Sampson and My Experiment of the Week

My little 8 year old has now discovered the teacher's guide.  Depravity of man, is all I have to say.  He called from his room yesterday, "Hey!  There's no answers for the division!"  "What do you  mean?" I called back.  "They only show the numbers, not all the work!"  Hmmmmm....I thought to myself.  That explained why he was getting really complicated subtraction and word problems all correct the other day.  I immediately had him come down and we went through all his work - multiplication 9 times table?  All good.  He could do them.  Roman Numerals?  He could do them.  Counting money?  Yup, fine.  Subtraction and regrouping?  Nope.  Word problems?  Nope.  Got 'em. I quickly took that teacher's guide and made it mine.  Good thing I found out before grade 12, I guess.  I have to keep an eye on that boy.

He's an interesting one, though.  I've written about him before.  His latest challenge he's given himself has to do with his super human strength again.  He does 700 chin ups a week, 100 a day.  You probably think I'm exaggerating, except I'm not.  I've watched him and I've counted.  He doesn't do them all at once.  He does 20 every time he goes by the chin up bar.  I cannot do even 1.  He's just doing what he sees his older brothers doing and wants to be fit and strong he says.  He's very interested in how this will make his muscles grow and took a picture of his bicep at the beginning of the week and wants to see how it will change by the end of the week after 700 chinups.  Rock hard.  When he hits adulthood, if he keeps this up, I'm in trouble.  We all are.  I continue to talk to him about Sampson.  Sampson was given super human strength by God, for a purpose.  But Sampson ended up getting majorly side-tracked and got into lots of trouble.  I continue to warn him - your strength could be a gift by God for some amazing purpose!  But, it could also be your downfall.  So we've actually prayed together about it, thanking God for how strong our little man is, but asking him to show us how and why he can use it for His glory.  It remains to be seen, but I'm very curious what God is going to do with this boy....for now, he keeps me jumping, praying, and begging for wisdom every day.

On a different note, I made a challenge this past week to use up things in the pantry, freezer and fridge that have just been sitting there and never getting used.  Everyone has said to me so many times this week, "When are you going to go grocery shopping?!"  To them, there is "nothing to eat"!  Well, I almost buckled down more on my resolve to show them what my mom did my whole life - make something from nothing.  I remember growing up wondering how she did it - there was a meal on the table every night and I have no idea what she made it with - I never saw that food in the fridge! Now, I would say it is one of my greatest skills and one of the best ways to save money - use up everything before going grocery shopping.  My other motivation is to show them how easy it is to take food for granted and to almost become "entitled".  How many times have I heard, "We don't have peanut butter!  I won't eat oatmeal!"  That makes me sooooo upset and I'll pull out the "starving children in Africa" line over and over because it's true....they better eat the oatmeal and be grateful for it.  So this has been an interesting experiment.

So here's a few things I made from "nothing" this week.

I have lots of beef in the freezer still, so that helped a lot.  I made tacos from shells in the cupboard that had literally been there for months.  I was going to throw them out, but once I put them in the oven, they crisped up and were perfect.  I had no tomatoes or sour cream, just a little cheese left and some salsa and lettuce.  I also used some wraps that had also been in the fridge for awhile.  Kind of worrisome that they hadn't gone bad, but they were great, too.  I added a can of beans that hadn't been used, warmed those up and suddenly had another thing to put in the wraps and tacos.

I also made broccoli soup from a bag of frozen broccoli.  I had literally just chicken bones with some meat still on them and boiled them and made a broth.  I then used a little cheese for a topping and we had broccoli/chicken/cheese soup.

Another night, I wanted to make this delicious chicken alfredo with pesto, but had no pesto and no parmesan left!  So I made a cream sauce with some some remaining milk and again boiled some chicken breasts I had frozen and boiled pasta - it wasn't what I had hoped for that night, but it was still delicious.

Then another night I made tuna/broccoli casserole with a few boxes of kraft dinner.  Not the healthiest, so I supplemented with the tuna and broccoli for a bit of health!  Super cheap and filled everyone's tummies.

I had a few frozen chicken thighs, so I went on a refrigerator crusade and literally put every leftover vegetable in the soup and made a refrigerator soup with the meat from the chicken and it was delicious!

Tonight, the final meal before I shop, I will make meat loaf with the last of the potatoes and a butternut squash - it will be delicious!

Lunches were made from the remaining cheese and lunch meat.  I used every half tomato, every bit of lettuce and sandwiches were on the menu.

I used leftover soup and that was great for those freezing days.

I had bagels with cream cheese that hadn't been used and the kids loved those for a couple days.

We even had desserts with just going through the freezer and finding frozen peaches from more than a summer ago!  My daughter made peach crisp (using up the oatmeal in the cupboard and all the butter).

Then yesterday we pulled off donuts!  I had lard still, yeast, flour and icing sugar.  Homemade donuts are unbelievable.  My son said, "Oh no!  We don't have milk!"  "Yes we do!"  I had bought powdered milk ages ago just in case we ever needed it for emergency baking and I had tons of it, so we quickly made some and the donuts were saved!

I also made date balls as a treat with all the little nuts, seeds, coconut I had in jars and that was also delicious.

Each time I made a meal, my kids were very curious what it would be as to them there was no food, yet time after time, I found something.  I didn't spend a dime and we used up a lot of food we had in the cupboards and freezer and I would say that almost everything I made was fairly healthy, too.  I told the kids, "I can just keep doing this!"  I still have tons of beef from the cow that was slaughtered.  I still have bags of frozen vegetables from our garden. I still have powdered milk and flour.  I have run out of the essentials, so that makes them mad - eggs, milk and peanut butter.  Tomorrow I will shop, but I might just keep it really simple for a little longer.  It's been a great lesson for me and them that we can get by without all the indulgences and even without some of the food they would call "necessities".  They aren't necessarily as essential as they once thought.