We’re down to just a few days before we pack up and move. Our meals are a bit hodge-podge these days as we use up the food we have on hand.
Here’s what we have left in our freezers. WAIT. Freezer. Singular. We gave one of our uprights to our neighbors. We’re only taking this one with us and here’s what’s in it.
I took what was left in our other freezer so I could defrost it before we gave it away. Goodbye ol’ freezer. You’ve been good to us.
Grocery Spending
My spending total as of June 24 is only $240. Most of that has been fruit and vegetable purchases, plus a few odds and ends to complete some meals that I’m putting together with the food we have on hand. I love the savings we enjoy when we’re eating from our pantry and freezers!! But I also know that July is probably going to make up for it because once we settle in, I’ll need to stock up on everything again!
Bonus: Look what we got at no cost:
We donate a lot of household items to an organization in York called Blue Valley so I follow their Facebook page. One day last week I saw that they had strawberries, blueberries, oranges, yogurt, and cabbage given to them – and it was all free to our community for the taking. Keith and I ran over there while the four littlest kids napped and we were shocked at the flats of fruit! “As long as you can use them, take an entire flat,” they said. Oh, we’ll use them!! What a gift. (York area friends, follow Blue Valley Community Action on FB. You never know what you might learn about.) :)
The kids have LOVED having a free-for-all with all of the berries!
Here’s part of our Walmart pick up order on Friday. Gotta have greens for these smoothies. :)
Here’s what we ate last week:
And now on to looking at the meals we ate throughout the week.
It all started with Father’s Day. The Saturday before as we were preparing, I was reading this recipe out loud so we could make pie for Daddy. Hearing, “we need 4 Tablespoons of butter,” Anna ran to the kitchen. She came back yelling, “Tablespoons! Tablespoons! Tablespoons!” She was alllll ready to make pie!
We decided to make two pies. First, this Easy Chocolate Fudge Pie – with a big scoop of peanut butter added.
Licking the spatula is the best reason to be involved in helping to make the pies.
Then, we made this Peanut Butter Cheesecake Pie – without the chocolate chips. Yes, Matt loves peanut butter. Both pies turned out so good!
Saturday night, Elias cut up two pounds of chicken so I could make Bacon Chicken Pasta for Father’s Day lunch right after church. I have GOT to make this more often. Every single person ate it and asked for more. It’s so very good!
Justus and Kelsey were able to come that afternoon to help out. AND they brought everything to make a Father’s Day dinner!
I took advantage of the help by spending an hour scrubbing a bathroom. Meanwhile, Kelsey got Kiya and Brayden in the kitchen working on dinner prep. They loved this!
Anna had coffee with Justus. (Not really.)
All afternoon I marveled at all of this. THIS IS WHY GOD IS MOVING US TO LINCOLN. Well, one of the big reasons. We’ll get to do life together with our Bigs. We need this.
Matt and I are stretched pretty thin. Any time our older kids pour into our younger kids, everyone wins. Brayden and Kiya needed to work in the kitchen with Justus and Kelsey – this fills them up! Anna needed Justus and Kelsey snuggles. Asa called Matt for Father’s Day and some of the littles ran to the phone to talk to him too. Eva snuggles and reads books to littles constantly when she’s here. I could go on and on. Here’s a shot I couldn’t pass up of everyone getting ready to watch a soccer game after dinner, Elias so naturally holding BabyBoy#11, and the littlest girls climbing up to join.
Meanwhile, Malachi went from going to Ecuador to spending a week at Soul Quest to heading to church camp to spend a week counseling. We’re thankful he’s out there serving, and we miss him. Good thing he’ll be back in time to help us move. ;)
So dinner. Justus smoked meat all Sunday afternoon: chicken thighs and barbecue ribs. Kelsey and the kids made mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts. It was all SO GOOD.
And Kelsey took pictures, because she knows that her mother-in-law is a food blogger who posts everything her family eats. Way to go, Kelsey!
On Monday, we ate up most of our weekend leftover smoked meat. What a treat! I made mac and cheese and peas as a side with lunch, plus let the kids choose canned peaches or canned pineapple.
For dinner we warmed up leftover mashed potatoes and I made corn and these smoothies to go with our meat.
Friends came to hang out late Tuesday morning plus I had case worker visits that day too. So mid-morning while the baby was napping, I browned some hamburger and put together pizzas to bake during my meetings. While I was at it, I made a tiny crustless pizza for my friend. (Tasha. It was Tasha. Remember Tasha? Tasha can’t have gluten. So I made her a crustless pizza.)
We ate our pizza with carrots and watermelon. Then Anna drank the watermelon juice from the bowl. Please enjoy this photo of Anna, along with my left foot and two buckets full of dirty rags.
That evening, I made Salmon Patties and served them with peas, leftover mac and cheese, and canned fruit.
Wednesday morning I blended ingredients together to make Bean and Cheese Salsa Dip. We ate it with chips and the kids’ choice of pears, peaches, or pineapple. (I had to get out cheese for our bonus kid who was spending several days with us. He’s the picky one I referred to in this post, but check out #5 here to see what he does like and eat. I keep these on hand for him if I can!)
My friend, Jenny, went to Costco that day and offered to bring home a Rotisserie Chicken for us. Such a blessing!! We pulled it off the bone that night and filled plates for the kids, serving it with melon from the fridge.
For lunch on Thursday, I made our meal based on food in the pantry. This “spaghetti” tasted great!
We’ve mostly eaten leftovers from then on, except for Saturday night when some wonderful friends came over. We needed to do some work up high on our house, so they hooked up their lift to their tractor and brought it over so they could help Matt accomplish the task. Phew!
The kids had a blast sitting on and climbing on the tractor while their daddies worked.
The rest of us packed and cleaned, then we got out everything we needed for a hot dog roast at our fire pit.
It just so happened to be this sweetheart’s birthday. One might say that we were so busy getting our house ready to sell that we almost forgot to celebrate. OR, one might claim that we went all out for Josie by renting a tractor for kids to play on during her birthday party!! Let’s go with the latter.
We put candles in her rice krispie treat, gathered around to try to keep the wind from blowing out the candles (to no avail), and sang to our birthday girl.
We thank God for the opportunity to have this impromptu party while our friends were there serving us.
And now, we pack the final boxes and load the truck. Stay tuned for next week’s adventures!
The post Big Family Food and Fun: June 18-24, 2023 appeared first on Heavenly Homemakers.