Crap I Made This Weekend

Ok, so there aren't many pictures to this post, but that is because I was bound and determined to be so freaking productive this weekend even I wouldn't believe. So, there was no time for silly things like pictures. And I forgot to take them.

I thought Saturday morning would be a good time to get things done for the coming week. My plan was to cook the ground beef for the chili on Sunday, make soup for my lunches for the week, make a chicken and noodle casserole to freeze for later in the week, and make a ham and broccoli casserole for later as well. All in all I give myself a B for this effort.

Brown ground beef-done. Nothing exciting to report here. I browned ground beef, what more can I say.

Make the chicken and noodles-done. Man, I always forget that if I make the full bag of noodles it is going to be a BIG batch of chicken and noodles. But the good thing is I have a big pan and a smaller pan in the freezer. My tip of the day, when making chicken and noodles put the frozen peas in the bottom of the colander you will use to drain the noodles. Then when you pour the boiling water and hot noodles over the peas, they thaw. It works great. If you use fresh peas you are probably and overachiever.

Make the ham and broccoli-not done. I didn't have enough cream of chicken soup. And while I fully intend to try to make my own cream of whatever soup, that was not the day. So, I figured I would make it Sunday. Then on Sunday I thought, well I'll just make it Monday because it would get eaten on Tuesday and can you make something Sunday and eat it on Tuesday? Then last night I talked with my good friend on the phone for a long time and didn't get the casserole made. Tonight while I'm at wine club the husband and kids are having ham, broccoli, and cheesey shells for dinner. Works for them, works for me, we are all good.

Make the soup for lunch-pretty much done, finished on Sunday. Ok, the soup I was going to make was this recipe found of course via Pinterest http://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/slow-cooker-beef-and-barley-soup/1280e771-8e0c-4ae9-94a3-445d2a045438/ Doesn't it look good?

So, here is what I did different. I only used 1 pound of meat because I wanted to cut some of the calories. I cut 1 lb of stew meat into small pieces. Then when I went to get the frozen veggies I decided just to get a bag of frozen peas, carrots, green beans, and corn. Then I didn't have to deal with peeling carrots.

Well, things didn't really turn out. First, I overcooked the barley. I kind of forgot that I had it on when we went to my in-laws for dinner and didn't remember until before bed. The soup wasn't really a soup anymore it was as stew. Ok, not a problem. I went to bed and set my alarm so I could get up in an hour or so to put the somewhat cooled soup in the refrigerator. The next day I needed to add the veggies so I just thawed the veggies and stirred them in.

This is what it looked like:

Not pretty, and actually kind of slimy because of the overcooked barley. But the good news is that it made a lot Each container has about 3 cups of stew in it. That is way too much for one serving, that is a good two servings.

The soup was ok, but really bland. It needed salt. Also, the veggies should have been cooked with the meat and whatnot. Next time I'll make it according to the recipe (well, I still won't brown the beef first, might as well be honest) and have some extra beef broth on hand. Some of my lack of salt could be because I used the reduced sodium beef broth.

The only other thing I made was the start of a prayer shawl for my church group. I have a big chunk of it done and will show you it when it is done.