No-Grocery November: week 4

Edibles:

~ Mongolian beef
~ fried onions and eggs for breakfasts most mornings
~ wannabe zuppa toscano soup (Italian sausage, potato and greens soup)
~ bean and cheese burritos with salsa
~ prune tart
~ cornbread
~ roasted delicata squash and onions
~ spaghetti with meatballs
~ BIRTHDAY CAKE!  White cake with peanut butter frosting
~ meringue mushrooms and cookies
~ chicken barbeque dip with quinoa chips
~ buttermilk pancakes with syrup and peanut butter
~ tomato soup
~ chicken salad in tortillas
~ dry rubbed chicken and kielbasa, sauteed cabbage, cornbread casserole
~ cornbread casserole (again! For Thanksgiving)
~ apple crisp
~ pumpkin pie
~ a large bowl of whipped cream (sweetened with granulated sugar instead of confectionary since that was used up a few days before)
~ roasted squash, onions and brussel sprouts with fried cheese curds
~ split pea soup (using canned carrots instead of fresh, celery seed to replace the actual vegetable and the last scrawny kielbasa instead of ham.  I was dubious as to the result- but it was remarkably good!)
~ blueberry muffins and cranberry muffins
~ pizza night- three cheese, onion and lunchmeat (sister in law brought over a lovely mufflata sandwich as a gift that I stole some meat from for the pizza) and ricotta, garlic and tomato (though I have run out of real garlic AND garlic powder so I had to use garlic salt and since the salt- I had to be more reserved with it.
~ pot roast with gravy and mashed potatoes

 Notes: 

~ made lots homemade breads, butter, cheeses and yogurt this week

~ On Tuesday, we hosted a little 'authentic' pilgrim feast using The Thanksgiving Primer with a family we do a class with each week.  The kids made venison, cornbread(s), squashes and prune tart.
Since the pilgrims had very little to go on, it happened I had enough food around to be able to do it. The prune tart was pretty good but to enjoy their cornbread, you'd have to be pretty hungry.  (Think: homemade playdough and you'll have a pretty good idea.)  We made modern day cornbread too- just to compare the two. 

~ It was a birthday miracle!  I had the EXACT amount of confectionary sugar I needed for Adele's birthday cake icing.  I used every particle, so much so I got to wash the container out to get it ready for a new bag.  It was PERFECT.

~ for Adele's birthday, we were expecting a few people to come and share cake with us.  I thought how nice it would be to have something savory to serve our guests and help cut the sweetness of the cake.  I was thinking- "What can I serve that is savory?"  I don't have crackers.  I don't have pepperoni or cheese or pretty much anything salty that I could serve last minute.  I usually try and keep ingredients on hand for warm dip at all times but I had nothing to dip into the dip WITH- no fresh veggies or crackers...  THEN, someone found a bag of quinoa chips my mother-in-law gave me a few weeks ago.  I got to serve warm chicken bbq dip WITH something to dip it with.  Lucky us.

~ I wanted to double the recipe for split pea soup (which called for one pound of peas) so I dumped two bags into the broth.  It seemed odd how many peas there were to such a small allotment of water until I realized I had dumped two TWO-POUND bags in.  I wound up making two huge vats of it then- with just a single kielbasa cut into pieces between both of them.  OOPS.

~ Winter milk from a cow is so delicious and tasty.  I don't love pasture milk as much so I wound up buying a lot of milk products because the taste of everything was so strong.  Now that the cow is eating more hay and making 'winter milk', I can make, eat (and enjoy!) all the wonderful milk products from our cow, Acorn.

The biggest lesson of the month:

If I was hoping to learn the art of contentment and make-do-ishness this month, and to be grateful even in times of want... the reality was there was no hard lesson to learn.  We ate like kings.  We were deprived not a single time. 

There are people today, right now who are divvying up a bit of beans, a bit of rice among their whole family.  There are people today who are wondering if they will even eat.  Unless and until I am wondering how I will find something to feed my children or desperate for a cup of corn or wheat or rice to cook, I will never truly know want. 

I guess that is the lesson I learned most this month.  Not how resilient I can be when faced with deprivation... instead, I realized how I have never once in my life been deprived.  I realized just how ridiculously wealthy we are.  We have never known true hunger.  And even after a month of cooking just from things we have around, we still have plenty of delicious food just awaiting a cast iron pan. The big lesson I learned was that I have been surrounded by wealth and food and ease and comfort and luxuries so much so that my eyes were blind to it. 

There were plenty of times when I would literally look in the cupboards when I hadn't gone shopping in a while and think "There is nothing to eat."    I cringe to think about it.

There is such abundance in my life.  Let me have eyes to see it, Lord.