My usual Monday

Yup, It was a Monday. Up at the crack of dawn- and with the time change it was actually starting to get light when I left home- and off to work. The usual errand run around after V drops K10 off at band. But we did go to a local overstock store and picked up a new set of sheets. Our favorite set of flannel sheets self destructed on the bed last week :( Then, pick up K, hurry home only to turn around and take J16 to orchestra rehearsal. Late dinner as usual. Now, it's time to check blogs and do my usual Monday IDC update.

1. Plant something- Nope.

2. Harvest something- Nope.

3. Preserve something- Nope again. (not looking too promising so far, huh)

4. Waste not- the usual recycling, repurposing and using cloth bags at the store. V and the boys broke down LOTS of cardboard boxes that have been accumulating and took them to the recyclers. I guess along with all this comes the distribution of pumpkins. Since I know there is no way we can eat that much we've been giving them away. Now, I'm down to only three whole ones plus all the puree I froze earlier. Oh, and in putting in the new door, V was able to repurpose bits of lumber to make a new threshold and to correct the bad framing.

5. Want not- hmm, I stocked up on Zatarain's box mixes. Yeah, I know- it's in a box but we love it. I use their jambalaya as a way to use up left over bits of meat in the fridge and it is something that everyone likes and is pretty fast. But they had them 5 boxes for $5 which isn't a bad deal for them. I also got a whole bunch of pears from my parents and Mom brought me jars and rings. Hopefully I won't have to purchase any jars for quite a while.

6. Build community food systems- pumpkins again. It's a theme, isn't it! But, now there is a good chance that some of my produce will be served at a local restaurant where my nephew works. That would be SO COOL!!

7. Eat the food- last night we had some broccoli from the freezer and I made pumpkin biscuits. Ok, they were a variation of Sweet Potato biscuits. The pumpkin was a bit wetter than when I've made the recipe with mashed sweet potatoes so I ended up making drop biscuits since they were waaay too soft to knead and roll.

Here's the recipe if you're interested.

Pumpkin biscuits

Dry ingredients:

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Cut into this 1/2 cup butter and set aside.

Combine wet ingredients and add to dry.

Wet ingredients:

2 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes (I used pumpkin puree)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup apple cider

Mix together.

For sweet potatoes, the recipe says to knead and roll out to half an inch thick and cut with biscuit cutter and place in a greased pan. For the pumpkin, I greased muffin tins and dropped the mixture into them.

This made 12 muffin/biscuits.

The recipe says to bake at 400*F until brown on the edges. I baked at 350* because I already had something else in the oven. They turned out fine. In fact, they were such a hit that the there were only two left over and I think V had them for breakfast this morning. Ha! What a great way to disguise pumpkin that everyone liked! I think I'm going to be doing lots of that this winter. These were great because they aren't really sweet but they're not exactly savory either. A nice balance. I need more of that in my life.