Christian Homekeeping

I haven't been taking food pics all of the time but I did for a few new meals we've recently made and I really want to get back to sharing food pics and recipes more often:

Southwest Turkey Skillet

Sheet Pan Jambalaya 

You may remember that a tumor was found on my optic nerve in my eye/brain and I started a regime of 12 servings of vegetables and fruit and the tumor was smaller on the next scan.  Well, I haven't been as diligent with my veg/fruit servings and I'm hoping the scan this week doesn't show a growth.  It's hard to eat that many vegetables and fruits every day!  Here's some pics of how I've been getting the servings in:

We've tried a lot of new recipes and liked most of them!  Here are a few of the new recipes that I remembered to take pictures of and then some oldies but goodies.

Sweet and Sour Meatballs - we usually have this on basmati white rice with a side of broccoli and it is one of my new favorite meals!

We all liked these Greek pitas with falafel and I made the tzatziki sauce and added some PB in it and water to make it more of a sauce.

I grew up on sauerkraut and weenies and thought maybe my son will like it as he's never had it, so I made some with kielbasa.  Well, he said it was the worst thing he's ever tasted in his life LOL! 

These White Chicken Enchiladas were so delicious!!  Definitely a keeper for us and I used olive oil in place of a lot of the butter and next time I'm going to use whole wheat tortillas to add some fiber.

Salmon Cakes I've shared before but of course they are great, we had them with home fries.

We've made a few more of the new recipes I picked to try for April and here are our reviews for each of them.

- Smoked Sausage Rice Skillet - we didn't care for this.  It was edible but just not a favorite, so I'm not even linking to it.

- Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit topping - absolutely delicious!  Definitely a keeper when we're in the mood for comfort food.  I cut the butter way down, it just doesn't need that much butter in my opinion as the recipe calls for.  I didn't use butter to drizzle on the top of the biscuit topping, I just sprayed them with olive oil.

I set out to cut our grocery budget in half from $800 down to $400 for the month of April.  I prayed and felt the Lord giving me wisdom and spent several hours and came up with a list of dinner meals that fit our needs and then made our grocery list and planned out the other meals and went grocery shopping.  I was able to get what we needed for the month for $237 with $163 leftover for our weekly trips for bread, milk and produce saving $400!

I had 26 meals to plan out because I don't cook on Sunday, it is fend-for-yourself day and usually leftovers, hot dogs, boxed mac/cheese, etc.  I planned out 5 chicken meals, 5 bean meals, 5 beef or pork meals, 4 pizza meals, 3 fish meals and 3 turkey meals.  Here is the list of dinner meals with links to the recipe (some of these are new to us and we haven't tried them yet):

• Homemade pizza - The sauce recipe is in the post at the end and the pizza crust recipe is in the comments.
• Smoked Sausage Rice Skillet
• Creamy White Chicken Chili
• Turkey Meatball Spaghetti
• Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo - FYI: website name has cursing
• Tuna Mac and Cheese with broccoli
• White Chicken Enchiladas
• Beef and Bean Burritos
• One Pan Sour Cream Enchilada Skillet
• Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping
• Creamy Turkey Spinach Curry
• Salmon Cakes and home fries
• Black Bean Burrito Casserole
• Cheeseburger Helper
• Pasta Fagioli and Baguette bread
• Cheesy Sausage Pasta
• Falafel Burgers and home fries
• Mexican Casserole
• Turkey meatloaf sandwiches and veggies
• Tuna Potato Bake
• Southwest Mac and Cheese
• Creamy Sausage and Potatoes

I've shared my white bread recipe on my blog before that is very simple and easy.  Recently, I purchased a NutriMill to grind wheat berries and make my own freshly-milled wheat flour.  I was wondering how would it work in my recipe using hard white wheat as opposed to store-bought white flour.  WOW!  I'm hooked because not only did it work great with my recipe, it was way better than even my white bread!  However, it did take more flour for some reason until it licked the sides of the bowl in my Bosch mixer, so I think I used about 7 cups of the freshly-milled flour (4 1/4 cups wheat berries), whereas I normally just need 6 cups of the store-bought white flour.  I'm thinking that's because the store-bought is more compressed and my freshly-milled flour was just milled and fluffy and I sifted it some too with a whisk beforehand.  It also rose way faster than my bread usually takes, and I had to cook it quickly before it got enormous.  I'm guessing that's because of the freshness of the just-milled flour because my yeast wasn't that fresh.

Not a lot of recipes to share this week because we were on a trip, but I do have a few things.  I made Sesame Honey Chicken over rice and it was a keeper for sure!

Here are several meals that I made recently that all take just one pound (or less with the salmon and tuna) of meat to feed a family of 4, as do most of the meals I cook.  We usually add in a side and/or salad, breads (homemade biscuit, muffins or other bread) and dessert.

I made some of our favorite Salmon Cakes that I had forgotten about that we used to make a lot in Washington.  I also made an old recipe of tartar sauce that I found and I liked it better than the one I had been making.  We also had some roasted vegetables alongside them.  I don't know where this recipe for Salmon Cakes came from, and I can't find it anywhere online, so I'm sharing it, along with the tartar sauce recipe, in a PDF below.

We've had lots of rain, as it is April, and something I guess we have to endure in order to bring forth the beauty of spring in all its splendor and May flowers.  We've also had some absolutely perfect sunny days, which causes me to throw school to the side and embrace the day!

Spring has sprung!  Our Bradford Pear tree is in full bloom almost and the daffodils of course had already been but they're starting to say their goodbyes.

We got our first dog ever as a family, a beautiful Alaskan Husky, the only dog I've ever liked, but it didn't last long:

My daughter turned 18 and I'm still having a hard time with that lol.  My baby is an adult!  What a wonderful woman of God she has become and that is my greatest joy.  I found this awesome birthday kit that came with everything to decorate for cheap and she loved it!  I, of course, crowned her an adult!

I've really been enjoying these new cookbooks and so far, everything I've made from them has been excellent!

I made their orange chicken, which came from the Next Generation book and it is a keeper for sure!

I know this one doesn't look good necessarily but it was absolutely delicious and the whole family loved it!  It was Chickpea potato stew:

They called for a lot of Instant Pot accessory pans and ramekins that I didn't have but thankfully I found them on Amazon:

I made my first cake in the Instant Pot with the Coconut Bundt Cake recipe and it was good but I wish I had made the strawberry sauce to go on top of it instead of the icing.

I made the World's Easiest Shepherd's Pie made with ground turkey and it was soooo good!  I actually made 2 Instant Pots of this so my husband had leftovers for work.  Everyone was scraping their dish to get every bite, so good!

I made the Broccoli, Sausage and Cheese soup and it tasted good but didn't have enough in it for me, I guess I'm more a stew girl than a soup!

This last recipe, Curried Tuna Casserole, was from the Kroger coupon magazine they send out that has recipes in it.  It was good but needed more salt.