I told you earlier about our day at the Amish but I didn’t show you what I bought…a box of HUGE onions.

At the auction they had a lot of three boxes like this.  Kayla took one and I took the other two.  We use so many onions at our house.  Both Hubby and I love them and well being I am the cook, the rest of the family tolerates them.

This is a lot of onions though so I was trying to think of what to do with them all….that’s when I remembered the wonderful taste of the onions in the bottom of the pan after making Kelli’s Chicken recipe.  That got me thinking..what if I do something similar with a beef roast and make French Onion Soup…so I did.

I took two of the HUGEST onions I had.  If using regular onions I’d say use at least four.  Chop them up and put them in the bottom of a oven dish.  I used my cast iron one.  From there…put in a beef roast.  I added a pack of onion soup mix, a tablespoon of beef bouillon and two cups of water.

I covered it and cooked it all for 2 hours.  It smelled wonderful.  I removed the roast…then tasted the onion mix in the bottom of the pan.  I added a little salt and pepper to taste and just a little more water.

From there I dished up four severing into bowl.  I put a slice of French Bread on top and put a slice of Swiss cheese over that.  I put all of the bowls onto a cookie sheet.  Then into the oven on broil for a few minutes.

It was really good.  Ever since we went to Chicago for a girls weekend years ago I’ve tried at various times to make some good French onion soup.  This was the best ever and I am no longer looking for a recipe…this one is it.

Hubby isn’t a soup eater so I wondered what he’s think..he hasn’t even had French Onion Soup before…He really liked it!!  By the way….the roast was really tasty too!

So what else am doing with all those onions…I can’t have onions like that and not make these homemade onion rings!!

We are busy full swing around here and have been for days.  We are doing as much of the work that we can ourselves to save money and to get the project done quicker.   On the nights that we aren’t doing something for the house it’s a scramble around here to keep this house in a tolerable order.  I’ve found that cooking is one of the hardest things.  Sometimes we are so tired we don’t care what we eat and have ended up at the local bar and grill….well that doesn’t save us any money so last week I came up with a plan.  Cook ahead.

I took an afternoon last week and made four supper dishes and put them in the refrigerator.  As we needed them I took them out, finished the last step or so and popped them in the oven.  I worked wonderfully.  I added a salad, baked beans or cottage cheese and we ended up with a decent meal.

Yesterday I decided to take time out of my day and do that again.

In the upper left had corner is lasagna.  The upper right corner is makings for a Stroganoff Bread that I make.   I’ll need to spread this on some french bread, then add cheese, peppers and mushrooms.   In the lower left is Ground Beef Grand Style.  Biscuits and cheese need to be added to the top of that.  You can get that recipe here.   The dish to the lower right is Overnite Casserole.  I’ll try to get pictures and share the recipes for the dishes I don’t already have on the blog as we eat these dishes.

While doing all this I made two Sour Cream Blue Berry Pies, put a roast in the crock pot for that night, made a batch of ham and bean soup and made egg salad for sandwiches for lunch.

In total I did all of that and washed all the dishes in just over two hours…What a time saver!!  Now we can enjoy some meals over the next five days without having to rush and worry.