Joy of Cooking in a Kitchen

Saturday is the day for sleeping in and playing... Well, my cold-wet-nose kid woke me at 6am, for the 3rd day in a row. I asked her if she was getting me ready for a job that has an early start! She just looked at me and then her bag of food with the demanding look saying "Feed Me!" Yesterday, I managed to get some cheap food from the store and mixed some of the fixing from the food bank together, cooked up some Chili. Needed some chili spice and didn't spend the money at the grocery store, but stopped at a family dollar on the way home and grabbed a bottle of chili spice for a $1 for 3ozs. The store wanted way more money for smaller amount and the same ingredients. The meat is sliced Round top steak from the food bank and it cooked up nicely. Since the crock pot in this house is a fire hazard, I had to put all of it in a big pot and cooked slowly on low heat. I'd turn the heat up a couple of time to bring it to a simmer and turn it back down. The steak came out tender and easy to enjoy. The point I'm making here is that I'm finally getting to cook after several years of not getting to cook the way I like. It's been since the winter of 2010. I made enough chili to store some in the freezer. The food bank has some great home made soups that I can add too and expand. I have cream of mushroom and cream of potato currently in the freezer. I buy simple clean foods on a budget that allows my food to live in the freezer until I use it. I'm a fan of the store brand mixed frozen veggies, nothing added. It allows me to do whatever I want with them. Giving up the kitchen because I don't have a job will make me sad. Today, with all the food in the freezer, it allowed me time to take a closer look to the tv issue and discovered that it wasn't even plugged into the antenna. So, I fixed that small issue and ran the program on the tv to locate any of the free channels out there in the air. When it was done, there was 3 PBS channels, 2 of which are showing food cooking programs. No tv for way too long, so I'm watching cooking shows. haha