What I've been doing

We have a friend from Florida that is staying with us for awhile. He is retiring from the military and took a job here so is staying with us while they wait for their home to sell. He has been here two weeks and it has been good to hold me accountable to cook supper. I don't feel I can just say I am tired and go get hamburgers or pizza. I also have tried to stretch our food budget to feed an additional person and have been more careful to plan and use leftovers and stuff.

I bought 2 large packages of chicken legs and 2 large packages of split breasts. I seasoned the legs with a spice blend of onion and garlic that I picked up free awhile back. I didn't feel like taking the skin off all the meat so after that one package I just boiled up the breasts and second package of legs and put up the meat. I got about 8 containers of broth. Since I am eating gluten free I can no longer use the chicken bouillon cubes or powder so I have to be careful to make my own broth and freeze or can.

I used one package of the meat I put up to make a gluten free tortilla casserole. It was 2 cans of Rotel tomato mixed with taco seasoning. I layered corn tortillas, the chicken/Rotel mixture, cheddar and mozzarella.

Today I am making red beans and rice. I have put the recipe on here a couple of times. I can't wait until supper! I need to make some sweet cornbread muffins to go with it.

I still have not made up a lot of items with my flour. I bought a lot of 5# flour at Walmart for $1.28 lb and froze it. It needs to be used so that I can buy a bunch of fresh flour. I have been planning on making up biscuits, pancakes, waffles, french bread, rolls, cinnamon rolls, peanut butter cookies (to use the last of the jar of Peter Pan peanut butter the kids won't eat). I made some of these items but still have about 30 lbs of flour left.

I finally used the last two boxes of Betty Crocker au gratin potatoes. I got these free or very cheap with coupons and I can't have them because they have gluten and we don't like them very much. Still working on about 8 cans of canned milk that are close to expiration. I used one for the milk in the boxed potatoe mix last night. I was going to use the rest when I made up biscuits and pancakes.

My husband and I looked at the laundry room last night and he is planning on putting me in some shelves for food. I have a long rod for hanging clothes and we decided to add a double rod to use more vertical space. That would give me enough room to the right of that for him to make some shelves. I want some cereal box heighth and then a lot of canning jar heighth. I would like to leave room on the floor for gamma sealed buckets of grains.

My second child graduates and starts college this fall. We somehow need to get a car for him to drive. He can't take my car every day. We have been working around everything for two years and it is just getting too tough. We had the third car as a "family" car but my daughter was going to college and working so it just didn't work out for him to ever use it. Our kids pay for their own college above what scholorships cover. My son has been offered a partial scholorship to the university in town. So, he will be working to pay tuition above that. In the midst of trying to save and put up money we know this is something we need to try to help with. The good part is that today is annual reviews where my husband works so we find out what his raise will be. He was offered another job last fall so this company matched that and his boss said that at annual review they would give him a cash bonus- they gave him a very good raise to match the other offer so could not go any higher at that time. Hopefully the bonus will buy a very old car???? I don't know, I don't expect much, and we don't know what to expect.