Tuesday, September 22, 2009

1 chicken, 17 meals?!?

So Dave & I have been trying to reduce the amount of meat that we eat, both for economical and health reasons. Once we've used up our frozen meat we're planning on buying directly ffrom a farm, where meat will be twice as expensive (at least) . . . so we're trying to offset that by making it a smaller part of our meals. For example, last night we had steak and made sure to leave enough left over to make another meal of tonight. (Tonight we'll have steak fajitas.) It turns out that one of the easiest things to stretch is a whole chicken----it's so versatile that you can do different things with it every night and it doesn't feel like you're just eating chicken over and over again.

Last Sunday I made a chicken in the crockpot. Here is how that chicken fed us over the week:

Sunday night: Roasted chicken dinner (for 2) (with potatoes & some vegeatbles from the farm)
Monday lunch: 1 chicken sandwich
Monday dinner: Pasta with pesto (which I make and then freeze in cubes) and chicken (for 2)
Tuesday lunch: 1 chicken sandwich (for me), 1 pasta with pesto & chicken (for Dave)
Tuesday dinner: Chicken soup (I made the broth from the bones, etc on Tuesday in the crockpot) for 2. The soup had vegetables, chicken, whole wheat noodles, & matzoh balls.
Wednesday lunch: Chicken soup (for 2)
Wednesday dinner: Chicken pot pie (for 2)
Thursday dinner: Chicken pot pie (for 2)
Friday lunch: The last of the chicken soup (for Dave), and the last of the chicken pot pie (for me)

That's 5 nights of (really delicious) dinner (for 2), and 7 individual lunches from 1 chicken! (For the record, it was a bit over 7lbs to start with. Also for the record, since the leftover dishes all involved re-cooking the chicken, I wasn't worried about getting food poisoning from eating old chicken).
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For those who are looking for Maya news . . .

Maya is doing well, enjoying our daily trips to the park, playground, or pool. On Monday we even had our physical therapist meet us at the playground and I learned some tricks/techniques that we can practice while we're there. If the weather is nice next Monday we may go there again.

Tomorrow we're going to get her splints finished. She's going to have braces that we go from her calves to down and around her feet (I'll take pictures, since it's hard to envision). The goal is to help her have a stable base so that she can start standing and walking. Also, they'll help to straighten out her feet, which tend to curl in. Hopefully they won't be too overwhelming, but I'm anticipating some unhappy days as she adjusts to wearing them.

She's also cutting tooth #6 and I think she's getting a cold . . .both of which have caused some feeding and sleeping issues, but hopefully that will all even out. She's eating baby food like a champ, now we need to start working on progressing to solids.

1 comment:

grandma said...

what a great smile!! she was laughing so much as you were tickling her---it was great fun to see her like that! anda i'm looking forward to some of that pot pie on a cool autumn night :c)