11.5.08 Weekly Frugal & Festivals

Hi, everyone! Sorry for the delay, but I was watching the election when I should have been blogging.

**Before I get to the menu for the week, I want to do some shameless promotion. I’m writing for Associated Content now, and getting paid for it. Please click through and read (or just click through and give me page hits, I’m easy to please) when you can.  It’s all work safe. Thanks!!**

We headed to the Heritage Apple Festival and the Persimmon Festival at Edible Landscaping with our friends, Dave & MJ and Erin and Adam. We had a great time, but it probably would have been a better time if two of the four of us hadn’t been just starting to come down with something. I am really looking forward to next year, when I hopefully don’t feel like collapsing on my face. That said, it was still a lot of fun, and we got a great deal on apples (which we’ll be canning as sauce and apple butter this weekend sometime).

I am so excited because we only spent $25 on groceries for the week (and $5 of that was in rare breed eating apples). This is when our stocking up starts coming into play, and those high summer grocery bills begin to be totally worth it!

This week (starting yesterday):

Dinners

Sunday: Butternut squash soup with homemade onion rolls. We put up squash from one of our favorite farms, Roundabout, and this was the first use of it. The soup was delightful and rich, perfect with UC’s NY Style onion rolls!

Monday: Homemade whole wheat pasta and sauce, with a side of sauteed zucchini. We will be making fresh pasta tonight, and pairing it with our homemade vodka sauce. The tomatoes are from linguisas we got for $1/lb (organic & local). We’ll be adding TVP to the sauce after it’s done to add protein. All told, a super-cheap, healthy meal.

Tuesday: Scalloped veggies. We need to use up some leftover cheeses (Amish butter, morbier, and aged gouda), so I’ll mix those with some standard cheddar and make a nice sauce. That’ll get dumped over some fresh veggies, then baked with a topping of whole wheat and anadama bread crumbs & TVP from homemade bread (we save and dry the ends).  it’s a great meal.

Wednesday: Chicken soup and sides. We’re hosting a movie & dinner night, and I’m making homemade chicken soup out of some local, organically-raised hens we got for $1/lb. They were older laying hens, so they’re perfect for stocks and soups. I’ll be popping in some carrots, and hopefully some homemade noodles (leftover from Monday night’s dinner). Folks bring sides if they want dinner.

Thursday: Pork chops with pickled beet tops and roasted beets. I’ll do the pork chops in one of my favorite spice rubs from The Frenchman’s Corner and pan-sear them. When we were putting up food for the winter, we got a ton of beets with the tops on. We wanted to do something with the tops, since they’re so healthful and tasty, and had initially thought about just cooking them down to can. Then, UC found a recipe for yeast fermented pickled chard. We used the beet tops in place of chard, and tonight we’ll pop a jar and try the results!

Friday: Undecided. Now that the markets are closed, we’ll be heading to some farms & stores directly on Fridays, so as of this week we’ll start our meal planning on Friday afternoon.

Lunches:

tuna salad on onion rolls (this was TASTY today), leftovers, pb&J on homemade bread, soup, and wraps from leftover 100% grass-fed London Broil (Pannill’s Gate) I pulled out of the freezer (along with local lettuces and tomatoes).

Snacks:

pb&J, cheese, smoothies, yogurt & granola, fruit (including some rare local apples!), roasted nuts, sliced tomatoes, carrots, chips & salsa.

Breakfasts

Eggs in a “nest” with toast (the nest is sautee’d spinach and garlic with balsamic dressing), porridge (wheat berry and pearl barley), cereal (got the Good Stuff with no HFCS on sale), and hopefully some homemade english muffin sandwhiches (UC is supposed to make the english muffins this week, but we’ll see if we have time).