Food saving and Waste

 Here is the link for the recipe I used to make Carabba's Chicken Soup. I did make one change. I only used ONE Tablespoon of white pepper otherwise I knew it would be way to hot for our taste :) When I freeze soups I don't put in pasta if the recipe calls for it. We don't care for the texture of frozen/thawed pasta.. It takes no time at all to add a little pasta when I want to pull a soup from the freezer to use. The other thing that works for me when freezing soups, stocks, or any liquid's is to first freeze them in loaf pans before vacuum sealing them. They stack much nicer in the freezer this way saving room for lots more :)

 Our food Saver has been hobbling along for several months now. It just doesn't suck as much air out as it should. This is in no way a knock on the brand as I and our kiddo's really put a WHOLE lotta mileage on the food saver, 2 to 3 years seems to be the best we can get out of one. I have had my eye on a professional grade vacuum sealer for awhile but with the unexpected expenses we have had over the summer I just couldn't make such a big purchase. It's time to start a savings jar for what I really want :) Soooo yesterday I bought a new one on sale from Kohl's. It wasn't a great sale but every little bit helps, as a bonus they were giving out Khol's bucks :) $70.00 in bucks and an additional $15.00 or $20.00 in some new reward program they have started. Wohoo, Christmas money!!

 See the bricks of soup in the front far right? Cool. The day before I had picked up ground beef and bacon  from the grocery that was a BOGO sale. The new Food Saver worked like a charm :)

One of the million things on my hope to do someday list was to do a major clean out of the pantries. Today is the day :) The front and back pantries are completed. Still to go are spices then on to bulk items like wheat, sugar, flour and such. The goal is to get them all done today!!! Here are the items I found that are out of date :( I know some folks feel its OK to use out of date food but I am not one of them. It just doesn't seem worth the chance of one or all of us falling ill. Off the top of my head I figure this is about $10.00 worth of food seeing as how I only buy on sale and coupons to boot. Still I don't like wasting food, now that hubby is home full time I will be doing a much better job of rotating.

I went to bed last night with the mindset that I needed a me day to sew, scrapbook, or read something!!! But when my feet hit the floor this morning I knew I would never enjoy some me time with so many big projects hanging over my head :) It use to be that I could do things like clean out the pantry, catch up on filing and things of that sort when I had the grands for the day. Those days are over now that they all want to help, they LOVE having jobs!!! Big jobs have to happen on days that I don't have one or more of them

 As I was loading the freezer yesterday Kara ask me what I was doing in Papaws garage? Just putting away food sweetheart. She informed me Papaw wouldn't want me in his garage, she and Papaw worked hard getting it cleaned up!!! She was right of course, they had spent most of Sunday piddling around out there while I fought Ivy in one of the beds I am revamping. She also informed me I needed to finish getting the weeds (ivy) pulled out as she needs to do her job. Papaw has promised when Nanny finishes up he and Kara will tackle the wood mulch pile to spread in the bed. She is looking forward to filling the wheel barrel.

Well now, just as I was ready to hit the post button I got a call from DD#1, Tyler had a sore throat, needed to be picked up from school, gezzz. Days never seem to go as planned :)  On the way home he shared with me he thought he had fever in his throat, ice cream might help cool it down. Ha After polishing off an ice cream cone he has had a nice pile of cookies and a bag of popcorn. Hummmmm :)