Not so "once a month" cooking

I’m not even going to mention the fact that I haven’t blogged here in a while.  (Oops, I just did.)  I have come to accept the fact that I am an inconsistent blogger.  We all have our shortcomings.

A blogger friend of mine is doing the “500 month” on her blog--100 dollars per person for food for the entire month.  I have seriously considered joining her, but alas, this is not the month to do it.  I need to order both beef and salmon and place a large order to Azure as I am not sure how often I will be able to order from them when I start working part time.  Sooooo, we’ll try it next month.  I think.

School Lunches and Snacks :)

Here is what I’ve been up to lately.  I haven’t been blogging about food because I’ve been in the kitchen making food—a. lot. of. it.  And the kids started school.  And I’ve been painting while the hubby put together IKEA furniture for two kids rooms.  Which means I’ve been living in a black hole for the past month.

Over the summer  onceamonthmom.com has been our go-to for cooking and menu-planning.  For some reason effective summer menu planning escapes me, so it has been nice to have someone else kind of tell me what to do.  I also used their back-to-school mini menu to put some food in the freezer for school lunches, which the kids have been loving!  Variations of peanut butter, cream cheese, and tuna sandwiches/roll ups gets boring after a while.  I’ve been loving the daily simplicity of lunch-making, too.

Homemade Spaghetti-O's and Mac and Cheese

In this process of giving once a month cooking another shot, I have discovered some things about myself, which I will share with you for your reading pleasure:

1. I love making bread, chicken broth, breakfast items, school lunches, snacks for the freezer.

2. I am thrilled to make a double batch of whatever I’m making for dinner on occasion to put in the freezer as an “emergency” meal.

3. I hate once a month cooking, because somehow or another one day turns into three, and as much as I really do love to be in the kitchen and cook, I don’t want to live there all day every day.  (I’ve tried to break it down into a few recipes per week, and that hasn’t really worked out so well either.)  I also think I prefer using my favorite recipes and adding in one or two new ones per week.

That being said, I’m not gonna do the once a month thing.  I still like the website for the school lunches, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of their recipes.  I’m thinking I’ll still use them, just not for a whole day-long cooking session.  Maybe someone with a different personality type could do it in one day and be done and would love it.  And maybe I will end up using it in the future when I know a busy season is coming up, and I want to have some meals prepared in advance.  As for right now, I’m going to spend the rest of my day putting together the August meals as I have already bought all of the ingredients for them but I'm not even going to worry about doing the September cooking session.  Be on the look out for a new menu plan for September/October next week!

Local foods in New Hampshire

Blogger is so good to let me know that it has been a month and a half (nay, almost two months) since my last post to this blog.  Thank you, blogger, I'm on it, okay?


We have been up to the usual busy nothingness of summer: moving, water parks, free bowling, kids' dollar movies, etc.  The first week of July we got to sneak away just the two of us for a week to New Hampshire, and I think I'm in love.  However, my dear husband tells me I haven't experienced a New England winter, and we have four kids who are required to live in a small area of Texas, so maybe we'll stay put for a while.

My DH hiding in the shadows in front of part of the farm

We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast on a farm that practices sustainable farming.  If you ever find yourself wanting to get away up north, I would highly recommend The Inn at Valley Farms. Our hostess, Jackie was wonderful, (and no, she didn't pay me to say that.) 


Our first full day there, after a delicious three course breakfast, we ventured down to nearby Keene to pick up some goodies at the Farmer's Market and do some window shopping.  In the afternoon we stopped by an alpaca farm and learned about alpacas and maple syrup from the farmer.  (And yes, we bought some goodies.)

Community Pizza Night-the oven is in front of the building on the right

That evening, we drove out to a bakery which hosts community pizza night every Tuesday night, donating all the profits to a local charity each week.  Everyone brings toppings to share and for five dollars you are given a lump of dough to stretch and form into a crust which you then take to the sauce table, the  cheese table, and finally the toppings table.  After this point they cook your pizza in a large outdoor fire oven, and you find a place to sit on the benches or the grass.  I would so love to do this with my church group, but I don't know how we'd cook all the pizza!


The following morning we went to a small town's Fourth of July parade over the border of Vermont.  Their local Farmers' Market marched in the parade and passed out carrots!  After the parade, there were different merchant tents set up and food vendors.  I found a lady selling jewelry made from beads through beads for life, a nonprofit organization that benefits impoverished women in Uganda, which I had just read about before our trip.  How cool is that?


Our final day on the farm Jackie, the innkeeper (how often do you get to use that word in everyday conversation?), took us on a tour of the farm.  She discussed how they garden, without tilling to preserve the layering of the soil, rotating crops, adding compost, and how they now use high tunnels to extend their growing season.  We saw their baby chicks that grow to be egg layers and that grow to be used for meat.  She discussed how they pasture the animals, rotating them on a timetable to get the most benefit for the soil, plants, and themselves out of the animals, and to provide the healthiest conditions for the animals.

Yes, I am holding a baby chick.

We left dreaming of becoming farmers.  Who knows, maybe when we retire that dream will become a reality.  For the present time we have a renewed interest in eating local foods, knowing our farmers and where our food comes from, and growing what we can in our little corner of the 'burbs.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

It all started with a recipe my friend posted on Pinterest for lemon sorbet.  Ooo! Ooo! I have lemons.  Darn it, I don't have an ice cream maker, which is a problem that may have to be remedied. But not today.  Hmmm... google "how to make sorbet without an ice cream maker" and bingo!  I found another recipe for lemon sorbet which explains how to make sorbet without an ice cream maker, which was measured in grams.  So of course I sliced and diced and added my own twist and here below what I came up with. (You can follow the links to the original recipes above.)


1 1/2 C Honey (or sugar)
1 1/2 C Water
1 T lemon zest
1 C lemon juice


1. Zest enough lemon to make 1 tablespoon.  Juice enough lemons to make one cup (around 5 lemons.)  Save rinds for another purpose. (Ideas follow below.)


2. Bring honey and water to a boil, stirring to dissolve the honey.  Add lemon zest and the lemon juice.


3. Pour into a bowl and cool in fridge for 30 minutes.


4. Place in freezer for 1 1/2 hours, at the end of which the mixture should have begun to freeze around the edges.


5. Notice that mixture has, in fact, not frozen at all.  Place in garage freezer and go play LIFE with the family. Forget about the sorbet in freezer.


6. Wake up and remember the sorbet that is now almost frozen solid.


7. Pour into food processor and process just until the texture has changed to the consistency of a slushy.  (Be careful not to over-process.)  Return to freezer.


8. Place in fridge 20 minutes before serving.  

Lemon Sorbet

I would not recommend taste-testing this first thing in the morning on an empty stomach if you are sensitive to acidity--not that I am speaking from experience.  We have yet to eat the final product, however what I sampled was quite tasty, and we are looking forward to an after-dinner treat tomorrow night!


The story doesn't end there.


I just couldn't bring myself to throw the lemon rinds in the trash.  Citrus is supposedly a no-no in the compost, a rule I sometimes do and sometimes don't follow.  Which leaves the option of throwing them away.  I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Some of you may not understand where I'm coming from on this, so let me explain.


If you had been a fly on the wall in my kitchen just a few days ago, you would  have heard the following conversation between my husband and myself as he was rinsing off dishes and putting them in the sink, water running full blast the whole time.  I must have had a funny look on my face, and quite possibly had begun to twitch.


Ben, "What's wrong?"


Me, "Oh nothing." Ben continues to stare.  "Umm, I'm just trying not to think about how much water is being wasted, and how much money it's costing."


Ben, "Only you would be thinking that."


Which is decidedly NOT true.  However, we do have conversations of the like often concerning trash and leftovers.  I don't care if it's barely enough to feed one person; it's food. And it is an absolute sin to waste food.  I once read a recount in a blog post in which the husband had informed the wife that she was the only person in her generation to have grown up in the Great Depression.  I need to meet this woman so that we can be best friends forever.


So...I googled uses for lemon peels and came up with this link to 22 uses for lemon peels which included cleaning options and a couple of food ideas, including a link to a recipe for Candied Lemon Peels.  I had to cross reference other recipes as well, of course, and came across this one on All Recipes.  I more so followed the second recipe, except I substituted the sugar for honey and then sprinkled the candy with Sucanat after it was finished.

Not dried yet, but I snitched one anyway. Yum.

The last line of the recipe reads, "Liquid may be reserved and used as a simple lemon syrup." 


Be still my heart.  


I used half of the simple syrup, 2 or 3 T of lemon juice to taste, a couple sprigs of mint and filled a pitcher the rest of the way to make a tasty refreshing lemonade.


After all was said and done, only  the already-juiced leftover pulp remained and couldn't find a good use for it. I did stumble across a recipe for lemon muffins which called for lemon pulp, but wasn't sure if it meant pre-juiced or what, so I didn't attempt it.  I actually have the leftover pulp soaking in a jar of water on the counter. I figure I'll use it for some kind of cleaning or deodorizing purpose.


By the way, I don't always go to such great lengths to use up lemons.  Sometimes we just juice them and freeze the juice in ice cube trays for use in recipes later.  Last year my husband made lemonaide for the kids and for the adults, lemoncello, of which we have enough to last a while.  This time I decided to branch out a little and try something new.


What about you?  What's your favorite lemon use or recipe?  Any ideas for leftover already juiced pulp?

Freezer Meals: AKA Curbing the Craziness

Wow. I just realized my last post on this blog was March 29.  Yikes!  The last few months have been oh. so. busy.  We are in the process of buying a house which we are planning to move in to in June.  Add in to that gymnastics, small group, tee ball, Ben's travel, wrapping up the school year, and other family matters, and it's been pretty crazy around here!  I myself have been trying to find balance between getting food on the table, running here there and everywhere, and not losing my head in the process.  (You can read more about that on my other blog here.)


In the midst of all the madness, I had stumbled upon a website through Pinterest onceamonthmom.com.  This website offers several different freezer meal plans per month, including a "Whole Foods Menu" which offers recipes for the freezer using only "real" ingredients based mostly on what's in season.  SCORE!  Oh, and did I mention it's free?  (BTW, I am not being paid to write this post. I could only be so lucky.)


I had noticed this website in April and glanced at it, but didn't actually take the time to try it.  This month with all of the craziness in store, I decided to bite the bullet and carve out some time to try it out.  I have experimented with once a month cooking, or freezing cooking, or whatever-floats-your-boat-to-call-it cooking before.  I can't really carve out that kind of time to cook and don't really want to right now either.  That being the case, I did some tweaking to the plan and did not do a full-fledged cooking day.  


Out of the menus they posted I baked a double batch of the Pecan Maple Breakfast Cookies (yum) one weekend and we ate those for breakfast the next day and I froze the rest.  Later I looked at the rest of the recipes to see which ones I wanted to cook as it lined up with the food we were getting from our produce share, and made a list of what meat I needed from the meat market. (I stored the meat in the freezer for later use.)  The weekend we got our produce I picked up any remaining ingredients needed from the grocery store.


Out of the other recipes for May, I decided to cook all of the dinner recipes, except for Pan Roasted Chicken with Lemon Garlic Green Beans.  I didn't have time to cook all of the recipes, and those recipes fit my produce items better.  The website has a downloadable spreadsheet for recipe cards, instructions, and grocery list, which allows you to input the number of people you are cooking for in order calculate the amount of ingredients needed.  I found myself referring back to the original recipes (which are all linked on the website) frequently as there seemed to be some glitches on some of the recipe cards.  Also, since I wasn't using all of the recipes listed, I put the recipes I chose into Pepperplate and created my own grocery list.


All of the recipes we have tried have been delicious.  These recipes have also helped us get our of our dinner-time rut.  The kids devoured the Shredded Beef Tacos we had for dinner a couple of weeks ago along with Black Bean-Goat Cheese Dip.  It has been refreshing to find freezer meals that do not call for cans of cream of chicken soup or dried soup mixes and the like.  Whatever little kinks there are with the spreadsheet are well worth working through, especially considering the fact that it is free.  Tonight I just pulled out the other half of the Shredded Beef Tacos to thaw.  With Ben out of town and tee ball tomorrow night, it is going to be a life saver to come home to the smell of shredded beef warming in the crock pot. *sigh*

Recipe Rescue: Calabacitas

Tonight was supposed to be frittata night.  But I didn't feel like eating Veggie Frittata. (It is one of my go-to recipes for Thursday night).  We had two huge zucchini left in the fridge from our produce share so I flipped through my slow cooker cookbook, remembering it had some scrumptious zucchini recipes.  Calabacitas? Have the ingredients. Perfect.


But I forgot to put it in the crock pot last night before bed, and I woke up late. It was a tough call, but I decided getting to work on time was more important.


After work today I still didn't feel like eating a frittata.  


The Calabacitas recipe says that the zucchini will break down in the slow cooker during cooking.  I don't really like my zucchini mushy anyway.  And I thought about the leftover black beans in the fridge which would make a nice addition to the dish...


Chop up part of an onion and one of the monster zucchinis.  (The recipe calls for two whole onions, but I don't really like excessive amounts of onion in my food. I just don't.)


Saute in pan with olive oil.  Add a cup or so of frozen corn.  (We prefer fresh over frozen, but I keep a bag of frozen corn and frozen peas in the freezer for emergencies. And sometimes Thursday night dinner is an emergency.)


Add leftover black beans and home-canned hatch chili peppers.  Salt to taste.  


Crumble feta cheese over top.  (Original calls for Monterrey Jack, but I. love. feta.)


Snip fresh cilantro from back porch (contented sigh) and sprinkle on top. 


Yum. And those hatch chili peppers pack some heat.

I'm envisioning the leftovers wrapped up in a tortilla for lunch tomorrow. 

On Yogurt Making

It seems as though almost everyone I know is making yogurt in their crock pot nowadays.  Easy and oh-so-yummy-goodness, plus less expensive than store bought. At the risk of arriving a little late to the party, here is the basic plan.


1. Pour 8 cups of milk into the crock pot. (Not ultra-pasteurized. We buy ours from a local dairy farm. YUM.) 
2. Cook on low for 2 1/2 hours.
3. Let sit for 3 hours.
4. Stir in 1/2 C plain yogurt (starter), wrap in a heavy towel or blanket and let sit for 8 hours.


I start my yogurt at 4:30, set the crock pot timer for 2 1/2 hours AND the kitchen timer for 5 1/2 hours (explanation follows).  When the kitchen timer goes off at 10:00, I stir in the starter and go to bed.

Whey and yogurt

5. After 8 hours is up, leave as is or, for creamier yogurt, place a colander in a bowl and line with cheese cloth. Pour yogurt into colander and let it strain for the day or so.


I personally like to let it strain for about a half a day to a day until it's the consistency I want. (Read it depends on when I remember I have yogurt draining in my fridge.) Then I take a large spoon and scoop 1/2 C into a small container to use as a starter in the next batch and then transfer most of the rest of it into a container with a lid.  In the bowl under the colander, you are left with whey which is worth keeping. (Find uses here.)  The remaining thicker yogurt still in the cheese cloth I allow to continue to strain to make yogurt cheese.  It is like cream cheese, but more tart.  You can experiment with adding salt or herbs to it.  Yum.


Note: Some people say that you should always start with a fresh (store bought) yogurt        starter. I have been saving my own yogurt as a starter for months now with no problems.


This is so stinkin' easy it's ridiculous.  The hardest part is remembering to stir in the starter and strain it in the morning (hence the setting of the kitchen timer.)  Last time I made yogurt, I forgot to do both.  When I went to pour it out the next evening, it actually looked like yogurt, not really sure what it was.  Ben jokingly suggested using one of the kids as a guinea pig to test it. Tempting, but seeing as how that could possibly end with me caring for aforementioned sick guinea pig, I decided against it.

Much Ado About Chicken (and Kale Soup)

In a surprising twist of self-fulfilling prophecy (sarcasm), I have failed to consistently update my grocery budget spreadsheets since the second week of January.  My promise to blog about our grocery budget with money saving tips has also failed seeing as how my last post was January 22nd, and we are now in the middle of March.  Oops.

However, I can tell you that our grocery spending has gone down significantly since the first of the year and why. And I can tell you how we get our money's worth out of our chicken. :) 

Waste not, want not

Gone are the days when a whole chicken could feed my family for three meals via the "rubber chicken" method.  (Dinner 1: Whole Roasted Chicken, Dinner 2: Chicken Burritos, Dinner 3: Homemade broth to make soup)  I roasted a chicken for dinner the other night and all that is left is enough to make soup.  Two meals is still better than one, but this hasn't been the most efficient plan for our family.

This is the method that works best for us now, and allows my husband to play with sharp objects.  (See photo right.) We buy two whole chickens (or more if we want to stock up) from a meat market that sells free range chicken.  Ben cuts the meat into parts which yield 4 breasts, 4 legs, 4 thighs, and 4 wings--for us, that's two-three meals, plus the wings go to a bag to use as meat in soups or for chicken wings when we have enough accumulated.  The carcasses (fun word) go into a stock pot with water, vegetables, herbs, and 1 Tablespoon of vinegar to make around 15 1/2 C of chicken broth which we can and store in the pantry.  After the broth is made, we pull the extra meat off of the carcasses (there's that word again) which leaves us with 3 1/2 C of cooked chicken which we use to make soup, chicken salad, or burritos--another two meals.  All together, that's 4-5 meals, plus a little extra meat (wings), and 6-7 jars of oh so yummy homemade broth. 

Use what you have on hand

Inspired by a couple of other blogs I've been reading (and a lack of motivation to grocery shop), I started substituting and tweaking recipes and menu plans to fit what we had in our freezers and our pantries.  I've always done this to fit what vegetables we get in the coop, but never to this depth.  Here is what amazed me: we didn't go to the grocery store for three weeks in a row and still had plenty of food to eat.  We did still have our every-other-week fruit and veggie coop and dairy/meat run.  The result of shopping at the grocery store less? (drum roll, please) Our grocery bill went down an average of $140 a month from last year.  No joke.

Below is an example of how to tweak a recipe to fit what you have on hand.  The other night I wanted to make a chicken and kale soup.  I couldn't find one on the Internet that fit what I wanted, and I had a recipe for White Bean and Kale Soup which gave the option of including sausage. By the way, I actually liked this version better than the original, and the family devoured it.

White Bean and Kale Tomato Soup (from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook)

Transformed to Chicken and Kale Soup

Three 14-ounce cans vegetable broth (changed to two jars of homemade chicken broth and 14 oz water)

One 15-ounce can tomato puree (two fresh tomatoes blanched and pureed)

One 15-ounce can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 C converted rice (changed to 1/2 C orzo added the last 10 minutes)

1 medium-size yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 t dried basil

Salt and pepper to taste

1 pound kale, stems removed and leaves coarsely chopped

1 pound sweet Italian sausage (changed to two cups cooked chicken)

1. Combine the broth, tomato puree, beans, rice (omit), onion, garlic, and basil in the slow cooker, season with salt and pepper, and stir to blend. Cover and cook on LOW for 5 to 7 hours. (I cooked mine on the stove for around 30 minutes.)

2. Stir in the kale and sausage (chicken), if using, cover, and continue to cook on LOW until the kale is limp and tender, another 20 to 30 minutes. When you add the kale, it will fill the cooker at first, you can add it in batches if you need to. (On stove around 15 minutes or so. Add the orzo with 10 minutes left.)

3. Ladle the coup into bowls and serve hot with Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. (I omitted the olive oil.)