MY CHOICE IS EITHER/OR - BUT THERE WAS A THIRD CHOICE

 I suddenly realized that it was Wednesday night and I had no thought on what to write about.  Then the mess presented itself.  

First, I should explain that I am a rather picky eater so many nights I cook a completely separate dinner for myself from that which I cook for husband.  I mostly have set dinners to cook for me when I don't like a particular food he wants for dinner – for example, on Monday nights he has hot dogs and beans for dinner.  I can no longer eat hot dogs (due to getting sick after doing so once) and I don't like/eat beans.  So on Monday nights I make myself a chicken patty and rice left over from Chinese takeout – sometimes with a gravy, tomato sauce or left over chow mein vegetables.   Not a big deal.

But tonight it got sooooo much worse.  First there was dinner.  Husband was having smoked sausage with left over mu shoo chicken (see even our choices in Chinese takeout are very different) and some rice.  I had a boneless chicken breast with leftover pasta and added peas.  So to start with, after I cooked the kitchen was full of used pots in addition to our dishes, etc.  Not a problem, normally we watch TV (in the kitchen) and when he goes upstairs after the weather report at 11:20 pm I do the dishes.  Not a big deal.

We had discussed today having a chicken stew that we like for dinner tomorrow.  The plan was to cook the chicken tonight (2.5 hours) and then tomorrow afternoon I would take it off the bone and use the meat and broth to cook the stew.  Husband knew this was the plan and that I would be cooking the chicken after we ate dinner, and while we were watching TV.

Husband still had in the freezer a package of ½ pound of ham, left from the ham we cooked for New Year's Day dinner and had taken it out and put it in the fridge to make ham salad.  It never dawned on me that he planned to do this tonight after dinner – but that was his plan.  So the chicken had to wait.  

The sink was mostly full with the dishes from tonight and we had used both of our 2 quart pots, both of of our 1.5 quart pots and both of our 1 qt pots.  A lot to wash, but it did not bother me.   

I was about to go and take out the chicken to simmer for tomorrow's stew when husband told me that he was going to make his ham salad.  I looked around the kitchen at the lack of space (we have a rather small kitchen) and knew that if he had this idea in his head, we were going to make his ham salad “now”.  

I had to find the small food processor we have – and had forgotten completely about as we never used it until he decided to make ham salad Spring 2020 after we made a ham for Easter.  I found it.  The had to find the other items he needed to make it.  Remember, I said at the start of this post that I am picky eater, well there are foods that I don't even look at, let alone touch and one of them is any kind of meat salad or anything else with mayonnaise – or even mayonnaise on its own – and you know who is going to be cleaning all of this up.  He made his ham salad and while he was finishing up and putting it in a plastic container, I started the chicken cooking.

So now our kitchen sink had the assorted cooking and eating items from dinner, the equipment he used to make his ham salad and was overfull already.  

I left the chicken simmering while we finished watched TV.  I then had to start washing what was in the sink – which had to come out of the sink to do so.  Washing up done – even the terribly icky (to me) equipment used to make his ham salad and from heating his mu shoo.  

Then the garbage question.  If we leave the remnants  of the ham and other items from dinner in the kitchen they will get smelly in the garbage.  Tonight is one of the one the nights we can put out garbage for the morning – so it goes out tonight or sits either in the house or our large garbage can outside.  Which one?  The amount of garbage in the bag/pail is maybe 20% of the capacity at most  - probably less.  Which would you do – waste the rest of the bag or have smelly garbage – and I should mention that the style of bag I like (with twist ties) is getting harder and harder to find – in addition to being a general waste of the plastic bag to put it out so empty?

Aha!  I can almost always find another choice to a problem.  I took the matching sized bag of paper garbage from our office downstairs and dumped it into the kitchen bag, which filled the kitchen bag which could to out for pickup without wasting the bag.  I have another bag of the same size in our paper shredder which is just about full – so tomorrow after I pull apart the chicken for the stew, I can throw the bones and other icky parts into the replacement kitchen garbage bag and then dump into that bag the shredder's bag which should just about fill it – and then put that full bag in our outside can to take out of same and leave at the curb on Sunday night for Monday pickup.  I will have filled and used a new bag in the kitchen, and will need yet another one for the kitchen, but I will be able to continue to use the 2 bags in the office until they are full again.  Problem solved.  

The chicken finished cooking since I started writing this post and I have put it in a plastic container to deal with tomorrow and its liquid in a separate plastic container.  I have not yet dealt with the pot and utensils from cooking the chicken – they are soaking and will be washed when I do the wash up from our late night snack, so I have to chance to breath – until I need to go downstairs and change loads of laundry which are washing in the basement.  (Wednesday night is first laundry night, followed by finishing of same on Thursday night.)

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

When confronted with two choices and neither one of them works – look for a third and maybe even a fourth choice. Don't presume that the situation is “either or”.  Often there is another or several other choices that one has not thought of before.  In this case I managed to find a solution so I don't have smelly garbage in my kitchen while also not wasting a plastic bag by putting it out without it being filled. 

COVID 19 #22 STORING AND LISTING FOOD SO YOU CAN FIND IT IN THE FREEZER

 Last week I told you about our food shopping trip.  One thing I have to do at some point not too long after we go food shopping is write up new lists of what we have in the freezers so we use it all up and don't let anything go to waste by lack of memory.  

Everything that had to be was pushed into a freezer when we got home – other than a few items that were not frozen and could stay for a bit in the refrigerator, but needed to be frozen for longer time storage – such as fresh meat that will not be eaten for awhile.  I was not able when we got home to put a number of things in the freezer that makes more sense – meaning I try to keep packages that we pull out the items one or two at time in the upstairs freezer in the refrigerator – such as a package of hamburgers – so I have to run downstairs when we have same and pull out one burger for each of us – or just one for husband if I am eating something else.

Last Friday night I boiled the chicken we had bought.  Half of it was to be used for a Brunswick stew for Sunday night and the other half to be frozen for later use either in another of same or some other dish.  Since it takes quite awhile to cook the stew and the chicken meat has to cool down between being being cooked and being pulled off the bones for the stew, I often boil the chicken in advance so this is not unusual.  My plan was to make the actual stew Sunday afternoon.  I have to keep an eye on the stew while it is cooking so I also planned to do several chores downstairs at the same time so I would be nearby to check the stew and give it a stir every now and then.  

One of the things I planned to so was make new lists of what is in the freezers and see if I could switch anything around between the two so items I need to have in the kitchen are there and not down in the basement.  

I had cut a sheet of paper into 4 list shaped pieces across the width.  I used unused paper for this so there was nothing on the back of the lists to dirty the refrigerator door.  (I normally reuse paper that has been printed on and was an error, was something some website printed multiple pages when I only needed one part, and so forth- the back of the pages and often part of the front have no printing and it makes great scrap paper – full sheets or cut up.)

First I went to the basement to make a list for down there and see if I could juggle anything around to move some larger items (like second container of ice cream) to the basement freezer to have room in the upstairs freezer for the items I would prefer to keep up there for convenience.  This was not to be. I brought 2 pieces of the paper cut to make lists and a pencil – and a large towel that we have using to cover the kitchen table when we bring in new food items to let the alcohol they were rubbed with to kill any Covid 19 on the items.  I had to take things out of the freezer downstairs shelf by shelf to see what was there – there are 3 shelves and I put this on the floor so the food is not sitting on the floor itself.  I mark one list basement (or B) and “meat” on its top.  The second one is also marked on top for the basement and as “other”.  Technically not everything on the “meat” list is meat – it actually means main dish type item.  The “other” list is vegetables, bread, and so on that is not a main dish.  I rearranged the freezer so things fit it into better and listed the items on the papers.  

We have been buying what I call “frozen box meals” - by this I mean those meals intended for a family that are popped into the oven, cook an hour or so and are a main course and often also the vegetables and starch are mixed into the entree – examples of this is a prepared lasagna, turkey bake, and things such as small meatloaves or Salisbury steaks – these latter two need to have the side dishes cooked separately for them. We buy 2 each of a few kinds of each and have them Friday and Sunday nights when we used to go out for dinner in the normal days before the corona virus.  I stacked them so that the same dishes were together with the older ones on top of the newer ones so that when I take one – it is the older one.  

We have a few items which take up more room than they should for what they are.  Back in May husband ordered a 5 pound bag of frozen corn and a bag about the same size of french fries from BJs when we ordered from them.  I am maybe halfway through the bag of corn and it takes up a lot of room.  I just finally opened the bag of french fries – we also had 2 normal sized bags of french fries that we had to use up first before opening this one.  Add to that husband bought a bag of meatballs when we went to Walmart back in May and it was almost the size – and he does not like them.  So after one dinner from them, they were sitting in the freezer taking up space – possibly to do so long after the pandemic ends – so I decided I would eat them for dinner when he has something I do not particularly like.  Unfortunately one of the reasons he does not like them is that they have too much garlic.  So when I have them I have to go upstairs and rinse out my mouth with mouth wash after wards.  They are small meatballs and 6 are suppose to be a serving.  It will take at least a month and a half or longer to finish the bag, so last week I upped the serving size to 8 meatballs – every 3 weeks is one week less I will be eating them and one week faster that I get the space from them back in the freezer.  When these 3 items are finished and gone from the freezer and a normal bag of french fries and a normal size bag of corn are there instead the freezer will hold a lot more things.

As I am removing all these things from the freezer and rearranging them – periodically I run upstairs to check and stir the stew.

I then went upstairs and started on the freezer in the refrigerator.  I took out most of the items on the bottom shelf and put them on the kitchen table.  These 2 lists were the labeled the same way as downstairs except they were labeled as “upstairs” instead of “basement”.  I rearranged the items in this freezer as I listed them and then put them back.  Up here are things like leftover gravies and cranberry sauce. (Did you know can freeze these things?  We only use half a can of gravy and I froze ¾ of the can of cranberry sauce in ¼ of the can size in small plastic containers (pudding sized) when I opened the can and we had the first ¼ can with sliced (deli type) turkey.  Also on this shelf is frozen bread (none yet from this purchase) and frozen hot dog and hamburger rolls so they last longer as we are shopping much less often than normal.  I then took out the items on the top shelf and did the same.  Our top shelf is a lot taller than our bottom one and I had bought a good sized plastic “basket” that I put small items into to keep them together and also stand up bags in so it is easier to see them and I can take out the entire “basket” to check what it is in it.  I have frozen eggs in this basket, as well as frozen meats in portions to use.  Husband had ordered from BJs back in May 3 boxes of eggs (3 pounds) but they did not have them and he accepted a 5 pound restaurant pack of eggs instead.  We don't eat eggs early (or breakfast) and needed them to cook things.  We had worked our way through one of the two layers when the good by date came up and we froze the rest.  To freeze an egg one has to crack it open and mix the yolk and white so that the yolk is not intact.  (If left in the shell or the yolk intact they will expand too much and break the shell and/or the yolk.)  In the old days when I did this with maybe four or five eggs I would put them in plastic, lidded pudding cups – but I did not have dozens of cups.  I put a plastic sandwich in each of 5 cups at a time and put in some cups one egg and others two eggs – if we do eat eggs – a bag of 2 is used for each, if we need 3 (say for a cake mix) take a bag of two and a bag of one or 1 for something we take – we take a bag of one egg.  I have the 2 eggs in one plastic zip bag and the 1 eggs in another.  I list of all of the items up here the same way – main dishes on the
“upstairs meat” list and the rest on the “upstairs other” list.  To make dealing with and finding the frozen vegetables easier – when I open a bag of same I put the contents in a labeled quart zip bag which is labeled with the vegetable name and the date it is good until.  I reuse these bags when I use up the contents and change the good until date.  I have them – ready for this?  In alphabetical order in the lower shelf in the kitchen freezer door – easy to find.  

Having finished dealing with the freezers and listing their contents  (while stirring the stew in between) I put all of the lists on the refrigerator door with magnets (no point to having the downstairs freezer list downstairs – then I would have to go downstairs to see what I have – if all the lists are upstairs it I can see everything while upstairs.

These lists would not work as well when we are shopping normally – they would have to updated instead of replaced  - they work now being replaced as there are major changes each time due to the length of time between shopping trips.  

Since the stew was still not finished (it cooks a LONG time), I then stored away my July Lucy and Me  figurines from the living room and put my September ones – the August ones never went out.  Again, I was close to the kitchen to keep checking the stew.  

When the stew was almost finished I made some biscuits from refrigerated biscuit dough (this is not the same as the frozen biscuits, although the same brand) to go with the stew.  Freezer contents listed, frozen food arranged a bit better and easier to use, Lucy and Me bears out for the month and dinner cooked – all at the same time.  A good day of organizing and a bit fun in changing the bears.

THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK -

1 – If you have do something to do that takes awhile, but must be watched – see if there are other things you can do in the same or nearby physical location so time waiting to stir or check on the pot is not wasted.

2 – List what you have in your freezer (and for some people – also what is in your refrigerator – so you know what you have.

COVID 19 #13 - DEALING WITH LOTS OF FOOD TO STORE AND KEEP FRESH

Sorry – like everyone else – I lost track of the day of the week and did not post yesterday.

Okay – we are all getting tired of the pandemic.  I hope that you and yours have either been lucky enough not to be affected or have survived any illness and are well again.  I thought I would mention some things we have been doing to deal with a variety of things that arise.  This week, one of my favorite subjects – Food!

I recently wrote about finally ordering food and going out to buy food  - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2020/05/covid-19-11-food-delivery-and-shopping.html

But what the heck does one do with all the extra food!  We have a rather small house, with our kitchen and dining room also being rather small so of course our refrigerator and freezer are small – 18 sq ft fridge with top freezer – which we bought last summer - see -

http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2019/06/replace-refrigerator.html
http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-refrigerator-saga-contines.html
 http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2019/07/refrigerator-at-last-and-on-to-next.html

We also have a dorm fridge sized freezer in our basement.  Both are full to the point I could not keep track of what is in them.  I cut scrap sheets of paper (all those papers that get printed out of the computer by mistake or run 4 pages when you thought they were one page or only need one page – I use the backs for scrap paper – good for the environment and cheap scrap paper as it would just be thrown out.  into quarters across the width so I got 4 from a sheet of a paper and made lists.  I have a list of the meats and entrees which are in the basement freezer and how many I have of each.  I also have a list of same for the kitchen freezer.  I have a list of the frozen vegetables, breads and such in the basement freezer.  ( I pack things very well.)  I don't have a matching list for upstairs – but I rebag frozen vegetables into quart zipbags – label each bag with which vegetable is in it and mark the end date (not that vegetables sit that long) and I stand them in alphabetical order in the door shelf of my freezer – empty bags (we have run out of some vegetables) are at the front of the bags.  It is easy to see how much is in each, generally a new bag of vegetables fits into the quart zip bag – if not I am generally using some when I start a new bag from the store anyway – they are in an order so I can find them, hey are at my eye level to make it easier to figure out and since the bags zip closed, they stay fresher than open bags with bag ties on them.  I know that we have a started bag of biscuits, and I know most of the other items in the freezer.  I also have a plastic box that fits on about half of the top shelf in the freezer to hold odd shaped items – like freezer paper wrapped meats, open bags of things like fries and pancakes, meal sized  amounts of stew meat in small zip bags, etc.  the other half of the shelf is boxed and bagged items and the stack of ice cube trays with a bin for ice over them on a wire rack.  We did not want to wast the limited space we have in the freezer with an ice maker as we tend to use ice only for cooking related chores – such as cooling down food quickly to put in the fridge.

We have a small closet in our kitchen which holds a variety of items including 3 shelves being used for can, bottle, jar and other storage.  What husband bought would overwhelm the entire closet.

I have left most of the items which were in the closet in it.  I covered my dining room table with thick towels and stood the cans, bottles and jars in rows sorted by what they are – all of the lentil soup cans together, all of the evaporated milk cans together, both of the soy sauce bottles together (somewhere around 3 years worth or more of same I estimate), etc.  Having had ants and mice over the 31 years we have been in the house I do not have food items which are not in sealed cans, jars or bottles out on their own.  Normally I will put unopened packaged items in two large boxes under the kitchen table.  But this is now too much for that.  Small packages such as individual packages of instant cereal, packages with 4 servings of instant mashed potatoes, and the like have been put into plastic boxes the size of a gallon of ice cream would come in.  These boxes are also on the dining room table.  The two boxes under the kitchen table are fuller than they have ever been.  We also have larger plastic tubs in the house which we use for purposes unrelated to food.  I gave up one of the tubs I used to store my bear village pieces in and husband gave up one of the tubs he uses to store finished items he has woven and they are filled with food items – such as bags of dry cereal (threw out the boxes), boxes of assorted dry pastas, cake mix boxes, mac and cheese mix boxes, and the like.  They are also in our dining room – on the floor.

When one has this much food one has to deal with managing the food and keeping perishable food from going bad.  Anything which could be frozen to keep it longer was frozen.  I am keeping an eye on the end dates of other items.  One problem is eggs.  Husband was buying 3 dozen eggs from BJs on our first try at ordering food delivered.  That is a lot of eggs for us – we don't eat breakfast so they are eaten for dinner some nights and used in things such as the cake mixes.  To make it even worse, BJs did not have the packages of 3 boxes of a dozen eggs each – so he ordered 5 dozen eggs and these eggs came in restaurant style packaging – 2 open sided trays of 30 eggs each stacked on each other – and the expiration date was June 15.  While I know that eggs do last longer than they are dated for (if unsure if an egg is still good – put it in a pot of cold water – if it floats it is not good), how long could they last.  Then I remembered – eggs can be frozen if they are opened and the white and yellow mixed together and will keep much longer that way.  So earlier this week we started freezing eggs.  I put a small plastic sandwich bag in each of several (4-5) pudding sized plastic storage cups that can be frozen.  I then break an egg or two into a one cup measuring cup (husband's idea to use the measuring cup) and mix it together with a fork.  I then pour the egg(s) into a storage cup and repeat.  I put the lids on the cups and put them in the freezer.  By the next day the eggs are frozen.  I take out each eggs – or pair of eggs and knot the bag closed (single egg) or put a bag tie around the bag to close it (two eggs).  I then put them into half gallon zip bags – the single eggs in one and the double eggs in a different one  - and label which is in the bag – and put them back in the freezer. I am down to 14 more eggs to freeze.  Why two and singles?  If we have eggs for dinner we have 2 each – so 2 in each bag is good for that.  But in cooking sometimes I need one egg and cake mixes need 3 eggs, so freezing some eggs as singles allows for odd number of eggs to be used easily while taking up less little plastic bags by having two in a good number of them.  And of course if all the 2 egg bags are used up – 2 singles makes a double. :-)

THOUGHT(S) OF THE WEEK -

Make sure that you keep track of expiration or other end dates on the food in your house – normally also but especially now.  Freeze items that can be frozen before they go bad or use them if their life cannot be extended. 

Also – just because areas are being reopened from stay at home orders – does not mean to run out and about willy nilly.  The corona virus is still here and still dangerous.  How terrible to get so ill and risk one's life to get a hair cut, go to the gym, shop for items which are not crucial or eat out in or outside a restaurant.  The number of cases is rising rapidly in some states which either have reopened too much, too seen or its residents are going out before they should.  Health and life – yours and others – are too important to rush the return to normalcy.  Stay well!  (I have too few followers now – I don't want to lose any.)

WHAT SHOULD YOU GET RID OF AND WHAT SHOULD YOU KEEP?

Pardon me - I didn’t post yesterday.  As I think I mentioned the most important annual Jewish holiday was yesterday and when it was over last night it slipped my memory what day of the week it was.  So here I am, a day late and a post short. 

As I was talking about last week, much of what one needs to know about organizing we know.  It is finding the time and pushing ourselves to do it that is the problem - at least for me.  Basically one has to sort through what one has and get rid of what is not being used and will not be used and then set up what is left in an organized manner so that one can find what one is looking for quickly. 

What to get rid of?  A good question.  Some of it is rather obvious - empty boxes of cereal for example.  They are garbage. Almost empty box?  Depends on how much is left - if you can eat it all while continuing to work - eat it and toss the box; if it is enough for a meal or two - use it up at meals and toss the empty box.  In this case I mean for the cereal box to stand for anything which gets used up, but the empty container is still around.  This week and last week I made a chicken stew that my husband loves for dinner.  Problem is that the garbage pickup is on Monday and Thursday and I was making the stew on Monday last week and Tuesday this week and both times had to hold it all both times until Wednesday night when I put it out for Thursday pick up.  The bones, skin and such have to be thrown out, but if I toss them in the kitchen garbage and they don’t go out right away, it will smell terrible.  I can take the kitchen bag out to the can outside, but it really upsets me to put the bag(s) out only about 1/3 full.  So, I put the chicken garbage into one of those plastic shopping bags that one gets at groceries stores, put same in the bowl I had used to hold the cooked chicken overnight (cooked the chicken one day, made the stew the next) before taking it off the bones and left it in the fridge.  When it was time for the garbage to go out I added the shopping bag of chicken icky stuff to it and out it went.  I then washed the bowl the bag had been in.  I actually have left over stew from both nights.  It can’t be frozen as it has potatoes in it and they never freeze well.  I have the stews in two canning jars in the fridge (one from last week and one from this).  I will hold them until the end of the next week - if husband has not eaten it by then (he really LOVES this stew) then it will go out that Sunday night in the garbage - it will not be allowed to sit beyond when it will be safe to eat.

Staying with the kitchen, some items are harder to get rid of.  Husband will decide that he likes something - say a particular canned soup - and buy a lot of it.  Then something will happen and it will not be eaten.  Say, he decides it raises his blood sugar too much and he should only have it once in a while.  The items sit........and sit.........and sit..........and sit.......and sit.  Suddenly they are past their date and one cannot even donate them.  It really kills me to throw out 6 full cans of something because it passed its date a year or two before - but out they must go.  They are taking up needed room and if they are eaten by accident they may make someone ill.  I have to check on some eggs we have in the fridge - wait, I will check right now - an entire dozen dated for June 16, 2018.  Now what do I do?  Normally I would toss the eggs.  But here is a bit of info - when eggs pass their date and are sent back to the producer by the stores they are allowed to be repackaged and sent back out a certain number of times - gross right, but it is true.  Eggs can be tested to see if they are still good and I will have to find the instructions on how to check them.  Okay, per “The Joy of Cooking” if the eggs float in cold water they are no good.  I will test them tomorrow and then throw them out if they float.  We go through periods where we eat eggs or use them in cooking and will buy them - and then the period of eating them ends - see husband deciding he likes something and then deciding not to have it any more, above - I think he was making quiches with them and then stopped doing so - and they sit.  Usually it only part of a dozen, which is left.  In case you are thinking - what about breakfast?  We wake up so late that we have lunch for breakfast, dinner for lunch and then a late night snack for supper, so eggs tend to be more of a dinner food here.  I am going to test them.....  Well, they will going out Sunday night with the garbage for Monday, the 3 I picked at random all floated - but, on the other hand, I was wrong - there are only 10, not a full dozen.  We have a quart of milk in the fridge also.  I know that is fresh, we bought it for a meeting of our reenactment unit last Monday - husband had volunteered to bring snack - oh that reminds me of something else, we are going to return an unopened package of cookies - we bought 2 different kinds for the meeting and apparently it was a chocolate mint cookie crowd, not a chocolate chip crowd.  But no one opened the milk to use in their coffee.  So I have to figure out how to use up a the quart - I guess we will be having diet pudding for snack a few times.  We were lucky to find the quart - mostly it comes in half gallons and more around here, and the quart cost almost as much as the half gallon.

So - when one sorts through stuff one will find stuff to toss, stuff to check and decide if it should be tossed - now or soon after, stuff to return, and stuff to use up.  If only I had some chocolate syrup for the milk, but if I buy same, then I will have a started bottle of chocolate syrup and someday in the future will be deciding if it should be thrown out or not.  (Plus we just plain should not have the extra carbohydrates.)

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

You know that you know what to do.   Go through and toss the floating eggs and the long past date things (whether they are actually dated or not) - and the chicken stuff which has been stored until you can toss it.  Get rid of the empty boxes or finish up what it is in them and get rid of them.  Return items which are in good condition which can be returned.  Use up the items that can still be used - before they have to be tossed because they are floating eggs.   This applies in the rest of the house as well as in the kitchen - paints and makeup can go past their use time also, for example.  The dress you bought for Sally’s wedding a month ago and then bought a different one, that you wore instead - return it if you can or donate it - unless you know that you can wear it for Harry’s wedding next month.  And so on.