This week is a short week with the Holiday and it is just an off week for us. Trying to prep for that is not always easy and sometimes makes me want to just order pizza! This week we will have to eat at least one meal out, but that is ok.

It is almost March and our apple supply is getting lower. We grow some of the fruit that we eat, but most of it comes from Lewis’ Orchard in Cavestown Maryland. http://www.lewisorchards.com/. We buy in bulk from them all year, strawberries, peaches, pears, apples and plums. At the end of the apple season, right before Thanksgiving, we purchase 5 bushels of apples. Some of these apples are storage apples and they last longer into the winter, than some of the others. We have a refrigerator dedicated to just apples for about 4 months of the year. The rest of the year, the refrigerator is the overflow of everything I need to process, milk, fruit, veggies, eggs and even cheese. We are so blessed.

As the apples start to go soft, I need to process them faster. I can do it all at once as apple sauce and can it for later, but instead we make it in smaller batches in the Insta-pot. This allows some whole apples to be made into pies as late in the season as possible. Mrs. Lewis will tell you the best pies comes from whatever mixture of apples your have left in the fridge. This week we made a large Insta-pot full of apple sauce and an apple pie. The apple pie will not last long, but the apple sauce will be for lunches all week.

With Wednesday, February 23 being National Banana Bread Day, I needed to make my banana bread ahead of time in honor of the holiday. We will have this for breakfast this week with our eggs. Having breakfast breads made ahead of time, makes mornings much easier for the kids.

I have made chicken salad the last few weeks and my son honestly prefers turkey. We raise 12 turkeys a year so that we can have one turkey a month for lunch meat. When we butcher the turkeys 9 of them are cut into quarters. This makes them easier to cook for just a weekend meal and then leftovers for lunch. Our meal tonight was turkey and the leftovers made two weeks worth of sliced turkey for lunches. I froze one weeks worth, pre-sliced and ready to go. Cooking a turkey also gave me a quart of wonderful bone broth. This will be used for Turkey Pot Pie on Friday and I will use it for my lunches of homemade ramen. Every time we roast meat, we also save the stock. It is so much better than store bought stock and can be used in so many ways. It freezes great in ice cube trays for small batch cooking later.

Our snacks for the week will be homemade Chex mix and popcorn. The popcorn we make in small batches as needed. Half the family prefers salt and butter, the other half prefer kettle. We will make both through out the week to change it up. This is part of our slow effort to replace processed snack foods with ones made at home. It has been a slow process, I love chips, but we are working on it. Chex mix is a great way to clean some of the “stale” nuts and seeds out of the pantry. I had pumpkin seeds that the lid did not get put back on, after roasting them for an hour with the Chex mix, they were perfect.

This week is going to be a quick dinner week because we are so busy, with one dinner out. I hope that when you read my weekly prep you are encouraged to prep your own week. Maybe not to the level we do, I am crazy, but whatever works for your family. Learning how to cook at home and plan ahead, saves so much money and keeps me from being hangry. I hope that what I write blesses you and your family in some way. Please feel free to leave me a message or pass it on to someone who could be blessed by it. Have a great week and try to enjoy National Banana Bread Day!