Dinner from the Freezer...Pantry Shelves...Cabinets and More!

There is a reason I haven't blogged here since the 5th of August.
I guess my computer is going haywire or something. Three or four times now... I go to the blog site and it hangs up and won't connect. I try for quite awhile and eventually give up. This time, it took me three tries to get this up. Oh, well!

Dinner from the Freezer… pantry shelves… kitchen cabinets and more!

Things have been wild in ways around here.
The budget is the usual squeezed condition so I was blessed to have some to take out for the kids’ lunches and breakfasts for the week. I’ll be making them oatmeal with brown sugar and/or honey, a bit of milk, butter, and cinnamon sprinkled on top. Alternate mornings will be like this morning: free range eggs and buttered toast. In the morning, they actually get blueberry or strawberry muffins because my teen daughter found the mixes for .79 and .88 cents each. We made two of them tonight for dessert and put the rest in a container for breakfast.

For lunches, they are eating the peanut butter and jelly swirl sold in jars. We got a grape jelly and one strawberry jelly version so they can switch to keep from being bored. They also have muffins, peanut butter crackers and cream cheese with chives crackers. They also have puddings and jellos for a treat I will be glad to have some things made in advance for better health and to fill up more.

I made up a vegetable soup that the teen girls both said was fantastic and awesome. This is a wonderful compliment and I thank the Lord… praise His Name… for showing us bounty.
I was dragging myself through the shelves after discovering we don’t have spaghetti as I thought. I had planned to make buttered noodles and sautéing up some vegetables to eat with them.

The Lord let me work through my despondency and set me to task!
I found some frozen carrots already cut, frozen lima beans, frozen peas, a can of hominy, two cans of green beans, and some tomato paste and sauce. Then I found three cans of V-8 my sister left here awhile back so I sautéed the carrots and lima beans for awhile in butter (got that with the breakfast and lunch stuff!) and olive oil (found some the other day I forgot we had!) and then added all the tomato cans except the paste. I added some chicken broth and then the corn and eventually the rest of the ingredients.
I let this simmer while I made other things and then cooked a medium sized pot of pasta, drained, and added to the soup/stew. I added dehydrated onions, parsley, garlic powder, Spanish paprika, and freshly ground pepper.
The girls ate two bowls each (so did I) and our six year old ate some of it. We put my husband’s up for when he got off of work.

We found the almost end of a parmesan wedge I thought we finished off on another meal and grated it finely on top of our soup. I also made garlic butter toast in the toaster oven and it made such a comforting meal!
I tried the oat cakes I’ll share the recipe for but they did NOT turn out so I don’t know what I did wrong!




Oat Cakes

1/4 cup medium oatmeal, plus extra for sprinkling
1/4 cup whole wheat flour.
½ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
pinch of salt.
tablespoon of lard.
5 tablespoons of boiling water.
• Melt a tablespoon of lard over a medium heat until it has completely melted.
• Place all the dry ingredients into a bowl and add a tablespoon of melted lard and five tablespoons of boiling water.
• Mix together using a round bladed knife until a dough forms.
• Sprinkle a surface with oatmeal and place the dough on it.
• Cut the dough in two and place one piece aside.
• Shape the half into a round and roll it out using a rolling pin until it is about 1/4 inch thick.
• Cut as many oatcakes as the shape allows and place them on the baking sheet.
I actually just pick up tablespoons of dough and pat them out into patties. [notes not mine]
• Repeat with the other half.
• Roll out and cut the leftover dough.
• Place the oatcakes into the hot oven for 10 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.
• Remove the oatcakes from the oven and place them on a cooling rack.
• Serve hot with butter and honey or fresh fruit!Alternatively, you can cook oat cakes on the stove top on a griddle. cook 2-3 minutes on one side, tilt he top becomes dry, turn and cook 2-3 minutes longer til pale golden brown.

[I have NO idea where this recipe came from to give credit. I found it in my bread recipe file and when I went to the link on it … it said the site was no longer active.]