Where are the recipes?

One of the reasons I wanted to blog was to have a place for recipes. My mother-in-law has asked for my recipes, and I want my children to have access to them, so it seemed the perfect solution. So where are they? The first problem I ran into was my lack of picture taking equipment, and my amazing issues with getting said photographs, once taken, onto the computer and actually onto the blog. I see some education in my future!

Other issues keeping me from trying and posting new recipes are time, money and the weather. Trying to work diligently when I should be working means no more cooking marathons while I sorta-kinda work. The budget means less splurging on special ingredients. The weird weather (is it hot or cold today?) is impacting any sort of advance planning.

Over the past few years, I've enjoyed cooking while I work (work for awhile, do some prep, work for awhile, do some more, work for awhile, cook some more). While the breaks are nice, and the food is great, I really need to focus more on working right now, so a change is definitely called for.

Not even thinking about dinner until Floyd Michael walks in the door at 4:30 is just not working for us. It takes up too much of our evening, when the garden and the gym and family time vie for our attention.

Enter, or re-enter the system I used years ago when I had small children at home and worked part time either outside or from inside the home - the weekend mini-marathon. Shopping, planning, prepping and cooking as much as possible on the weekend saves time during the week. It also tends to keep costs down as the ingredients that lend themselves to advance cooking and prep tend to be lower on the price scale. It is definitely cheaper (and healthier) than a last minute pizza run because it is late, everyone is hungry and I am still working.

All dinners around here need to feed five adults, plus enough for Floyd Michael's lunch at work the following day. More leftovers for lunch for everyone else is a bonus. Dinner also needs to be available in shifts, as work schedules vary. Obviously, then, dinners need to reheat well. Every family has their own agenda items to work around, and those are ours at the moment.

This weekend we did our shopping at Sam's Club. The major purchases were beef brisket and country pork ribs. Okay, definitely not the least expensive choices, but we have chicken, ground beef and beef roasts in the freezer and needed something different.

The brisket was cooked in the crock pot with a sweet and sour tomato sauce. It made enough for dinner one night, and leftovers are in the freezer for another. I'd share the recipe, but I was working from several variations and basically winged it (another reason for so few recipes to pass along - I'd actually have to follow one).

The pork ribs were also given the crock pot treatment yesterday. This time with BBQ friendly seasonings for a few hours, then drained, and BBQ sauce added. Those were dinner last night with a garden salad and potato salad (potato salad got made during breaks during work). A portion of the pork ribs (pre-cooking) was cubed and frozen for a pork and hominy stew at a later date.

I also baked a chocolate cake, and made peanut butter brownies from my "favorites" folder. It is a good thing I decided to make the recipes from my favorites folder before I posted them to the blog. These recipes have both been in the folder for many years. Upon re-trying, I realized they really weren't all that good. They weren't awful, but I've made better over the years. I can see that my favorites folder will be getting revised as I go along.

Floyd Michael must have something sweet in the evening. If it isn't home baked, he will eat Hostess Cupcakes. Seriously. Every-single-night, so I like to provide a home baked alternative. Thus, the baking while the weather permits.