Turkey/Black Bean Sloppy Joe's

These were very good! My family members are not huge fans of sloppy joe's to begin with, but these were very tasty the first night, and even better at lunch the next day. I got the original recipe from Crystal at the Family Homestead, and then switched out turkey for ground beef.

Turkey/Black Bean Sloppy Joe's

1 lb hamburger (I used ground turkey)
4 to 5 cups cooked beans (I used black, and I only used about 2-3 cups)
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 green or red pepper, chopped
1 1/2 cups ketchup
2 T worcestershire sauce
1 6oz can tomato paste
3/4 cup water
2 to 3 T apple cider vinegar, to taste (I didn't have any so left this out)
3 T sucanat or sugar
1 tsp dry mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Brown hamburger or turkey with onion and green or red pepper. Drain grease if needed. Add cooked beans.


Add remaining ingredients and let simmer long enough to get everything hot and blend flavors. She suggests serving on homemade whole wheat French Bread rolls, but I served on whole wheat hamburger buns from the grocery store! (I'm out of wheat berries and can't bake any bread or rolls until the ones I've ordered arrive).

Verdict: Well liked by all except Little Man, and he ate half of one with help. :-)


Next time I make sloppy joe's I'm going to try my friend Susan's recipe!

Moroccan Lentil Soup

This is a crockpot recipe from Stephanie at crockpot365. I will tell you right up front to click on the link and go to her blog and see the way it is supposed to look, because I had to substitute a few key ingredients and mine looks like some slightly soggy kidney beans and veggies. But I will also tell you right up front that man was this good! It had quite a kick to it, which my husband LOVED. He has lived all our married life with slightly toned down food, bless his heart, and this was a chance for his taste buds to really have a party! I was not aware that Moroccan food, like Thai food, is generally quite spicey hot (as opposed to temperature hot, a distinction our children like to make). The leftovers were even better the next day!

Morrocan Lentil Soup

1 cup dried lentils (I used red)
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed (I didn't have so left this out)
1 can pinto beans, drained and rinsed (I didn't have pinto so used kidney)
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 chopped carrots
28 oz can of diced tomatoes, with juice
4 cups vegetable broth
1 1/2 tsp garam masala (had no idea what this was so left it out)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 inch ginger, peeled and grated (I used 1 tsp ground ginger instead)

Use at least a 5 qt crockpot for this, it makes alot. Chop up all veggies and put them in the crockpot first. Drain and rinse beans, add them to the pot. Add spices and then broth and tomatoes. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours (I cooked on high for 6 hours). Soup tastes best the longer you cook it. Stephanie suggests taking an immersible blender and pulsing to blend the veggies and beans together before serving. I don't have an immersible blender so did not do this, and it was great without it.



Verdict: 4 of the children were forced to eat this under duress because of the spicyness. But because my husband loved it so much, I plan to make it again (with the right beans this time!). I will probably use a tad less cayenne pepper for the children's sake, and let my hubby add more to his bowl.

Working on New Recipes

Not thoroughly checking ingredients came back to bite me last night. I had been planning to make black bean/sweet potato burgers, but didn't realize until 4:00 P.M. that I had no quinoa which is also called for in the recipe. So that will have to wait until next week. Instead we had a new family favorite, taco style lentils and rice. When the children asked me what I was making for dinner and I told them, they all cheered! Gotta love that reaction!

I am currently researching more new recipes and will post them as I make them! Tomorrow we are having Moroccan Lentil Soup in the crockpot and Saturday we will be having Sloppy Joe's made mostly from beans. Some of you have emailed me with new recipes, which I really appreciate! If you have some wonderful family favorite that is also fairly inexpensive to make, I'd love to hear from you! Email me at gglc_pam@yahoo.com. It's my junk email but I promise to check it! Or leave it in the comments section so others can benefit also. (Of course if you know me in real life, feel free to use my "real" email addy, just don't want to post that here).

Poppyseed Chicken

This is a recipe I got years ago from another homeschool mom on the Sonlight curriculum forums. I don't remember her name (sorry whomever you are!) but my family loves this dish. It is the type of dish I am trying not to make too many of these days ~ you know, the type that calls for 2 cans of cream of ___ soup ~ but my brain is not quite to the point where I can make bean or veggie main dishes "easily" and sometimes I need a fall back. This is a great fall back! And it's a great way to use up leftover rice.

Poppyseed Chicken

Combine in medium bowl:

1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
2 cups (give or take) diced, cooked chicken
2 T poppyseeds


Meanwhile, layer cooked rice in bottom of casserole pan. Cover with chicken mixture. Top with bread crumbs or my favorite Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing mix (I should get a commission for mentioning them so often!) and drizzle one stick of melted butter on top of that. Bake at 350 for approximately 20 - 30 minutes or until heated through.


Delicious! And the leftovers, if there are any, make a great lunch for hubby. :-)

White Chocolate Cranberry Muffins

This is a recipe I found on Amy's the finer things in life blog. They looked so yummy and different than what I normally make, I just had to try them.

In a large bowl, mix:

1/3 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup orange juice

Stir thoroughly, then add:

1/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Stir til moistened. Then add:

1 cup cranberries, chopped (I used dried)
1 cup white chocolate chips, chopped

Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes. When I made this recipe it yielded 16 muffins.

Verdict: LOVED by me, hubby and 3 of the children. Liked by the other two. A keeper!

Italian Vegetable Soup

This is a very filling crockpot soup. We serve it over spaghetti noodles and all the children love it. A winner every time!

Italian Vegetable Soup

Layer in crockpot:
3-4 carrots sliced (or several more if they are baby ones)
2 small potatoes, chopped
3 ribs of celery, sliced
1 small onion, chopped
2 T parsley flakes
3-4 tsp beef soup base or beef bouillon cubes (can use vegetable soup base to make this a vegetarian main dish)
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 can red kidney beans
6-8 cups of water (depending on size of your crockpot!)

Do NOT stir. Cook on high for 4 to 4 1/2 hours, or on low for 8 or 9. Add 1 can of stewed tomatoes and ham (optional) for last half hour of cooking. Meanwhile, cook spaghetti noodles and drain. Place some noodles in bottom of bowl and top with soup. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top if desired. Yum!

More on Menu Planning

Not sure if anyone noticed besides me, but last week was a really blah week in the food department. I didn't make good menus at the beginning of the week and I kindof needed a mental break from the "planning how to use up every single ingredient so I don't waste any money" thing. Our big Mexican feast (courtesy of my cousin and her grown daughter) was the highlight of the week as far as meals went, and the other nights we ate the "old" way ~ chicken and steamed rice and veggies, etc. We ate veggies, but not as the main part of our meal. I just fixed whatever was on hand that didn't require much mental effort or time.

So far I have not shopped as carefully as I did last month. I have spent over half of my food budget for March, and I have lots of food in the freezer, fridge and pantry, but I'm not sure how to coordinate it all into meals for the rest of the month. In other words, do I have everything I need to make dinners for the rest of the month except for fresh produce? Not sure. Obviously I still have work to do this afternoon! The good news is that we are stocked up on toilet paper, pullups, and facial tissue. :-)

This week we will be having soup one night and a bean dish another night. Friday is pizza and movie night. The rest of the meals I am still planning. Check back later to see what I decided on!

Bread Recipe

As requested, here is the bread recipe I use with my wheat grinder and Bosch mixer. It is from Denise at the country baker, though the recipe that is linked is slightly different than the one I use. She must have updated it! I'll have to give that one a try, though we love our current one.

Grind 12 cups of Prairie Gold wheat (or whichever wheat berries you prefer - just be sure they are hard wheat berries as opposed to soft wheat, which does not require yeast and is used for quick breads and desserts). My wheat grinder will only grind 8 cups at once, so I have to grind twice. Of course you can use store bought whole wheat flour in this recipe if you don't have a wheat grinder.

In Bosch mixer (or very large bowl, if you don't have a mixer) pour 5 cups of warm water. Then add in this order:

1 1/4 cup oil (I use EVOO)
1 cup honey
8 cups flour
5 tsp salt (I use sea salt)
1 T lecithin granules (optional - this acts as a natural preservative and adds freshness)
1 T dough enhancer (optional - this helps give it a nice texture but I have left it out and the bread still turns out great)
2 1/2 T SAF yeast (this is professional baking yeast, not the kind in the little yellow packets at your local grocery store)

Turn mixer on (or stir thoroughly if not using a mixer) and watch for ingredients to be well mixed. Add 1 cup of flax seeds (optional). Gradually add 3-4 additional cups of flour until dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl and the sides of the bowl look "clean". When this happens, set a timer for 4 minutes and let the mixer knead the dough for that amount of time. If you are kneading by hand, turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead for 20 minutes. When time is up, pour dough onto countertop and form into long roll. Cut roll into fourths and put each fourth into a greased bread pan. Pinch the sides down so that the center will bake into a slightly rounded top. This looks so nice when baking is done! Set aside and let rise for one hour. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

One additional reason I love this bread is that it contains no dairy products, so it can be eaten by our little friend Micah whom we babysit a couple times a month and who has a severe dairy allergy. My husband, who is lactose intolerant, can also eat it with no ill effects.

Update to our February $500 Food Budget Challenge

Yay!! We did it!!! By God's grace we were able to buy all our groceries, toiletries and pullups for the month with less than $500! I spent a total of $469 this month. About $85 of that was for pullups and toiletries, and the other $384 was for food. I'm not sure we could have done it were it not for the fact that I'd stocked up on some things ahead of time, and we ate lots of beans instead of meat, but we did it! I would never have thought we could if I weren't "forced" to try, and I feel quite empowered to know we can. We ate well this month ~ whenever we were hungry there was food to eat. Honestly, there were a few times that my husband and I felt hungry before going to bed, but we can stand to feel hungry a little, and if we didn't stay up so late that problem would probably be solved!

A double blessing is the fact that although $469 was the total amount we spent during the month, some of that was spent at another grocery store, so we actually have over $100 left on the original grocery store gift card!

I will probably have to spend a bit more in March as I stock up on some things again, so I'm shooting for $600 or less this month. I am hopeful we can meet the food budget challenge again!