and absolutely delicious and the best part of all...made with veggies you grew in your garden!

20 Weeks...No Major Shopping...Wrap up!

 WOW...we made it and what's even better, 
is I'm finally getting this blogged about!  


For those not familiar with this challenge...
 our challenge allotted us $20.00 each week to spend on produce
and a gallon of milk every other week... 
the rest of the things we ate, came from our food storage.
 If you would like to see 
what meals we ate for 5 months and what produce we bought,
click HERE and scroll through the posts...
there are LINKS in each post to the recipes I used
and HELPFUL TIPS for what we did to make things stretch.

While I initially wanted to be done with this Challenge 
the first part of September, here 
  I still had another months worth of the staples such as butter, sugar, flour, yeast, cheese, etc... and so I decided to go until I ran out of butter.

This took us a little under 20 weeks from start to finish with no major shopping and you know what, we didn’t really feel deprived at all!
Other than the fact that I was down to the last cube of butter and roll of paper towels and I had ran out of BLEACH, raisins and gallon sized freezer bags, we survived going 20 weeks with no major shopping.

  (here are links to click on to to see 

what we ate/did week by week)
week 1  week 2   week 3

  week 4    week 5   week 6 

week 7   week 8    week 9

weeks 10-11   week 12   week 13

weeks 14-15    week 16  week 17 

weeks 18-19

Call me strange, but, I really do enjoying challenging and “stretching” myself…
it’s something that is in my blood and something that is SO enjoyable to me!
Preparedness truly does bring peace!

Here are the things I learned this year...

The CASES of canned beans, canned tomatoes and canned chilies we don't go through that much for how many cans we have in our food storage.
I will never again buy a case of 48 of anything, unless it is tomato sauce, OR, Tuna Fish.  We realistically can't go through them before the expiration date.

You go through A LOT of dish towels cooking every meal from scratch.  While I have a large supply of kitchen towels and dishcloths, 

I did laundry twice a week just for washing dish towels!! (usually go through 5-7 a day and sometimes more), depending upon what I'm cooking.

I realized that it would be REALLY nice to have a few cans of cooked chicken on hand, for those hectic afternoons when all of a sudden it's dinner-time and I am scrambling to throw something together!
(excited to pressure cook up some chicken breasts this week after I get my Zaycon Chicken order)

POWDERED MILK makes wonderful summer-time treats (here)
I used this to make homemade Fudge Pops, Chocolate peanut butter milk shakes and peanut butter energy balls. (here)

We also enjoyed a few batches of HOMEMADE yogurt made from powdered milk as well.  (here)
Love this recipe and LOVE that it uses things I always have on hand.

Artisan bread is one of our new favorite breads (here)
AND it is the perfect thing to make up if you don’t have any crackers on hand.
Bake it, toast it and it is perfect

 Homemade Hoagies are now officially a staple at our house!  (here)

We use them for everything and the versatile thing about my French Bread recipe, is you can make up a loaf of French Bread AND 6-8 Hoagie buns, so you can make the most use out of the dough, if you don’t wall all hoagies or all bread loaves.

Homemade Tortillas are also a staple at our house as well! (here) I haven’t bought store bought tortillas since the first of the year (when we purchased some for Tracy’s scout campout breakfast burritos).     
They were wonderful to make up and use our garden veggies and make wraps/roll ups.  They were perfect to line a bowl and fill with taco salad.  They were wonderful to fill with yummy things to take hiking and they were wonderful made into Enchiladas, Quesadillas or Breakfast Burritos.

 It truly is the best feeling in the world to be able to make 95% of the things your family eats from scratch all by yourself! 
Everyone is happy when the food they are eating, 
was made with love by YOU!!
 

We also realize the more we hike that my basic Oatmeal Cookie recipe (here) with LOTS of raisins, dried cherries and walnuts make PERFECT energy bars to take hiking and it is SO much cheaper than purchasing CLIF or ODWALLA bars.

Here is a list of the major things we went through 
in our 5 months of no shopping.
With cooking every meal from scratch, we went through A LOT of the staples...

(BTW...we have chickens that we get eggs from, so we didn't have to use egg powder)

(staples)
150 pounds unbleached flour
50 pounds sugar
18 pounds brown sugar
5 pounds powdered sugar
12 pounds RAW cane sugar
18 pounds honey
20 pounds raisins
4 pounds dried cherries
22 pounds wheat
2 pounds corn meal
2 pounds SAF yeast
1 pound baking powder
3 pounds baking soda
4 pounds salt
8 pounds rock salt
35 pounds steel cut oats (this is our mainstay for breakfast Mon-Fri…here )
12 pounds rolled oats
16 pounds powdered milk (4 #10 cans) (here's how I make our milk stretch here)
10 cans Evaporated Milk
5 cans Sweetened Condensed Milk
9 pounds dried beans/legumes
8 pounds rice
1/2 pound wild rice (made this yummy soup here)
12 pounds pasta
4 pounds popcorn kernels
7 pounds raw almonds
3 pounds walnuts
1/2 pound pecans
3 pounds Almond Cluster Nut Mix (here)
1 large bag of DARK Chocolate Peanut M&M's
1-1/2 pounds sunflower seeds
1/2 pound flax seeds
1/2 pound cashews
1 pound coconut
1 large jar lightly salted peanuts, 1 package of mini marshmallows and 1 pkg. peanut butter chips (these combined together to make Salted Nut Rolls here)
34 ounces unsweetened cocoa powder
4 pounds Stephen’s Hot Cocoa powder
25 boxes of STASH brand Peppermint Blend tea
48 oz. REAL maple syrup
½ bottle of Mapleiene Extract (made homemade syrup here)
12 ounces molasses
12 ounces corn syrup
3 packages marshmallows
1 pound coconut
3 quarts applesauce (this along with whole wheat flour turned into muffins here)
3 boxes of pectin (made homemade preserves)
1(4 pack) box of Gelatine (used to make homemade yogurt here)
1/2 pound Citric Acid
4 bottles Lemon Extract
(6) 8.2 ounce bottles REAL vanilla
3 liters Olive Oil
72 ounces Canola Oil
4 pounds cornstarch
72 ounces Nestle Semi-Sweet chocolate chips
3 pounds Ghiradelli Double Chocolate Bitter-Sweet chips
10 ounces white chocolate chips
(5) 40 ounce jars peanut butter (we went through so much of this as we made a few batches of granola bars (here) and peanut butter energy balls (here)
4 cans non-stick baking spray
5 pounds cottage cheese (we ran out the last 6 weeks…we need to try making HOMEMADE cottage cheese for times like this)
2 pounds sour cream
(5) 8 ounce packages Neufchatel Cream Cheese
.5 ounces of freeze dried mushrooms
(we also used quite a bit of Cajun seasoning, lemon pepper, taco seasoning, cumin, chili powder, granulated garlic, beef and chicken bouillon, buttered flavored salt, dried parsley oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and poppy seeds, sesame seeds)

(cheese/butter)
12 pounds Monterey Jack Cheese
5 pounds sharp cheese
1 pound Mozzarella Cheese
48 pieces of string cheese
32 pounds butter
2 pounds lard

(meat)
4 pounds chicken breasts
2 whole chickens
2 pounds chicken thighs
6 pounds hamburger
2 beef roasts
1 pound stew meat
2 pounds bacon
2 pounds sausage
(7) ½ cup packages of ham and one ham bone (that we had cut up in our freezer from our Easter ham here for how I do this)
1 pound Tilapia
6 pounds Salmon
1 pound crab meat
1 package Chicken/Spinach sausages (here for how we put them to use)
2 packages Nathans ALL beef hot dogs (had these in our freezer…we stock up on these in the spring to have on hand for summer barbeques...here for 2011 fun)
30 cans tuna
2 packages of Smoked Salmon and 2 large bottles of artichoke hearts
(we made 2 different batches of  Salmon and Artichoke dip here)

(misc.)
(many limes, citric acid and Lemon extract turned into this here)
6 packages Pink Lemonade Kool-Aid
1 box of Tangerine Emergen-C (Kids take this in their lunches to drink)
(3) 46 ounce jars pickles
(2) 24 ounce bottles ketchup
(3) 30 ounce jars Mayonnaise
(3) 30 ounce jars Miracle Whip
4 jars Ragu Spaghetti Sauce
10 cans stewed tomatoes/tomato sauce
1 pound frozen peas
2 bottles salsa
2 boxes Sunbelt brand Fruit & Nut Granola Cereal
2 boxes ZOOM cereal (this is what we used for breakfast when we went backpacking)
4 packages dry Ranch Dressing Mix (used to make Ranch Popcorn here)
31 packages Doublemint Gum
2 bags of 200 Menthol cough drops
4 bags Tortilla chips (we ran out the last 8 weeks…wish we had a way to make homemade tortilla chips
(1) 28 package individual chips
50 pounds of onions
25 pounds of potatoes
1/2 bag charcoal briquettes

(we also went through a few cans each of pineapple tidbits, olives, diced green chilies, canned beans, Tomato and Cream of Chicken Soup, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and chow mein noodles...ALSO, a few packages of Ramen for our backpacker meals).

(I lost track of how many pounds of frozen fruits/berries we used for our smoothies,)

(cleaning/toiletries)
(6) 56 ounce containers Soft Soap
(1) 56 ounce container Soft Soap for our bathroom dispenser in our shower (here)
66 ounces shampoo
66 ounces conditioner
52 ounces hair gel
99 ounces hair spray
1 box of hair highlighting kit (here how we use this)
6 bottles of deodorant
10 tubes of Chap stick
(2) 20 ounce bottles Curel lotion
40 rolls paper towels
76 rolls toilet paper
5 boxes PUFFS tissues
72 count box of tampons/(1) 18 count box maxi-pads
2 boxes of each sandwich and snack sized bags
4 boxes of each gallon and quart sized bags
(1) 100 count box of bread bags
(1) 75 ft. box aluminum foil
(1) 75 ft box waxed paper
½ box Plastic Wrap
1 box Q-tips
1 large bag cotton balls
1 package small Dixie Cups for the bathroom
32 oz. mouth wash
3 tubes toothpaste
(3) 100 ounce jugs laundry soap
1 gallon bleach
30 ounces Spray and Wash
2 boxes Borax
165 dishwasher soap drops
46 oz. Jet Dri
64 ounces Glass Plus
1 large can AJAX
18 ounces 409 cleaner
22 ounces hardwood floor cleaner
60 ounces Bathroom/Toilet cleaner
60 ounces Shower Cleaner
72 ounces Hydrogen Peroxide
10 gallons vinegar (we went through so much as I use it in my dishwasher since we have hard water)
1 box Bounce sheets
120 kitchen garbage bags
45 outside garbage bags
2 gallons CAR oil
Oil filters (for changing car oil)
2 gallons windshield washer cleaner

YES, you can eat REALLY well on your food storage...

YES, you can live on your food storage and LOVE it! 

So grateful to have had another opportunity to “Stretch” and to put this wonderful quote by Percy Cerutty to the test once again…

"You only ever grow as a human being

if you're outside your comfort zone”.

Kimmie in Real Life! (week 17)

WOW!
I forgot what it is like to have a somewhat "normal life", with cooking dinner every night. 

It was SO fun to be back spending lots of time in my kitchen cooking yummy things for my family to eat.

As I type this
I am down to my last 5 gallon bucket of flour, I have 7 cubes of butter left, 10 pounds of sugar, 2 pounds of raisins, 2 pounds of cheese and a few dollops of sour cream, AND PLENTY of all of the other staples we use on a daily basis, so I will definitely make it 2 more weeks without doing any shopping,  
albeit,
I don't know if I will make it without running out of paper towels, or gallon Zip-loc bags. 

 I have been enjoying this challenge SO much 
and I think it's going to feel a little weird 
to actually be able to go out and shop and buy things again!  

Here are the food highlights from our week!

I made these up using POWDERED milk.
I put 1/8 cup dry milk powder and 1 cup water in my Vita-Mix and blended it together.
I then added in the rest of the ingredients and blended for 30 seconds and we had a PERFECT batch of Oven Pancakes to enjoy for breakfast!
I think I'll be making these with powdered milk from now on!

If I were to think of one of my favorite meals
(other than SALAD, or Lentil Stew), it would have to be this yummy fresh, Tomato Soup.
So nourishing, delicious and comforting and PERFECT served with your choice of bread sticks!

BOTH of these Bread Sticks are a hit at our house!
SO fun to have enough leftover soup the next day to make up a different style
of Bread Sticks the next day.

You don't have to worry about serving leftovers, 

when you have a yummy bread to serve with it!

I found this recipe when Jade was just a youngster,
when I went to a Women's Conference and I attended a class entitled... 
"Feed Me Right, I'm Yours"! 
Fun, yummy recipes to disguise things to get your kids to eat them!
My kids enjoy these LOTS and loved that there were leftovers to enjoy in their lunches the next day at school.

When it's the first week of Autumn, 
you know that this yummy meal will grace our dinner table!

We had a frost and it killed our precious squash/pumpkin plants, but we had this lone pumpkin and pulled it and let it sit in front of the window of our sliding glass door to finish ripening and it was perfect for our yearly tradition!!

If you have access to pumpkins or Sweet Meat Squash, you should try making this up to add a little bit of FUN to family dinner time during this wonderful Autumn time of the year!

YES, apple pie also graces our table 
to be enjoyed after our "Dinner in a pumpkin"!
Ethan commented that the way we scooped the homemade ice cream on top of the pie, looks like a "Storm Troopers" head from the Star Wars movie.

LOTS of delicious garden produce
sauteed together, filled inside homemade tortillas and sauce made the most tasty and savory Veggie Enchiladas!
Love this recipe and the FUN memories it brings with it!

Fresh Apples and Pears that were 
shared with us from our neighbors abundance.
WOW, pure heaven is what we were in 
when we got to enjoy these yummy things this week!

If I were to think of a specific meal that is our favorite, 
 it would hands down be this delicious and savory Beef Stew, served over a bed of mashed potatoes!
Jade especially enjoys this!!
This is what you call "Man Food"! 
I love that you can take somewhat "tough" stew meat, make this yummy stew and then put it in the crock pot for a few hours on low and it tenderizes the meat and makes it SO tender that it falls apart in your mouth!

DELICIOUS!!

I found out on two occasions this week that when you freeze extras,
they ALWAYS come in handy on days,
when you have a lot going on,
thus was the case when I made up some Lemon Bread and French Bread a few weeks ago.
I didn't have time to make treats or cookies and I was wondering what I could add to our lunches and so I looked in my freezer and had a loaf of Lemon Bread and pulled it out, cut it up and we such a yummy treat in our lunches.
This is on Tracy's TOP 5 list of favorite treats that I make up!

We had to go on 10 mile hike with the Scouts on Saturday and we got back from Jade's Cross Country meet on Friday night around 10:00 and there was no time at all to bake bread, so thank goodness I had a loaf of French Bread I could pull out of the freezer...
I scrambled up some of our eggs from our chickens
and these were PERFECT for lunch on our hike!

Saturday morning I baked up a batch of Raisin Cookies while we were getting our backpacks packed so we would have something yummy for energy on the trail.

This one recipe is SO versatile, delicious and ALWAYS a hit.
It is definitely a yummy, frugal thing to make for trail bars,
rather than buy pricey Odwalla or CLIF bars.

I'm so grateful to have kids that eat whatever is baked up...
it's amazing that my sweet nine-year old, LOVES Raisin Oatmeal Cookie! 

Some of the apples we were given were really SOFT
and were more of a cooking apple and not a eating apple.  
SO, I boiled them up, pulled out my strainer and turned them into applesauce.
Heated them on the stove and added in a little cinnamon and some raw honey and let simmer 5-10 minutes and put the applesauce in containers for lunches and used the remaining applesauce to make Applesauce Muffins!
 It is SO much fun being creative
with all of our abundance of produce that we have going on this time of year,
and making sure none of it goes to waste!

September 11th to 17th

Sunday
Oven pancakes, sliced apples
Fresh Tomato Soup, Yummy Bread sticks 

Monday
Steel Cut Oats
Granola Cereal with milk, carrot sticks, apple and string cheese
Leftover Tomato Soup and Bread sticks (made a batch of Bread Sticks/Pretzels)
Raisin Bars

Tuesday
Steel Cut Oats
Tracy...leftover soup, bread sticks, boiled egg, apple, and raisin bars
Jade...Granola Cereal with milk, bread stick, apple, raisin bars
Ethan and Kimmie...boiled egg, bread sticks, apple, raisin bars
Celebrated the first week of Fall with...Meal in a Pumpkin
My neighbor brought us over an Apple Pie for tending her animals for her while they were on vacation...we baked it up along with some homemade ice cream

Wednesday
Steel Cut Oats
Lunch for all of us...Leftover meal in a pumpkin, apple, lemon bread
Homemade Enchiladas, (made up tortillas, added in leftovers from last night)
Made an apple pie for my family and we made up another batch of homemade ice cream

Thursday
Steel Cut Oats
Tracy, Jade and I leftover enchiladas, apple, lemon bread
Ethan went on a field trip to Craters of the Moon and took tortilla rolled up with ham/veggies, string cheese, apple, chips, lemon bread
Beef Stew served over mashed potatoes...truly our family's very favorite meal! 


Friday
Steel Cut Oats
Jade Leftover Beef Stew and apple (took peanut butter balls/string cheese for energy for his cross country run)
Ethan boiled egg, apple, string cheese, peanut butter ball, chips
Tracy and I met in town and had lunch at Taco Time (since we won't be getting a date since we will be attending Jades cross country meet in Blackfoot)
Went and watched Jade run at his Cross Country meet in Blackfoot and then took the kids and enjoyed Western Lemon Chicken at New Hong Kong since it was Pay Day (we usually treat the kids to dinner when it is Pay Day)  

Saturday
(woke up and made a batch of Raisin Oatmeal cookies for our hike)
ZOOM cereal for breakfast
pulled French Bread from freezer and made up scrambled egg sandwiches for our hike, also took apples, string cheese cookies and chips
Wonderful 12.4 mile hike with the Scouts
The leaders bought the kids Square Ice Cream cones on our drive home

Links to recipes used this week:
Yummy Bread Sticks
Bread Sticks/Pretzels
French Bread
Oven Pancakes
Garden Fresh Tomato Soup
Meal in a Pumpkin
Beef Stew over mashed potatoes
Homemade Tortillas
Veggie Enchiladas
Raisin Bars
Lemon Bread
Apple Pie
Peanut Butter Energy Balls
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

SO grateful to be blessed with the BEST kids in the world!
They never complain about what we eat, 
 and I hear "thank you for the yummy lunch"
every day of my life from my kids, when they walk in the door and greet me after a long day at school.
Even when they get sent with Potato Salad, fruit and a muffin for lunch, they never complain and if it is a hectic morning and there is only an option to have a Tuna Sandwich on a homemade biscuit for lunch, or to eat school lunch, they ALWAYS want to take a lunch from home.

Can life get any better than that?!?  

I love my wonderful life

and I'm so grateful to have a home, 

where Gratitude & Love are in abundance!

Kimmie in Real Life! (week 16)

This week was kind of a "catch-up" from the craziness of the previous weeks and SO, I don't have too much to share as we spent half of the week, eating sandwiches from leftover sandwich fixin's from the previous weekend, AND we enjoyed green smoothies for three different meals. 

Needless to say, it was a great week and now I am finally caught up on this thread of posts for a week.

Here are the food highlights! 

We were in absolute HEAVEN 
with these yummy apples we had to enjoy all week long!
I purchased an 20 pound box of Gala apples for $8.00.
WOW, these apples were freshly picked from the orchard they grew in and were crunchy, juicy and the best snack enjoyed all week long!
I just got some delicious apples from my neighbor as well that we will be enjoying for a few weeks.
I love when my kids are hungry and begging for a snack and we have an abundance of apples to cut up and enjoy!   They never tire of eating apples!
"An apple or two a day keeps the doctor away"!

YAY, we were SO excited to be able to enjoy some more Green Smoothie on three different days this week!
My family never tires of the yummy creations we put together.

This was a "throw together whatever you can find in the fridge/freezer smoothie.
These random ingredients were absolutely delicious together!

YES, when it's this time of the year, 
Zucchini Quiche, Casserole and Bread are enjoyed multiple times. 
Once harvest is over,
(other than enjoying zucchini bread and an occasional quiche through the winter),
we have to wait until next year to enjoy them again.

 I absolutely LOVE this muffin recipe
and I am hooked on adding in the ground flax seed and whole wheat flour as it makes a really hearty but moist muffin and the leftovers (if there are any), freeze well to pull out to add to lunches.

Such a yummy meal...
delicious corn on the cob from our neighbors garden,
juicy, ripe cantaloupe
and a delicious salad!
Everyone was thrilled when this was served for dinner!

 It had been a long week and I decided to surprise 
my hubby by making his favorite...
Snickerdoodles!
Definitely, a hit anytime they are made up!

It was a hectic Saturday
as I had to work and I came home to Tracy up to his eyeballs in projects
and so the quickest thing I could think of to throw together
was to whip up a batch of these tasty  
Buttermilk Biscuits
along with a smoothie!
Butter and fresh local honey spread atop these muffins were fantastic!!

 Along with the busyness of my week, I had 2 days where I did some canning.
I took some of my abundance of zucchini and bottled up some relish with a recipe that my sweet friend Tauna passed along to me.
Since we LOVE tuna sandwiches, this will be SO yummy to add some of this to our sandwich fixin's.
(post coming in a few weeks with canning info and canning recipes,
which this recipe will be included in that post)

I also took our garden tomatoes and
bottled up a batch of Tomato Soup.
This soup is AWESOME and we enjoy it all throughout the year, when we need something quick to eat, but I haven't planned something else.
I got this recipe from my sweet friend Connies' blog...here for the recipe

The only adjustments I made to it, were I adjusted the salt to 1/4 cup
and the sugar to 1-1/4 cup, other than that, I followed her recipe.
WOW, this tastes SO fresh and if you don't have time to make a pot of homemade soup,
this is the next best thing.
Serve it with some homemade breadsticks,
OR, grilled cheese sandwiches and it is a perfect meal!

Week of September 11th to 17th

Sunday
Buttermilk Pancakes
Zucchini Casserole
Took leftover sandwich fixins' and made sandwiches for dinner

Monday
Steel Cut Oats
Sandwiches on Multi-Grain Bread, chips, string cheese, banana,
Zucchini Quiche, Green Smoothie
(made 2 batches of French bread and a batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies to deliver to people that had done thoughtful things for us, like pick cherries off their cherry tree, and bringing us a large bag of FRESH raw almonds)

Tuesday
Steel Cut Oats
Sandwiches on homemade Hoagies, chips, grapes, string cheese, chocolate chip cookies
Leftover Zucchini Quiche, Green Smoothie
(made a batch of Zucchini Pickle Relish)

Wednesday
Huckleberry Muffins, Green Smoothie (I did CHATS at home from 7-9 and so I was able to be there to send my kids off to school!)
Sandwiches on homemade hoagies, chips, apple, Goodie Bars
Broccoli Slaw Salad, corn on the cob, cantaloupe

Thursday
Steel Cut Oats
Broccoli Slaw Salad, muffins, apple, string cheese
(made a batch of French Bread for Jade to take to his Pasta Party for Cross Country)
(also made a batch of energy balls so Jade could have them for energy for his Cross Country meet on Friday) 
(spent all afternoon bottling up homemade tomato soup)
Since we had to drop Jade off at 6:00 to a party, take Ethan to Stake Pack Night at 6:30 our dinner consisted of Garlic Cheese toast and apple slices

Friday
Steel Cut Oats
Tracy (leftover tomato soup, bread and butter, apple, peanut butter balls)
Jade (school lunch since he had a cross country meet today, but he took string cheese, apple and peanut butter balls for energy before his run)
Kimmie and Ethan (tuna sandwich, string cheese, apple, peanut butter balls)
(made a batch of Snickerdoodles to surprise Tracy with, since these are his favorite)
Tracy decided to take us to Wendy's after Jades Cross Country run and we got Chili and baked potatoes

Saturday
(I had to work from 8-12)
Tracy sent me out the door with fried eggs, toast and apple
He and the boys enjoyed this same breakfast as well
Lunch consisted of a yummy smoothie, Buttermilk Biscuits
We took the kids to town as Jade has worn out his running shoes and so we went to find him some new shoes. Tracy took us to get Pizza as a "we made it through a hectic week" celebration.

Links to recipes used this week:  
French Bread
Homemade Hoagie Buns 
Multi-Grain Bread
Broccoli Slaw Salad
Zucchini Quiche
Zucchini Casserole 
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Huckleberry Muffins
Peanut Butter Energy Balls
Snickerdoodle Cookies
Buttermilk Biscuits
Buttermilk Pancakes

I'm SO grateful for the ABUNDANCE  

that I have in my life right now.

 An abundance of healthy, nourishing things to eat,

an abundance of clean drinking water and water to bathe in,

and abundance of clean, fresh air to breathe,

an abundance of health in my home,

and abundance of beauty that surrounds me,

an abundance of friends and family that love and care about me

an ABUNDANCE of love in my home 

with my three favorite people in the world...

Tracy, Jade & Ethan!

I am blessed beyond measure 

and just when I think that life can't get any better, 

it does! 

 Life is Oh, So Good!