Purdyville

Fairly often, I’m asked what our family usually does for lunch. Here’s the run down of this past week: Monday: Caleb (age 6) makes macaroni and cheese, from scratch. He needs only a little help from me. Tuesday: Cadie made Chicken and Spaghetti for supper last night. I boil another three pounds of spaghetti for [...]

As many of you know, we haven’t exchanged gifts for Christmas for many years. Instead we have a family party on Christmas Day, which has come to be known among the youngest in Purdyville as "Food Christmas," much to my chagrin. I have to admit, we do have a lot of food, and we try [...]

Our toaster is ailing. The button won’t stay down, though if you stand right there and hold it down, it will still toast the bread. I don’t remember going through toasters so fast when I was a kid. Seems to me we had the same toaster forever back then. Maybe it was only ten years, [...]

Menu: Double-Crusted Pizza with Sausage and Peppers, doubled Double-Crusted Pizza with Mushrooms and Onions, doubled 2 gallons Purdyville Juice Comments: Tonight was Lachlan’s turn to cook. This is the first time we made the sausage and pepper recipe. We based it on another recipe called Sausage Sandwich Squares. By using the poultry sausage we managed [...]

Menu: Chicken and Dumplings, lower fat Chocolate Surprise Cake 2 gallons Purdyville Juice Comments: This is the same recipe I posted here, except I used 98% Fat Free Campbell’s condensed Cream of Chicken and Cream of Celery soups. I’m happy to report nobody tasted any difference. Titi made up the cake recipe to use up [...]

Menu: Ravioli with Tomato Sauce Black Forest Cake Pumpkin Pie root beer Comments: Ravioli sure is popular around here! It’s a little pricey to have as an everyday meal, so I guess that’s why it seems like a treat. Believe it or not, the Black Forest Cake is low fat. It sure doesn’t look lowfat! [...]

Menu: Poppy Seed Casserole Spinach The Best Brownies Comments: Poppy Seed Casserole is a variation on your basic chicken-and-rice casserole. I make it when Rice-a-Roni goes on sale. You might find spinach a little tastier if you cook it our way. And The Best Brownies really are the best, but that happened to be the [...]

Menu: Kale and Vegetable Soup Oatmeal Pan Bread 2 gallons Purdyville Juice (use search feature) Comments: When people hear we’re having this soup for supper, they say, "Oh." But when they eat it, they say, "Actually, this is pretty good." Still, it doesn’t rate up there with, say, pizza, so I only make it occasionally. [...]

Menu: Chili Meatloaf and Potato Casserole 2 gallons Purdyville Juice (use Search feature to find recipe) Comments: This is a stick-to-your-ribs kind of meal that I found in the MasterCook collection itself. Titi cooked tonight and forgot to make a vegetable. No one seemed to mind. I find it a bit tricky to coordinate the [...]

Menu: Spaghetti with Ricotta 3 lbs. asparagus 2 gallons Purdyville Juice (use search to find recipe) Comments: Wegmans had asparagus on sale for $1.49/pound. It was definitely a nice change from the usual vegetables, cooked in water, drained, buttered. The spaghetti dish is another quick meal from the very early days of our marriage. Collin [...]