Dinners

I think we all know what they say about the best laid plans. There have been some rearrangements made to my dinner menus already. Last Saturday I did use the slow cook feature on my 'instant' pot and turned the roast chicken carcass into chicken stock. I cut up the chicken and put almost all of it into the stock and filled up two quart containers for the deep freezer. I figure these can become the basis of a couple of different versions of chicken soup (thinking a white bean and kale and possible a chicken tortilla soup for December).

The last container went into the refrigerator. Youngest son H's girlfriend M was in a cooking/baking mood and brought over a large container of homemade Baked Potato soup and some Hot Chocolate cookies she experimented with. Both items were delicious and it was nice to eat a dinner I didn't prepare myself.
Sunday I pulled the soup stock out the refrigerator. I brought it to a boil and added some egg noodles and this was dinner along with the brioche dinner rolls I'd picked up from Aldi. I love trying the new 'fancy' items my Aldi gets in.
Saturday I as in a baking mood myself and made a pumpkin roll as per a request from youngest son. This was dessert on Sunday.
Monday I made a chicken salad sandwich using the chicken I'd set aside from the roast for this purpose and ate this along with carrots & celery sticks in the car on the way to my night job.
Tuesday I had a hair appointment to touch my color and had enough time afterwards to run through the McD's and get a sandwich and drink off the dollar menu before going in to work.
Wednesday I unexpectedly got asked to stay at aftercare and work. I luckily had some chicken tenders left over from lunch service and paired those with carrots and celery sticks and apple slices, eaten in the car on the way to work.
Tonight I am back on my menu plans making myself some baked tilapia!
Being prepared but also flexible enough to roll with the changes is certainly a stress reducer.

Edited to include the rest of the week:
On Thursday I more or less followed my dinner plan. Tilapia it was but instead of just baking it with lemon I decided to do an old favorite, Horseradish crusted tilapia. I mixed together mayo, horseradish, parsley and bread crumbs and spread it on the fish. Toasted additional breadcrumbs in butter and sprinkled them on top then baked the fish in a 425 degree oven for 12 minutes.


And finally I was asked to work Aftercare today so a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and celery sticks await my drive into the cleaning job later on.

July Groceries & Food Supply review

I did some actual grocery shopping the other day at my two favorite stores, Aldi and BJ's wholesale club. At Aldi I spent $85.92 and I brought home a watermelon, a large box of 'single origin' K-cup coffees (Brazilian, Peruvian, Costa Rican & Ethiopian), a small box of hazelnut K-cups, a box of elbow macaroni, a box of frozen Angus burgers, a pack of snow peas, 3 zucchini, a bag of breaded chicken strips, a bag of crispy tortilla strips for salads, a bag of French fried onions for salads, a bag of grapes, 1 pint of grape tomatoes, two bags of spring greens, a seedless cucumber, 2 lbs sweet onions, 1 pint mixed tomatoes, 1 bag of spinach, 1 bunch of bananas, 1 bottle of balsamic glaze, 2 quarts of lowfat cottage cheese, 1 jar dill pickles, 1 jar bread and butter slices, 1 bottle three cheese vinaigrette, 1 bottle garlic vinaigrette, 1 container of coffee creamer, 4 lbs. sugar, 1 bottle light balsamic vinaigrette, 2 boxes of biscotti, and a box of continental assortment cookies.

At BJ's I spent $65.90 and brought home a whole center cut pork loin, a whole eye of round, a porterhouse steak, a bag of mini fresh mozzarella cheese, and two large jars of peanut butter.

I cut the pork loin into a roast, a bag of pork cubes (which I am making into Pork Adobo for tonight's dinner), and 13 pork chops which I individually wrapped with plastic wrap before putting into a ziplock freezer bag. With all the coming and going around here these days this allows me to take as many as needed for any given dinner out of the bag at one time. I cut the eye round into a small roast, a tiny bag of beef cubes for shish kabobs, and seven steaks also individually wrapped like the pork chops.

Because dinners are either portable and going to the hospital with me with leftovers for the kids or just for one or two people (work schedules vary so much between us these days that I don't remember the last time we were all home for dinner together) this will last a long time. In the freezer I have a couple of bags of frozen blsl chicken breast & tenders, some bone-in chicken thighs, about 1/2 pound of shrimp, some salmon & barramundi fillets, a pork tenderloin, two racks of pork ribs, several packs of bacon, some breakfast sausage, hot dogs, chicken sausages, cheddar brats & a whole cooked smoked turkey, as well as assorted bags of frozen veggies, some frozen egg rolls, and a ton of frozen beef burritos that middle son J got for free from a neighbor who moved out and cleaned out his freezer before moving (these come in handy for lunches & a quick something the kids can make themselves). In the pantry I have a ton of canned, bottled, and boxed goods. Dinner salads being a staple of mine these days we are heavy on salad dressings of all kinds. Aldi has been offering a large variety of these items and I've been stocking up when I see them. We also have a nice variety of fresh produce still although a small stop for carrots and more spring greens will be made within the week.

What we don't have these days is junk foods (except for popcorn which I always have around). The cookies were an unusual purchase because I generally bake but youngest son H requested some and with the temps expected to peak around 100 degrees this week I bought instead of baked. Same with the biscotti.

And now for the meal planning......

What's been cooking

 Having been on vacation from the school and also been off several days from the hospital I have been doing more cooking at home.  I've kept it simple doing pasta with marinara sauce, grilled pork chops, soup from the freezer, etc. On Christmas eve I made our traditional dinner of pork tenderloin balsamico, white and wild rice, salad, rolls and ice cream for dessert. Christmas day I did a roast beef for son's house taking some of that along with leftover rice and salad for my own dinner .  Oldest son packed up leftover turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, corn, roast beef, and mashed potatoes which I made into dinners for my two weekend shifts. Monday I was off for my pre-surgery appointment and had appetizers at my friend V's birthday celebration. Tuesday was my off day and V and I went out to a local bistro for dinner. Yesterday I put together a riff on a Pampered chef recipe penne with Sun dried tomatoes, spinach and grilled chicken.  Today I made a new recipe I found on Pinterest for a honey-garlic shrimp and broccoli. Here is the link: 

http://homemadehooplah.com/recipes/honey-garlic-shrimp-and-broccoli/

Good Eats

 With the food budget having very little in it at the moment even though I will be cleaning tomorrow (need to fill up the gas tank and get dishwasher detergent and milk with that) I am concentrating on using up what we have on hand right now. So far this week I have had:
Monday:
Breakfast: Toast with cashew butter, banana, coffee (kids don't eat breakfast)
Lunch: treated to lunch by a friend I treated to dinner last time we ate at Cracker Barrel together
Dinner: grilled cheddar brats, buttered elbow macaroni mixed with peas (off the dinner menus but adult son asked for this)

Tuesday:
Breakfast: toast with cashew butter, nectarine, coffee
Lunch: grilled cheese sandwich, carrots and celery sticks w/ hummus
Dinner: Two cheese sticks, a plum, and a handful of pepperoni (all by myself and I just didn't feel like cooking anything)

Wednesday:
Breakfast: Blueberry muffin, coffee
Lunch: cottage cheese w/ homemade pineapple jam, plum
Dinner: Roast leg of lamb, beef rice a roni, salad , strawberry shortcake

Thursday:
Breakfast: Blueberry muffin, coffee
Lunch: grilled tomato-mozzarella Panini

This is my version of what used to be my favorite sandwich at Panera that they no longer offer. I took a ciabatta roll (from Aldi), split it, spread Sun dried tomato pesto (from Aldi) on both halves, topped each half with sliced fresh mozzarella, topped with slices of tomato and some sun dried tomatoes. Sprinkled it with basil then brushed the outside with melted butter and pressed in my Cuisinart 5-in-1 Grill/Griddle/Panini Press.

 This handy little tool is used so often I keep it on top of my microwave.

Dinner: Pasta Au Pistou, salad.  I've been trying something a bit different with my recipe for this. Instead of using my food processor to blend fresh parsley, fresh basil, parmesan cheese and olive oil together I am using jarred pesto sauce, mixing it with the sautéed chopped onion, canned diced tomatoes and brown sugar called for in the au pistou sauce. Just as delicious and half the work and expense.

 

Today I have had Cream of Wheat cereal and coffee for breakfast. Lunch will be leftover rice a roni  and salad

Dinner is going to be grilled pork chops, scalloped potatoes, and corn on the cob (slight change in menu plan due to having corn that needs to be cooked).

Update: Lunch turned out to be Chipotle, a treat from college age daughter for driving her around to do some errands! Dinner got tweaked a bit when I decided to make garlic & parsley redskin potatoes (at GF's house, need to use these up) and peas and carrots (another item in GF's freezer that needs using up).

 



Baking! Blueberry Muffins and Biscuits

 On my to do list today was some baking. I had a pint and a half of fresh blueberries and wanted to use some of these up in muffins. I turned to my all time favorite basic cookbook, The Joy of Cooking. On a food message board that I used to participate in there was once a discussion of the best version of this cookbook. The majority agreed that it was the early 1970s version, an opinion I sided with. My much beloved copy finally fell apart due to so much use and I reluctantly purchased the newest version which revised the version that updated the 1970s one. I have to say it is way more like the 1970s copy that I had than the awful updated one. Lots of my favorite recipes reappeared (like tuna noodle casserole).
Both the muffin recipe and the biscuit recipe are ones I have been using forever from this cookbook (which btw all my married/on their own children have received as a gift).
I used the basic muffin mix recipe and added 1 1/2 cups of blueberries (that I lightly floured to prevent sticking together).

Blueberry Muffins:
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Mixed together
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup oil
added to the dry ingredients and mixed on low until blended
1 1/2 cup blueberries
folded into the batter.
Using my handy Pampered Chef scoop in the largest size they sell  I filled paper muffin liners with the batter:

 

I had preheated my oven on the convection baking setting to 375 degrees. They baked for 17 minutes and turned out looking delicious:

 

I upped the temperature on my oven to 400 degrees for the convect bake and turned to mixing up the biscuits.

 

Basic Rolled Biscuits:

1 3/4 cup flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons cold butter

I mixed the flour, baking powder, and salt together and cut in the butter using my KA mixer. I then added:

3/4 cup milk

and mixed the dough together. I turned it out onto my marble pastry board which I had lightly floured and used my marble rolling pin to gently roll the dough to 1/2 inch thickness. I used my 2 inch biscuit cutter to cut the biscuits out:

 I placed the biscuits evenly spaced on one of my stoneware baking sheets and lightly brushed the tops with melted Smart Balance:

 

I baked these for 13 minutes and am very happy with how they turned out:

 

So we have blueberry muffins to snack on (minus four which are going to a friend as a small thank you for something she did for me) and the biscuits will be served topped with strawberries and whipped cream for dessert!

 

 

 

 

 

Pineapple Preserves

My hunt at the grocery store for pineapple preserves being fruitless (ha ha) I turned to the internet for a recipe. And I got lucky finding one that is only two ingredients which I already had in the house! What I didn't have was jam sized canning jars. But Target had them on sale, a dozen for $7.99. I just happened to have turned all the loose change from the bottom of my purses into paper money ($40!!) so I dipped into some of this and bought the jars.
This morning I added the jars to my almost full dishwasher to make a full load so that they are clean and sterilized and ready to go. Then I assembled my ingredients:

 a can of crushed pineapple in juice and sugar. Put them in the pot

stirred them up and brought them to a boil.

  Stirring constantly for 20 minutes and the preserves were thick. I spooned them into two sterilized jam jars put on the lids and rings and processed them in a boiling water bath in my dutch oven. AND thinking ahead I saved the water for another project that I will share later.

Here are my two homemade jars of pineapple preserves (cost: 89 cents for crushed pineapple, 50 cents for 2 cups sugar bought at wholesale club, so total cost is 69 cents per jar not counting cost of jars ( 66 cents each which will be used over and over again).

 

 

Dinner for One

  Tonight I dined alone, something I am slowly getting used to. Adult son and college age son were both at work and college age daughter is out of town with her boyfriend's family. I took some of the leftover roast eye of round and cut it into strips. I had two bags of frozen stir fry veggies in the deep freezer so I heated up the wok, added some oil and the defrosted veggies. I threw in the beef and some stir fry sauce. In a small pan I cooked the noodles from a package of ramen and then added this to the whole mess. A whole new meal out of leftovers:

Table for One

Monday night was another evening where I found myself making dinner for just me. I went totally off the menu plan when college age son mentioned that he and his girlfriend had made themselves chicken and cheese Panini for dinner over the weekend and there was one ciabatta roll, two slices of gouda, and one breaded chicken breast left in the fridge. I grabbed all three, added some pesto and a sliced tomato, and VOILA a Pesto-Chicken-Gouda Panini for dinner! I just wish I'd taken a picture to share. So off the menu path but frugal none the less.

Food Stamp Challenge

  Recently I had read an article about Gwenyth Paltrow and the food stamp challenge. Mostly I rolled my eyes and chalked up her experience to her lack of familiarity with how most of the country lives. Then I read the follow article which I thought was interesting and insightful and had a lot to say. The only thing that bugged me was that the author who has a food related job was so uncreative in what she did with the food she bought. She just kept reheating leftovers. Surely she could have done better (I kept wondering why she didn't turn that chicken carcass into soup or a chicken and rice dish or a stew.. and why she didn't divide that whole pound of ground meat into some type of meatballs plus the meatloaf she made or even made herself a burger patty or Salisbury steak with it and why she didn't buy two different veggies instead of two bags of one veggie) even if she did way better than old Gwenyth did. LOL.
Here's the link to this article:
https://gma.yahoo.com/try-day-friday-taking-food-stamp-challenge-150240471--abc-news-Recipes.html

Simple Sunday

I have decided that my last several posts have been too depressing for words and it is time to stop having a pity party and concentrate on the positive. I have also come to the conclusion that it is not healthy to focus so much on work to the point of not enjoying my life. To that end this post is dedicated to the simple yet wonderful and relaxing Sunday I am enjoying. A hot cup of coffee enjoyed to the sound of church bells began the day. GF and I had a nice breakfast out followed by a trip to the car wash and then a leisurely Sunday drive along some country back roads.
I did a load of wash and then ran out to Aldi to pick up supplies for the two Make & Take baking classes I am giving this week and a stop at the gas station to fill up for the week. Funny thing about the gas station, when GF and I went to breakfast the price of gas was $2.19 a gallon ( compared to $2.25-$2.37 at other stations). When I returned with my vehicle it had gone down to $2.17! Score!
Returning to GF'S house I settled in with my kindle to read some food magazines and begin to prepare May dinner menus.
I also did some prep on tonight's dinner by mixing together a marinade of olive oil, soy sauce, brown sugar, some balsamic glaze in his fridge, and a bit of Montreal steak seasoning. I have a smallish top round steak marinating in this.

GF had four russet potatoes that needed using up so I washed and diced these and put them in a pan of water to cook 

The steak went on the grill

The potatoes became my Mom's parsley potatoes 

And I put together two individual salads

Dinner was served!

Something New

In an effort to save money and be a better manager of my resources I have been eye-balling a lot of meatless recipes lately. I came across one for Winter Vegetable stew on the Betty Crocker website that I bookmarked to try. Tuesday night I organised my ingredients ready for prep and into the crock pot on Wednesday morning. The recipe called for fire roasted tomatoes which I didn't have on hand so I substituted regular diced canned tomatoes. I added peeled and diced onion, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and celery. Chicken broth, thyme and rosemary went into the pot.

I set the timer and went off to work. A wicked sinus headache brought me home early and both my son and I remarked on how delicious the house smelled when we walked in. When the timer on the crock pot went off I decided the stew needed a little something more to it. I settled on my mom's drop dumplings. I combined a cup of flour, one egg, and enough water to make a thick batter. I boiled some water and dropped spoonfuls of the dumpling batter in.



Once they were cooked I drained them and added them to the stew. 

Sons and I both really enjoyed the meal although I think the fire roasted tomatoes would add yet another depth of flavor. Next time I make this it will be with those. 

Sunday Supper:Spaghetti night

  Sticking with my planned menus for the month of January is going to be very important to meeting my budget goals. With that in mind while doing errands with GF I suggested he pick up some meatloaf/meatball mix at the wholesale club. Half for use on Sunday and the other half for later in the month for meatloaf.

I used an open jar of Ragu sauce that was in his refrigerator and combined this with a couple of cans of tomato sauce, added garlic, Italian herbs and grated parmesan cheese  in the crockpot to stretch this sauce.

I took half the meatloaf mix and added an egg, some Italian bread that I'd soak in a bit of milk, more grated parmesan, garlic, onion, and Italian seasonings and made meatballs that I browned off on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven:

 

I added the meatballs to the sauce and left that to simmer in the crockpot on low for about 2 hours;

While the pasta was cooking I made a Caesar salad of romaine lettuce (from Aldi), some shaved parmesan (buying this in a bulk piece allows so much versatility), some cheese and garlic croutons( from Aldi) and Caesar dressing that GF got for 50% off at the local grocery store . Dinner was served:

 

 

 

First Meal of 2015

 2015 has gotten off to a great start on the cooking front. After peering into GF's refrigerator I came up with a terrific brunch that was based on what was on hand. It even included some of the planned over ham from "That Ham". Inside of the refrigerator was 2 dozen eggs (awesome), a baggie of ham slices (awesome), a block of cheddar cheese (terrific), milk and smart butter. On the counter were two lonely Idaho potatoes (great), and a loaf of rye bread (yippee). In the cupboard I found dried chopped onion, an item I keep on hand here because GF is not a big fan of onion and the fresh ones tend to go bad before I can use them all here. I also knew we were going to be going to BJ's in the late afternoon where we were picking up more potatoes so using up what was on hand was not a problem.
I quickly prepped the potatoes by dicing them small, the cheese by grating it, and the ham by cutting it up into smaller pieces:

I heated up a skillet on the stove with some oil in it, added the potatoes and the dried onion along with a sprinkle of parsley,  a pinch of salt and some black pepper and set that to cooking:

Once the potatoes were golden on all sides I added a tablespoon of water and covered the pan to finish cooking. I took six eggs and some milk and beat them in a bowl:

I tossed in the cheese and the ham. In my larger electric skillet I melted some smart butter then added the egg mixture to make a scramble.

I popped the rye bread into the toaster:

 and within minutes the first meal of 2015 was plated and ready to go:

 

One of my goals for this year is to eat out less and use up smaller amounts of food or planned overs before they go bad on me. Especially at GF's house where I will leave him things and they will just molder in his refrigerator because he can't be bothered to heat them up and eat them.

Our New Year's Day dinner was a smallish pork roast that I browned and put into the crockpot along with sauerkraut, a bit of apple cider, and some brown sugar. It cooked while GF and I ran errands (picked up college age son from his girlfriend's house, shopped at BJ's). Once back at his place I made mashed potatoes, heated up some corn, and made a small batch of homemade applesauce to serve with the pork roast. We enjoyed the dinner so much I totally forgot to take pictures.

It felt good to know that all our meals yesterday were made at home. I also had a zero dollar day since the BJ's trip was one that GF needed to take. I'd say 2015 is off to a good start.

 

 

 

 

That ham

Lingering in my deep freezer for the last year has been an enormous whole bone in ham. I have included it many times in my monthly menus but hadn't gotten around to actually cooking it. Looking to be even more frugal in this coming year I decided it was time that ham was used. Besides a year is really the max for quality. The ham I had looked identical to this:

 quite a hunk of meat n'est-pas?  Just thinking of dealing with it exhausted me. But I put on my big girl panties and got to work. I poured a bottle of beer over it and using my largest roaster put this in a 350 degree oven for three hours. I mixed up a quick glaze of brown sugar, mustard, and vinegar. Once the glaze had melted I served the ham with mashed potatoes and green beans. To two people. Yes only two of us for dinner. The ham was quite tasty, moist and not very salty. However with the exception of a small missing section it still looked pretty much like that picture above. I sighed deeply, covered it with foil, and stuck it in the cooler on GF'S screened in porch. 

This morning I faced the fact that I was going to have to break that monster down.  A large sharp knife, a pile of zip lock baggies, my food processor, and cutting board and I was ready. Forty minutes later and I had two bags of  ham slices, three bags of ham cubes, two bags of ground ham, and the bone broken into two pieces and wrapped in foil for soup making.

 A bag of cubes and one of ground  went into GF'S freezer, the slices went into his refrigerator and the remainder  is going home with me. We will get several more meals out of this in the next couple of months, easing the meat portion of the food budget considerably.