Exceedingly Mundane

Apparently, I never posted here about my new little happy that I got in the mail! I shared a photo on Facebook, but thought I better record it here and do a little background (well, for me, it’s a lotta background, since I’m so verbose!)

I went the first 38 or 40 years of my life and never touched coffee. In fact, growing up, I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee. My parents made it every morning and drank about 2 cups each. But it seemed strong and smelled burnt and just icky. 🙂 When I met Tim, I learned quickly that he really loves coffee. He’s not a modern coffee kind of guy, though. He’s not really into going to Starbucks or a local coffee chain we have called Cups, although he will go and drink coffee. But, he just goes for a plain black coffee. Nothing flavored or sweet or fancy. He just likes plain, black coffee.

Me, I tried coffee for the first time on vacation, I think when we went to San Antonio about 10 or 12 years ago. We had a coffee maker in the room and they had some flavored coffee. One morning, Tim offered to make me a cup and add cream and sugar to it, if I would just try it. I did, and learned to “tolerate” coffee, as long as it had enough stuff added so that it didn’t really taste like coffee! He has fondly, over the years, referred to my coffee as “hot chocolate”. 😀 I always tell people mine has to be a light khaki color and not really taste like coffee. LOL!

Anyway, forward a few years and the Tassimo product first came on the market. I saw one at Bed, Bath and Beyond and thought, well, that’s something new, but I don’t know if it will go over. Why would people buy little pods of coffee to make one cup when they could brew a whole pot? Notice that I had a similar thought about the iPod and digital music when Apple first introduced the first iPod and iTunes. I’m like, why would you pay for music online and listen on a specific device, when there’s the radio and CD’s available to buy in every store on the block. Sensing a theme here? I’m not particularly forward thinking or immediately accepting of new things 🙂

So, the Tassimo did ok, and then Keurig came out with their brewers. We stayed at a Hard Rock hotel (got there late and they had given our room away, but upgraded us to a suite with an ocean view, a wrap around deck, a huge shower and a Keurig in the suite) and I tried the Keurig for the first time and exhausted their supply of flavored coffees supplied to the hotel room. I thought then, wow, I’d like to get one of these for me, to have my flavored coffees occasionally.

But then, as now, I realized that a Keurig is just NOT practical for us. With Tim working from home and loving coffee, he drinks a LOT. He’s actually drinking less than he did a few years ago. He’s down from drinking 12 cups a day to *just* 8 cups a day. We normally only make him 4 or 6 cups on the weekend. But, from a cost and practicality stand point, that’s not very cheap when you are buying that many K-cups a day. The beans he likes we get at Sam’s in a big bag and that bag (about 12 bucks) lasts at least a month. So, nowhere near the cost factor.

So, I just never got a Keurig. In our old house, I didn’t have room for it. I kept my little cheap Mr. Coffee coffeemaker from Walmart out in the garage and just brought it inside once or twice a week (at most) to make me some flavored coffee. I was banned from using “his” coffeemaker, since he swears he can taste the flavored coffee afterwards, even though it was cleaned. So, I just kept my old one hidden and he used his daily.

Then we moved last year, into a bigger house with a nice big open kitchen and quite a bit more counter space. I still stored my old coffeepot out in the garage and brought it in once or twice a week (mostly in the winter when it was cold and I didn’t want hot tea).

And, then there’s the Viggle part. I had Viggle points accumulating. I had been using Viggle (an app that you use to check into tv shows) for a while and was cashing the points in for gift cards. I have earned $110 in Amazon gift cards, $55 in iTunes gift cards and a $15 Chili’s e-gift certificate. I was perfectly happy saving my Viggle points for gift cards. Except I went about 6 months and never saw a single gift card offered. Apparently, they wanted you to spend your points on products. So, in looking through the product catalog, I didn’t see anything I really wanted. Except the Keurig. So, by June, I had saved enough points and ordered the Keurig. I think it’s a model that has been discontinued. It’s the Keurig 2.0, but the 350 model. I see the 300, 400 and even 500 model in stores, but never the 350. The 2.0 system means it has the carafe, so we can do a small pot of 4 cups for Tim. But the catch with the 2.0 system and Keurig is that it only uses Keurig branded K-cups. Which means I can’t buy a refillable cup and use all the ground coffee I have here. And I can’t use local brands like Community Coffee or other coffees that don’t partner with Keurig. I love to order stuff from Amazon and they have lots of fun assortments of K-cups. However, half of them don’t have the Keurig brand on them, which means they won’t work in this 2.0 system.

However, it was free, it’s here and I’m thoroughly enjoying it! I’ve been slowly buying K-cups. Decaf, as that’s all I can handle these days. I learned when I woke up with tinnitus 5 years ago that caffeine does a number on my tinnitus, so I eliminated caffeine from my diet. No tea, unless its decaf (so, usually herbal), no Coke, just Sprite or a root beer that doesn’t have caffeine. I’ve quickly learned that there are not a lot of choices in Keurig branded K-cups that are decaf. I’ve only found one or two that are flavored.

But STILL. It was free, I didn’t even have to pay shipping and handling. It’s here, it’s out on my counter, and I’ve been enjoying the bee-jeebers out of it! I’ve had decaf or hot tea every day, using one of my new K-Cups. I’m adding a lot of cream and sugar, as is what I have to do, and I’m already noticing the pounds are starting to slide back on. Nothing like drinking your calories! But. I’m loving my new little happy! 🙂

Here’s the assortment of K-cups and K-carafe pods that came with the brewer:

And my first cup of coffee that I brewed in my favorite little red cup:

It’s the little things in life that make me happy! 😀

I shared the photo above on Facebook the day my prize came in… I was so excited! I enter giveaways at random online (I used to do a lot more, just a few here and there now) and rarely win any more. So, when I won the Pacific Foods giveaway at the Appetite for Health website, I was SO excited! When it came in, I was even more excited! I got two of each, of 12 different items, so a total of 24 products from Pacific Foods. I had to work to find a place to store them!

Then…

I started using the products. To be fair, I had bought one Pacific product in the past, and loved it! I have been buying their low sodium tomato soup for years. I decided quite a while back to stop using almost all canned soup. I started making my own dry cream soup mix and I gave up the Campbell’s tomato soup. It’s just so easy some winter nights to open up a red and white can, and throw together a grilled cheese sandwich for supper 🙂

Anyway, I have always loved the tomato soup that I’ve bought in the past, so I had high hopes for all of my giveaway products. To be fair, I have tried two, and while neither have been very good, I have opened them up, warmed them up and served them. I think they will be a lot better on the second one of those, as I will spice them up or jazz them up some. I tried one package of the pork and beans when Tim smoked some ribs. I normally open a can of pork and beans and then add a ton of stuff to it, so when I just opened the paper package of Pacific pork and beans and didn’t touch them at all, Tim was not happy with them. Next time, I’ll know to jazz them up like I do a normal can of beans.

The second thing I tried was a container of the butternut squash bisque. I had even higher hopes for it, as I love butternut squash anything. It just wasn’t what I was expecting and the flavors were a bit lacking. So, again, next time (since I have two containers of each product), I will add more seasoning and stuff.

I am excited to get all of this stuff though and look forward to trying more of the products. I feel like the broths (I got chicken and vegetable) and the milks (I got 2 almond and 2 hemp) are going to be great and I’ll go through those easily.

Well, since we no longer have my sweet baby Beau, I find that lately about the only thing I have to take photos of, is food. If you look through my phone’s camera roll or my Instagram, it’s mostly food related photos these days. So very boring 🙂

Believe it or not, I tried two new recipes yesterday, but didn’t take a single photo of either one! I also made another recipe that I’d tried once before, and failed to take a photo of it. I’ll have to make them again, because I like to include photos when I post recipes that I make over at our website (recipes on Hambones here).

Yesterday at lunch, I decided to make a smoothie (very out of the ordinary for me!) I got industrious last week and froze some fresh fruit (blueberries, strawberries and chunks of banana). I also bought two bags of frozen fruit at Kroger. So, yesterday I did a quick one with blueberries, mango, greek yogurt and almond milk. My almond milk is unsweetened, so I had to add some agave. I halved the recipe, thinking Tim wouldn’t want any, but then he wanted to try it. Note to self, next time, make the whole thing! Need to experiment with more flavors and combinations. Anyone got a favorite they make?

Yesterday afternoon, I was watching one of my favorite shows, The Chew. They had on guest host Curtis Stone, who made a nectarine chutney (but his used mustard seed, which I don’t have on hand). So, since I had some overripe nectarines, I got online and found a similar recipe. I’ve never tried to make a chutney before, but it was easy, and quite good! 🙂 Tim grilled himself some pork chops on his new grill, and I made this fruit chutney to go along with the pork. I didn’t eat any meat, tried to be good and ate a spinach salad, some of the chutney and some of this couscous. I also *might* have had a bite of his mashed potatoes, but no meat!

So, I’m not really back into much of a cooking groove, but I am trying to try a few new things here and there. I keep pinning things to Pinterest and never trying them, so it’s good to finally move a couple of pins to the Success or Fail board 😀

Tuesday afternoon, since Hambones was down, I tried to get a few odds and ends done. I was catching up on some stuff on the DVR and was watching an episode of Rachael Ray. She said, as she has said before, that the best way to clean a wooden cutting board is with fresh lemon juice and kosher salt. So, I decided there was no time like the present.

I squeezed a whole lemon, one half at a time, and then spread sea salt on one side of my Boos board. It made a bit of a mess, but it seemed to do a pretty good job of cleaning and deoderizing it. I need to do the other side soon. I let it dry good and then wiped it down well with board oil. I’ve done the oil several times before, but had never cleaned it with lemon and salt.

I should have blogged about my board before. I have a set of plastic color-coded cutting boards that I use (actually, it’s my second set, I wore the first one out), and also a smaller wooden cutting board that I like. But for a while now, I had been wanting a nice board. All of the cooking shows that I watch, they seem to all use the Boos brand of cutting board. So, since Tim is always wonderful to me, he surprised me this past Christmas with one. I love the thing, I know it was a splurge but I plan to use it for a very long time to come. And after all, he had given me my Wusthof santoku knife for my birthday last October, so getting the board for Christmas seemed rather logical 🙂

Yesterday was a good day in the kitchen. I got two items checked off of my culinary bucket list. “Culinary bucket list”, what is she talking about? I know, probably no one else on the planet has that type of nerdy, foodie bucket list but me! But, I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older that there are a lot of things I want to try to do or make in the kitchen, and so I’m trying to make a practice of doing some from time to time. And yes, I’m OCD enough that I actually have a list. I have one in my head, and I have another in a text document, where I actually write them down, and then a date by them when I finally knock one off my list. Last year, a couple of the ones that got marked off the list were make hummus and make tortillas from scratch.

Yesterday, I got two more accomplished – cut a fresh pineapple and make a 2 layer cake from scratch (with frosting from scratch). Now, granted, these are probably nothing to most people. But they are both something I’ve never done and was rather proud of myself for doing 😀

The pineapple should have been one I did years ago. I *love* pineapple but Tim doesn’t like it (although to be fair, he’s gotten better the longer we’re married. He doesn’t like CANNED pineapple, but he will now eat a bit of the fresh). I always thought they were hard to cut, but it totally was not. I do have to get better at cutting and coring, but I am still happy that I now have a delicious sweet pineapple cut up in the fridge to snack on. I found pineapples on sale this week at Kroger for 99 cents, so I grabbed one. I hope they are on sale again soon, I think most of the time the darn things are more like 3.00 or 3.50.

Second, I have made lots of cakes from scratch. But they are always sheet cakes, and they are often what I call “poke” cakes. You poke holes and pour something on top (I’ve done lemonade cakes, honey bun cakes, strawberry cakes, etc that fit this category). But, whenever I’ve made a layer cake, I always used a box mix. I found a recipe online and made a yellow cake. I got out my layer pans, which I have rarely, if ever, used and discovered this:

Can you see what I never noticed? I bought these pans at either Marshalls or TJ Maxx, and probably at separate times. I’m all about saving a buck, you know. And apparently, I didn’t realize they were a tad different, one is darker than the other one. So, the cake layers were not quite even.

Anyhoo…. It was good, but a little dry. I think I’m still having trouble adapting to the new oven – this one cooks hotter, better, faster and so I’m going to have to start adjusting my recipes to cook at either a lower temperature, a less time, or maybe even both. The cake was still good, don’t get me wrong, but I think it was a little overdone. The frosting was good, but I didn’t have the right kind of chocolate, so I used what I had on hand. So it wasn’t quite as dark and chocolate-y as I would have liked. All of that said, I’m still shoving this cake into my mouth!

I’ve tried off and on for the last couple of years to grow some herbs. While I like and enjoy flowers, both Tim and I have realized that it’s really nice, even in our tiny yard, to try to grow something useful, that we can eat or use. He’s grown tomatoes and jalapenos for the last couple of years, and I’ve been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to grow herbs.

I have never been able to get them to grow from seed. I’ve tried a couple of times (granted, I don’t use the little seedling starter kits, just a packet of seeds from Lowe’s that I’ve sown in a big planter, and nothing has ever popped up). I tend to generally buy plants from Lowe’s or Home Depot that are already growing and green, and I have been mostly killing them in a very short amount of time. (Note to self, I saw some gorgeous herbs in Fresh Market, get some there next year to grow). This year has been a bit better. I’ve had a lot of trouble with parsley, and on and off troubles with my basil. I’ve also got chives, dill, rosemary and oregano. The oregano, rosemary and chives have done the best. I’ve used them each several times… it’s so nice to have fresh herbs! I’ve also used some of the basil. When it blooms, the leaves are so much nicer. When I pinch the blooms off, it tends to shrivel up and get brown. Any ideas why? I wonder if I should be trying to grow the basil (or any of the other herbs) inside, and not outside?

The parsley has been the biggest mystery to me. I’m on my second plant. The first one, I put out in a planter in the yard, and I thought it was getting too much sun. So the next one I bought, I put in the planter with the chives, where it mostly stays in the shade. It gets yellowy and is just not growing well:

I don’t know if it’s the kind of parsley I’m trying to grow (curly) or the sun or the water conditions. It’s always half dead looking and shriveled up, I can barely use it.

I’m getting a lot of use out of the chives though! I think it’s my favorite one. I’ve made chive butter for homemade bread, and used it a lot in sauces and also as a topping for baked potatoes. It does well as long as it’s in the shade!

If you have any hints on growing herbs (especially in the hot, humid south) or any ideas on what I’m doing wrong, please leave me a comment and let me know! Thanks! 😀

We’ve been trying to grow tomatoes in the summer for Tim, for about 3 years now (I don’t eat them!) The first year, I think, we put the plant in a planter on the deck, then last year, we plopped it in the corner of the big flower bed in the back yard. I so wish we had room for a nice big veggie garden, but our yard is tiny. We’re thinking about putting in a rectangular bed next year, behind the fence (which is technically not our property). However, we have some tomato plants back there this summer, and they are doing a LOT better than the one we planted inside the yard, in the flower bed. Go figure!

Anyway, I heard on the news that this year is a great year for homegrown tomatoes. I guess because of the mild winter/warm spring or maybe with all the rain we’ve had the last couple of weeks. Either way, that’s definitely been true. Tim’s plants are doing great. One day last week, he had six tomatoes, ready to eat!

He’s been making us some salsa, and he’s been eating a lot of tomato sandwiches. He’s really enjoying his bounty! I’ve been growing herbs, and I’m hoping to blog about them soon, maybe later today 🙂

I learned a lot from my mom, including how to be frugal and how to shop for deals. I also try very hard to stick to a list and not get anything that isn’t on my list. I have my Grocery IQ app on my phone, but also on my iPad (and I use it daily), and as my new giant Kroger has free wi-fi, I just carry my Ipad to the store. It’s a tough life 🙂

Anyway, I deviate from my list when I find “deals”. Recently, I found some Laura’s Lean organic ribeyes in the clearance bin, so I snatched them up. Same with a whole organic chicken, which Tim smoked on his new smoker he got for Christmas (ooh, I feel another blog post coming up!). Today, I found a basket full of reduced priced items in the Natural/Organic section. I could have bought a lot more, but I was good and just came home with these:

The agave was my big score. I had *just* bought a bottle of this brand in their organic section two weeks ago. Luckily, I have been using it and knew it had a good taste. Instead of 3.99 a bottle, I got them for 99 cents each. Me and my “oatmeal on steroids” are set for a while now, since I add agave to my oatmeal every morning. I’ve bought Bare Naked granola before and liked it. The organic “pop tarts” are a new try, but maybe they won’t be too bad. 🙂

I love a good deal at the food place!

I am trying to get back into a groove of trying new recipes. Sometimes, I feel like I cook the same things over and over. I do try to break out of my rut, eventually. 😀

I entered a few new recipes that I’ve made in the last couple of months in both my local recipe software (MacGourmet, that I bought last year for my new MacBook and just LOVE!), and also on the recipe section of our website (here). I’ve tried to be better about taking photos. It’s funny, because when I transferred photos, I had two distinct themes:

1. Food
2. Beau

(So expect a couple of Beau photos soon!) Anyway, here’s a few of the new things I have tried lately. I tried to give credit for where I had found them (I think these are all online), and hope I got them all correct. I tend to troll for recipes, print them out or file them, and not always cite where I found them. Ahem.

* A change on regular banana bread. This is more of a dessert, since it has chocolate inside and a great chocolate glaze on the outside. Banana Chocolate Walnut bread recipe here.

* One I made back earlier in the winter, for quick enchiladas in the crockpot. I have a recipe very similar to this that I do in the oven, which is also just basically black bean enchiladas. It was nice to do them in the afternoon and have them ready at suppertime, just having to fix some sides to go with them. Crockpot enchiladas here.

* A honey oat bread in my bread machine, here.

* A tangy, strong vinaigrette for a spinach salad – here.

* A copycat recipe for Bourbon chicken. It was good, but not quite like the Bourbon Chicken at our favorite local chinese restaurant.

I also went back and entered a few recipes for things that I have made for years, or haven’t made in years, that were on recipe cards and not in either of my software systems. One is my mom’s chili, which is just a guideline. No measurements, she didn’t measure much of anything! Another is for a “pantry cake”, a quick snack cake that doesn’t use eggs or butter. It doesn’t have a frosting so Tim does not like this one. What a shame, I had to eat almost the whole thing all.by.myself!

Chili recipe here

Chocolate Snack Cake recipe here

I am hoping to try a couple more in the next few weeks. If they turn out good, I’ll probably make another recipe post 🙂

P.S. Sorry for all the different sizes on the photos. I just didn’t feel like going back and making them all the same size. Sheer laziness, I tell ya! 🙂

Have a great day!

I appear to be a seasonal eater. These days, if we go out to eat lunch or dinner, I seem to want to go somewhere that serves a nice variety of soup choices 🙂 Especially at lunch, I love places that offer a combo of say, soup and a half a sandwich. I guess because we’ve had quite a bit of cold weather lately, I am drawn to soups, both at home and eating out.

In the summer though, I’ll do a salad and a half a sandwich. I love places like Corner Bakery, Newks, Sweet Peppers, McAlisters, etc — good soup/sandwich/salad places. I love paninis and get those a lot. I rarely order a caesar salad, for whatever reason. I also don’t love places that just have iceberg lettuce for their salads. (Have you noticed a trend, I appear to be quite picky!)

I admit, when I eat out, I tend to favor “fattening” foods. Especially this time of year, with soups. Something like a broccoli cheese or a loaded or baked potato soup. Or at Newks on Fridays, my favored lobster bisque. Yummy and fattening. At home, I tend to make a little healthier soup, a turkey or bean chili, a Cooking Light recipe for potato soup, etc.

How about you? Which do you prefer – soup, sandwich or salad? Are you a seasonal eater or does the weather not affect what you eat? Do you have a favorite place to eat this kind of food, and a combination that you like? Leave a comment and let me know!

I don’t know why I’ve always walked by these in the grocery store every year, and never picked any up to try. This year, I rectified that and bought a bag of Cuties Clementines a week or so ago. And… I really like them!

I think it’s a nostalgia thing for me. I am pretty sure that Santa put an orange in my stocking every year, growing up. I remember thinking the oranges were O.K., but I wasn’t fond of the peel and all the seeds. Maybe later, Santa switched to tangerines. And those were better, but these little Clementines are good! They’re small, so a good size for portion control, and easy to get into.

So, how about you… is there a food that is really nostalgic for you this time of year? Something your mom or grandma always made, or put in your stocking, or you always got to have this time of year? Leave me a comment and let me know!

P.S. ALL of my presents are wrapped, I’m dancing a happy jig over here! 🙂

This is what happens when you talk your husband into stopping at the grocery store, after church. You know, for necessities and healthy food (milk, orange juice, fruit, veggies). These just “jump” in the cart:

What you don’t see is the 6 or 7 bags of potato chips we already have at our house. Plus now we have 4 bags of Who Dat chips (which are “regular” flavored, not even a special flavor). Good grief. I try not to eat many of them, so Tim has some serious chip eating to do 😀

I’m a complete oddball, because my favorite thing to shop for is… food! I actually love to grocery shop, love to go to Sam’s and stock up on food and household supplies, and when we travel, I love to go to new grocery stores. Yes, I’m weird, and I know it 😀

When we went to the beach before Labor Day, I got to get in two food stops. We went to a Publix to shop for food for the beach house for everyone while we were there. This particular Publix had a nice organic section in the produce and several healthy options on the shelves. I didn’t buy anything here, but I easily could have 🙂 In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Publix chain store, or if I have, it’s been a couple of decades.

My other stop is one of my all-time favorites – Harry & David. Whenever we travel and go near an outlet mall that has a Harry & David, I always want to stop. Years ago, I would browse a lot and not buy much. These days, I have finally realized that I don’t get to go very often, so I better buy while I’m there and it’s available 😀 We normally only go near a Harry & David every 2 or 3 or sometimes 4 years, so it’s a nice treat for me to go in and find something new to buy, or pick up an old favorite. One of our all time favorites there is their tomato and pepper relish, which I use to make a dip for football season. This year, I made a pointed effort to get mostly new things, and so I am trying all new stuff this time!

Here’s the link to the last post I made about this, two years ago: click here

And here’s a photo of the stuff I bought this trip, I actually did pretty good and didn’t go overboard! 🙂

P.S. In case you’re interested and can’t see from the photo, I bought: Multigrain Tortilla chips, Sesame Garlic tortilla chips, Moose Munch decaf coffee, Raspberry scone mix, 2 kinds of salsa (habanero and black bean & corn), one jar of queso, one jar of cherry preserves and one jar of cherry butter. I like apple butter, so I hope I like the cherry kind 🙂

But not recipes for Spam!

A couple of random thoughts this morning:

1. I don’t understand people who leave spam on my little blog. I mean, it’s not a high traffic blog, nor does it have anything controversial or even overtly interesting on it. I’m SO grateful for Akismet though – the spam filter I installed a while back to catch all of this nasty spam. I’m constantly amazed and disgusted at the kinds of spam that Akismet catches. Ugh. At least it doesn’t get out there, but I hate seeing it all on my moderation page.

2. I’ve been trying to get back into a cooking groove. For a while now, I’ve just been making things that are easy, or things that I’ve made many times before. I’m making a concerted effort to try new things. Most of them have been winners, although some have been better than others. All of these are new to me, and all are from places online. I have tried to give credit from the website where I found the recipe, but sometimes I don’t always write it down or print it out. I have just entered several recipes on our family website, in the Recipes section. Here’s a sampling of them:

Sausage Calzones, with homemade dough – here

Pizza Pot Pie – here

Butter Honey Wheat Bread – here

Homemade Taco Sauce (here), which I used in this Skillet Taco recipe

I am going to try a new recipe today for a homemade spaghetti sauce. I’m on a kick lately to reduce sodium and cut down on the processed food I buy and use. So many additives in the canned stuff, packet mixes, etc, as well as that nasty high fructose corn syrup. I hope it turns out ok, because I sure do like using jarred spaghetti sauce, it’s so easy!

It’s a little thing, but I’ve decided to go with more glass and less plastic in my kitchen. For quite a while now, I’ve been thinking about trying to get rid of most of my Rubbermaid / Tupperware / Misc Plastic containers. I have read (or as Tim thinks, bought into the hype) that there’s stuff in the plastic that can leach into your food. Plus, plastic gets stained with tomato products like spaghetti, chili, etc. Now, I like plastic for the no-breakage option, but I’m trying really hard to be careful and not chip or break my glass containers.

I bought a couple of 3 pack Pyrex glass storage containers at Walmart to give them a try. A few days later, Tim and I were at Sam’s, and he found this. He came and got me and said, “Let’s get this for you, I think you’ll love it!”. Such a sweetie 🙂

I told him, I really don’t need that many containers, nor do I have room for them. But, I started going through my cabinets and decided I could purge some other things that I had. I had a set of stainless /coated storage containers, some ramekins, as well as all of my Rubbermaid containers. Once I cleaned all of them out, I had enough room for all of my red Pyrex glass containers.

I’ve had them a few weeks now, and I really like them. I can mix up something like chicken salad in one of the containers, then just store it in the fridge. I can scoop up leftovers from supper, then when we want to warm them up for lunch the next day, I don’t have to worry about taking them out of the plastic and putting them on something else to warm up (that’s mostly what I had read about plastic, don’t microwave in it and heat them and the contents up). I can pop them in the freezer, I can put them in the dishwasher and they come out looking brand new. I really like this set from Sam’s Club, because I have some rectangular / oblong ones in addition to different sizes of round ones. Lots of variety and lots of storage sizes. All good things 🙂

So, here’s a quick question – do you do leftovers at your house? Do you store them in plastic or glass? Do you freeze leftovers?

Have a great, happy, joyous day 🙂