Meals in Lean Times – Pork Roast Plus Ham and Bean Soup

An article by Joanna    No Comments

Now that I am a stay at home mom, we’re officially down to one income. To be honest, we didn’t really get that much income from my job after the expenses of daycare and gas, so I would’ve almost been paying for the privilege of working if I were to send two kids to daycare. But, I digress.

One of the beneficial things that we learned during the lean times – when I was laid off and the husband’s hours had been cut with the economic downturn – was how to really make meals last. I have always struggled with leftovers. I love to make huge meals, but I don’t always know what to do with the leftovers, so planning that in advance really helps me. I recently read a book called Miserly Moms (pick it up if you see it, it’s great!) and she talked about how their family had instituted a soup and bread night, which is something I decided we could adopt.

So tonight we had pork roast from some pork butt shoulder roasts that I picked up super cheap at the butcher and the recipe from the Pioneer Woman‘s first TV show. It’s super neat to see someone whose blog I followed on TV! I think my husband actually left drool spots on the sofa when he was watching the episode with this recipe! We also had mashed potatoes and corn bread (I cheated and used Jiffy boxes!)

Then, after the dishes were done (ok, after I was done doing dishes and while the husband picked up my slack!), I cleaned some Great Northern beans and set them out to soak. Tomorrow we’ll be having ham and beans and I’ll probably have to make more cornbread since I love the stuff.

I don’t think I really have a recipe for the ham and beans – brown sugar, ham, beans and onion is about what I use. I didn’t catch a picture of dinner tonight, and I might not tomorrow either since I “borrowed” the batteries from the camera for the Wii remote and then forgot to get more batteries when we were at the store…

So anyway, I kinda lost my spark for blogging. I’m behind on reviews and giveaways and I’m still trying to juggle house cleaning, discipline for a three year old, relaxing, studying and everything else. The last two weeks life just kinda blew up in my face you know? But I have high hopes for the rest of this week and next month and the month after that. Ad nauseum.