Dinner for 11

Last night after a delicious dinner of deer roast, potatoes au gratin with bell peppers, pears, bread, and cinnamon sugar tortillas, I got everything cleaned up then started on dinner for tonight.  I took out the two quart crock pot and threw in everything left over from the refrigerator.  There wasn't much so I took a cup of split peas and some TVP bacon pieces and put them into the crock pot too.  I started a loaf of bread and decided to get creative.  After all, I always say you can't go wrong with bread once you have the basic recipe down.

The kids like cold cereal so on days that I'm particularly lazy I will pour them a bowl of something.  We have the cereal in clear containers on one shelf.  Some of the cereals are highly nutritious with very little sugar.  Other cereals are what I call candy cereal.  About half the time the kids want the candy cereal the other half they want the good for them filling stuff.  One cereal that I like to snack on is mini-wheats with the sugar coating.  I'm not sure what they do to the sugar but it's more like dried frosting.  At the bottom of the container is all the crushed bits of cereal and sugar.  I always save the crushed stuff at the bottom of the containers.  When it starts looking particularly unsightly I take the bits out and put it into a canning jar.  Normally, if I'm making granola or even oatmeal I'll throw some of the sugary crumbs in as an extra flavor and texture. 

I had about 2 cups of crushed mini-wheats with sugar frosting in the jar.  I thought, wheat, sugar, sounds like normal bread ingredients.  I should put this into my bread dough.  So I did.  I didn't put anything else unusual into the dough.  Just flour, yeast, salt, and warm water.  The dough had a strange smell (perhaps it was the dried frosting?) but the texture and flavor was alright.  

With the dough made I headed out to the office.  At noon Mr. and Mrs. Bug-out renter called from my house to tell me they were there and wanted to work on the storage room a little more.  I left the office and headed home.  This meant they were staying for dinner.  I knew baby grand daughter was staying the night so now dinner needed to serve five big eaters and the baby.  Not a problem.  A half gallon of soup and bread will be enough.  Then oldest daughter called at one.  She's dropping off her four kids for the night.  They don't have school tomorrow and they wanted to play with their cousins.  Never mind that her husband doesn't have to work tomorrow so they were going to the movies tonight.  That's four more for dinner including three teenage boys.  Then Army daughter called.  The baby wasn't spending the night after all.  Oldest daughter was going to drop off the baby along with her four but the baby would be picked up by son-in-law around 5:00.  Son-in-law called at 5:00 and said he'd be here in an hour.  You may as well eat over.  Everyone else is.  

Somehow a half gallon of soup and a loaf of bread was not going to be enough food for ten big eaters and a baby.  Around here, to fill up the kids I will make rice, potatoes, or noodles almost each night.  In order to stretch the soup to serve 10 plus baby, I made a big pot of rice.  Four cups of rice, eight cups of water.  I also made a huge pot of vegetables.  For dessert they had leftover cinnamon sugar tortillas that I made yesterday.  Everyone left the table full.  We still have some rice left but the rest they devoured. 

After dinner son-in-law, baby, and Bug-out renters left.  It's just me and six grand kids.  The big ones cleaned the kitchen.  The little ones made forts to sleep in.  Me, I'm going to curl up with a good book and go to bed.  Morning comes quickly and they'll be starving once again.