Homemaking on the Homestead

Good Morning!! This week I shopped at both Costco and Winco. The first stop was Costco.. I picked up some Kings Hawaiian Dinner Rolls, and 8# bag of oranges, potato chips, a 4 pack (1# each) of bacon, an Asian chopped salad and a bag of pistachios. My total for Costco this week was: $55  The next stop was Winco.. I picked up the basic needed fruits and veggies: apples, bananas, a bag of lettuce mix, mushrooms, cucumber and a few roma tomatoes. For dairy I got milk, half & half, and yogurt. I got 2 bags of frozen corn (you can only see 1 bag, but the other is below it). Hubby and I had been running errands in town and he wanted to BBQ a steak. We have LOTS of steak in the freezer but by the time we would be getting home it would have been to late to defrost it, so we picked one steak up and some shrimp. We got a half pound of it and I put it on skewers to put on the BBQ. It was a great treat for our d...

Good Morning! How is your week going? Mine has been good. :)  I decided to make use of the cool morning and got out and did my workout this morning before getting this post out. I finally did make a batch of soap. It almost turned into a disaster. I had the soap started in the crockpot and the phone rang, I went and picked it up and was talking for a couple of minutes when I remembered my soap. I walked back into the kitchen to see it all cooking away, right up and out of the crockpot and all over my counter! I was able to stir it down and salvage most of what had spilled out. After all my soap making years I do know that you should NEVER walk away while making soap. Ha! I'll be more careful next time.  I scented it with peach fragrance oil and got it cut up. It smells so good. Even though it is ready to use because I make hot process soap, the bars are still soft. So I lay the bars out after I cut them and let the excess moisture evaporate for a week o...

Good Morning! Here's a look at what I was cooking up last week... The week started off with sausages, corn on the cob, salad and french bread.. We cooked the sausages and corn on the BBQ and I did a double batch so we could have it for 2 nights.. I had a package of boneless pork ribs in the freezer and wanted to use them. A few weeks ago I saw some marinade packets at the store and thought I'd give them a try.  I used this one for the pork.. This was easy to use. I dumped the packet into a zip lock bag and added water, oil and vinegar (according to the package directions). I put the pork meat in the bag and squished it around and put it in the fridge to marinade for a couple hours.  We cooked these on the BBQ and they were so good! I served them with baked red and yellow potatoes and a salad..   On grocery day, hubby wanted steak and then saw shrimp he wanted as well. He picked up 1 T-bone steak ...

Good Morning!! This will be a super quick grocery haul. By the time grocery day came around I actually did not need anything except fruit and half & half. So Hubby said he'd pick that up on his way home from work.    So there you have it! My super simple haul from Safeway.  Total for this week's groceries:   $10 ****************************   Weekly Average at the end of July I like to give my weekly average at the end of each month. Last month was a bit crazy with all I had going on and I completely forgot.  This is a month past the halfway point now in the year. To date since the year started I've spent $2990 for groceries.  I've shopped a total of 30 times (once a week).   2990/30 = 99.66666666 My weekly average to date: $100 per week  I'm right on target and hopefully can continue to stay within my desired budget for the rest of this year.  That's all for ...

Good Morning! I hope you are having a great week so far! I woke up this morning to some beautiful sunshine! I'm certainly enjoying the fact that summer has arrived. I sat on my deck drinking my coffee and soaking in the warmth. I took this pic down my driveway.. A couple of weeks ago my Hubby was in Home Depot and was looking for something and lost his footing and a large, heavy bracket fell right down on his left index finger. It bled horribly and was very swollen. It was late in the afternoon when he got home and felt like it would be fine. The next morning it was still badly swollen so he went in to the doctor. The doctor said there was no infection and asked if he wanted an x-ray. Hubby said no, he'd wait for it to heal up on its own. To make a long story short, after 2 weeks it was still in bad shape and he went in yesterday again. This time they insisted on an x-ray and discovered it was broken.  I'm waiting now for the call f...

Good Morning! Here's a look at what I was cooking up last week! I started the week with a super simple dinner. I had purchased a rotisserie chicken from Costco and we had that with some of the leftover alfredo pasta and a salad..    The next night I still had quite a bit of chicken left so I decided to make some enchiladas. I didn't have sauce in a jar so I made my own. If I had it to do again I would have made a few changes (which I'll share). I thought they turned out a little dry, but Hubby loved them.  I started by making the sauce. I used a can of diced tomatoes, taco seasoning, cumin and salsa..  I put the diced tomatoes in a bowl and added: 2T taco seasoning 1t cumin,  1/2 cup salsa I mixed this all together...  At this point, if I had it to do over, I would have used my stick blender to puree the sauce. I think this would have helped. Then it was time to roll and fill...