cooking – Little House on the Fairy Hill

Cooking and Housekeeping In a Construction Zone

It helps if you trick yourself into thinking you are camping, I’m not gonna lie.

We are trickling into our 12th week with no kitchen, our 13th week of construction, which is long enough that when we borrowed a friend’s house in New Hampshire for a weekend in back in October, I brought all the supplies to make meatballs because I was just so excited at the idea of a sink, a stove and counter space, all in the same place.

Luxury.

Going into this process, we were told we would be 10-12 weeks without a kitchen. In reality, it’s going to be about 20 weeks all in. Straight through the holidays, which is heartbreaking to me. But here we are, and the only way out is through.

The framing is done, the roof is on, and while it is still a shell of a house on the back with zipper walls to keep the front living quarters warm, we are making so much progress.

The construction, excited though we are, is moving along but also is definitely grinding a little on us. For weeks now the driveway and surrounds to the house have just been mud, mud mud.

And we’ve been writing checks, a lot of checks. It’s pretty overwhelming.

Everything everywhere all at once, that’s what this is. Still, we chose this, and we knew that we were going to be walking a line financially to get all of this done.

With some more time to go before chaos of the house being pulled apart ends,and the house starts to be slowly put back together, we’re in it for the long haul because at this point, there’s nothing we can do about it.

We’re trying to just breathe through it every day.

One thing we haven’t done much of is eat out, or switch to paper plates. So far our system of washing things in the bathroom sink and cooking in is working pretty well. While we packed up our crock pot, and it’s pretty good and buried in our storage space, I found an early Black Friday deal at Kohl’s for $17 for a 5 quart crock pot, which is coming in handy as it starts to get colder. While I hate to spend money for a thing we already have, it’s worth it if it means we get through this part without a ton of take out.

My husband has been carrying most of the load of cooking during the week, and I do much of the meal planning and weekend cooking, We’ve’ve been eating pretty well. A lot of one pan meals or food on the grill, of course, and certainly there are some things that are easier than others to do, but so far, so good.

Like Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon – this is a household favorite, and while beef prices are omg high, it makes quite a few meals, and we can freeze a portion or two for later. It’s a cozy treat, and I’ll slice, saute and freeze the leftover mushrooms for a later meal. We had that about 2 weeks ago and it was delicious.

We’ve been trying to carve back on our grocery spending, but it is hard when we’re having to flex our plans for so long.

My sister brought us tons of potatoes, onions, spaghetti and butternut squash and sweet potatoes from upstate NY, so we are incorporating those into our meals. Every now and again I stock up at Costco as well, and add to that the regular grocery shops, our winter share – there’s 2 more distributions – and our meat share, and we’re doing pretty great.

Here’s what we have to cook with right now:

A 2 burner hot plate loaned by a friend. This is a great tool that we use on the daily
A small older microwave that we’re hoping doesn’t die before we get a kitchen back
Grill with a single burner, so if we need something to cook faster or hotter than the hot plate we use that. Downside – on the porch, and it’s November in New England
A rice cooker – this thing is 20 years old, sees use multiple times a week and has for years, and is just absolutely the best kitchen tool. We buy rice in 15-lb bags and eat through it several times a year.
An Ooni pizza oven, a gift to Eli some years ago. While it’s a bit of setup and work, the option to have homemade pizza is lovely.
The coffee pot, without which we would not function.
An electric tea kettle. We love it and use it constantly.
An instant pot. Ours died 2 weeks after our kitchen was demolished and my neighbor gifted us hers for free.
A crock pot – we accidentally packed ours up and can’t find it in storage, so we replaced it with a $17 5-quart version last week

So look, we’re not short of options. While it’s not ideal to be prepping in the living room and washing plates in the bathroom sink, we’re eating pretty well and everything is staying pretty clean. I mean, we’re in a construction zone, so the floors outside of our living spaces, ugh, but otherwise we’re in good shape. I vacuum every day, we try to wipe down surfaces and the 1 sink all the time, and every couple weeks the bathroom gets deep cleaned. The floors get wiped down a lot as well, but keeping them clean is the hardest part. I took some pictures of the living room/pantry/prep area/dining area as well as the bathroom to help show what we’re doing.

So what are we eating this week in our little construction zone?

Use up: Grapes, Tomatoes, Cucumber, Cabbage, leftovers

Sunday: Skillet Ravioli Lasagna & Fattoush Salad

Monday: Our busiest day, Eli Cooks
Tuesday: TBD, just us

Wednesday: Slow Cooker Sausage and Potato Soup (it calls for kale but we’re out so I’ll add spinach at the end)

Thursday: Rachael Travels, Eli Cooks
Friday: Rachael brings home dinner from NYC’s Chinatown – Mei Lei Wah’s famous Pineapple Pork Buns and some other good stuff. I’ll also bring home some bagels.
Saturday: The forecast says some weather is coming, so of course, soup. Probably chicken tortilla soup in the crock pot – everyone likes it, and add some rice and croutons and it’s a comforting and delicious meal for a cold night
Sunday: Eli CooksMonday: Chili and Eli’s Corn Bread

Reimagining Sithean Part 2 – Transformation

It’s a quiet Sunday morning in the back half of October, the beginning of week 6 of construction. Other than a couple of quiet weekends our life has been moving at double-time for months now, and we really don’t stop until November. This weekend has been errand-heavy, and today we’ve got to get the house tidier in between commitments. The fair is over in our town, and the weather is starting to get chillier at night.

The back half of the house has been gutted for over a month, the vast majority of the excavation is done, and part of the foundation walls are up. We’re about 2 weeks away from new windows and replacement of our current furnace with a new hydro heating/cooling system. Our existing windows, the ones with the handblown mullions, will be saved aside and likely turned into stained glass over the next several years.

Our living room is kitchen, dining room, pantry and living room combined, and we have one functioning sink and shower for the whole house. When they gutted the upstairs bathroom they left us the toilet so we have that at least. Eli’s studio and our bedroom are filled with clutter and clothes, because there’s not enough places to put things.

I don’t like clutter, so it’s a lot sometimes, but we’re dealing with it.

The kids rooms are generally intact, and the zipper walls keep out most of the dust on our side of the house, at least for now. While it’s weird, it’s surprisingly not awful. An inconvenience, rather than a problem, living in a construction zone.

And it’s fascinating to watch the transformation up close. We have an amazing team, too. Our excavator, Jacob, who is magically turning a dirt pile into a house shape. Our lead carpenter, Ryan who keeps everything moving. Colin, who patiently explains the construction as it happens. The foundation guys, whose names we don’t know because they are quiet and refuse our efforts to bring them cold drinks, walking atop 9 foot tall foundation forms like they are stilts. Alan, the master plumber and Dana, his assistant. We get the sense that they are as committed to this project as we are.

Artisans, all of them. I have endless respect for people who can build things, can take a drawing and turn it into reality. It’s one of the things that drew me to Eli.

Throughout the process, the folks who have worked with us to painstakingly make every choice have been wonderful, from the supply folks who took us through faucets and shower heads, and then found less-expensive versions when necessary, to the flooring folks who pressured us not at all and instead showed us flooring that we immediately fell in love with. We have been so blessed to really like these folks, and we can’t wait to invite them all back when we’re finished so they can see what their hard work has wrought.

So far we’ve had over $19k in extra infrastructure costs, from burial of the propane tank to having to move a water line and pour one wall of the foundation higher than planned. I’m guessing there’s a little more out there – none of it the ‘fun’ stuff, but all of it things that will make the house what it needs to be.

The unknowns financially scare us, but we’re rolling with them one at a time, and rolling with this whole crazy ride one day at a time. There’s nothing else we can do – the kitchen is gutted, the things for the house are ordered, there’s a giant pit in our backyard – this is happening, and we’ll figure it out. Every time I get freaked out I remind myself that we have a 100% success rate of figuring it out in our lives so far. That’s not bad.

We are renting 2 storage spaces for all the things, but we’re hoping to consolidate to 1 by mid-December when the stove gets moved to our kitchen. Very early on we made the decision to have everything we needed to buy – light fixtures, cabinet handles, fittings – in storage and staged so that when the time came to install there was no mad rush to stores. By and large, we’ve done that, with just one light fixture, chosen but left to buy, as we are cash flowing our purchases.

Similarly, we’re almost done picking paint colors, several months in advance. In most cases we’ve gone with soft creams, but with bursts of color – deep green with dark grey trim and a slightly lighter green ceiling in the hallway and mudroom, my office ceiling will be Benjamin Moore’s Tapestry Gold, a rich yellow that reminds me of autumn leaves, paired with softer walls in Benjamin Moore’s Rich Cream. The kitchen cabinets are Farrow and Ball’s Down Pipe, a dark grey that has both green and blue undertones.

And we’ve bought richly colored wallpapers for the powder room, the upstairs hall bathroom and the master bath. A particularly fun find for the upstairs hallway was Mind the Gap’s The Station View wallpaper, which makes me delighted every time I think about it. Another fun find was Claret & Key, wallpaper in which you get to pick the ‘season’ color scheme – there are 4 for every pattern, and then the background color, of which there are over 35.

The only room we truly had design help with was the kitchen, so we’ve been mentally putting all our choices together, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job.

We’re cooking in 99% of the time, between instant pot, air fryer, grill, and hot plate. The crock pot got packed in the mad dash to get the kitchen emptied when it was demolished a week ahead of schedule, so we’ll probably not see that until we move back in. We’ve spent more on groceries than I had originally planned to, but I think we’ll see that temper itself shortly.

While dinners are not frequently fancy, they occasionally are. Eli has taken our camp cooking situation as a challenge and has turned out some truly amazing meals. The salsa, salsa verde, jam and various and assorted items we preserved in the freezer, like pesto, peaches, shredded zucchini and raspberries this summer are coming in handy.

The other night I came home from a work trip to homemade black bean soup and cornbread cooked on the grill. Last night we cooked some hamburger with onion combined that with pumpkin ravioli, pesto, toasted almonds and parmesan.

We’re hardly suffering.

These are the golden hours, watching the home we dreamed about be created. Every piece and part, every color, every fitting will have been chosen by us. While it’s not our hands doing most of the building, it’s our creation – from my inspiration to build out in an L-shape, to Eli manifesting that in a 3-D model, the changes we worked through of that model due to budget constraints – everything in this house will be made for us. That’s an astounding thought, and sometimes to me, it feels like too much – that I’m too fortunate, that no one should be this lucky.

I remember our first day here, after days of traveling – both filled with adventure and exhaustion. My Mom took the trip with us, and I will be grateful for her presence for the rest of my days.

That first morning, the kids found their way straight to – and we named – Oona, the eminently climbable mother-tree in the backyard before even eating breakfast. My son’s melt down when the promised playset arrived in pieces and boxes in the pouring rain because I couldn’t build it right then and there, and them pulling up their chairs and watching their father put it together, because we both agreed despite our divorce that our childen needed home. I remember watching the magical landscape change, and that June watching flowers drift across the driveway from the Honey Locust that is our fairy tree, home to the fairies that Sithean, The Fairy Hill, is named for. Eli’s first visits, and eventually permanent arrival, our missing piece.

It hasn’t all been delightful – a 70 foot pine tree fell on the house our first autumn here, I lost a job, we lost people we love, and animals we love. We’ve had financial challenges, mental health challenges, all of it, but we’ve come out the other side, every time.

And life is changing now. The kids are growing up, life is busier and more complicated. Never again will they crawl across the snow after a storm, pretending to be foxes. We are slowly packing away their childhoods while we pack away the house for the renovations. It’s a little sad at times, but also delightful to watch them grow up.

But it’s still magic. I feel like my life has been an endless series of transformations, and here we are in another chrysalis of change. And my children will carry the magic of this place with them always, no matter how they evolve.

I can’t wait to see what’s next.

An Autumn to Remember

The weather is still warm, but we’ve started to roll into Autumn. The leaves are turning, and lovely, and the nights are cooler. The transformation of the trees never ceases to amaze me.

So too is Sithean transforming. We are heading into our 3rd week of renovation, with about 27 or so weeks to go – to date only demolition and a lot of time with our truly lovely work crew.

Our living room has become our pantry, kitchen and living room. The porch, intact for now, holds our grill, which is used almost nonstop these days, especially the burner on the side – we have a hot plate, but if we really need to cook something stovetop style, that’s our best bet. The good news is that we have a lot of appliances – our rice cooker and instant pot, already in heavy rotation with a kitchen, now are used nearly daily without.

It’s like camping. The downstairs bathroom, the only one that will not be renovated, is the sink for all things water.

And we’re still packing things up. This weekend it was the hall closet – the new flooring will go into it, so it has to be emptied- as well as our son’s closet and bedroom, which we are simultaneously working on as he has begun to seriously outgrow his bunk bed.

Yesterday I grocery shopped at Hmart, Costco and Whole Foods, because this Friday starts off the fair in our town, and other than getting milk or a few things here and there, we’re basically locked in through mid-month. We have been dedicatedly eating down the pantry and freezers, but that had to slow so that we can plan on a couple of weekends with limited access beyond our home.

We love the fair, and that family gathers with us for opening night, it’s truly an event for us. This year our home is not really conducive to family gatherings, but by next year it will be. Other than a few paint colors left to pick and a single light fixture left to purchase, there’s not much left to choose – at this point, we are just in a waiting game to see what it looks like in real life. While the decision fatigue has been sometimes real, and at times construction planning was a second full time job, that work is almost done.

We are still packing things up and moving them around, but that too, should be done in a few weeks. Which is not to say that when we wrap that up it won’t be the end of a long, exhausting marathon, but we have to empty and clean these spaces anyway. And of course, once we’re done there will be more cleaning and moving things around and moving them back in, but that’s ok. One day at a time right now.

In general, it’s not terrible. Cluttered and dusty? Sure. But we have a small table set up in the living room we can eat at, and our meals are good so far. We like camping, and this is like that.

Last night I cobbled together a pound of chicken, sauteed onions, garlic and poblano peppers, a pint of salsa verde, a cup of chicken broth and some seasonings and put them in the instant pot for 20 minutes, then added a little parmesan, mexican cheese, and cream cheese to make a variation on Chicken Chili Verde, and it was downright delicious. Tonight I’ll make Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon.

Our kitchen limitations are causing us to be more intentional, but we’re still eating off of regular plates and using cloth napkins. At the end our budget will be very tight, but that’s nothing new either. And we’ll have a lot of finish work to do ourselves, but that’s ok.

And in the meantime we still have an abundance of raspberries to pick in the backyard, 3 more weeks of our summer CSA, and the simple pleasures of home – there is really something satisfying about curling up on the couch after a long day of paid work or house things and eating a delicious meal that we magicked out of our temporary kitchen.

So what are we eating this week through this long race?

Sunday: Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon & salad

Monday: Eli will make grilled chicken pita pockets, broccoli from our CSA

Tuesday: It’s just Eli and I on Tuesdays, so we make simple things in bowls. We have some wax beans to eat from our CSA, so we’ll make those our veggies.

Wednesday: Tortellini, spinach and chicken soup made with the roaster chicken I bought at Costco.

Thursday: Burgers, tater tots and broccoli

Friday: Pizza with Family

Saturday: Chicken soup with rice

Maybe by week 20 we’ll be completely over this, but for now, life feels pretty good.

The First of the Sunflowers

It’s August. While everything is still green and lovely, the prolonged stretches between rains mean that slowly that is changing although we did get a soaking, all-day rain a couple of days ago.

Last week we brought home eggplants and tomatoes from our farm share, along with the greens that have been so prevalent until now. We are officially moving into late summer.
We also brought home 5 gorgeous sunflowers picked by my lovely daughter. I love sunflowers – they are so magical.

We are having waves of heat interspersed with cooler days, with temperature swings of 50s and low 60s overnight to ramping up to the mid-90s occasionally. It’s been an odd summer, but aren’t they all now? One day it was so hot we could barely move, the next I had to change into sweatpants because it was downright chilly.

As weird as it is, we’re enjoying it.

We’re enjoying summer food, too – last Friday night it was too hot to cook so we made a salad and a charcuterie board. Detailed meal plans that make sure we have hot, home-cooked food during the school year begin to degrade at the beginning of summer, and by this point in time we are full-on winging it. The kids can spend extended days at their Dad’s, mealtimes become focused around when they woke up. For my daughter, now 16, this is likely her last summer of idleness before jobs and college prep consume her time. She’s bored now, actually, so that may come sooner than later.

The world seems to be descending into a kind of darkness we haven’t seen in a long time – Gazans are literally starving, the world’s efforts to make a whole people disappear. The war in Ukraine lingers with uncertain (or possibly terribly certain) outcomes ahead, and our own country has built a secret police that takes people away in broad daylight from their homes, cars and gardens. Cuts to food programs have a horribleness I can’t understand – in the wealthiest country in the world, in the wealthiest point in history, it’s shameful.

It has oddly reversed roles for Eli and I – normally I’m the political one but the more things worse, the more he monitors, his protection instincts firing on all cylinders, while I want to close in the walls of our sanctuary here at Sithean, just to keep us all safe. Which, of course, I can’t, that requires engagement.

And I do delight in our sanctuary while I worry. Sitting on the porch watching dragonflies and bees just doing their thing is one of my favorite weekend afternoon activities.

We’re just a couple weeks away from breaking ground in our endless efforts to make our dreams and reality the same for this place. It’s happening, and it’s going to be amazing. But a lot of stress to get there, for sure. Once we break ground, we’re off to 30-week odyssey that includes about 10 or 12 of those weeks without a kitchen. So we’re eating down the pantry and freezers as quickly as I can, as we have about 8 weeks left until we convert to grill, instant pot, rice cooker, air fryer and crockpot. I’m content we’ll figure it all out.

Mostly. I am stressed about it too, but the only way out is through.

Last week we added a second storage space down the road – we think we’ll need 3 by the time this is all said and done, but one thing at a time.. We’re just about done picking everything other than paint colors, with my daughter’s bathroom still the one room that’s forming up. If all goes well, we’ll close and pull the permits this coming week, and start in mid-August.

Our weekends are buried in preparation, planning, sketching every room and every floor. It’s very much fun and also mentally tiring, but in the end our art project of a home will come to life. And we’re ready, after all the long years of hoping, planning and thinking, it’s here.

Last weekend we finally took a day off and rested from the house planning We took the kids to the movies. It’s some of the last expensive fun we’ll have for a while.

And as we eat down the pantry and the freezers, I imagine meals will get more creative, but that will be fun.

So what are we eating this week?

Use up: lettuce, mangoes, peaches, cucumbers

Monday: Dinner out, a small celebration

Tuesday: Just Eli and I, so we made Jose Pizarro’s zucchini gazpacho – pretty good, I added ½ an onion. Liked it, probably won’t make it again. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/jul/08/courgette-almond-gazpacho-recipe-jose-pizarro

Wednesday: Garlic chicken, rice pilaf, salad

Thursday: Chicken Kebabs, rice, roasted broccoli

Friday: Just E and I, so bowl food

Saturday: Just E and I, tbd
Sunday: E’s enchiladas, refried beans, salad, mango and regular salsa

Monday: Chili & macaroni salad

I expect it to be a delicious week, busy in preparation, but also one of the last few of quiet before the transformation begins. Happy August!

November Stockpile

About 5 minutes after I published my last post, our schedule changed. I had managed to prep the refried beans and made some hard boiled eggs, but I didn’t get to the cookies, and we punted on the Onion Pakoda, as badly as I wanted them, because we ran out of steam, substituting some samosa from the freezer instead.

And then the kids schedule changed around as well as their Dad had to delay time with them. The good news is that we were able to shift our plans and still cook in. Well. One night we caved and bought pizza dough and cheese because we had no plan whatsoever, but we managed otherwise.

I wrote last time about spending an astounding amount on food this month. Every November, our food spending skyrockets. My total for the last post was $805, but if I subtract the non-food items, it was more like $645. But then it went a higher still. Our Walden Local Meat share was delivered, we project to spend about $18 on milk for the rest of the month (a little over a gallon a week is what we use most of the time), we’ll need a few more groceries – and then there’s the Thanksgiving cheese.

All in, our current tab was $939, and I expect to close the month out over $1500.

Zoinks. Not going to lie, that gives me the shakes.

But. Reasons.

First – a disclaimer. We are blessed as heck and able to invest in our bellies, not everyone is. My endless gratitude for our ability to stock up every November.

Second – a disclaimer. This is food we will eat for quite some time, not just this month. But the deals are now, so into the pantry and freezer it goes.

Also, this includes some more expensive event food. I’m on for a bunch of items for a 30+ person Thanksgiving dinner. And at this time next week, we’ll have every piece of our Christmas dinner other than greens and potatoes. Turkey, cranberries, stuffing, you name it – in the cabinets or the freezer, because we are having a turkey dinner, and the time to buy that stuff is now.

I do not shop like this all the time.

For the first 3 months of each year Eli and I cut back pretty hard – pantry eat down, and only buying what we need for the week. I expect my grocery bill for January-March, including our meat share, to run $1800 or less for the 3 months, or an average of $600/month, loaded towards the back. I will caveat that by saying we may pre-pay for our Walden Local share this year, which affords us a discount overall, which would be $1800 up front. That’s a full year, and it would reduce our meat bill by over $600 for the year.

Third – a disclaimer. I didn’t do a great job of tracking our costs or using things up in 2024. We started 2024 with Eli gravely ill, me juggling work, kids, house and animals and we ended it with me juggling the equivalent of 2.5 full time jobs as the division I work in got sold, and I have been overseeing the transition, a 537-person team, and my day job. Add to that our house and 2 busy kids, family, friends, the fact that both our refrigerator in the house and the one in the garage died this year and had to be replaced, and I feel lucky this year to have a handle on anything.

Despite that, we’ve done better this year on food management than in several of the past years.

In 2025, I’m going to track my food costs by category rather than overall to see if that helps get our costs down. We’ll have a few savings, in that it’s our neighbor’s turn to pay for the summer CSA ($675 annually spread over 2 families and 20 weeks, which works out to $16.88 per family per week for tons of produce and flowers). For example, I put the dog’s food and treats in our grocery budget right now, but not chicken feed or bunny food and treats. So I’ll carve that out.

I also want to know what we really spend and use.

We have reason to believe that we’ll finally be renovating in 2025, which we’ve postponed for 4 years because of a) a pandemic b) a monstrous tax bill from closing down my business that blew a hole in all of our plans for almost 2 years and c) some real job instability on my part and that meant I would much rather postpone than be in a bad financial position.

That means that we’ll need to eat down literally everything in the house, something that makes my ‘a stocked pantry is an emergency fund you can eat‘ wiring get a little anxious. So planning our grocery bill for next year is a little wonky in that I know we’ll spend less, I’m just not sure exactly how it’s going to play out. I literally hate running out of food, but I’m going to have to learn to live with it.

Oddly, eating things down initially puts more stuff in the freezer than it takes out. An example is those refried beans I made last week. While it did get rid of 2 mason jars of dried beans on the counter and give me 5+ meals worth of refried beans, it added them to the freezer, which got much more full as a result. Similarly, I periodically batch roast, skin and freeze acorn and butternut squashes so they don’t go bad, but that too is freezer space.

So, with all that said, why November for a stockpile?
1. Our winter share typically has 4 pickups starting in November and the volumes are pretty high for veggies. Some of the items last until early spring. Also, while this year we got our farm stock up in late September, most years we go around now. So we are inundated with winter veggies such as squashes, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots and onions.
2. Food prices are often rock bottom for the holidays. This is the time to buy sugar, flour, and other baking ingredients. I buy stuffing mix and other Christmas turkey dinner accompaniments now, because the discount won’t be as good in December when I need these things.
3. I’m a squirrel. There’s something about November that makes me want to tuck food into cabinets like nobody’s business

So we go into the winter like the pioneers of old, with a larder stocked with all the things, and then eat it down. Unlike them, if I run out of wine or coffee, or II lack something, I can go get it. I live in the country but there’s really good sushi about 1.5 miles away. Deprived, we are not.

But then it’s time to eat it all, and eating things down through the winter feels good. I delight in it, actually. It’s fun to work our way through that 50-lb bag of onions. It’s fun to meal plan starting with ‘Ok, so what do we have?‘. It’s marvelous to pull pesto out of the freezer to top our homemade pizza, and smell summer, knowing it will come again.

Some people shop and cook weekly and that really works for them, or even shopping and cooking more often. Others cook once and eat all week. We’ve tried both methods, and neither works really well for us – we just are always on the move, and because of that, having a very stocked house helps.

As the day wound down, I had prepped bulgogi for the freezer, made a double batch of turkey meatballs for Monday’s, our Sunday dinner, and taken the mushrooms I didn’t use and sliced and sauteed them. Once that was done I popped them in the freezer for later use.

A note about those sauteed mushrooms. I used to never use up mushrooms fast enough and ended up composting one too many of them. Then I started buying frozen sauteed mushrooms because I didn’t want to waste any fresh ones, but there are some recipes that previously frozen or dried mushrooms won’t work for. Then one day I was looking at some unused mushrooms and had an aha moment. Now this is how I deal with excess mushrooms.

So what are we eating this week?

Use up: cantaloupe, strawberries, beets, a random rutabaga I have, salad veggies
Lunches: LEFTOVERS, baby. All the way.

Sunday: Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon, a house favorite, warm naan, and salad with lettuce that miraculously came with our winter share. I almost left out the potatoes, but at the last minute I remembered. Whoops.

Note how I cleverly crammed the potatoes in the over-full pot.

Monday: Spaghetti and turkey meatballs, homemade bread, roasted broccoli

Tuesday: Kids are with their Dad, Eli and I have what we affectionately refer to as Bowl Food, usually a piece of salmon over a salad, or couscous, or cauliflower rice with some veggies mixed in. I love, love bowl food.

Wednesday: We have a lot of Thanksgiving food prep, so Eli will cook something simple. Could be as simple as Trader Joe’s Orange Chicken and rice, we’ll see.

Thursday: Thanksgiving. ALL the foods. All of them.

Friday: Recovery from all the foods, the kids are with Dad and Eli and I often go out on a date rather than cook. Possibly my pants still fit me, possibly not.

Saturday: Roasted beets and maybe bowl food again. Or soup.

Sunday: Chicken Souvlaki Bowls and probably I’ll start baking cookies. I bake a lot of cookies in December.

And then it will be Monday again. And so it goes.

Autumn Chill

The growing season is over. Last week I pulled out the last few tomatoes that could ripen on the window sill and prepared for the coming frost. It’s hard to believe I grew tomatoes into November.

After some unseasonable warmth, the cold is finally settling in. Jackets are coming out, cozy boots are being worn, electric blankets are back on beds, and tea and hot cocoa are supplementing mornings and evenings, along with the usual coffee for Eli and I. It finally rained this morning, which was a relief. We are in deep drought, and brush fires are running rampant through the area.

Veteran’s Day weekend was extended by an extra day off for me, which I spent taking care of some appointments – I was long overdue for an eye exam and a few other things, and braving Costco and other stores to do a stock up shop. We really, really needed to stock up.

Almost $805 later across 3 stores (ouch) we had almost everything we could possibly want or need, plus full freezers and cabinets. Add to that our winter share, and the bulk vegetables my Brother in Law had brought from upstate NY, and we simply won’t need to shop much until we get close to the holidays. Except for Thanksgiving cheese, but that’s in it’s own budget. Other than milk and fruit, we are set for a while. Like squirrels with their acorns, we’ve stockpiled for the coming winter.

And that’s fine because I’m tired, and while I do enjoy grocery shopping (other than Costco – too crowded and stressful) I don’t have much spare time for it. I much prefer to shop from my house. And we all want to cook and eat all the things, so a very deep and rich set of options from the freezersand pantry cabinets suits us here. The only thing we have to manage is food waste. It happens – like when our fridge died last month – but we’re getting better all the time at using things up. Years ago I wrote about Managing Food Waste and we still do most of the things – there’s only 1 bunny left now, Marshmallow and he’s old and persnickity and really only wants to eat kale and his treats, so we humor him. The chickens are getting older, but still great about scraps, and Teddy the dog does get some occasional leftovers. We also still compost as much as possible.

So what did I spend $805 on?

Food: The bigger expenses were chicken, salmon, shrimp and olive oil. I hadn’t bought shrimp in a long time, but I do like to have some frozen for a quick meal. All the meats get frozen and we eat multiple meals from them. These 4 items were nearly $120 of my expenditures. Assume 25-ish meals from the proteins at least.

I also bought a 12-lb bag of flour, replaced some pricier items that we lost when the fridge died (fish sauce, coconut aminos, etc) that I tend to keep on hand and use fairly frequently. Our snack box was getting a little thin on selection, so I spent about $50 on snacks that should last us a couple of months. That’s a lot, but includes beef jerky and some things that tend to be a little more expensive, like mini RX bars.

I bought cucumbers, and greens for some salads, since 3 of 4 of us love salad. Lots of avocados and broccoli, since we’ll use them up. Kiwi fruit and raspberries to keep us in fruit – the kids love it. We also already had a cantaloupe, so we’ll eat that up as well. I didn’t yet any tomatoes since we had the last few from the garden. I’ll have to buy some the next time I shop. Green, yellow and red peppers for various meals and because cutting them up with some hummus is a family favorite.

I got bagels, tortillas and sandwich bread for the freezer, sweet potato crackers, lots of yogurts, a large block of cheddar cheese, more sliced provolone, sub rolls, and a pound of pastrami that we stuck in the freezer and make into hot pastrami sandwiches soon. I also got some more Parmesan cheese, since we use a lot of it. Couscous and chicken broth for the pantry.

I also bought a 4-lb bag of frozen peas. Those who know me know they are one of my less-favorite veggies, but we use them often in things like shepherds pie and Indian food. That bag should last us quite a long time.

I bought bake and eat pretzels with dipping sauce, ham for sandwiches (in the freezer for now), butter, also for the freezer- since I bake all December, it’s better just to have it on hand, 4 lbs of coffee (at $30 for the 4 lbs, it’s a deal) and a few other items.

Non-food: Lighters for candles and the wood stove, Advil, soap, conditioner, thermal liners for the kids for winter/skiing, socks and a couple of holiday gifts.

Our next non-small grocery shop will be in mid-December when we go to the Korean and Indian grocery stores for a stock up there. In the interim, we’ll need things like fruit, scallions, greens and milk.

So how am I managing all this food? Very carefully. Today I’ll blanch and freeze a chunk of the broccoli for later meals. I’m making chocolate chip cookies for the week and an Indian meal that should produce lots of leftovers for lunches for the week. We’ll have salads mostly until we run out of that, and stir fry, since I need to eat up some Bok Choy from our winter share.

I’m also doing some other prep, like hard boiled eggs. My goal is quick and healthy snacks and food for the week.

I have lots of winter veggies to use up – sweet potatoes, one cauliflower, squashes, onions, beets and a few potatoes from our giant bag left, but those are almost all gone now. I also have a cabbage that I’m either turning into pickled red cabbage, or going to roast in curry.

Here’s what we’re eating this week:

Saturday: Creamy Green Chili Tortilla Soup, which used up the last few fresh poblano peppers from our summer farm share – I have more frozen that I picked – popovers, and this salad with some substitutions – I used pumpkin seeds instead of walnuts, skipped the persimmons since I didn’t have any, used goat cheese instead of blue cheese, and added cucumbers and the last of our cherry tomatoes from the garden. It was delicious.

Sunday: My daughter and my husband were doing a volunteer activity in the evening, so my son and I went to Salem MA to do some holiday shopping and eat dinner out. We were home by 5:45 pm because we’re both homebodies and he went off to game and I watched some TV with a glass of wine.

I put some dried kidney beans to soak in water so I could make a batch of Haphazard Homemaker’s Refried Beans, which is such a great and simple recipe. Once made, I freeze them in side dish sized batches for future use.

Monday: Holiday for me and the kids. Preeti’s Dal, Butter Chicken, rice with peas, and Eli helps me make Onion Pakoda. Few substitutions in that last – I use canned green chilis, and dried cilantro since I don’t have any fresh. I will roast some broccoli for something green on the side.

I also plan to make chocolate chip cookies for the week. I haven’t yet started making holiday cookies, but that will start up soon.

Tuesday: I have dinner plans, Eli was working, so I will prep him some leftovers with a nice dessert

Wednesday: Using 1/3 of the dozen rolls I bought (froze half, kept 1 out for a sandwich for my son, used the rest for meals) to make hot pastrami sandwiches with sauteed onions, provolone cheese and whatever else people want on them, along with Fattoush and some roasted broccoli.

A note on the Fattoush – hands down a house favorite, I learned to make it after getting hooked on it during my work travels. The sumac is fairly cheap and it lasts a long time. We probably make this salad weekly, and I often roast slivered almonds on top.

Thursday: My daughter has her riding lesson and then went to her Dad’s, so it was just my son and Eli and I. Crusted salmon over couscous. Ours will have some garlic scape pesto over it from the freezer, my son’s will not.

Friday: The kids are with their Dad, so Eli and I will have either Butternut squash soup or stuffed spaghetti squash boats.

Saturday: The kids have an art museum outing during the day, and will eat lunch out. If anyone needs dinner afterwards, I’ll make homemade meatball subs with some of the frozen sub rolls.

Sunday: Beef Ramen with Bok Choy added, and homemade potstickers, in order to use some of the Napa cabbage from our farm share.

I hope you all stay warm and cozy this November.

Spring Arrives

Spring finally arrived at Sithean after a cold spell following the Easter holiday, complete wtih forsythia, tulips and daffodils. Even the myrtle and the apricot tree astarted blooming. everything turned green all at once.

It’s been raining a lot, so Eli and I have only been slowly able to do yard cleanup. Still, it’s coming along – and hopefully by early May it will be mostly done. I’m regretting not cleaning out the big garden last fall, but I also find it peaceful to be out tidying it up. I started a few seeds, but not enough and not early, so I’ll be getting some plant starts from family and maybe buying a few seedlings for the garden this year, but I’m just not stressing about it. Whatever happens, happens.

This year has moved at breakneck speed, and the fact that it’s already two-thirds through April is a little shocking to me. Some of that was the series of crises that hit and absorbed the first 3 months of the year, and the rest was general busyness – work, kid activities, life in general.

I managed to take a 5-day weekend off, and started knocking away at my to-do list, which included yard work, some appointments, house organization, and rest. The kids needed warm-weather clothes, my son needed a haircut, the yard needed work and the house was slowly being overtaken by laundry mountains. But also I needed a few days away from my laptop, and I was recognizing the start of burnout in myself.

So the kids and I trekked off to the mall while Eli worked – it’s nice to get some time just the 3 of us occasionally, and he is working to finish his book, which sometimes means the fun stuff has to be put aside. We grocery shopped, they worked on projects, we went into Boston with Eli and their Dad for fancy Afternoon Tea.

Now that the crises – and there were 3, stacked up on one another – were past, we started once again to work on eating down the pantry and freezer with some simple meals. I did a Trader Joe’s shop, and then we decided to do a 3-week, $100 food challenge. Everything we needed for $100, shopping first in our house. Our pantry eat-down in the winter had been blown up by medical events, and in April I was just too tired and burned out to do the planning required. We had also had some unexpected expenses – my car’s radiator blew, the kids and Eli needed some clothes, a few things cost more than planned by a fair bit. So it was time to tighten our belts and use what we had.

Also there was a frozen turkey taking up way too much space in the freezer, and I needed a plan to get that sucker out and eaten.

First though, I had to make sure there was enough wine, fruit and snacks to get us through. I’m nothing if not practical, and I know when to expect a rebellion based on a lack of snack options.

So what are we eating?
Use up: Mangoes, sweet potatoes, kale, lettuce, eggs and I realized we have both regular and pearl couscous, plus fregola so we need to eat up a lot of tiny round pasta in the near future.

Meal prep: Bulgogi for the freezer, meatballs for Monday, egg muffins for breakfasts*

Saturday: Instant Pot Carnitas sliders, Fattoush salad, sliced veggies, mango salsa
Sunday: Trying something new – Crispy Pesto Chicken with Whipped Feta and Tomatoes and a favorite, Harvest Moon Kale Salad. I had frozen some delicata squash rings in the winter, and I pulled them out to thaw and roast.
Monday: Spaghetti and meatballs, popovers, roasted broccoli. There were some extra meatballs from making them on Saturday, so I put those in the freezer for a future meal.
Tuesday: Eli cooks for just the 2 of us
Wednesday: Eli cooks for all 4 of us
Thursday: Typically it’s just Eli, I and my son for dinner on Thursdays. Since my daughter doesn’t like salmon it’s a great night to pull some out of the freezer and thaw it. We’re going to try Sheet Pan Honey Mustard Salmon with the fingerling potatoes I got at Trader Joe’s and some of the 2 lbs of brussels sprouts we have in the fridge
Friday: it’s just Eli and I, so we’ll make something with part of a bag of shrimp in the freezer and pick a theme for flavor. Using one of the tiny round pastas, whatever veggies are in the ‘need to use up‘ category, it will be a quick meal after dropping the kids off at Dad’s.
Saturday: We have a busy day, so we’ll likely prep something in advance
Sunday: Top your own pizza night, made in the Ooni oven, one of our favorite things.
Monday: Chicken and Rice circa 1975, one of the house favorites. I saute 1 medium onion and garlic, add in 2.5 cups of rice to saute for a couple of minutes (stir constantly) then move it to an oiled 9x`13″ baking dish that’s on a jelly roll pan in case of leaks. I put 4-6 chicken leg quarters on top, add a quart of chicken broth, then sprinkle the top with salt, pepper and garlic powder.

Happy Spring!

A Year of Abundance

I learned from my friend Melissa years ago to choose a word to frame each new year. New Years is her favorite holiday – full of possibilities and fresh starts, and I love that outlook. This year my word is Abundance, and I do feel abundant in every area of our life.

On New Year’s Eve the kids came back from their grandparent’s house exhausted and with nothing left in their social batteries after a week of solid events.

I made Beef and Broccoli from scratch – total winner, and a smashed cucumber salad that was good but not so good I would make it again and we ordered a bunch of takeout. Eli made a fire in the wood stove, and he and I watched Barbie, while kids did their thing. It was quiet but very nice with everyone taking the time to restore their energy in their own ways.

I meant to make Chinese Chive Dumplings for dinner as well, but I forgot to get wheat starch to make the dough, and while I could have substituted wonton wrappers, it wouldn’t have been the same. So instead, I chopped up the chives and froze them for a later meal. Honestly, you really can freeze almost everything.

I’ve been really trying to preserve things lately and avoid waste, even slicing up and sauteeing mushrooms and then freezing them if we have some we aren’t using. I had some of our last apples that were starting to get a little mealy, so I turned them into cinnamon applesauce for our big family brunch too – just peeled, cored, and popped the apple bits in the crockpot with 2 tablespoons of sugar, a decent slug of cinnamon, and a little water. It was really good, and I sent most of it home with my sister since we had so much food.

And here we are in 2024, entering it softly, and with optimism. We put the last of the tax impacts from 2022 to bed in December, and so we’re walking into the new year with a level of freedom from financial burdens we haven’t had for a while.

Interest rates are very high, so we’re not sure exactly when the renovations will start, but it’s likely to be late this year or early 2025 because we want to be thoughtful about how much we spend and commit to spending. It’s hard to keep waiting, but we also know in our hearts it’s the right decision. It will happen, and in the meantime we’ll do some small-ish improvements that give us some quality of life, like replacing a few windows and finally bricking the walkway, and a few other things.

But despite having to keep pushing off the renovation, we’re very much at peace. Everyone got things they needed and wanted over the holidays. We got to spend time with family. January, despite a couple of work trips, is going to be relatively peaceful, and we deliberately kept the first weekend open other than one errand that will take a couple of hours, because we all just need a break.

We are slowly de-Christmasing the house, and I find the lack of ‘stuff’ in it refreshing. And what’s nice is that we really do have everything we need and then some. I’m grateful for the bounty in our lives and that we’re able to share it with others.

And we’re having a very frugal month – eating down the pantry, focusing on our financial future. We do have a ski weekend planned, and a dinner at the end of the month with my parents, but those are budgeted in.

This week we’re eating simple and healthy. To kick off the new year I made the Green Goddess Salad that is making it’s way around TikTok. It’s really good, especially after it sits for a little bit for the flavors to blend. Also, it makes a metric pantload of salad (this being the technical unit of measure), so you might want to consider making it for a party or as I did, give some away.

Use up: We have a lot of green veggies to use – spinach, baby kale and lettuce, brussels sprouts as well as tons of root veggies.

Monday January 1st, 2024: Homemade chili, cornbread, green goddess salad, guacamole

Tuesday: Just Eli and I, salmon over cauliflower rice with veggies

Wednesday: Grilled chicken wings that were in the freezer, couscous, roasted brussels sprouts and onions

Thursday: Eli cooks with a protein from the freezer

Friday: Homemade pizza with various and assorted veggies and toppings

Saturday: Baked sage chicken meatballs (only we have ground turkey, not ground chicken) with parmesan orzo & roasted vegetables

Sunday: Clam Chowder and homemade bread

Monday I’ll travel for the first time in 2 months, so Eli and the kids will have a few days of their own meal plans before I come home and we start the meal planning again.

Happy New Year to all.