Eating again...?

...no wonder you're fat!

Years ago we read of a device you could get to put in your fridge that would spew these words at you when you opened the door. We thought it was so funny. It's one of those things that just sticks in one's memory and we repeated it many times. (Maybe that's why it stuck?)

Anyway, we're eating again. And again. And again.

Here's this week's (Dec 26- Jan 1) menu plan. Breakfast and main meal. The rest of the time it's leftovers.

Breakfast	Dinner
Scrambled eggs & sausage Grits Yogurt & fruit	Chili soup Cornbread Layered coleslaw
Omelet roll Muffins	Rice with Alfredo sauce Lettuce salad Baked apples
Spinach quiche Barley	Vegetable soup Italian dinner rolls Waldorf salad
Waffles Gravy Peaches	Sheet pan dinner
Granola Yogurt	Honduras meal
Fried potatoes and eggs Yogurt & fruit	Rice and beans Cranberry salad
Creamed eggs Yogurt & fruit	Potato soup Pepperoni rolls Veggies & dip

I love how the veggies and meat are so colorful in the mix for a sheet pan meal.

I've once again linked a number of the recipes for your convenience.

You notice we have barley for breakfast? I cook pearl barley and then the next morning I fry some diced apples in butter and maple syrup, stir in the cooked barley and heat it through. It's a favorite here. Eat it with milk as a cereal.

The rice with Alfredo sauce was leftover rice and chicken. I made a plain Alfredo sauce (no meat added), stirred in leftover ham broth gravy, and put it atop the rice and chicken. Oh, so yummy!

The Honduras meal is rice and chicken, beans, cabbage salad, Central American salsa, sour cream and tortillas.

I asked my sister if these menus are helpful to her at all? Give her any ideas? She said they just make her tired. She doesn't think she could cook that much. 

I'll admit it is tiring. 

Blessings to you in the new year! God bless you, go with Jesus.

Just Whatever

We brought the potted plants indoors this fall before they froze. I had started marigolds from seed and that tall one grew and grew all summer but never bloomed until it was inside! 

It was appalling how iced up and dirty the freezers were. We cleaned them out before we butchered the steer. How wonderful to once again have clean freezers, though they are half empty. 

We didn't have a fruitful year in the garden. Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in Lancaster, PA where the Amish raise food that one can buy for reasonable prices.

Christopher working to get the ice off the sides.

Christopher decided one day he wanted to refinish this little table. He promptly did just that.

 Reference the picture below for the former appearance.

On December 17 my sister, her daughters and I spent the afternoon at Mama's place, in honor of her birthday (the 18th). We had a tea party and played a game together. Poor photo, I know. I'm not a pro at sellfies.

The cute nephew who came along, sitting in a cute little rocking chair.

The same little party got together for my birthday on the 10th. We had a tea party and a sugar free, gluten free, yummy cake! Not something I get very often. And Verina gave me an Instant Pot! That is also not something I get very often. Ha ha. I'm having fun learning to use it.

Austin gave me this nice, big mug for my birthday. The I in HIS is an arrow pointing up, to indicate the mind of God. Okay, you want to know how old I am? 46. (I just used the calculator to make sure that's correct!)

Christopher carved a heart out of a cedar shake and put it in the fire. See how it glows in there?

A contradictory church sign we saw during one of our recent trips.

Please come.....worship with us

This is hard to see, but in the top photo the house windows glow with the sunrise. A few minutes later they're dark (bottom photo). 

Okay, that was a bunch of random stuff. None of it worthy of a post of it's own, so there! 😀

Vehicle Maintenance

Today is vehicle day here at the Lapps.

Austin cleaned the interior of the car and is taking time to fix the basketball hoop.

Christopher washes the van. 

He's already shined up Grandpa's car.

Thomas, Matthew and Melvin work on the black Ford. (Melvin has a bite of apple in his mouth.)

Stephen repainted the dump trailer this week.

Now he's unloading equipment from his truck of a car. He had hoses, power washer and paint sprayer in there. Who knows what else.

Too many vehicles around here and then sometimes there are none here for me to drive!

Beef

For the first time in my life I was the one in charge of getting a steer to the butcher to be slaughtered and hung, back home again and in the freezer. I learned some lessons along the way.

(As a girl at home I remember doing our own butchering, from start to finish. We had a cow spread out on the table once when a neighbor lady stopped by. She came in and exclaimed, "Holy cow!" Then, "Oh, it IS a cow!")

We shared our steer with another church family and they came to help butcher. I was amazed to be done cutting, grinding and packaging by around noon. 

Photo credits- Christopher Lapp

We were all pretty much amateurs in this butchering thing. I think every one of us cut one or two of our own fingers or someone else's in the process. We emptied a box of BandAids. (Not a very large box.)

This was the fattiest beef I ever remember working on. The family that was helping us said the deer they did this year were also very fatty. We wondered if it's an indication of what the winter will be like?

Tubs of fat. Looks rather red. It was so intertwined in the meat, it was hard to cut off.

Praise the Lord for a nice amount of meat in the freezer! I know it won't last very long but when it's gone the Lord will provide more! He is faithful.

That's about 11 deep so approximately 66 bags with a lb + of meat in each.
 Plus a number of roasts on the side.

Transformed

Melvin's handiwork.

This Week's Menu

Freezer meal

I wrote this on Thursday. Now I'm editing it on Monday.

This week's menu begins on Wednesday. 

Friday evening is full of question marks. The young folk have a Christmas banquet. I thought maybe the rest of us could go somewhere to eat also. If Thomas feels so inclined after another long day of work. We used gift cards to eat at Domino's pizza. This Mama ate BBQ'd wings and garden salad while the others ate pizza. 

On Saturday we are butchering our steer with another family. Some more meat for the freezer. Yes!! More about this later.

On Sunday we are the host family which means we are responsible to make sure any visitors at church have a place to go for lunch. Instead of potatoes and burger we ate rice and chicken. Also some leftover chicken and dressing that Stephen brought home from Penn Valley. And in place of pie I made cobblers.

Tuesday (the last day on the menu) is Christmas day. I didn't think about that when I was planning the menu. It may need to be revamped. We'll have something with potatoes and burger for lunch and switch the Mon & Tues evening menus. 

All meals written with color and a line underneath are linked to either the recipe I use or a similar one. 

For the enchiladas I use corn tortillas.

Oh my! It's almost time for another menu. Tell me how you keep up with this monumental task. If I wasn't so frugal I would purchase menu plans from Eat at Home. I did that for one month and we really liked it!

Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Breakfast enchiladas Yogurt & fruit salad	Leftovers	Honey/Rosemary chicken Rice Lettuce salad Applesauce & cottage cheese
Scrambled eggs Bacon Yogurt & fruit salad Cereal	Leftovers	Taco soup Lettuce salad
Scrambled eggs Biscuits Tomato gravy	Leftovers	???
Overnight apple-stuffed French toast	Lebanese chicken stew Cornbread Applesauce & cottage cheese	Pizza Lettuce salad
Baked oatmeal	Potato/hamburger casserole Mixed veggies Lettuce salad Apple pie	Black bean dip Apples Popcorn
Pancakes Sausage gravy PB & syrup		Chicken tortilla soup Spinach salad
Potato/meat quiche		Beans Cornbread Coleslaw

Last Week's Menu

	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Wednesday	Leftovers	Vegetable soup Cheese Apples	Potato & ham casserole Green beans Lettuce salad
Thursday	Scrambled eggs & sausage Yogurt GrapeNuts	Tomato soup w/ Hot dogs and pinto beans Cheese Oranges Cookies & milk	Beef stew Spinach salad Chunky applesauce
Friday	Breakfast burritos Oranges Yogurt	Leftovers Applesauce & cottage cheese Apples & PB Cookies & milk	Mashed potatoes Sauer Kraut Sausage Waldorf salad
Saturday	Pancakes Sausage gravy P.B. & syrup	Chicken salad sandwiches Apple cake Oranges	Chicken “enchilada” casserole Lettuce, tomato, etc
Sunday	Granola Yogurt	Rice and chicken Coleslaw Green beans Chocolates & biscotti	Egg, sausage & cheese biscuits
Monday	Leftovers  Fruit & yogurt		Turkey, sausage, potato dish Caesar salad
Tuesday	Egg sandwiches Yogurt & fruit salad		Ham Peas & carrots Potato salad

This is the basic menu plan for the week past. If you like to see what we're eating. Or maybe you need ideas. 

We had visitors for Sunday lunch so for dessert I served some chocolates and biscotti that we had been gifted. 

The potato and ham casserole was also a gift -leftover from a church potluck.

The chicken "enchilada" casserole was made with rice instead of tortillas. 

My sister brought the salad Monday evening because we were together for my mother's 70th birthday. We had the big party for her in October. Her birthday was actually Tuesday the 18th.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Change of Occupation

Over the last year Thomas has helped an overhead doors contractor a lot. This contractor asked him if he would like to buy the business. The contractor was moving away from the area and his business covered three states- West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia.

It was a job that suited Thomas well. Repetitious work. Not a lot of time to estimate a job. Not a lot of time running after supplies. A lot less headache. But the cost of the business was prohibitive. We already had enough debt and the bank wouldn't give him the loan he needed. So he had to give it up. 

He continued helping the contractor occasionally with large jobs. After a few months the contractor said he has no one to buy the business so he'll either have to just quit and walk away or give it away. Was this from the Lord? 

Thomas chose to believe that it was and took over the door business. Now he is busier than he has ever been. The boys are able to help him and there's no shortage of work. No waiting on supplies. Except when the company sends the wrong thing. Like a 10 ft panel for a 14 ft door.

He has a few construction jobs left on his plate that have been driving him crazy. He can hardly wait to finish those up and get them off his mind. But we are grateful to have plenty of work that can be done even in rainy weather.

A lot of his jobs are just "handed to him" by a company that sells to a pole building company. These make up the majority of his work. They just call him, tell him when the doors need to be installed and ship the doors to the shop. How easy is that?

One problem we face is not owning a place to put the doors until they are installed. We are currently using the previous owner's shop but if he sells it, we're "up the creek". You can join us in prayer about that.

This job was a beast. In the top photo you can see mud. They said it was awful to work in. Mud sucking at your feet at every step.The doors were huge.

Another time they went, the concrete was poured, making it easier to work. Interestingly, the last name of the client was Boggs. The guys referred to this one as the Mud Bog job.

Praise the Lord for His goodness and His wonderful works to the children of men. Psalm 107:31