Holidays at last!!

Its Day 3 of my holidays today and I’ve been busy in the kitchen for the last two days cooking for the freezer.

I bought 12 brown bananas for $2 so have made 3 loaves banana bread which I’ll slice and freeze.

Yesterday DD cooked two huge pots of bolognaise sauce. Half of it we froze in 12 single serves, 3 x 4 serves containers and then made 4 lasagnes in single serves for the freezer.

I roasted a pumpkin, onions & tomatos which I’ll make into pumpkin soup today. I made 12 single serves of split pea soup for the freezer. I used this Ina Garten recipe and seriously – it is absolutely beautiful! looks exactly like the picture and is now a new fave soup recipe.

So the freezers are full to the brim – I need to do some rearranging today to move the older food up to the top and make a bit more room.

The fires eased up for one day since I last posted and we had a beautiful blue sky  till about 2pm when huge smoke clouds started to roll in. I took this photo from our front verandah just slightly to the left of the photo in my previous post.

I’ve also had time to work through financial progress for the year and to set some goals for 2020. I’ve added another page for this. I’m looking forward to the next few weeks of holidays so I can catch up with family and get some jobs done around the house.

Making soup.

I’ve been busy cooking soup the last few days and my freezer is starting to fill up again. I now have 46 individual serves of soup in the freezer.  I really love soup and often eat it for breakfast or lunch. Its also one of the most healthy and cheap meals you can have. My favourite way of cooking soup is in the crockpot and adding any veggies that need using up.  So, what soups did I make?

Roasted Tomato – This was from Chrissy Teagans recipe book and each serve ended up costing me about 60 cents.

Red Lentil & Vegetable Soup – I make this a lot, just a good stock, a couple of cups of red lentils, carrots, potato, capsicum, a couple of tins of beans, celery and herbs. Makes a lovely thick soup.

Pumpkin & Veggie Soup – I used all the pkts of frozen veggies in the freezer (broccoli, cauliflower, stir fry mixed veggies, carrots) added some onion, celery, half a small kent pumpkin and chicken stock. Blended it up and it tastes so good!

Chicken Bone Broth – I always have this on hand in case I get sick. With my gut problems this is what I eat if I get a flare up and can’t tolerate foods. Bone broth is really healing for an inflamed gut. I use chicken legs, celery leaves/stalks, carrots, oregano, salt pepper & onion. ( I also make a beef one sometimes). I cook it in the crockpot for about 12 hours, then strain. I do brown the bones with a little olive oil and the onion before cooking and add the pan juices to the pot.

(I forgot to take photos of all my soup cooking unfortunately!)

We usually buy a bunch of celery every 1 -2 weeks and I chop the top of the celery off with all the leaves, put it in a ziplock bag and freeze it. I always add these bags to my broth and sometimes to my soups-really adds a nice salty flavour – ( I rarely use salt in cooking due to kidney problems)

So, all in all a good few days cooking and it means I’ve got good food ready to eat when I am too tired to cook after work.  I still haven’t got the muffins done yet so might do that tomorrow.

More meals from the stockpile

We’re doing well with out stockpile eat down. Heres what we’ve been eating the last few days.

DD made Vegetable Tortilla Stew from  Chrissy Teigens ‘Cravings’ book (p 54). OMG this is fantastic! and is now going to be a regular meal for me – I loved it! The recipe includes:

olive oil
chopped onion
green capsicum
garlic
ground cumin
chicken stock
black pepper
2 cans tomatos
3 cans beans

So we used up five cans in one go. I ate this on toast, with corn chips and also put some in the freezer.

I’ve been having fruit smoothies to use up some of the fruit, almond milk and protein powder.

Then yesterday DH made a lovely stew with minced beef, onions, carrots and potato – delicious! 

In the next few days my plan is to make a big pot of soup and also cook with the almond flour. The shelves are gradually emptying!