March 26 was National Spinach Day. It was also Make Up Your Own Holiday Day and Jeremy wanted to make up the holiday, I Don't Have To Go In To Work Day, but it didn't work. Poor guy.
But we did celebrate Spinach Day. To go along with Spinach and salad dressing (our kids are into simple salads- spinach with or without dressing, lettuce with or without dressing), I made Creamy Garlic Pork Chops, Classic Mashed Potatoes (both from "A Season of Family Meal Plans" volume 1), and applesauce.
I'll tell you my true opinion. Pork chops were yummy. Mashed potatoes weren't as good. They were easy but I need to do a better job at seasoning them. More garlic, that's what we need. And the spinach wasn't part of the meal plan, but it was a good side dish and fit the holiday.
Speaking of spinach, the next day we had spinach again with our dinner, this time with more than just dressing. We had Best Ever Fettuccine Alfredo (with spaghetti instead of fettucine) and Butter Lettuce Salad (with spinach instead of butter lettuce). We also had some homemade wheat bread to go along with it.
I'll tell you my true opinion. I definitely did some shelf cooking with the alfredo sauce recipe. I combined cream, half and half, and powdered milk with water. Used up the rest of the cream that we had in the fridge and the rest of a container of half and half we had in the fridge. We still have another unopened container of half and half that Jr. Jr. brought home from a youth activity where they were making ice cream, so no hurry on that. Anyway, the alfredo sauce was good. I still prefer the alfredo sauce we usually make and will probably stick to that one, but it's okay to try new things, especially when you have ingredients you need to use up. The recipe I usually use is Guiltless Alfredo Sauce from ourbestbites.com and most of us in the family love it. O.K. About the salad. It was good. The green olives in it were a pleasant surprise for some people. Honestly, I got myself a bowl of the olives to munch on while I was making dinner. I like green olives. It was a good salad but not craveworthy.
As far as the homemade bread goes, we did the traditional tear into one loaf to snack on and slice the others after they've cooled. I know we're not the only family that does that. Jet used to tear into all the loaves. A little bit of this loaf. A little bit of this one. Thinking about that makes me laugh. So many fun memories with this family.
On a different note, March 27 was Manatee Appreciation Day. I did sing, "Barbara Manatee" to celebrate. And thinking ahead when a picture of a manatee popped up on the laptop a few days before, I took a picture of it so I could look at it on the holiday. Celebrating in simple ways. Tee Hee.
It's a blessing to be able to celebrate what we do. We have friends in Haiti who are dealing with things that we don't even have to think about dealing with.
To take their children's minds off of what they are going through at this time, our friends set up Google Meets with people to take time to talk to the girls, read books, or whatever. Jeremy signed us up so we got to chat with them, show them silly Jet. Jeremy put together a presentation about animals and birds of Utah so they could learn about them and find out what birds Utah has in common with Haiti. Then he made a couple of balloon animals for them to see since that's what we do. I hope it helped. They seemed to enjoy it.
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