Heavenly Homemakers

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Big Family Food and Fun: July 9-15, 2023

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Ready for Food and Fun: July 9-15? We are on week three of Castle living. Each day we make a little bit more progress as we settle in. Of course, each day we make lots of messes, eat lots of food, and throw lots of tantrums so unpacking boxes is a bit of a challenge between dealing with normal day needs. :) We’ll get there!

Unrelated to food (unless we’re talking about formula), suddenly none of his clothes fit this little chunkers. (BabyBoy#11, not Matt. Matt’s clothes still fit.) Good thing I found some clearance items this week!

I’d say we ate pretty well this week as we have been well cared for by others and I am getting settled into our new kitchen. Every day I tell Matt, “I LOVE this kitchen!” Hopefully he doesn’t get tired of hearing it. Truly, it is an amazing kitchen and I’m so thankful God gifted it to us.

(This was the real estate photo.
The kitchen is no longer this clean because we live here and make food here.
But pretend that it is still this shiny.)

Food and Fun July 9-15

Sunday morning we sliced the Sourdough Pumpkin Bread our friend Barbara had made for us and enjoyed it with grapes before loading the kids into the van for church.

Before we left I had put potatoes into the crock pot for a Bake Potato Bar for lunch. When we got home, I realized that I had only set the crock pot to “low” instead of “high” so the potatoes were still not done. Oops. SO, I switched our lunch plan with our dinner plan and we warmed up more of Barbara’s food! What a gift that she had taken care of us so well!

We enjoyed her Turkey Alfredo, finishing off the first pan and half of the second. YUM.

That evening, we had our baked potatoes with bacon, cheese, peas, sour cream, and butter.

Monday morning I realized our need for quick-to-grab foods so I stirred together these No-Bake Cookie Cups. They are made with just a little bit of honey so they’re perfect for breakfast or snacks.

The rest of the day was borderline nuts. (What else is new?!) We had foster care specialists come in the morning to tour our home and approve it for foster care. We warmed up leftovers for lunch, then took the kids on a walk to the Sunken Gardens before naptime.

That afternoon, BabyBoy#11 had a well-baby check up with his new doctor. I filled out tons of paperwork to get all of our kids in the system and to authorize their medical records to be transferred over. Then we ran to Costco because it was close by. I rushed through grabbing a few essentials because Matt’s truck was in the shop and we needed to pick it up by 5:30.

I got home and we threw all of the kids into the van with a snack to hold them over (which it did not). We picked up Matt’s truck and went into Sam’s because it was two minutes away. Elias was with us, thankfully, so we had three adults with seven (hungry) littles in Sam’s. This was not my most relaxing shopping hour, ha. We filled two carts with more essentials. Meanwhile Keith screamed through half of the store because I wouldn’t buy him boots that he didn’t need. Oy.

We grabbed the beautiful $5 Rotisserie Chicken on our way out of the store, got home and tore it off the bone to quickly feed everyone before bed. Zero out of ten, do not recommend executing a plan like this in the future. But that chicken sure did taste good.

There was a mess of chicken skin, bones, smashed grapes, and apple cores all over the dining room when we were done and we managed to get the kids in bed – only thirty minutes late.

The good news is that I am now stocked up on groceries again, woohoo! I spent $216 on food at Sam’s and $286 at Costco. I’ve been avoiding the stores in an effort to use up what we have, and I’m so thankful for the savings as we’ve had other moving expenses. Making meals and snacks will be much easier now!

The next morning Matt and Elias needed to leave early to get to York for a meeting and to work on our house there. So I made them Sausage and Egg Breakfast Sandwiches for the road. We had a lot of strawberries that I’d picked up over the weekend so I made another batch of this Cheesecake Parfait to enjoy with them.

Then Kiya got up and the kids finished off the No-Bake Cookie Cups I’d made the day before.

Kelsey and Eva arrived to help me manage the kids all morning since Matt and Elias were going to be gone all day. (Malachi is gone for three weeks for work and church camp.) We decided to take the kids to the splash park I packed a loaf of bread worth of turkey sandwiches, juice boxes, and mandarin orange cups to eat there.

The kids LOVED this outing and took great naps when we got back. When everyone got up, I was on my own with all seven kids so dinner consisted of air fried Orange Chicken (boxed, from Sam’s), rice, and broccoli. OH WAIT. I burned the broccoli. So our veggie turned into spinach dipped in ranch. OH WAIT. Kiya eats her spinach with ketchup. Hey, whatever gets the nutrients in, I say.

Wednesday morning we ate yogurt with granola for breakfast before heading to our “new library” to check out story hour.

Silly as it sounds, when we got there and the story hour lady was soooo nice, it made me teary-eyed. We had loved story hour in York and I miss it already. I miss a lot about York and it’s all starting to hit me. So I cried a bit through Llama Llama Red Pajama. Tired much, Laura? :)

See Kelsey there? She had picked up a 2-year-old buddy to help out a friend
and they were at the library when we got there!

We came home and warmed up leftover Turkey Alfredo and made quesadillas with the leftover Rotisserie chicken from Monday.

I also sliced apples with this cheese, which is SO GOOD. Unless you don’t like it, and then it’s not so good. But most of us think it’s SO GOOD.

I had a lot of spinach in the fridge, and there’s only one solution to dealing with that: Make a cake. Obviously. I knew my kids would love the treat, and they were only fascinated that I could bake a cake in a crock pot. They didn’t care about the spinach. Big score!

That afternoon during naps, Kiya and I had a “date” at Aldi to pick up everything I hadn’t gotten at Sam’s and Costco. Highlights: whole milk yogurt, salad kits, protein snacks for Elias, cheese and meat trays for picnics, juice, and whole milk cottage cheese. Also macaroni salad because I have been hungry for it but didn’t need a Costco-sized container. :)

I spent $115 at Aldi that day, bringing our July total up to $884 so far. (Keep in mind that our four youngest kids are on WIC so that provides us with around $210 in food – a huge blessing. You can see what WIC provided for us this month in this post. Plus lovely people have showered us with food blessings since we arrived in Lincoln.)

My plan was to smoke Pork Loin for dinner, but wow I am learning that I need to budget my time differently now that we are in a city. Driving places takes longer, but also just getting out the door to go shopping takes longer because I’m not organized enough yet to efficiently find my purse and shoes. One day at a time.

Anyway, by the time we got home, there was no way I was going to start smoking pork loin. Matt had the smoker going so we quickly threw on Smoked Sausage I’d gotten at Sam’s. While that cooked, Elias put together the Caesar salad kits, I steamed corn on the cob, frosted the crock pot cake, and worked really hard to open the container of mac salad. ;)

We were so hungry and this feast tasted so good!! With cake for dessert – woohoo!

Inspired by my Crock Pot Cake, I decided the next morning to use the big bunch of brown bananas in my kitchen to try baking this Banana Bread recipe in the crock pot. It worked well enough that I’ll write a post about it so you can try too if you’d like to bake without heating up your oven!

While it was “baking” I cut two cantaloupe, a watermelon, and two pounds of strawberries to have in the fridge for easy side dishes.

Matt was working on fixing one of our air conditioners all morning (always fun when things break right after you move in). But we were able to all steal way late morning to have lunch at the zoo. We are amazed that we can “walk to the zoo for lunch” whenever we want! It’s just a few blocks away and we have a year family pass. Lunch with tigers and pandas. YES!

That evening our next door neighbors joined us in our backyard for dinner. They have been so good to welcome us and help with various needs. Our kids and their kids are becoming great friends and spending time together that evening was fantastic. We smoked three of the Pork Loin that I’d gotten BOGO last week and enjoyed it with green beans, banana bread, plus watermelon and mac and cheese brought by our neighbors.

Lunch on Friday was delicious soup Barbara had made plus Matt made grilled cheese sandwiches and set out pears.

Elias baked frozen pizzas that night and we enjoyed them with cold melon outside.

Matt spent time cleaning our smoker while the kids and I picked up sticks so the guys could mow. Afterward, the kids all lined up like this and started singing “The Wheels on the Bus.” It was kind of amazing because it is so rare that all the kids cooperate and play together like that. I had to document it! :)

The next morning we ate a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and yogurt before heading to the Farmer’s Market to meet friends.

I also made a double batch of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies because our friends were coming over for lunch after the Farmer’s Market. It was fun to bake cookies for the first time in my “new” oven!

Lunch with our friends was a Nacho Bar with chips, taco meat, white queso, salsa, sour cream, cheese, tomatoes, corn, black beans, and avocado.

That afternoon I put together a huge Lasagna for our Sunday lunch so that we could celebrate Eva’s birthday together. We pulled out leftover to clean out the fridge at dinnertime, gave all the kids baths (no easy task), and cleaned the kitchen.

Hope your new week is off to a great start!

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Big Family Food and Fun: June 18-24, 2023

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We’re down to just a few days before we pack up and move. Our meals are a bit hodge-podge these days as we use up the food we have on hand.

Here’s what we have left in our freezers. WAIT. Freezer. Singular. We gave one of our uprights to our neighbors. We’re only taking this one with us and here’s what’s in it.

Compare that to last week!!

I took what was left in our other freezer so I could defrost it before we gave it away. Goodbye ol’ freezer. You’ve been good to us.

Grocery Spending

My spending total as of June 24 is only $240. Most of that has been fruit and vegetable purchases, plus a few odds and ends to complete some meals that I’m putting together with the food we have on hand. I love the savings we enjoy when we’re eating from our pantry and freezers!! But I also know that July is probably going to make up for it because once we settle in, I’ll need to stock up on everything again!

Bonus: Look what we got at no cost:

We donate a lot of household items to an organization in York called Blue Valley so I follow their Facebook page. One day last week I saw that they had strawberries, blueberries, oranges, yogurt, and cabbage given to them – and it was all free to our community for the taking. Keith and I ran over there while the four littlest kids napped and we were shocked at the flats of fruit! “As long as you can use them, take an entire flat,” they said. Oh, we’ll use them!! What a gift. (York area friends, follow Blue Valley Community Action on FB. You never know what you might learn about.) :)

The kids have LOVED having a free-for-all with all of the berries!

Here’s part of our Walmart pick up order on Friday. Gotta have greens for these smoothies. :)

Here’s what we ate last week:

And now on to looking at the meals we ate throughout the week.

It all started with Father’s Day. The Saturday before as we were preparing, I was reading this recipe out loud so we could make pie for Daddy. Hearing, “we need 4 Tablespoons of butter,” Anna ran to the kitchen. She came back yelling, “Tablespoons! Tablespoons! Tablespoons!” She was alllll ready to make pie!

We decided to make two pies. First, this Easy Chocolate Fudge Pie – with a big scoop of peanut butter added.

Licking the spatula is the best reason to be involved in helping to make the pies.

Then, we made this Peanut Butter Cheesecake Pie – without the chocolate chips. Yes, Matt loves peanut butter. Both pies turned out so good!

Saturday night, Elias cut up two pounds of chicken so I could make Bacon Chicken Pasta for Father’s Day lunch right after church. I have GOT to make this more often. Every single person ate it and asked for more. It’s so very good!

Justus and Kelsey were able to come that afternoon to help out. AND they brought everything to make a Father’s Day dinner!

I took advantage of the help by spending an hour scrubbing a bathroom. Meanwhile, Kelsey got Kiya and Brayden in the kitchen working on dinner prep. They loved this!

Anna had coffee with Justus. (Not really.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All afternoon I marveled at all of this. THIS IS WHY GOD IS MOVING US TO LINCOLN. Well, one of the big reasons. We’ll get to do life together with our Bigs. We need this.

Matt and I are stretched pretty thin. Any time our older kids pour into our younger kids, everyone wins. Brayden and Kiya needed to work in the kitchen with Justus and Kelsey – this fills them up! Anna needed Justus and Kelsey snuggles. Asa called Matt for Father’s Day and some of the littles ran to the phone to talk to him too. Eva snuggles and reads books to littles constantly when she’s here. I could go on and on. Here’s a shot I couldn’t pass up of everyone getting ready to watch a soccer game after dinner, Elias so naturally holding BabyBoy#11, and the littlest girls climbing up to join.

Meanwhile, Malachi went from going to Ecuador to spending a week at Soul Quest to heading to church camp to spend a week counseling. We’re thankful he’s out there serving, and we miss him. Good thing he’ll be back in time to help us move. ;)

So dinner. Justus smoked meat all Sunday afternoon: chicken thighs and barbecue ribs. Kelsey and the kids made mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts. It was all SO GOOD.

And Kelsey took pictures, because she knows that her mother-in-law is a food blogger who posts everything her family eats. Way to go, Kelsey!

On Monday, we ate up most of our weekend leftover smoked meat. What a treat! I made mac and cheese and peas as a side with lunch, plus let the kids choose canned peaches or canned pineapple.

For dinner we warmed up leftover mashed potatoes and I made corn and these smoothies to go with our meat.

Friends came to hang out late Tuesday morning plus I had case worker visits that day too. So mid-morning while the baby was napping, I browned some hamburger and put together pizzas to bake during my meetings. While I was at it, I made a tiny crustless pizza for my friend. (Tasha. It was Tasha. Remember Tasha? Tasha can’t have gluten. So I made her a crustless pizza.)

We ate our pizza with carrots and watermelon. Then Anna drank the watermelon juice from the bowl. Please enjoy this photo of Anna, along with my left foot and two buckets full of dirty rags.

That evening, I made Salmon Patties and served them with peas, leftover mac and cheese, and canned fruit.

Wednesday morning I blended ingredients together to make Bean and Cheese Salsa Dip. We ate it with chips and the kids’ choice of pears, peaches, or pineapple. (I had to get out cheese for our bonus kid who was spending several days with us. He’s the picky one I referred to in this post, but check out #5 here to see what he does like and eat. I keep these on hand for him if I can!)

My friend, Jenny, went to Costco that day and offered to bring home a Rotisserie Chicken for us. Such a blessing!! We pulled it off the bone that night and filled plates for the kids, serving it with melon from the fridge.

For lunch on Thursday, I made our meal based on food in the pantry. This “spaghetti” tasted great!

We’ve mostly eaten leftovers from then on, except for Saturday night when some wonderful friends came over. We needed to do some work up high on our house, so they hooked up their lift to their tractor and brought it over so they could help Matt accomplish the task. Phew!

The kids had a blast sitting on and climbing on the tractor while their daddies worked.

The rest of us packed and cleaned, then we got out everything we needed for a hot dog roast at our fire pit.

It just so happened to be this sweetheart’s birthday. One might say that we were so busy getting our house ready to sell that we almost forgot to celebrate. OR, one might claim that we went all out for Josie by renting a tractor for kids to play on during her birthday party!! Let’s go with the latter.

We put candles in her rice krispie treat, gathered around to try to keep the wind from blowing out the candles (to no avail), and sang to our birthday girl.

We thank God for the opportunity to have this impromptu party while our friends were there serving us.

And now, we pack the final boxes and load the truck. Stay tuned for next week’s adventures!

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April 2023 Groceries and Meals We Ate (Big Family Food!)

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Whoa. Here are our April 2023 groceries and meals we ate!

Groceries we bought

My big shopping day this month included two trips to Sam’s (in one day, ha). First I went in once for non-perishables, left to do other shopping I needed to get done, then went back in for fresh produce, refrigerated, and frozen items before driving an hour home.

I was preparing for Easter that day, so along with the normal produce I always get, I also picked up fresh asparagus and garden green beans.

I was thrilled that day to find a great deal on chicken legs. Sam’s and Costco always have big packs of drumsticks for $0.98/pound, which is a fantastic price. But this particular day they had a $1.50 off deal – no limit – so I got five big packs of chicken legs for around $3.50 each. SUCH a great price for good quality meat!

I splurged on those coconut crisps – have you had them? We love them at our house! I also bought a lot of tortilla chips this month because we had graduation parties to celebrate. More on that below.

Here’s the back of my van after my big Sams’s day. All this cost $817. Actually, that was just for the food. We budget paper products and household supplies separately.

The whole family gets involved with bringing in the groceries from the van when I get home. It’s like Christmas, seeing what I got at the store that day!

Another day, I stopped at our local grocery store to get some fresh fruits and veggies. I always check their meat markdowns while I’m there, so I got a great deal on a pork roast and some smoked sausage.

Here’s our 1-yo helping me take groceries out of bags another day I went to get some WIC items.

Keith made a tower of canned goods and he was so proud of how it was taller than him. :)

The rest of the month we grabbed fruits and veggies as needed, plus a few additional items we needed for Elias’ and our daughter-in-law, Kelsey’s college grad party. I went slightly over our $1,200 budget for the month and felt great that I kept it so close since we are/were preparing to host extras!

Meals we Ate

We had a gorgeous April, so we ate a lot of our meals outside. (We like it when the kids drop their crumbs in the yard instead of in our kitchen, ha.) Malachi had his senior soccer season so we took a lot of meals to the field too.

Early in the month, I made a platter of chicken salad sandwiches and took them to the trampoline for the kids to eat. I threw out some bananas and that was dinner. :)


For that week’s soccer game, I made 16 hamburgers and packed them up for all of us to eat while we watched.

The next soccer game’s dinner featured peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with apple slices and grapes.

One weekend for lunch I made Salmon Burgers (recipe coming this month). We ate them with carrots, honeydew melon, and pear slices.

One morning I was able to get some baking done. First, I divided up my big bag of whole wheat pastry flour from Azure Standard, putting it into gallon-sized bags for the freezer.

Then I made this Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread/Muffin recipe x6 along with some scrambled eggs. I froze most of the bread/muffins to serve on other days as needed.

I had marinated some chicken breasts last month, so one night I smoked them and served them with green beans and fruit. (We were in a hurry to get Elias out the door that night so I brought the chicken in from the smoker early and finished cooking it in a skillet.)

Here are some of the kids eating Pumpkin Bread and peaches outside while they wait for the rest of dinner.

I packed 22 hotdogs to take for us to eat during Malachi’s soccer game one night. There were only three hotdogs left at the end of the evening. :)

The day before Easter I prepped as much food as possible. (We ended up having 27 people share our celebration that day!) I made coffee ice cubes so that guests could make a fancy Cold Coffee.

Our Easter meal included a sprial-cut baked ham, huge pan of party potatoes, roasted green beans, roasted asparagus, corn, rolls, fresh pineapple, grapes, and cheesecake.

During Easter break, we spent a day at the zoo. Asa’s wife Eva plus Justus and his wife Kelsey were able to join us and help with all the kids. We packed summer sausage, cheese, crackers, carrots, hummus, applesauce, and chips for lunch.

That evening, we all met at a park for dinner (Asa joined us after work!). Kelsey and I ran to Costco and grabbed a $4.98 rotisserie chicken, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, pretzel bites, and soft serve ice cream (because we adults needed a treat after all the fun at the zoo!).

Justus was awesome to pull all the meat off of our rotisserie chicken while we all helped ourselves. :)

A bit out of order, here’s what we ate for breakfast before leaving for the zoo that morning. I used the rest of our Easter ham from the day before to make an Egg Casserole.

One evening I smoked marinated chicken thighs and served them with roasted carrots/broccoli, cream cheese corn, grapes, and garlic bread.

I knocked out a bunch of breakfast/snack prep one morning, making a big pan of Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Bars, a double batch of Bran Muffins, and a double batch of Applesauce Bread/Muffins.

I baked a huge bag of dino nuggets from Sam’s one evening and served them with pears and carrots.

On an unusually hot day in April, I declared it to be too hot to cook. So I quickly blended up this 3-Ingredient Beans and Cheese Salsa Dip for dinner, which we ate with chips and carrots with ranch or peanut butter. (Our 7-yo girlie likes her carrots with peanut butter, and if it gets the veggies down, this is just fine with me!) Side note: Skippy makes a 3-ingredient peanut butter now that has ingredients I don’t feel bad about. Maybe one day I’ll go back to making our peanut butter again? Maybe.

I can’t remember what we were doing this particular day but it was a full one so I resorted to something easy from the freezer! We declared it to be an ORANGE meal with our favorite Orange Chicken from Sam’s, oranges, and carrots. :) (By the way, the CaraCara oranges are a favorite around here! Pink on the inside and extra delicious!)

I used up a bunch of blackening bananas to make two loaves of banana bread and two pans of muffins. We froze some and ate some with scrambled cheese eggs and fruit one Saturday.

Keith is here eating his first plate of food one night. This is usually how I feed my kids: I give them a plate with their fruit and veggie first, then I give them the main dish. Otherwise, they tend to fill up on the main dish and are suddenly “not hungry” for their veggies. Keith shocks us by eating his spinach without any dip. Way to go, Popeye!

This box of food is what I packed to take to Lincoln one day when we were going to spend the day with our married kids there. I packed frozen chicken burritos to warm up, carrots and hummus, chips and salsa, peach cups, and those awesome coconut crisps that Sam’s and Costco sometimes have!

For a lovely, warm, but windy, soccer game, I made 12 melted sub sandwiches. Some had turkey (from the big bird I baked last month) with ranch and cheese, and a few had just ham and cheese.

I cut the sandwiches all in half to make them easier to eat, and put them into ziplock bags to stay warm. I also packed veggie straws, oranges, and applesauce squeezies.

I decided to take a picture of my lovely swirling smoothie one day when I was making it for lunch. This includes a 1/2 pound of fresh greens, along with frozen fruit and milk. Matt and I drink this and it gives us each two servings.

We hit a new level of busy as the month ended and we were preparing for graduations and adoption day! So I started slacking a bit (feeling no guilt!) on meal plans and just throwing out whatever I could find to simply put food in our bellies. This meal was a simple pan of cheesy scrambled eggs (15 of them), spinach, blueberries, salsa for those who wanted it on their eggs, and a pan of Chocolate Oatmeal (because I had some in the pantry I wanted to use up).

I made a huge Lasagna for Malachi’s May graduation day and put it into the freezer one morning while the baby napped and the girls played.

Malachi had his very last home high school soccer game (sniff) and I made a big breakfast casserole to eat at the game. I’d never tried this before as a “to-go” meal but it worked great! I put it together that morning, baked it in the afternoon, cut it into squares and took the squares to hand out on the sidelines for the kids to eat. It worked GREAT!

Here’s our 2-year-old sitting in the wagon working on her second square of egg casserole. :)

Last but not least, here’s a picture of my vanilla beans. I got them out to start a huge batch of vanilla!

We hosted a graduation party for Elias and for Justus’ wife, Kelsey, on the 29th. I just don’t have those pictures ready to share yet. I’ll include those in next month’s meal post! May is going to be incredibly full with our girls’ adoption day and Malachi’s high school graduation. Ready, set, go!

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