Gulp

See all these empty dishes...

This is only about a third of my dishes.

The other stacks look just like these.

Empty.

What happened?

The black hole that is my family's appetite happened, that's what.

Sigh...



Guess I know what I need to get busy doing again...

The Bestest Pumpkin Muffin Recipe Ever

My recipe makes 24 muffins but you can cut it in half in case you are not feeding a small army like moi.

Although they do freeze really well, so maybe you'll want to make a whole batch? I made eight batches of these the other day and after they had cooled, I put them in baggies and then out in the freezer.

I just went out and looked in the freezer and they are all gone...

Sigh...


4 c. whole wheat flour

2 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

4 t. ground cinnamon

2 t. ground ginger

1 t. ground cloves

1/2 t. ground nutmeg

1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, either dark or light

6 T. unsulphered molasses

1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce

4 large eggs

2 cups canned pumpkin

2 t. vanilla

1 1/2 c. buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Coat (2) 12 muffin pans with cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg.

In a large bowl, whisk the sugar, molasses, applesauce and 2 eggs until combined. Add the other eggs and whisk well. Whisk in the pumpkin and vanilla. Whisk in the flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the buttermilk. Whisk just until combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared muffin pans. Tap the pan on the counter a few times to remove any air bubbles. Bake for 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center of 1 of the muffins comes out clean.

Let cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the muffins to loosen then and then place them on a wire rack to cool.

**I never use buttermilk but instead add 1 T. lemon juice to 1 1/2 c. non-fat milk OR I use coconut milk if I have any**

**Also great use of your frozen squash puree from the garden, I just substitute that for the canned pumpkin**

Enjoy! We all love these, with the exception of Matthew. But he is almost 6, which explains it all.

My weekend

This last weekend we...

Went to two basketball games

Watched Liz's performances

Doesn't she make a cute ballerina?

We buried our cat, Spook, back by the garden.

Took the entire fam damily out to dinner for my birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Stared, depressed at the growing mound of empty casserole dishes.

Counted eight meals left out in the freezer.

Had a good cry

Got to work cooking

Made 10 beef and bean pies

Two double batches of Taco Chili

Four batches of red potato soup

Four lasagnas

Eight bean and biscuit casseroles

And someone just informed me that it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Huh?

Apples...a recap

My dad is a genius. For real.

He can take a pile of what appears to be junk and make something worthwhile out of it.

Because he got me into this mess he is the one that ordered me the ginormous "box" of apples, he decided that he had better come up with a way to make this easier. Because he knows that I'm close to the edge, all the time, maybe.

But, whatever the reason, I'm grateful for the help.

In years past, we have just gone the old fashioned route and cut the apples up by hand, using a knife.

The amped up version? Made from junk stuff that he had laying around over at his man cave shop.

Dad took an old tire pump and attached an apple wedger. You simply put an apple on top of the wedger, pull the handle down, and presto...instant cut up apples.

Me likey. I actually hogged this machine. Because it was kinda fun.

I'm a real special kind of crazy. But, it's the good kind.

This machine took a lot of the work out of it.

Dad likes motors on things. He's a guy. Nuff said...

He took the formally hand-cranked strainer and attached a motor.

All that needed to be done was dump the cooked apples into the hopper and turn it on. Nice. My arm thanks him.

Dad is a genius but he must not think much of me because he told me to make sure that I didn't submerge the motor on this machine. The first time he said this, I thought to myself "duh". The second time he said it, I said, "Dad! How dumb do you think I am?"

To which Dad replied, "Well, sometimes, you make me wonder."

Thanks Dad.

To help cook the apples faster he brought over a commercial convection oven that he "had laying around".

Two words here people.

Pack.Rat.

But in this case, I'm grateful. We put a whole lotta apples in that oven.

My wonderful Mom spent all three days that we sauced apples in my kitchen. Mostly stirring because Dad hasn't invented anything to do that yet.

Isn't she fab?

Even my dad came over one day to check on our progress.

He usually has a grease rag stuffed in his back pocket.

Notice that he has one of my kitchen towels sticking out. I found this highly amusing.

Ahhh...beautiful...

Because we are letting the applesauce "age" we haven't eaten any of it yet.

275 quarts...gulp.

Dad wanted to know if I wanted more apples next year.

I told him to wait awhile before asking me that.

I'm still recovering from this year's crop...

What We've Been Doing

Freezers full of main dishes...6

Number of meals ready to eat...150 (this is OUR size meals)

Happy, grateful mama...1

Canning...like crazy

Pears...400 pounds

Peaches...150 pounds

Sore, tired aching feet...2

Freezing veggies...too many to wrap my tired brain around

Corn...120 pounds

Green beans...120 pounds

Squash...10 quarts

Grated Zucchini because it is taking over and I can't deal with it anymore...36 quart bags

Number of parents who are praying for frost so that the squash plants die...2

Number of people in my family who love Sloppy *Tims...11

*We are a politically incorrect family and have renamed the Sloppy Joe's, Sloppy Tim's because our Joe is not "sloppy" and was offended. Our Tim, however, is very sloppy and has earned this title...for now.

I get a ton of questions regarding my style of cooking and freezing meals.

It is beyond valuable to me to have this system in place!

I can't even fathom what our grocery bill would be like if we ate out all the time or bought a lot of processed, ready-to-eat foods. I can't even remember the last time my kids had fast food. We go out to eat as a family one or two times a year. Not because I am a food snob...but because, it's expensive!

Every night my family eats a home cooked meal. And most days, I don't even cook. I can't imagine it any other way.

We eat a wide assortment of foods like, chillies, soups, casseroles, meat pies, lasagnas, burritos, sandwiches, and bean dishes.

I have a master list hanging up in the kitchen with all the meals listed and how many of each meal we have. When we pull something out of the freezer, we remove that item from the list.

Cooking in bulk is so easy...and so worth it!

I wish I would have started this years and years ago. I take our favorite recipes and times them by 2 or 3 in order to make one big enough for my family. I then times this new quantity by 4, so we can get four "our size" meals.

I make a master list of all the different ingredients needed to cook all the meals that I plan on making. I do this before I go and then organize the list into different sections, like produce, dairy, etc...

After purchasing all the food, I start cooking! I usually will chop, shred, brown or cut up all my ingredients before getting started, just to make my life easier and we all know I need lots more of that.

When done, we allow them to cool. Plastic wrap first, tinfoil second and 5 gal white garbage bag over the top and then labeled. After pulling one out of the freezer to serve, I pull everything off, put the foil back on and then stick in the oven. If the item is still frozen, I put it into a cold oven and then turn it on as to not crack my dish.

I totally encourage everyone to try cooking ahead, I can't say enough good things about it!

Lifesaver...totally!

The zucchini are taking over!

Zucchini vs. Becky

48 loaves of zucchini bread later...I think I won this round!

We have some wonderful neighbors with nice gardens. Mid summer, when produce is abundant, our friends look to us as an easy target to unload the excess on bring us lots of fresh veggie gifts.

I actually get a kick out of figuring out what to do with what we are given. It's a challenge to not let anything go to waste. I know that makes me sound mental I like it. For real.

We were given A LOT of zucchini, most of it too big for me to consider slicing, cooking and serving to my family. So, I grated it for bread. Which, apparently, makes it grow. Seriously.

But I was feeling stubborn determined to use the grated zucchini and not just put it in the freezer and forget about it freeze it.

So, I decided to make as much bread as it took to use up all the grated zucchini. what a crazy decision!

I did make one slight change in the recipes that I had been using. Because there is a whole lotta oil in those recipes!

Last year when mom and I were canning pears we had pears that were still good but slightly too ripe to can. So, I sent those pears through my strainer and froze the pearsauce.

This pearsauce I substituted for half of the oil in the bread and I made a couple of different kinds of bread.

Yummy!

But no more zucchini...please...

Feeding the masses

Of all the questions that I get regarding our large family, the ones that I get asked the most are about laundry and food.

I honestly don't know what our grocery bill isI don't really want to know, I don't have a budget, I just pay as I go. I do know that we spend over $50 a week on fresh fruit and $30 a week on milk. Other items that I am constantly buying are cheese, veggies, tortillas, yogurt, butter, oatmeal, bagged cereal, and pretzels. For snack each day they can choose fruit or yogurt so we go through a lot of those foods.

I make most of our meals from scratch for a couple of reasons. First, the cost. Prepackaged cost is more expensive and we go through a lot of food. Second, the nutrition. There is a lot of preservatives in prepackaged foods. I don't buy white bread, processed meats, packaged cookies or chips. We recently changed over to whole wheat pasta but I still find that I need to work on the white flour and sugar consumption. I've never claimed to be perfect like that isn't obvious but I'm always working on improving.

When I cook, I look for recipes that freeze well and make multiple batches. One for dinner and three for the freezer. It is such a relief to take out a container of homemade soup in the morning and throw it in the crock pot for that evening. Before I had my last baby, I cooked like a mad woman crazy and had 90 main dishes in the freezer before giving birth. I was very depressed when we used the last one.

We usually stick with chicken and hamburger (lowest fat that we can afford), whole wheat pasta or bean dishes. Every now and again I will make a dish that is a dud shut up Char about the wagon wheel pasta dish. ahem... so I just toss that recipe and move on.

Nutrition is such a funny thing. I hear lots of different things that we are supposed to be doing and try to incorporate it into our meals. I just wish there was an instruction manual on how to best feed my family. I just feel like I am blundering along, but getting better as I go on. I just want my kids to be healthy and not struggle with their weight. I have to try and figure it out as I go along and there is a lot of guilt involved when I discover that something I've been doing is not healthy for my family.

Because this is my life, I forget that the amount of food that my family consumes is not the norm. My parents have seen me cook and are astounded at the quantity of products that we use.

Here is an example-


Breakfast on the weekend:

30 eggs


12 homemade yummy cinnamon rolls zip it, I know that they are not nutritious


3/4 watermelon


1 gallon orange juice


1/2 ham

And that was just one meal. I may sit down and have a good cry when all my boys are teenagers!