February Home Store Challenge: February 12th

Today is my sister's birthday!

Not that that has anything to do with my home store challenge ;).  Just thought I'd share ;).

Breakfast:  Scrambled eggs with toast and blackberry jelly.  Little Man had some scrambled eggs (without the seasonings) and some cereal and applesauce.

 We have some blackberries in our freezer from 2011.  Well, we did.  I think I used them all up today (I will have to double-check our chest freezer out back to be sure...).  Decided to make a blackberry crisp. 

 This was to show what's in those big white buckets ;).  Left to right is flour, sugar, and oats.  We buy those in bulk, then transfer to food-grade buckets.  I just scoop out of those when I cook.  I had been getting the box for the oats to show in other pictures, but we have the "in reserve" boxes in the bedroom where my husband was sleeping, so I just went this route ;).

 And it turned out I had defrosted too many blackberries, so I decided to make blackberry syrup with blackberries and sugar.

 Lunch!  My girl requested PB&J plus I added green beans and mandarin oranges and she had milk.  I had a chicken wrap with cheese and BBQ sauce.  Usually I put lettuce on these, but I don't have any, so boo!  No store!  I had green beans and mandarin oranges too.

 Little boy had sweet potatoes and squash.  He didn't eat it all, so we carried over to dinner.

 Blackberry syrup.

 The blackberry crisp!

 I made dinner in the crock-pot -- yay!  So technically this picture was taken in the morning.  (I love the crock pot!)  Anyway, dinner was chicken taco soup.  YUM!  Served it with shredded cheese and tortilla chips.  Little man had cereal and peas added to his squash and sweet potatoes.  PLUS he enjoyed black beans, chicken, and corn from the soup (rinsed, of course!)

 And a sweet treat for my Princess and me to end the day:  Blackberry crisp with vanilla ice cream!

February Home Store Challenge: February 11th

Today we enjoyed a field trip with a local MOMS group, which included french fries at a place called Fritz's.  And that ended up being lunch (okay, maybe that's a mommy fail that we had french fries for lunch...).  So there is no picture of lunch, as we had dinner out (bought with discretionary funds). 

Breakfast was "apple pie" oatmeal for me and Little Miss.  Baby boy had applesauce and multi-grain cereal.

 Lunch was out, as I said.

And then there was dinner.  Little boy had cereal with corn and cauliflower.  We had leftovers.  The second picture was all our choices ;).  Milk for my big girl and also juice, since it was in the fridge.  I had juice too. 

It was definitely a low-key food day!

February Home Store Challenge: February 10th

Another successful day! 

For breakfast, my girl wanted a yogurt parfait.  There wasn't enough yogurt (well, the store-bought kind, which is handy) for both of us to have one, so I had Raisin Bran instead.  Little man had plain multi-grain cereal.

 For lunch, I was working on getting that last slice of pizza out of the fridge.  So I ate that plus some THRIVE Peas.  My girl had chicken nuggets, peas, and berry applesauce with milk.  Baby boy had squash and cauliflower.

 I had to prep some white rice to go with dinner.

 Here are the components for dinner.  Turned out I didn't hav.e to get into the big block of cheese... Yet.  I will have to next time I need cheese.  On the up side, it's not been frozen yet.  We are usually more on top of cutting and freezing it.  It's been sitting in the fridge like this since mid-January.

 As a treat, we decided to make juice to go with dinner.  We rarely have juice in our house, but I know every once in a while I crave it.  So I like to keep some in our home store.  This is a peach drink mix.  We also have an orange one.  My big girl was helping to stir it.

 Dinner was chicken divan (love this meal!).  I had juice and water with mine.  My girl had juice and milk.  She drinks water anytime that's not meal-time, by the way.  The baby had squash, peas, corn, and cauliflower.

 Just a shot of my bowl and juice ;) :).

February Home Store Challenge: February 9th

Another day and another bunch of meals made without a trip to the grocery store! 

Breakfast:  Waffles.  I love that the pancake mix is so versatile.  Plus I had that egg leftover from the egg wash for yesterday's French Bread.  Wanted to make sure I used that up!

  Baby Boy had his usual breakfast of applesauce and multi-grain cereal.

 Here are our waffles, before we divvied them up ;). 

 Frozen squash and sweet potato cubes.  These became lunch for Mr. Roo.

 I asked my big girl what she wanted for lunch, and she said macaroni and cheese.  I chose the purple box (since I have to sneak into the bedroom where Daddy is sleeping and grab them out from under the bed ;) -- it's where we keep a lot of our bulk purchases from Costco!)

 Lunch is ready!

 Dinner ingredients. 

 Baby Boy's dinner.  He ate it all.

 Southwestern Egg Rolls!  I LOVE these.  So filling, so yummy.  We will probably  be having them again this month, since I have all the ingredients and they are packed with veggies!

And, finally, my plate!

February Home Store Challenge: February 8th

And here's the post for today!  I did a lot of stuff in the kitchen today.  Some days are like that, I guess.  I had to get a lot of stuff done so it's done for later on :).

Breakfast was granola in milk.  This granola is so good.  My husband had it for breakfast too, and he usually has his sandwich, so that should tell you something!  He opted for the granola!  And little mister had cereal and applesauce.

 Then I needed to make some French bread for part of dinner tonight.  So these are the ingredients for that.

 Looks yummy, huh?  Fresh-baked bread.  Yum!  And I have loaves frozen for other meals!

Then there was lunch.  Grilled cheese, tomato soup, pea crisps, and fruit crisps!  Milk for my girl and water for me!

 And squash and cauliflower for the baby.

 Our lunch done :).

I needed to make more baby food, so I got that done today.  This was my first time trying out the sweet potatoes for baby food.  We'll see how he likes it, but it doesn't look particularly appetizing.  I've used the THRIVE Sweet Potatoes in a recipe before (muffins) and they turned out good.  But like this I'm a bit leery ;).

Then I decided to make these power ball bites that I've been meaning to make for the last 2 months.  They are so stinkin' good.  If only I didn't want to eat them all at once!

 Then it was time to work on dinner!  These are the ingredients for dinner (and the reason I needed to make French bread today!)

 The dinner recipe called for a garlic-herb cheese spread or cream cheese.  Neither of which I had.  So I improvised with my THRIVE Sour Cream Powder!  Not a bad substitute, if you ask me! 

 My 'spread' on the bread ;).

 While dinner was cooking, I worked on Family Night Treat.

 it was supposed to be white chocolate popcorn with pink sprinkles (for Valentine's Day!).  It didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped.  Sigh.  Oh well.  They can't all be wins!

 Then I worked on a veggie for dinner.  This is where I am finding my biggest struggle in eating out of our home store.  I like my food to be yummy and I tend to rely heavily on salads.  Salads don't store for long-term.  If it was summer, and if I had a place for a garden, we'd be set!  But it's not... And I don't.  So I'm having to learn how to make yummy side dishes with THRIVE!  This one was okay.

 Here was the main dish:  Meatball sub casserole.  Not a fan of the brand of meatballs I used (which I didn't buy, but got from a neighbor who was moving last month).  I'll keep the recipe, though, and just make home-made meatballs next time!

 The baby ate mashed potatoes, peas, and corn.

 And here's my plate!

February Home Store Challenge: February 7th

Home Store Challenge Day 7! This was actually yesterday's, and tonight I will post today's... Just a little explanation on why there isn't much food depicted for the day (at least breakfast and lunch...). In our faith, we set aside one Sunday a month as "fast Sunday." It is a time members of the congregation are invited to fast for a particular purpose (that purpose is up to each individual) and abstain from food for two consecutive meals. Then we donate the money we would have spent on those meals as fast offerings to help people who may need assistance with some things.  It is not required, but when I am not nursing or pregnant, I choose to participate. So what you will see for breakfast and lunch is what our little girl ate (the baby ate food too, of course!). And then dinner was leftovers, so I just took a picture of our food sitting on the counter as we started prepping our individual meal choices ;).

For breakfast, Lynnaea wanted a yogurt parfait with blueberries again :).

 Little man had multi-grain cereal.

 She requested pb&j for lunch, plus I threw some peas on her plate for some veggies.  Plus she had milk. Baby boy had squash and peas, a bottle, and a cracker.

 After church, we all had dinner.  Leftovers again -- but this time we managed to clean out the fridge (well, except we still have one more slice of pizza!).  I also made fried okra to go with the meal.