Saturday Roundup

 

I spent most of this past week sewing, and cleaning/organizing the kitchen cupboards. The linen closet also got a going through.

But today was a bit different. I decided to try my hand at a bit of batch cooking. Really it feels like I was cooking most of the day, and when I mentioned that to Harvey he laughed and said I actually had. I did take a little bit of time off to phone my youngest brother and I actually went out into the cold to visit a neighbour for coffee. So all told up until just before supper was finished I had about 2 1/2 hours of not mixing or chopping, cooking or baking. 

So what did I make today....

As soon as I got up (well needed a cup of coffee first) I got out all the ingredients I was going to need for the days cooking.

I started a loaf of bread in my machine first. Here is the end product.

While that was baking I threw the 2 chicken carcasses, some black pepper corns, water, celery and onion into a large pot. Started to make chicken stock.

As that bubbled and started to make my kitchen smell even better, I started my next adventure in cooking.

A totally new recipe and one I do hope we enjoy.

The beginnings of Chickpea Curry. That also added another lovely smell to the kitchen.

I ended up with three containers of the chicken stock and two containers of the curry.

I had to do a wash up at this point as I had run out of a few utensils that I needed for the next items I planned on making. Once things were clean, I started up once again. 

First up was meat sauce for spaghetti. 

I managed to get three containers of this for the freezer as well. 

I then phoned my brother and talked to him for almost an hour. 

After that I mixed up some pumpkin muffins. 

Twenty-four pumpkin muffins which now are wrapped in groups of two and then put in a larger air tight bag and placed in the freezer.

Lastly I made what we were going to have for supper, putting it in with the muffins for the last 15 minutes they were baking and then turning the oven down. 

Sweet and sour ribs, served over leftover rice. This made us a meal for tonight and I have this leftover.

We will be having this remainder in a couple of days. 

I was going to bake some cupcakes or perhaps a cake, but I ran out of steam. I may do that tomorrow and use my toaster oven rather than the big oven. 

I will need to figure out if I prefer doing this type of batch cooking rather than just cooking extra if I make stew, chili or other such meals. 

Still I used up the celery from the crisper, an onion, the chicken carcasses from the fridge freezer, some frozen tomatoes, the coconut milk from the pantry, the canned chickpeas from the pantry, three jars of frozen homemade tomato sauce, 2 pkg of frozen pumpkin, and a package of frozen chopped orange peppers. This does not include the hamburger (ground beef), ribs, or chocolate chips (they needed using so I put them in the pumpkin muffins, instead of raisins). 

Things used up and made into new meals for another time.

Everybody have a wonderful evening. 

God bless.