Soup(er) Suppers and other meal related thoughts

Jacob will be coming home from college soon for winter break. He'll be here for almost a month. I started thinking about making his favorite meals which got me thinking about how grocery shopping/ meal planning has changed since Jacob started college. Here are a few things I've noticed that have changed vis a vis meals/ food purchasing since going from a household of five to a household of four:

• There are a few items that I've virtually not bought since Jacob started school because he was the only one who consumed them. Items include cows milk (the milk drinkers in the family consume almond milk), breakfast cereal, Cheez Its, and ice cream novelties (ice cream sandwiches, Drumsticks...etc.). Also, while I currently buy some chips, I've been buying way less since Jacob has been away at school.

• Jacob is a snacker (see above :)) which, while not healthy, had the effect of him not eating huge amounts of food at dinner. So while there is now one less person eating dinner, I still make the same amount of a food that I'd make when he was eating with us. We generally have leftovers (although not always) yet not many which makes me wonder how that same meal would feed all five of us. 

• Jacob prefers beef to chicken while the girls prefer chicken to beef. In his absence, I am definitely making more chicken dishes or subbing chicken for meals that I used to use beef in (making chicken tacos instead of beef tacos for example). Jacob doesn't dislike chicken but I'll probably modify some of the dishes I've been making with chicken and use beef instead while he's home over break.

• Jacob tended to grumble when I made soup for dinner. He's just not a soup fan. He would generally tell me after he ate the soup that he liked it but the idea of soup for dinner was usually fairly unpleasant to him. By far the biggest change to our diet since Jacob has been gone is the frequency with which I now make soup for dinner. We remaining four enjoy eating soup. I love making large enough batches of soup such that we get at least two meals out of them.  The soups that I make on repeat are chili, pasta e fagioli, chicken tortilla, and chicken noodle. In fact, last week, we had soup four of the five weeknight meals. I made soup on Monday (chicken tortilla, I think) which we had on Monday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, I made chicken noodle soup which we had on Wednesday and Thursday. No one complained at all about the soup dinners but I felt like I should make non soup dinners this week.

This now has nothing to do with Jacob's absence from home or coming home for break- it just relates to meals in general. For years now, I haven't cooked dinner on Saturday evening. We always eat out- many times it's just carry out and not something at a sit down restaurant. But, it's always a meal from a restaurant. I like this tradition because food eaten out generally tastes better than my own cooking. In addition to that, it's one less meal I have to prepare and almost more importantly, one less meal that I have to think about what to prepare. 

At church this past Sunday, the pastor's sermon was about generosity. Our church has taken on Compassion International as a charity to promote and part of the sermon was about how beneficial Compassion International is to the communities it serves in impoverished areas of the world. Families or individuals sponsor a child or children; for $38 a month, the sponsored child receives an education, food, access to medical care and of course hears about gospel. Our family has sponsored a child through Compassion International for years. But hearing the message, seeing the faces of some of the kids hoping to get sponsored, and realizing how fortunate we are for the blessings that God has given us prompted us to sponsor another child.  The new child that we are sponsoring is a young boy from Colombia.  

Part of the "pitch" of sponsoring a child consisted of the pastor mentioning that $38 a month is roughly the equivalent of two pizzas ordered from a restaurant. So if one wanted to sponsor a child, foregoing two meals of pizza a month would cover the cost of the sponsorship (although presumably the individual or family would eat a meal in lieu of the pizza that would cost something but that's splitting hairs I guess with the pitch). We are in a financial position, thankfully, where we don't have to give up expenditures in order to commit another $38 a month to sponsor another child.

However, the thought of foregoing eating out a couple of times a month (like pizza as the pastor mentioned) resonated with me for different reasons besides saving money. (After all, it would be easy to spend as much money making a meal at home than buying a cheap meal out.)  In many ways, with Jacob being gone, it's easier to make meals that the four of us remaining like (eg we all like soup) so the reason to eat out at least once a week because it's hard to come up with meals that everyone likes is a little bit diminished. Also, we are so fortunate to have a pantry full of food, a refrigerator/ freezer full of food,  a basement freezer full of food, and the wherewithal to buy what I need from the store to make every meal we eat from home. There is no really good reason why I shouldn't make meals on Saturday evenings. I don't want to give up on eating out entirely (no way!) but I am going to make an effort in 2020 to maybe make two of the four Saturday meals at home instead of eating out. I will enlist the girls and Donnie to help me come up with ideas for new meals to make.  I feel like I make the same meals over and over again; if I'm going to be adding more meals at home to make, I need new ideas.

Well, off to the store. I need to buy beef, milk and Cheez Its before Mr. College Freshman comes home for break :).

A peak into the deep freezer reveals that I need not purchase Drumsticks for Bub. Although these Drumsticks may be freezer burned by now. Only one way for (Jacob) to find out!!

A letter from our sponsored child in Ghana- Compassion International encourages letter writing. I will admit that I'm not the best letter writer to our sponsored child.

Some information we received about Columbia and our sponsored child from Colombia