Labor (of love) Day, Part 1

I had many ideas of what to call this post.

Labored Day. The Great Freezer Stock-Up of 2012. A little bit crazy, but much less hungry.

You get the idea. So Labor Day weekend. Started the whole thing off with a family reunion at my aunt's house in Sebastopol. Weather was amazing. Such a relief from the heat of our inland empire. We were celebrating all kinds of things, namely my grandmother's 90th birthday (which isn't until October, but hey! We were excited!). It was wonderful to see family and all get together. Three of my cousins have recently had babies, so you can imagine where I spent a lot of my time (eh-hem, on the "baby blanket" on the grass). My husband was finally able to meet my mom's last brother (he's met the other six, but Tom lives in Hawaii and doesn't often make it to the mainland). All in all, a great day. Lots of yummy food, good times, lots of pictures, lots of smiles.

Sunday morning was leisurely. Hubs and I have taken to drinking our morning tea (weekends only) on the porch swing while discussing our plans for the day, the week, the year and life in general. We gently sway back and forth dreaming of what our property and home will become. I have come to really rely on that special bonding time. We cherish our few quiet minutes before the boys and dogs have gotten up and before we are "supposed" to be doing something else.

Spur of the moment on Sunday late morning I decided to head into town and do my grocery shopping. Now, in a typical household, this would consist of about a week's worth of groceries. But alas, we are anything but typical. I had already made up my menu for the month and consequently had created my grocery list. The question was when the shopping would occur. No time like the present! After hours of carefully monitoring my Excel spreadsheet of groceries and calculating as I went, I was finally done with both grocery stores and people and my car was full to the top. Yay!

Monday. THE day. I say this is Part 1 because not all of my projects were completed. I will finish them today or tomorrow. Here's what I got finished:

Recipe makes two "logs" of cinnamon rolls...Here's the first all shiny with butter :) 

Six trays of cinnamon rolls later....Popped them into the freezer. Now we just thaw, let rise and throw 'em in the oven. Cinnamon rolls on a Sunday morning without getting up at 3AM!

 Six trays of PW Cinnamon Rolls (with a few variations to make them more of a combo of Cinnamon Rolls and my mother's/grandmother's German Coffee Cake). See PW recipe here

Challah Bread BEFORE

After! Punch down and rise again!

 My recipe for Challah Bread is supposed to make one loaf, but a few weeks ago when I made it, it ended up HUGE so I took that same recipe and made two loaves out of it. I then made a second batch of dough strictly to make sandwich rolls for the boys' lunches (I'll do anything to help inspire them to "remember" to pack a lunch). My recipes for two batches of Challah yielded two loaves and sixteen sandwich rolls. YUM!

Golden on the outside, soft on the inside. Challah Sandwich Rolls

Two beautiful loaves of Challah. I just love the braided look. One is happily in the freezer for later use. 

 For the family reunion this weekend, I made Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. It was so popular (with my family!) that I shredded more carrots and doubled the recipe and made muffins yesterday. How can I turn down kids asking to eat veggies?? :)

Two dozen Carrot Muffins cooling...Bread and rolls in the back

 My mother grew up in a HUGE family. Well, huge by today's standards. Then? Large, but not unheard of. Well, yesterday I finally got to feel what she and my aunt, JT, did on a regular basis. I peeled 10 lbs of potatoes in one sitting. Now, this is obviously way more than my family will eat, however, in an effort of being time conscious, I boiled them all up, mashed and distributed them into "throw away" aluminum containers to freeze for those days when I don't have time to come up with dinner (or any potatoes!)

10 lbs later......my fingers hurt

Three large trays of mashed potatoes cooling, waiting to go to the freezer. 

 So, my other accomplishments didn't have any pictures. I made more chicken stock from thigh pieces and boneless breast. The breast meat and stock will be combined (today or tomorrow) to make frozen chicken pot pies. Pictures to follow. The thigh meat will be picked off the bones and mixed with rice, carrots and sweet potatoes to mix with our dogs' current dog food (trying to help with the dog food budget).

I made 20 more of the cheeseburger wraps I wrote back in an earlier post for hubs' lunch. I also baked potatoes and sweet potatoes to be turned into a sweet potato side dish and frozen (much like the mashed potatoes) and also twice baked potatoes (also frozen). In addition I made the following crockpot meals. Now all I (or one of the kids) have to do is find the appropriate bag, follow the instructions and dump into the crockpot! We now have:

2 - Salsa Chicken
2 - Chipotle Salsa Chicken
2 - Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken
1 - Cajun Chicken Fettucini (without the pasta...add that when cooked)
1 - Rancho Style Steak (courtesy of my Grandpa Robert's recipe)
2 - Sweet & Spicy Chipotle Chicken
1 - Greek lemon/herb Chicken
1 - Chili Colorado Beef
3 - PW Chicken Tacos Mix
2 - Ranch Buffalo Chicken
8 - Ground Beef packages, seasoned ready for use

That about covers it for my weekend. However, that's not all the labor that was done on Labor Day. Allow me to continue in this show and tell.....

Looking from the back deck (also from the kitchen back door) to the back of the property. Barn is to the left. Pasture beyond the bushes. 

As I described in "Moving on up!", Hubs and I decided to switch the placement of the garden. Well, the process has begun. Very slightly. Up until now, the bushes above were meant to hide his junkyard collection of trucks. Last weekend, we felt a flip-flop was in order and wanted to put the garden where the trucks were located which resulted in a larger dog yard for our puppies. Because I love spending so much time on the deck and I look out at it, it made more sense to add the garden where we can enjoy it on a daily basis. That being decided, the ugly shrubs had to go. And let me just say, I am NOT sad to see them leave.

Loves to use the chainsaw. 

Mostly all gone! Left enough of a stump so the tractor had something to hold on to when pulling them up. 

 The last shrub on the end wasn't coming down yesterday. As Hubs discovered, it is HEAVILY populated with wasps who were non-too-happy about the loud ruckus of his chainsaw and removal of their brush. Needless to say, that will come down at a later date. That, and the plum tree next to it is in full bloom and needs to be trimmed up as well. However, they are heavily entwined, so it looks like fall is the time for those to get cleaned up.

New View...Tried to do a panoramic one...Picture this pic with the one below it...

Can you see what I was going for? 

So, busy weekend all around. Hubs was laboring. I was laboring. Good Labor Day. I'm tired.

Peace Out :)