food and freezers and gratitude lists

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     What's everyone making for dinner tonight?  Over here it's sausage and butternut squash enchiladas and some plain ole taco meat for the littler kids who are super picky.  Thank goodness Roger and Jeremiah and sometimes Josiah will eat just about anything I prepare.  I'm a meal planner.  I try to plan for 4-5 meals a week and shop accordingly so that if we are home that many evenings, there is a well-balanced meal ready to serve.  I actually enjoy meal-planning a lot.  I don't even mind buying groceries....

    Recently I took inventory of my freezers.  We have 2 fridges with a freezer, and then one deep freeze.  That sounds really extravagant except the one freezer is not trust-worthy so it can only contain ice packs and frozen pizza and popcycles in case it doesn't seal properly.  The other small one is in our kitchen and has mostly waffles and ice cream and a few more ice packs because we tend to get injured.....often.  Have I mentioned Roger's post-covid sprained ankle????

    In the big, main, hold-all-the-valuable meat and garden goodness freezer, I wanted to take inventory because, alas, winter is finally heading out.  Spring is coming and with it will be the tilling of the garden, planting of all things colorful and yummy that I can grow in the midwest.....and what we don't eat fresh will be frozen because I am not of the "canning" generation or skill set.  There was one bag of shredded zucchini and one bag of butternut squash. There was one frozen jar of strawberry jam left from the strawberry patch we visited last year on 4th of July.....and some other meats and frozen hash browns, etc.  I decided to use the squash today for the enchiladas.  Upping the nutrition game and the satisfaction counts mid-March don't you agree?  The zucchini will go into muffins soon because my people really like them...and the jam will go with peanut butter on toast because that's what we do here.  I may even have an opportunity to defrost and clean out this freezer before we start to stuff it full again.....who knows!

    I have been prompted over and over to find the "3 things per day" to be grateful for.  Even my pilates instructor Robin, who I have never met but who I pay $24/month to encourage me and post my workouts every month (starting March 1) urged me to bring to mind 3 things I am grateful for today.  My Journey course missions, Heart for the Nations, sermon today also prompted a list of blessings....and I provided the list to both of them, and now here is one, just for my journaling space, my blog, my reflective partner and friend.....and any of you who clicked the link and are reading along...

I am very grateful for:  1.  garden fresh then frozen butternut squash.  2.  Italian sausage.  3.  Cheese.  and then some more cheese on the salad maybe....and then just because it snowed today and the kids stayed home and I didn't get as much work done as I hoped to do.....nachos with cheese.  All the cheese.  


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