Making Food for the Week!

I like cooking on Sundays for the coming week. I use veggies I've pressure canned...

and ones I've frozen!

Next year, I'm going to pressure can chick peas, but for now I boil them up (after soaking them for 6-8 hours) and cook them before adding them into a dish.

Shown are:

• pumpkin soup

• collard greens with carrots and onion, slow cooked on low heat for a few hours, seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, hot chili flakes, and salt

• a tomato soup (or sauce, as you can put it over rice or noodles too!) made from my canned tomatoes, my garden frozen Swiss chard, chick peas, sauteed onions and seasoned with honey, salt, pepper, hot chili flakes, balsamic vinegar and a little red wine. It also simmers away on the stove for a few hours at the lowest setting.

In the first picture I also show a jar of pressure canned beets. There's really no preparation for that - just dump it in a saucepan, blend it up, and season with salt, pepper, and a little allspice. Easy and delicious!

This pretty much covers my lunches for the week!

Here they are fully cooked and ready to go in the fridge.

I also make a pumpkin bread (sometimes I add banana) every few weeks. Today I started with two cups of pureed pumpkin (that I pressure canned in the fall), an egg, a quarter cup sour cream, a quarter cup oil, half a cup brown sugar (give or take) and then added in about two cups of flour and 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and salt to taste (I like a spicy loaf so I put a few tsp of each in).

Here it is out of the oven! I cut it into slices and freeze to eat for a morning snack at work.

And that's it! I find I save a lot when I cook for the week, especially on Sundays when I have time, most importantly, but also when electricity is cheaper (every little bit helps I guess!:)

Hope you have a great week!