Monday’s are usually my kitchen day, but today was an extra busy one! I had several things left over from last week to finish up, and other things I needed to do today in preparation for the week to come.

Eric took the three oldest children to a work day for a local women’s shelter, so I was left at home with the 6 children ages 8 and under. I wasn’t sure how much I would get done, but Bethany (the baby) cooperated by sleeping most of the morning, so we actually did a lot. The oldest children were getting community service time, and the younger were getting Home Ec.

I had made our homemade version of Packet Oatmeal last night, so that was what we had for breakfast.

HOMEMADE PACKET OATMEAL: (Fills 3/4 of a gallon jar)
8 c. Quick Cook Oats
1 1/2 c. Packed Brown Sugar
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. salt
2 c. powdered milk

Mix all together and store until use. Just add hot water!

I had toast as I have eaten my lifetime quota of oatmeal.
After cleaning up from breakfast, I pulled out the pumpkins I had baked and scraped last Friday. I had bought 6 pumpkins for $1 each. 2 of them had burned, and I ended up feeding those to the chickens. (Multi tasking doesn’t always pay…) I had the pulp for the other 4 pumpkins, and all the seeds. I set two girls to getting the seeds separated so we can save some to plant next year, and roast the rest.

And I poured the pulp into my handy dandy Bosch mixer and mixed it a bit until it was smooth. I then filled quart freezer bags with 4 cups each, and froze them. The four pumpkins made 3 quarts. I hopefully can get some more pumpkins when we go to the fruit stand next week, now that I know it is pretty easy to do. (If you are interested, you can see my blog and look at last Friday’s entry. It explains what I did.)

I also made yogurt for tomorrow morning It is so simple!

HOMEMADE YOGURT:
1 gallon of milk
Heat it to 160*, then let it cool to 110*.
Take about a cup of the warm milk and add a couple pints of live culture yogurt. Either Dannon or reserved yogurt from the last time.
Add a good glug of vanilla (that’s exact, isn’t it?!)
Mix together and pour into a gallon jar.
Get a cooler and put a bath towel inside.
Wrap the jar in the towel and put in the cooler for 9 or so hours.
Move to fridge.
Eat when cool.

This gives a gallon of yogurt for around $4. It would cost $8 for a gallon of the Wal Mart brand yogurt, and have a lot more sugars, etc. In the morning we will mix with homemade strawberry jam or with some frozen fruit to get the flavors. It’s good, cheap, and healthy for you!

Then we started on the apples. I had bought a bushel of apples for $18 at the fruit stand. So we started peeling…

and they ate a lot of the peels.

They all took turns with the peeler. We filled my big roaster and added some water, and turned it on, stirring occasionally. We only used 1/2 a bushel so far.

Then it was lunch time. I just wanted to have tomato sandwiches (Tomatoes from the garden on homemade bread), but the girls wanted to make pizza melts. So I let them. Notice the paper plates. If we have something during the week for breakfast or lunch which would be served on a plate, I use paper. Eric once asked me how much we spend on paper plates each week. I asked him how much my sanity was worth, and have never heard another word on the issue. It actually isn’t more than we would spend on the water to wash them, I don’t think.

After lunch, my vitamins, and a cup of coffee (I AM the mom of 9 children after all. I NEED my coffee!), the apples were cooked. So I put them in my Bosch mixer to make them smooth. If you like chunky applesauce you could skip this section. When they were cool I put them in quart bags. This is the size of the jars we would buy. I got 7 quarts for the $9 of apples. And there is no extra sugar or anything.

We were also on our last loaf of bread, so I washed the Bosch and started the Nutrimill and got going on the a batch of bread.

HOMEMADE WHOLE WHEAT BREAD
6 c. hot tap water
2/3 c. sugar (or honey, but we don’t have any right now)
2/3 c. oil
3 T. yeast
2 T. salt
8 c. flour

Mix for about 30 seconds, and leave alone for about 15 minutes. It will rise. This makes sure the yeast is good before you commit any more time to it, and counts as the first rising of the bread.

Turn on mixer again and start adding flour. Add about 10 more cups until it cleans the sides and is still a little sticky. Keep the mixer going for 7 minutes.

Shape into 6 loaves and put in pans. After they rise cook at 350*. (I made 2 loaves into cinnamon bread for the morning by rolling them out in a square and adding cinnamon sugar, then rolling them back up.)

By now, I was in a rush to get dinner together so Eric could get out of the house on time. I had the 2 lbs. beans from last night which I made into taco flavored beans by adding chili, onion, garlic, salt, and paprika to taste. We had tomatoes out of the garden, and leftover lettuce from yesterday. We shredded two blocks of cheese, opened up a can of salsa from the garden, and heated up 3 boxes of 18 taco shells. Total cost was about $7 for all 10 of us to eat.

Phew! It was such a busy day! Tomorrow we need to finish the apples, but I am not sure if we need to really do anything else except feed us all. So it should be an easier day!

Don’t forget to stop by Carri’s blog, The Peterson Clan. Thanks for opening your kitchen to us all this week Carri!

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