Holidays, Shelf Cooking, and Bonding Time

September 10 was Ants on a Log Day. We had fluffernutter sandwiches and ants on a log. See my blog post for September 14, 2020 for an explanation why we celebrate with fluffernutter sandwiches on that day. We didn't have any marshmallow fluff so we used real marshmallows. #shelftember

 

Other Shelftember foods we had near that time:

Start with a box pasta meal. Add cooked pasta, some extra seasonings, and cooked bacon from the freezer. It stretches a lot farther. That's shelf cooking!

 

Sometimes I forget that something as simple as beans and rice works for a quick lunch.

 

Homemade bread, spinach before it goes bad made into a salad, casserole from the freezer (tortellini casserole from A Season of Family Meal Plans), and a banana.

 

My husband has always been better at throwing things together to make a good meal. He knows how to do shelf cooking. He took my leftover black beans and some polish sausages and veggies and made some yummy yummy food. He's awesome.

September 11, we remembered.

September 12 was National Video Games Day. I had every intention of playing video games that day but by the end of the day I was too tired. Sigh.

It was also Hug and High Five Day and National Chocolate Milkshake Day. 

Jet helped me make cornbread muffins to go with our dinner of Sausage Veggie Skillet (with extra zucchini because it was cheaper than yellow squash) and rice-n-cheese (instead of orzo-n-cheese because we have rice, not orzo). Both those recipes came from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3, of course. Our chocolate milkshakes were yummy.

September 13 was the Anniversary of The Animaniacs premiere in 1993 so we listened to Animaniacs music. It was also Roald Dahl Day so I put on music from Wonka.

After after school snack of parfaits to celebrate International Chocolate Day and National Peanut Day (and quoting the movie Shrek about how ogres, onions, and parfaits all have layers), I let the kids have the kitchen for Kids Take Over the Kitchen Day and they made pizza. 

September 14 was Eat a Hoagie Day so I made hoagies/buns for people to use and it was National Parents Day Off but I really don't remember what Jeremy and I ended up doing, if anything. I did get a picture late at night of the moon and clouds.

September 15 was Double Cheeseburger Day and National Linguine Day. We had spaghetti with sauce (it had hamburger in it- well, ground turkey, tee hee) and two types of cheese (double cheese, tee hee). #shelftember

September 16 was Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day and National Play-Doh Day. I was complaining about not having time to make play doh and Jeremy pointed out that I played with dough in order to make cinnamon raisin bread which tasted so good by the way.

 

September 17 was Monte Cristo Day. Did you know there is a Count of Monte Cristo musical? I found out when I tried to get Alexa to play music from The Count of Monte Cristo while I was making food and it put on songs from a musical. Fun. I decided to do something new this year and made Monte Cristo Slider Sandwiches from sixsistersstuff.com

Yumm. I made more later to freeze so we could pull out sandwiches when we wanted them.

 

September 18 was National Cheeseburger Day. So we pulled hamburger out of the freezer (ground turkey) and made smothered beef burritos from... you guessed it... A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3.

Of course walks, snuggles, and other kinds of bonding have continued. I love my family.

My parents made a quick trip to Utah for my dad's 60th high school reunion. They stopped by to see Jet and me one day. I love my parents.

Parents Day Off

September 14 was National Parents Day Off. My sweetheart and I went on a date... to get gas in the van... and to go bowling. 

That was fun. I don't know that we'd ever gone bowling together before and it had been years since either of us had. 

This is me trying to ask the magic eight bowling ball if I'll knock down the last two pins.

 

And of course for this real date, I wore my Jurassic Park shirt.

I love spending time with my husband.

 

Since it was also National Eat a Hoagie Day, the kids made dinner since it was our day off. They made Chilly Pheesesteaks (because I can't pronounce Philly Cheesesteaks correctly) using some provolone cheese we had in the fridge and some canned roast beef from the pantry (and other seasonings, etc. that we have). I made homemade buns/hoagies the day before so they would have those to work with and we didn't have to buy hoagies. 

Dinner Club

Six Sisters' Stuff started a dinner club. All you have to do to join is eat dinner. Yep. You can do more than that but only if you want. They've been doing some contests. They wanted people to post to their Instagram stories about what they have for dinner. People can get ideas from those that Six Sisters repost and for me it's kind of motivation to have side dishes and decent food if I'm going to post about it. But hey, since I usually take pictures of food anyway because of using our celebrating in menu planning, it wasn't that much harder to put them in my Instagram stories.

I was posting fancy things like Instant Pot Swedish Meatballs and Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole (which Instagram autocorrected to "blue") with homemade French bread and Ritz Cracker Chicken Casserole (from Six Sisters' Stuff), then after leftovers night I got picked and won a gift card. Ha Ha Ha.

Six Sisters' Stuff have also had a few live meetings/videos on Instagram and that's been fun to participate in. I've been getting more ideas for recipes to try and it's a nice break in my day... something for me (I've been getting burned out lately. Sigh).

Their first Dinner Club meeting was on Friday, September 10, which is Swap Ideas Day. How appropriate. We were definitely swapping ideas for the club and dinner ideas. That's where I got the idea for the Ritz Cracker Chicken Casserole.

At the end of the day, the older members of our family swapped ideas about what to watch after the younger boys went to bed.

I didn't put it on my picture with Leftovers Night but I made hot cross buns for dessert that night because September 11 was Hot Cross Bun Day.

Anyway, here are other things I've been posting on my stories for #dinnerclub

 

September 12 was Videos Games Day. People took turns playing video games while the more ambitious of us worked on our parts for our at-home potluck. I made chicken noodle soup with a whole chicken like grandma used to make but I didn't follow her recipe for noodles. I used some of the nokedli Jeremy made to be eaten with the chicken paprikash. It was fun and I love that everyone contributed (even though we chose and prepared for Jet- water to drink). 

September 13 was Kids Take Over The Kitchen Day so I told the kids they were in charge of dinner that night- not fend for yourselves but making dinner for the family. Nichole stepped up. Yay, Nichole.

Lucky had fun with the holiday, too. He wouldn't let me in the kitchen and put up a barricade with a sign, "The kids have taken over the kitchen!!!! Mwa ha ha haaa!!!" Jr. worked on dishes.

I got to relax and have some snuggles with a couple of my kids then later since it was International Chocolate Day and National Peanut Day, we all had Whatchamacallit candy bars. Mmmm.

September 14 was Eat a Hoagie Day. It was also Ants on a Log Day. I had plans to make ants on a log but the celery wasn't any good so we grabbed some fries out of the freezer instead.

September 15 was Double Cheeseburger Day. I made hamburger buns that turned out pretty small so I made hamburger patties to match. Hey, less meat that way when you're doubling up patties. It was also Linguine Day so I used The Food Nanny's recipe for Linguine with Butter and Parmesan Cheese.

September 16 was Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day. I adapted a recipe from The Food Nanny and Jet helped me make the cinnamon raisin bread. He helped out and it wore him out.

The Chicken Tikka Masala recipe was another one from Six Sisters' Stuff. It was so good. I was going to make other Indian foods to go with it but I ran out of time so I threw some other sides together. It worked.

On September 17 Nichole and I discussed "The Count of Monte Cristo" while I made Monte Cristo Sandwiches (recipe from The Food Nanny) on Monte Cristo Day. I love finding reasons (and ways) to celebrate.

 

The posting did slow down a bit after the contests for posting on stories ended but the Six Sisters are still encouraging people to share what they're having for dinner so I still do from time to time. And Dinner Club is still going on.