Pinto Beans ~ Pantry Lunch Packings ~ Handiwork Developments

I finally broke down and rinsed our home grown pinto beans.  The piddly harvest....we all know that story right?  Either way, I am cooking them to go with breakfast burritos, snacks and after school burritos.   We get creative with breakfast burritos.  Which reminds me, I better open a jar of zucchini salsa too.

The roads were not that greatest yesterday morning, and I was getting over a very bad migraine, so my goal was to create lunch packings with what I had in the pantry and refrigerator.

I checked my ingredients, improvised on some, and set the oven.  I thought I'd better make more than one, to not waste heating up the oven.

 I baked two loaves of organic pumpkin bread.....

I baked a batch of homemade chewy granola bars (had just enough dried apricots, thankfully)......

...and because I had almond milk that needed used up, I baked these orange-walnut muffins (allrecipes), but improvised on the orange juice.  I substituted water and homemade orange peel powder.  They are not the tastiest, but are pretty good with a layer of home canned jam on them (quick breakfast for kiddo's on the run too). 



More Handiwork developments:

The baby blanket will take me a while.  I need 96 granny squares with pink flowers, and 96 with yellow.  I think I have two pink ones and about 16 yellow ones.  I just decided it was too beautiful not to finish the blanket.  

The squares can easily travel too, so I am currently crocheting the center yellow and pink flower parts first.  Then I only have to tote the other colors on road trips, camping trips and appointments. 

The current project is a #5 cotton crochet thread dishcloth.  I finished it two nights ago, and last night sewed in all the ends.

I had abandoned my netting over the last two years, so I'm digging it out, cutting the 10 yards into 3 inch strips, and rolling them into balls for future dish scrubbies.   

I had one strip of purple that was not quite 3 inches, so I crocheted a simple scrubbie and tossed it into our camping supplies.

Although it's pretty cold outside right now, the sunrise was beautiful (despite a few clouds).  Today, my only goal is to cook a dinner from the pantry/freezer.  I'm down to one bunch of organic collards, so I may dig out some ground beef and whip up a pasta, and toss in the greens.  I have plenty of frozen vegetables to pick from to go with it.  Dessert can be canned applesauce, or something with frozen blueberries.