Weekend Feeding

I have a routine on the weekends no matter how much time or money we have, it's something I adopted from my grandparents: Using up leftovers and what food is in the house on weekends.
My ability to do so has been greatly increased with the cookbook "Cooking More With Less." The book has all kinds of recipes that you can tweak, make vegetarian, substitute, etc...lots of good ideas to boot.
Often times I'll take pasta and left over veggies and make a casserole or a pasta dish.

Here is a sampling of this weekends "put together":

• Whole wheat hamburger buns with pizza sauce and mozzarella
• Leftover pizza, chicken pot pie, apple pie, and black bean dip and blue chips
• Roll out pie crust with lunch meat and sliced cheese baked Stromboli style.
• Dried Kidney Beans with Brown Rice, topped with canned rotel (heated up) cheese and sour cream.
• Tortilla chips, lettuce, chopped onions, kidney beans, salsa, sour cream, and cheese
• Jello and Pudding (instant)
• Drinks: Crystal Light, Water, Sweet Decaf Tea, Juice with Soda water
• Oatmeal with pecans
• Plain yogurt with plain nuts
  

There was more, but the main thing is don't get caught up in thinking everyone has to eat the same thing. My son ate a Nutella and banana sandwich on a hamburger bun with a glass of milk, three of my kids had the buns made into pizza, and my husband and I had leftover Chicken Pot pie. Just because you don't have enough of one thing to feed 7 people, that's okay. Remember when feeding kids: Fair doesn't have to mean equal. Each kids gets what they will eat, feed them separately if you have to to avoid a fight of I wanted "such and such"....

This is actually a very satisfying and nurturing thing for me to do. It reminds me of my grandparents who were raised during the Depression and made do with what they had.

Happy Eating!