Chicken Egg Rolls and Pizza Logs

 So last week we made chicken egg rolls and pizza logs, we make these about every 4 to 5 months. My husband is the best at rolling the egg rolls and I handle the pizza logs. 

Due to the amount of work and the mess when we make them we do it in bulk, I think this time we did 75 egg rolls and 96 pizza logs.

                                              

These are the wrappers that we use and they can be found in the freezer section of most Asian stores. If you can't find these the egg roll wrappers that you can find in the produce section of most major stores will also work, they will just look different and be a bit thicker.

For the pizza logs, you will need string cheese cut in half the long way, pepperoni, and spring roll wrappers. You could also use any veggies you would add to a pizza. If you don't have string cheese you can use shredded mozzarella but I find that the string cheese works better.

The pizza logs are easy, one piece of cheese, 6 pepperoni on a spring wrapper and roll. Seal with a egg wash and then fry. I like to cook all of them before I freeze that way I only need to make a mess with frying oil once, but you can freeze them un- fried To reheat from frozen you can use the oven, air fryer, or even microwave. 

Serve with pizza sauce on the side for dipping them in.

For the Chicken egg rolls, you will need ground chicken I used 2 pounds this time, 2 heads of cabbage sliced thin, a one pound of baby carrots chopped up in the mini food processor. I also like to season the mix with ginger and some oyster flavored sauce. Insead of cabbage and carrots you can use coleslaw mix.

Fry up the ground chicken in a bit of olive oil, remove from the pan. Add the cabbage and carrots and cook them down add the ginger and oyster sauce. Mix the cabbage mix with the chicken and let the mix cool. This time we lucked out as it was a very cold winter day so we set the mix outside to cool.

When you go to wrap them use about 2 TB of mix on a spring roll wrapper and seal with egg wash. And then fry. Same as the pizza logs you can re heat in the oven, air fryer, or microwave. 

He is the best at rolling the egg rolls.

I am in charge of the frying and this time I only burned myself once. 

Price Book- Week One

 I normally keep a paper price book, and I will also do that but I wanted to also use my blog to help keep track of prices for items like milk, bread, meat to see how prices go up and down during the year.

Week 1

 ALDI= A

Walmart= W

Sam's Club- S

Item	Store	Week 1
Bread	A	0.79
	W	0.89
Milk 2% Gallon	S	3.22
	W	2.98
Eggs 18ct	W	2.2
Ground Beef 90%	S	3.44lb
Chicken Tender Fr	S	2.79 lb
Moz Cheese	S	2.51 lb
Canned Chicken	S	1.39 8 for 10.98

Menu Planning 2022 Week !

 So the plan for the first week of the year was :

Saturday- Chicken Soup

Sunday- Hamburgers-  Aidan cooks

Monday- Turkey Club sandwiches w/ leftover soup

Tuesday- Pizza- Conner cooks

Wednesday- Taco- Nolan Cooks

Thursday- Chicken w/ Chicken Rice

Friday- Snack Dinner

Saturday- Potato Soup

What we ended up having:

Saturday- Chicken Soup w/ bread from Wheatfields bakery

Sunday- The best Aidan made hamburgers, with fresh veggies

Monday- BLT sandwiches w/leftover soup. What happened was when I went to use the turkey it was moldy which was a disappointment as I had bought it only 2 days before and it was with in dates. I had gotten it at Sam's, never have had an issue before with lunch meat from there, but since it's on the other side of town I was not going out of my way to return it. I did take pictures and the next time I am there I will stop by the customer service desk.

Tuesday- Conner and Shadow came to make dinner like they do every Tuesday but instead of the usal pizza. Shadow made her chicken and rice fajitas which the boys who live here had been asking for, many happy people that day at dinner. This is also the day that my phone met a unfortunate incident with water, and while the phone still works my camera  not so much. 

Wednesday- We did have tacos, but I made them and I have been told that only Nolan should be making Taco dinner nights. I guess I might have seasoned the meat a bit to much. 

Thursday- Chicken w/ Chicken Rice - Well this meal turned into Chicken and Biscuits w/ mashed potatoes and corn/ broccoli and there was a bit of a incident with my pressure cooker and the stove top.

 Yes I melted the bottom and the house smelled like melted plastic on the coldest day of the winter so far.I had moved the pressure cooker to the back of the stove, so that I could use the front burner to make the gravy and I must have bumped the dials and turned on the unit at the back. Good news is the pressure cooker is usable, and I was able to scrape all the melted plastic off the stove top.

Friday- Snack Dinner- Well we went to see Wicked the play and decided that we would get dinner in downtown KC. We ended up eating at brgrkitchen , I had the mac and cheese and the Cobb salad both delicious. The guys had the Juicy Lucy,  Portabellas Mushroom Burger and the New Burger all with fries. Aidan actually ordered something other than chicken strips for dinner out but then they didn't have chicken stips on the menu 😃

Saturday- We wrapped up the week  with Potato soup, and cheesy bread along with ice cream sundaes for desert as it was family game night. 

Time to go plan the menus for the coming week.

How did your dinners go this week ? 

Goal Update 2022- Week One

 It has been a good week as far as working on goals and I am hoping that it keeps on going this well.

1 ) Work / Life Balance- It has been a crazy week back to work thankfully it was a short week. I have been much better about not worrying about the next day, I control what I can and work hard during my work day but at the end I leave it at work. 

2) Menu Planning- For the most part we followed the menu, there were some changes but we did eat at home every night but Friday.

3) Blog More- this week I managed to write 3 Blog entries, and I think I may have found a way to make sure that I take time to blog. 

4) To Do List- Not so good on this one.

5) Game TIme- we did play a family game this week, it was Ticket to Ride and for the first time in a long time I won a game that we played. Some things that we did to make sure this happened was to let everyone in the house know that we were going to play a game on Saturday and the time. 

6) Personal Goals - 

a) Get Up and Move- I worked at a school 2x this weeks so that was a solid 5 hours of moving each day. As far as family the husband and older son did go to the gym once and the youngest did TKD 3x last week.

b) Drink More Water- What I did this week was drink water all morning and not have any soda till the afternoon when I needed some caffeine. 

c) Fast Food- during the work week I didn't get fast food at all, but I was tempted. Then I remembered this goal, and drove on past. I have started placing some snacks into my work bag so that I have something in the car to eat between different schools. We did have fast food 2x on the day that we went to my daughters school once for breakfast in the car, and to bring home donuts from a great place near her school as a treat. 

7) Clean Kitchen before bed- This goal has been the hardest and also has made the most impact. I was able to get it done every night but Friday night. Making sure that this was done , made the mornings and dinner each night easier. 

8) Garden- nothing yet.

Shopping 2022- week 1

One of the things that surprised us when we moved to Kansas from NY seven years ago was that in Kansas you pay taxes on food. So this year along with keeping track on how much we spend on food, I am also going to track how much tax we pay on groceries over the course of the year. 

I am considering the shopping I did on 12/30/2020 as part of this year's food budget since I would have done this big shop on 1/1. Except we were getting a winter storm and I would much rather shop on a 40 degree day then a 0 degree day. 

This time around the big budget items were ground beef, chicken, and canned chicken as I had been working our way through the freezers for the last 2 month trying to use up what we had. 

I am trying to keep to the actual food budget this year 440 a month ( 40 is for taxes) , so I will be bringing back using a price book. A price book is a way of keeping track of what you pay for food over the course of time, so you know when you are getting a good price and should stock up. Most stores run sales on items like meat and cheese every 6 to 8 weeks. 

This week I went to Sam's Club, Aldi's, 88 International ( one of our local international stores) and Hy-Vee. The hardest item to find this time around was cabbage of all things, finally found some at Hy-Vee and they only had 4 heads of the organic kind. 

The special request items for this shopping trip were ice cream and spaghettios, and I was able to get both of these items.

I spent : Alidi's 104.71 ( 8.73)

              Sam's Club 237.12 ( 19.78)

              Hy-Vee 13.80 ( 1.20)

              International Market 19.80 ( 1.81) 

Total - 375.43 ( 31.52)

I did a second shop this week to get Milk, Bread, Eggs, Banana's and soda and more ice cream for family game night. 

                Walmart : 38.77 (3.48)

Weekly Total- 414.20 ( 35)  

As of today I have already spent the money budgeted for the whole month of January for food. I will likely have at least one more big shop this month. So I am just going to hope that it balances out by the end of the year. But then I haven't actually spent any of 2022 food budget yet, as the funds for January have yet to be deposited into my grocery account. I used Decembers food budget for the shopping listed above. 

Making Chicken Broth

  I started with one normal size pressure cooker a few years ago and when my crockpot met an unfortunate incident with the floor the husband bought me a even larger second one. Having two has made chicken broth day so much easier. 

 When it comes time to make chicken broth which happens every three or four months it is a whole day affair. But it doesn't take up much of my actual time, but it is a day that I need to be home to keep an eye on the pressure cookers as they do the work.

I like to use the cheapest chicken that has bones in it for making broth, this time around it was drumsticks.

I use carrots, garlic, onion, and mushrooms along with the chicken to make the broth. I do not season the broth when I am making it as I like to that when I use it. 

When it comes to the carrots if I am using whole ones I just give them a good scrub and don't peel. Often I use whatever sad looking carrots are in the fridge, which sometimes could be baby carrots.

The onions just get a quick peel and cut in half 

The garlic just gets the ends chopped off, I don't even peel it as I strain the broth.

As a family we don't eat mushrooms, they just don't appeal to us but when it comes to making broth I toss in a container, I think it adds something to the broth. 

All of this in then placed in the pressure cookers, I use enough of the mixture to fill the cookers almost to the top and then add water and a splash of apple cider vinegar  to break down the chicken bones. Set the pressure cookers on the chicken setting for one hour, and I let them naturally cool for about 30 min after the cycle finishes. Then strain and place the broth on the stove in my extra large pot that holds 17 quarts.  Then place the now mushy mix of  veg and meat back into the pressure cookers add more fresh veggies and chicken if you have them left from the beginning add water and repeat the process. I do this about 3 times just keep reusing the veg and chicken and I will have about 17 quarts of broth. This takes about 8 hours, during this time I leave the broth that is finished simmering on the stove and that reduces it some more. 

If I am doing this in the winter and it's a nice cold day, I will portion it out into the containers and then place out in the snow until the broth cools and then I freeze it. If it's summer time I will try my best to have a open freezer and place the broth in there, also a sink of ice helps to cool it quickly. 

Lots of wonderful chicken broth to use in soups, and other recipes. 

 Let's start this year of blogging with a topic that fits in well with the name of this blog What's One More.

Yes that was the family motto for 2020-2021. At first we thought that we would be moving to GA, and in fact the husband was in GA from July of 2020 to June of 2021, while the rest of us where here in KS. So we spent time in 2020 trying to pair down belongings and make a plan for moving. Then we learned in the beginning of 2021 that we would not be moving to GA, something that we thought was going to happen. So not one more move for us.

Instead it became a remodel job, if we were staying in KS we needed to make our house work better for us. After 7 years here we had a pretty good idea on what worked and what didn't. The hard part was trying to make what needed to happen not only fit in the budget but in the space we had. So I spent a lot of time getting estimates for work . Some projects were tabled due to cost and others we made choices on what parts could we do and what parts needed to be done by a contractor. 

In the end we decided to remove all carpet in the family room and replace with tile, wood floors to replace the laminate in the kitchen and living room, a shed for the yard , and some new furniture that fit the rooms better. Then there are the What's One More projects that seemed to be natural extensions of the original plan.

I had asked for a new sink and countertop for the kitchen to be included in the plan, and here comes the first of many what's one more project in 2021. Lets just remodel the whole kitchen says the husband who remember is in GA at this time. After some thought, I was on board, and the planning began.

So the final projects ended up being a total kitchen remodel, which is still has bits not finished but we are getting closer. New wood floors in the kitchen, livingroom, hallway and front staircase. New railing and a 1/2  wall to replace a railing. Plus painting the whole upstairs and downstairs, a fireplace mantel project. Tile floors in the downstairs, tiling the upper 1/2 of the boys bathtub/ shower walls. And some new furniture that makes the rooms work as needed. Some days I felt that if I had to make one more decision my head was going to explode, as these were choices that I was going to have to live with for the next 20 years. What if I made the wrong one ,so much second guessing.

The house is more ours now, it works great with only 2 of the kids living here at home, and when we have guests or college kid comes home for a break we have a space for them. If the college kid moves back in after college, we might need to rethink some spaces. 

Here are some before and after pictures of the living room. I will be sharing more of the remodel as the year goes on room by room. 

                                                              Before and then the After