Homemaking on the Homestead

Good Morning! This week it's back to menu planning for the two of us. I'm planning on keeping it pretty simple. The temps outside are hot and since I don't have air conditioning I don't enjoy heating up my kitchen if I can avoid it.  I'm playing around with putting specific meals on specific days.  I'm going to see how that works for me now that I'm getting a better handle on cooking for the two of us.   Monday: It's a real toss up today. I'm either going to buy a pizza when I'm out grocery shopping or put chicken in my IP for chicken gyros . Either way, I'll serve a salad and fruit with it.    Tuesday: Salmon is the plan. I have put salmon on the menu a few times and never made it. I had too many leftovers to get to making it. I'll grill it and serve it with potatoes, salad and maybe some corn on the cob.    Wednesday: Burgers on the BBQ with all the trimmings and some fresh fruit ...

Today's grocery haul is actually from last week. I was doing the final shopping for my family gathering. This week I did not need to shop at all. We have plenty of food in the house to make it to next week's shopping trip. I was feeding anywhere from 6 to 20+ people over the course of 6 days. It was mostly adults so I had another big haul. My first stop was Winco. I had to do 3 pictures since I had so much... I purchased some apples and limes, lettuce mix, tomatoes, mushrooms, a bag of sweet Walla Walla onions, and 2 large bags of mixed veggies. This was a mixture of broccoli, cauliflower and baby carrots. I did buy a 10lb bag of potatoes which somehow did not make it in the pic.  Plus macaroni, olives, chips and 2 containers of coleslaw from the deli. This pic has some of the breakfast foods I needed, cereal, muffins, yogurt, milk and cream cheese. And finally dessert. I wanted it simple and this did the trick. ...

Good Morning! I've been MIA in my blogging world. I have been so incredibly busy! My family came, we celebrated and they have all gone home now. My week was crazy, noisy, and amazing! :) That's the way it is when you have a big family and they all come back home for a few days. I loved every minute of it! We spent our time visiting, holding my oldest daughters baby, laughing, talking and cooking lots of food. Grandpa gave the grandchildren tractor rides and taught a couple more of them how to drive the tractor. It was a big highlight for all of them. Our only sadness was the fact that my daughter Emily and her family, down in Sacramento, could not be here with us. As she said, if the timing of life had been just a little different she would have been here with us in a heartbeat. We are already thinking about and planning on the next gathering where we can all be together. It's not easy with 8 children who live busy lives, and many of th...

    Good Morning! Hope you are doing well today. I have 3 days until the first of family begins to arrive. This week's menu will be bigger than my usual due to the extra people to feed. I've been planning not only dinners but breakfast and lunch as well. Breakfast meals will be simple. I'm serving yogurt, fruit, muffins, bagels & cream cheese and I'll have cereal available. I plan on doing a couple bigger breakfast meals too. Breakfast sandwiches for one and waffles and scrambled eggs for another. Lunches will most likely be leftovers or sandwiches. So there's not a lot of extra planning for those. My menu this week: Monday: Chili – I'm making a batch of chili in my IP for the two of us. I'll serve salad along with chips & salsa Tuesday: Leftovers Wednesday: Turkey wraps, orange slices, pasta salad Thursday: Family is arriving and I'll be making pulled pork sandwiches (in my IP) ...

This week was another spendy week for groceries. With my upcoming family gathering I'm getting extra food in the house. It's not every year we can get most of the family here at the same time so we're celebrating. :) Aside from our children and their families we'll have a few extra people here who wanted to take the opportunity to stop and see everyone. My meal planning is based on that. In any case, the first stop was Winco.... I got the regular fruits and veggies. I didn't need any greens for salads because I had spinach, romaine and cabbage still in the fridge. I purchased the typical items such as milk, half n half, chips and cookies. I bought olives for the pantry because they were on sale and 2 cans of spaghetti sauce and lasagna noodles. I bought 2 large boxes of taco shells as we'll be having a taco night while my out of town kids are here.  And a box of onion soup mix for making dip. And we'll be having ...

Good Morning! I hope you all are having a great week so far. Last week I started writing my WSS and then the day took a different direction and I wasn't able to finish it and get it out. Hubby and I had no plans for the 4 th of July. We were going to have a little BBQ and relax. I got a text from one of my sons asking if he and his girlfriend could come up and then shortly after that I got a text from my youngest daughter asking if her and her boyfriend could come up. Of course I said, “Sure!”. So I pulled out more meat to put on the BBQ and the kids said they would bring the side dishes. I also grabbed the last frozen pizza dough in the freezer and got that defrosting. In the end we had quite a nice spread and too much food :). I struggle to cook for two people but give me a bunch of people and I'm in my element.. ha, ha. But the kids took food home with them so it all worked out in the end.. Yesterday was a fun day, we had our grandsons...

Good Morning! I hope your week is off to a great start. I have a big family gathering starting in a little over a week. So my mind and plans have been on that. This week I'm keeping the menu super easy. I'm hoping to get a few meals in the freezer this week to help out when people start arriving, and I want to focus my time in the kitchen on that. Last night I made some Costco orange chicken, a few potstickers and some noodles for our dinner. I still have some of that left. I may make a sub sandwich for my hubby to go along with this and of course we'll both have a salad. The rest of the week is looking like this.. Tacos It doesn't get much easier than tacos :). I'll serve them with all the typical trimmings and tortilla chips and salsa on the side. Chicken Salad I plan to marinate my chicken in the Olive Garden Italian Dressing I purchased last week. I'll then either fry it up or grill it. I'll make a big ...

This week has been on the busy side for me. I had a few people here for the 4 th of July holiday and didn't have enough time to get Wednesday Snap Shot out. It will be out next week. My grocery haul this week was a big one. I have a family get-together coming up in a couple weeks and will have a lot of people here for several days. So I started this week to stock up on a few things in preparation for this. The first stop this week was Fred Meyer. I don't normally shop at Fred Meyer but my hubby needed a couple things there and I had seen that they had T-bone steaks on sale for $5.77 a pound which is a bargain around here. So I picked up 3 packages of them... The whopping grand total for the steaks was $71 Next stop was Winco... The fruits and veggies were the basics.. lettuce, spinach, cabbage; both red and green, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers. I picked up some apples and bananas. We still have oranges from th...