Simple. Healthy. Tasty: My Weekly Meal Plan

Another week of food preservation mostly but we are also getting back into the swing of things with recommitting to be a bit better with our chores and our schedule. September is more my time for renewal and fresh starts more so than New Years.

It was so nice and even with the hubbub of canning and Ryan being gone with work for half the week . I think everyone was much happier and more productive and we even had more time.....rhythm is a good thing.

Missy had her dance this weekend dress hunting was part of the week also it was a little tricky and shopping is not on my list of favorite things to do but it was fairly painless and I thought she look absolutely beautiful!

Food preservation last week consisted of making Barley Soup, Pear Butter and drying LOTS of pears and apples!

Dried Pears coming out of the dehydrator......better than candy!

I love my Excalibur Dehydrator and this time of year it keeps really busy. My only wish is that I had another one. I have had my eye on a new all stainless steel one for a while and my hope is to have it by next fall. The reason I want another one is because that even though dehydrating food saves me tons of time and space it does take quite a few hours for certain foods to dry and sometimes a day can make all the difference in the readiness of your fruit etc.

Apples ready to be dried.

I also save a lot of time dehydrating foods because it is easy to have everyone even little ones help. There is not hot stove and things to worry about. With me and 3 or 4 of the kids it takes us about 20 minutes to do a batch. Of course that doesn't include drying time but the Excalibur does all that work.

This week I hope to have more tomatoes ripe enough to do some more Salsa and I have some cucumbers ready to do these Bread and Butter Pickles today!

Tonight is our annual family Pajamarama! It's our little family "back to homeschool" party (yeah it's a little later this year than usual). We have a big breakfast for dinner in our pajamas (symbolic of we could "do school" in our P.J.'s if we wanted to the kids usually don't but Mom has been known to at times ;) We have a lesson and talk about our theme for the year then watch a really inspiring movie and just enjoy having fun together.