Labor Day Weekend: So Much Work

Well, here it is the Tuesday after Labor Day, 5 am, and I'm still awake.  Once in awhile, my weekly dose of methotrexate hits me like a ton of bricks and I spend the next day nauseous.  This week there was some added misery, as I spent two solid days in the kitchen and took a pain pill on Sunday night.  I topped it off with some anti-nausea meds Monday morning and long story short, slept all day Monday.  Literally.   Until 7 pm.  Since I'm up, I figured why not blog about my weekend?

Last year, I decided to redo my pantry.  I don't use any animal products anymore when I cook at home, and I buy a lot of my dry goods in bulk and keep them in glass jars in the pantry.  This system has worked extremely well.  As a matter of fact, I'm able to buy my staples only once  every couple of months and they keep in the pantry without any issues.

I noticed, however, that a good deal of produce was going to waste in Casa Schmiddy. When you work all the time and live alone, it's easy for this to happen.  Anyway, my remedy for this was to make a big shopping trip and get good deals on produce that was on sale, then prepare and freeze it.  It took three solid days of work to get all of the freezer items squared away, plus clean the pantry and package the last haul of dry goods-but it was worth it.

I got a lot of things on sale-including ten pounds of potatoes at Pro's Ranch Market for 99 cents.  (Pro's Ranch has the best sales on produce.  Typically, oranges are 99 cents for 5 pounds).  As soon as I got everything home, I set about cleaning, chopping, slicing, shredding, roasting, blanching, boiling, zesting, juicing, bagging, and freezing.

Making chai concentrate.

Roasting my Hatch green chiles.  

Shredding potatoes for hash browns with my Kitchenaid mixer.  (Thanks to my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Russell...this only took about ten minutes!  That mixer is a lifesaver!)

Potatoes ready to be blanched/boiled/mashed.

When all was said and done, here's what I ended up with in my freezer.  (The number is the number of quart-sized ziploc bags that were filled).

• 1 sliced limes
• 4 hash brown potatoes
• 3 red potatoes (chunks)
• 2 sliced peaches
• 2 sweet potato fries
• 2 sweet potatoes (chunks)
• 2 whole key limes
• 2 diced onion
• 2 tomato quarters
• 3 salsa
• 1 sliced onion
• 1 onion quarters
• 5 rosemary and garlic mashed potatoes
• 5 white velvet soup
• 1 carrots (sticks)
• 1 carrots (sliced)
• 1 (big bag) green beans
• 2 french fries
• 2 green bell pepper slices
• 1 jicama
• 2 raspberries
• 2 blueberries
• 1 strawberries
• 1 spiced strawberry sauce
• 1 roasted green chiles
• 1 rosemary
• 2 cilantro
• 1 roasted garlic
• 1 (big bag) pineapple
• 1 lemon juice cubes
• 1 lime juice cubes
• 1 lemon zest
• 1 lime zest
• 1 lemon rinds (for boiling for homemade air freshener, cleaning, etc)
• 1 sage
• 1 dill
• 1 chai spices (already used once, but again, for homemade air freshener-it smells great!)
• 1 chai concentrate
• 5 chai concentrate cubes

Yup, that's a lot of food.  Hopefully it will make my life easier for the next couple of months as we head into a more stressful time of year (when is it not a stressful time of year?)  Here are a couple of pictures of the final product.  It's so organized when everything freezes flat!

And here's the pantry (also beautiful!).  I didn't take any pictures of the spice cabinet, but I also buy my spices in bulk at the local Indian grocery because they're cheaper, so picture rows of smaller glass jars.

Not to worry-this weekend was not all work and no play.  I took some time out Saturday night to go on a ghost tour  of Concordia Cemetery.  This tour was great, but even if you're not into ghosts, it's worth it for the history.  El Paso has a very long and rich history and I love learning more about it. 

The moon was very bright.

View of the star on the mountain.

The most visited grave in El Paso-gun fighter John Wesley Hardin.

I also had some, uh..."help."  Thanks, Mac?

If I fits, I sits.