Saturday Cooking and Cleaning

It's our normal Saturday cooking day.  Ruth and I started out by cleaning out part of the fridge, starting the dishwasher and making a grocery list.  We had to go to three different grocery stores and still didn't get everything I needed, but the remainder of stuff is not essential.  When we got home from grocery shopping, we finished cleaning out the fridge, washed down the shelves, and put all the newly empty containers through the dishwasher.

Joe and Kristie had given me a cookbook for Christmas, and after Christmas I found some Company's Coming cookbooks on half price and had purchased two new ones.  (I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for cookbooks).  Ruth and I had been looking through the various cookbooks and thinking that it would be nice to try this or that recipe, so when we made up our grocery list, we planned to try some of the new recipes.

Joe and Kristie gave me the cookbook called The Big Cook - which is for planning to make a number of meals in advance and freezing them.  Well Ruth and I like to make meals in advance, however right now I don't have room to freeze anything much - the freezer is full!  However, we've been trying some of the recipes.  Earlier this week I made a Mexican Casserole from that cookbook and it was very good.  We're also planning for several of the meals for this week to be from that cookbook.

The two cookbooks I purchased are Adding Vegetables to Everyday Meals and Anytime Casseroles.  From the adding vegetables cookbook we tried the Sesame Cabbage Loaf (very pretty but I think I'd prefer it as a yeast bread to a soda bread, so I may tweak the recipe a bit).  We also made Shrimp Veggie Salad Rolls.  I had a recipe I had clipped from The Leader Post for a barley and wild rice salad, which we also tried.  Ruth also made up one of our old favourites, the Broccoli Salad while I made a Greek Salad.

Because we had been cleaning out the fridge and freeing all the prisoners from their Tupperware tombs (actually we use glass), we also started a pot of soup.  The fridge looks very nice now; we've got our usual three salads made, as well as a new type of bread, and all the meals planned for the week with the groceries purchased.  I also got two loads of laundry done and three loads in the dishwasher and all the larger bowls that don't fit in the dishwasher done.  So we've got a lot accomplished.

 Here's the barley and wild rice salad.

 This is the Sesame Cabbage Loaf - the first picture is before it went in the oven and the second one is after it was baked.

And here are the Shrimp Veggie Salad rolls.