Heather's Cooking Ventures

 Now, Don't go running out to buy a cookbook...

And make sure you aren't hungry, or this post will KILL you...




I can tell you some...interesting...stories about our diet this year, haha! A couple of them were FLOPS, and then some actually tasted awesome, but, the kids didn't think so. Rather than starve my children, I opted to let some things go, and only kept *some* of my healthy stuff in the menu. But it was a fun and wild ride while it lasted! Wanna glimpse? Here we go!

 These are Whole Wheat/Oat flour pancakes! They were not as dense as I thought they would be! We were getting 5lb bags of "Montana Wheat", which is one of the few wheat producers in the USA that still don't use genetically modified seeds. GMO is something evil we tried to avoid...but, alas, in many instances, it doubled our food budget on products, AND gas trying to find stores that carried the specific items we needed. We found a few! And Yoders was the place that carried our wheat ♥

This was a typical meal that I would make. Lots of it was straigh out of our garden! Butternut Squash & Carrot soup (in the mug), Sauted zucchini, and green beans!

 I LOVE this photo!
What a perfect pasta fan! ♥

Our own Grassfed beef, with yellow squash and broccoli from our garden ♥
I did cheat though, and used teriyaki sauce :) We had it served over white rice.

 This was our beautiful garden overflow! I had so much zucchini and yellow squash, I was giving it away left and right to friends and family, AND canning, freezing, and dehydrating it! We didn't get that many pickling cucumbers, mostly because the boys were eating off the vines, lol...


And Speaking of Zucchini...

Here is us, making our own recipe of zucchini bread! I made a lot of substitutes, but it came out AMAZING!

Jason LOVES baking! He helped me with this venture...he was the mixer boy!


 His job was to put in ALL the grated zucchini from the board, and mix the dry and wet ingredients together...

All Done!!! Delicious.....Mmmmmm!!!

 Don't worry, we didn't let our favorites go! We just substituted awesome things for our...un-awesome? things...lol ;) Whole white wheat, amish butter with high butterfat content (from grassfed cows..), raw milk, and tuna withOUT any soy in it :) Yep, they put soy in your tuna now...don't believe that garbage about it being canned in water. Unless you pay 3x the amount for GOOD tuna, you're getting tuna in soy broth. Lovely! :/

 This was an AMAZING Meal!
So, I cooked the cube steaks on my George Foreman grill, and then used cream of mushroom sauce for the gravy.

The yellow squash was cooked to a nice mash, in salt and butter...and then we had rice, with the gravy on it too

(Yes, we still used soysauce :GAH!!: Find that a little ironic due to my soy fit above with the tuna? Yeah well....at least soysauce is ON the label....I just get mad when they do it to trick you :) )



 And the good O'l faithful Chicken Adobo ♥ LOVE! 

 Want instructions on how to make your own shredded chicken for ANY use, anytime? YAY!
First, take that pack of chicken out of your fridge, and after lining your cookie sheet with voil, place all your chicken breasts (or any boneless chicken meat...) on, and bake at 375* until you slice the chicken, and the juices run clear. I always season mine VERY well, with Salt, Pepper, Onion Powder, and Garlic Powder. These are my FAVORITE spices (thanks mom and daddy!), and I rarely cook any meat or sauce without them :)

Blend it up!




Stuff in tubs!

Freeze ♥

    















Pull just one container out per meal...we used one tub for THIS delicious meal! Homemade chicken noodle soup!!! ♥

 And YES...it was a definite hit with ALL of the kids! :)

Toss some crackers in, to thicken it up for the little ones, if you want to...

 Chicken pot pie? Beef pot pie? Sure! Just make a drop-biscuit recipe doubled, thicken up any leftover chicken soups or beef stews, place in pie dish, dollop the batter on top, and bake it to perfection! These two pies were DELICIOUS! The beef pie was actually leftover roast beef from the crockpot the night before, and the chicken one, I made this night, on the stove (fry chicken pieces and veggies in butter, in a pot. Add equal amounts of flour as you did butter, then slowly pour in water or milk, and stir while boiling, to make a gravy sauce. Cook veggies and chicken in gravy on low).

And then here we have my homemade split pea soup :) We get our all natural sausage from a local pig farmer, so I just toss some sausage in with the peas while they cook down for a nice long while. The sausage gives it SUCH a wonderful flavor!!

Watermelon from Aunt Janice's garden! Micah planted the vines, and let them get nice and GINORMOUS! LOL!

OOH! And this is now a favorite here at the Hawkins household!

Tuna cakes! We went back and forth from tuna to salmon, and both are delicious.









Anyhow, like I said, it was all a nice little phase, but, lest my children starve while I insist on them eating my eggplant parmesan, I resolved to make more child-friendly meals again.

 And for a grande finale, here is something awesome I tried this summer, with AWESOME results! Put some apple cider vinegar in a bowl or dish (glass), and put plastic wrap over the top Make SURE it seals good on the edges. Take a fork, and poke holes in the top. These holes are big enough for fruit flies to crawl in, but the somehow don't crawl back out, and definitely can't fly out...so they get trapped and die! Voila!