Blessings from Friends

Well, an awesome friend (I'm going to start referring to her as Ms. J) came by with 2 huge bags of pink-eyed purple hull peas (also known as field peas in some parts of the US) for us!!!

I blanched them for about 5 mins (that means put them in boiling water), rinsed them in cold water, drained them, and then bagged them and put them in the freezer. I did one gallon bag and the rest were quart sized bags that held 3 cups each. (Did I mention she brought baggies too just in case I didn't have enough!?! Ms. J is such a God-sent blessing!)

I ended up bagging 58 cups of peas! We didn't eat these beans til we moved to MS but that's gonna change now! Yumm!

In the picture you can see the stockpot on the back burner that's cooking down our apple peelings and cores into apple juice. I then put them (and another batch) into crockpots for the night on low heat. I'll strain the juice and refrigerate it until I go to town and get more sugar to make apple jelly!

Today I plan on finishing the last of our apple harvest by making applesauce (and maybe some apple butter). Those peelings will be cooked down too ;)

I've also plan out our breakfasts and dinners for the upcoming week along with the grocery list needed for them. This week's dinners are going to be: Chicken alfredo, BBQ chicken, sloppy joes, BBQ chicken salad (I'll cook all the BBQ chicken at the same time), Broiled fish with salad, and Shrimp Po'boys.

Breakfasts are easy. They take about as much time as pouring a bowl of cereal! Every week we have the same things but flavor them differently. We have: oatmeal, eggs with breakfast meat, muffins, grits, and breakfast sandwich. Last week's oatmeal was apple cinnamon with real apples cut up in it, grits were pumpkin pie flavor, muffins were chocolate banana with chocolate chips, breakfast meat was bacon (and another day we had corned beef hash), and the kids had cereal one day.

Final preparations for tomorrow's Sunday church service and next week's homeschool plan going also. Our 2012-2013 school year officially starts Monday!