Mass Meal - Meatball Subs

Last night, our church hosted an event that's a combination of a block party /vbs we like to call Saint Mark Summer Nights. We do one each month of summer, and each night has a theme, free meal, short devotion, and activities for people of all ages. This is what our church does instead of vacation bible school. 

The family that normally makes and serves the meal for the event moved away this year, and G and I stepped in to take over cooking for the masses. Last night's theme was FIFA World Cup and our menu tried to have as many round/ball-shaped things as possible. 😂 

Soccerball subs (aka meatball subs)

Clementines

Cheese balls and chips

Soccerball cookies

The food was a huge hit, and it was surprisingly easy to put together. We three big bags of Italian meatballs from Sam's club and heated them up without sauce and a roasting pan. The instructions on the back of the bag recommended heating the up with sauce, but we wanted people to be able to control how much sauce they put on their subs. I asked Chat gpt for tips. It recommended heating them at 250° for 2 to 3 hours, stirring every 30 to 45 minutes. Also add one cup of water to the roaster to help steam things. It works perfectly! The meatballs were nice and juicy- not dry at all.

I heated marinara sauce in a crock pot for people to ladle on. Additional toppings included mozzarella cheese (most popular), mayonnaise (G's idea, I don't think anyone used it), and ranch dressing (due to the world's discovery of American ranch). 

If you don't know about the World Cup ranch thing, Google it. America is hosting some of the games, and visitors to America have discovered the wonders of ranch dressing. They've been trying to bring ranch home in their carry-on luggage (it's considered a liquid and gets confiscated). So many people are doing it that the TSA had to put out a special bulletin! 😂

Anyway, we got many compliments on the food and I was very pleased that it only took us a couple of hours to prep it, most of which was hands off time. We served around 65 people. 

The July event theme is Happy Birthday America, so we'll see what meal we come up with for that! Probably burgers and hot dogs. 😎

Circle Lids

G brought these into our marriage and I must submit, I am only now appreciating them for their usefulness. 

They are stretchy circle lids that go over basically anything that is roughly the same size. You can put them over cut fruits and vegetables, serving bowls that don't come with lids, glass containers whose lids have cracked and been thrown away...

All in all, very handy! 

Sidenote, did you know that you can order Pyrex lids just the lids off Amazon? I need to do that and replace some of our lids that have seen better days. 

Dust Bath Refresh

The last time we were at the farm we brought back a gigantic tire to use as a mega chicken dust bath. We finally got it set up this past weekend. 

I found another free sand listing on marketplace, and we picked up a bunch of 5 gallon pails. Some of that sand ended up in the giant tire along with some coconut husk fiber, dirt, and diatomaceous earth.

Leftover sand for future projects...

Since we had extra sand, we also topped up the other dust baths. 

Using some dirt left a few big pots available for repurposing. I am attempting to make additional nesting boxes for the chickens. So far, they haven't been interested. 

They also haven't tested out the new dust bath. I wonder if the tire is too tall for them to realize what's inside. I guess I need to build some chicken steps. 😂

Garden Replant

My poor garden took a beating while we were gone. Only two of my basil plants made it. The rest look like they were never there. 😭 Did something eat them or did they whither away from wind/heat/lack of water? My two Roma tomato plants also shriveled up and I couldn't see the rosemary I planted. A couple pepper plants were gone too. 

The trellis plants look okay- transplants all alive and the seeds have sprouted. My cucumbers have sprouted too. The ones struggling are the items I planted inside holes in flattened cardboard boxes, intending to put mulch on top but ran out of time before we left. The weeds have pushed the cardboard up, and at my quick look around I couldn't tell if any of the seeds were growing. Sigh. 

Thankfully the garden center still had plant starts, so I restocked the tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, along with a bean plant and a basil plant. The basil isn't a kind I'm excited about, but I want fresh basil, so I'll plant it and start some new basil from seed. 

Thawed Items

Our fridge is packed with salvaged thawed items, chicken broth and a whole chicken to name a few. 

I found a soup recipe that calls for a whole chicken. A bit misleading because you make broth with the whole chicken and then make soup afterwards from parts of both the meat and broth. Still, an easy enough recipe and the broth smells really good. 

The formerly frozen chicken broth I decided to freeze dry. I've freeze dried broth before, and it turned out fine. This is a bit of an experiment because this particular chicken broth is not very flavorful. I think we added too much water to the roaster when we were making the broth. I'm curious if freeze drying it will improve the flavor since all of the water will be taken out. 

Instead of filling the trays and freezing them in the freezer, I put empty trays in the freeze dryer and filled them directly in the machine with a long spouted funnel.

That worked very slick! Now, how many days will it take to freeze dry them???

Mulberry Foraging

There's a big mulberry tree close to G's work that's plumb full of berries. 

Jaron and I stopped by today and picked for about an hour. Jaron loved being able to stretch an arm out and grab berries to eat while I picked. Sometimes he squawked at me because I wasn't close enough to the tree for him to reach a berry. 😂 I'm not sure how many he ate, but a few fell out of my carrier when I took him out at the end. 

We picked roughly a gallon. The trick is to "tickle" the berries and they fall into the pail.

Mulberries are pretty delicate and don't last long fresh, so I'll freeze the bulk of them. Last year I dehydrated them and we didn't love the texture (probably because I over dried them 😅). Freezing is easier, so we'll go with that! 

Foraging Compost

Mama chickens teaching their chicks to forage the compost pile. 😊 (Blurry picture due to morning sunlight and not wanting to get too close and spook them). 

That's one of the best things about chicks hatched by a hen instead of via incubator - they learn how to be chickens from chickens instead of needing to figure it out themselves.