My photo
No longer on the river and, again, an empty nester. Back to living on Fleming Island and making some more friends!

Sunday, August 11, 2013

We need room in the freezer!

My in-house chef has declared we need room in the freezer because he wants to buy 10 pounds of chicken breasts. I guess Justin has seen his share of wonderful recipes either on Facebook or other sites on-line, mainly slow-cooker types. We do have tight quarters in the freezer so began to use food already in stock for our meals. 

My idea was to make a nice, big kettle of bean soup using my ham and its bone but he dissuaded me from making soup in the summer. Using that package would free up a good amount of space but I guess Justin is correct about eating soup like that when it's so hot. He is in the heat all day long making soup right now unappealing.
                       
His plans for Saturday were to work in the spare bedroom getting it straightened away for Linda's arrival in less than two weeks. He also planned to make a meal with a pork roast which was in the freezer. Justin cut the defrosted roast into pieces just larger than a medallion and cooked it all afternoon in the slow cooker. He poured a bottle of Asian 'anything' dressing over the meat, plus a can of beer. When I came in from the pool, I was met by this wonderful aroma in the kitchen!

Thursday night Justin had made some bacon-wrapped potato wedges for our dinner. We had much leftover so he had me heat them up and mash the potatoes to have with our pork. He went to the store (had me text message a shopping list to him as I viewed the Publix weekly ad from my laptop!) and he picked up what he needed yet for dinner. And, yes, a few more things! He got sour cream and shredded cheese to add to our mashed potatoes, making them loaded! He used the blitz-hacker on the bacon which was added to the mix. Delicious meal, and the meat was tender like butter.

Publix had pound cakes on special "two-for" also, so I defrosted a bag of strawberries to serve over the lemon-flavored pound cake, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Yes! The other cake I will not eat---banana nut. 
                
During the week I had made a batch of spaghetti, which he preferred to have more like a casserole. He had a can of whole kernel corn in his food storage which was added to the sauce. This made a large portion and it's leftovers fed us a couple more meals the rest of the week. 

Here's the funny thing about emptying the freezer to make room for chicken breasts---ice cream was on special 2 for $6. So, the roast came out plus a package of hamburger earlier in the week. And two containers of ice cream went in. I know that sounds a bit silly, but I believe it won't be in there very long. My boy loves ice cream as much as his grandma enjoys ice cream, and he does not belong to the Single-Scooper Club like I do. We can't have bean soup in the summer but ice cream is certainly a must-have on hot summer days!