09.28.09
I REALLY like making applesauce!
I like it so much I learned to can. I mean, seriously. I have a mini-canner, which holds 7 pint sized jars (or half pints) – and that is actually more than my BIG crockpot will hold! At least before the apples cook down. This evening I made 8 pints of applesauce out of 5 pounds of granny smiths and 5 pounds of galas. Added some cardamom, some nutmeg, and a bu ch of cinnamon, but no sugar. The galas make it sweet enough.
Now I need to try canning something else. I am trying to decide whether to go for pickles or jelly next. Prolly jelly because I can actually make that using juice! 
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I also made up a batch of Asian pickled pears – quick pickles that just go in the fridge. But it was a good use to put some of the quart sized jars I had been collecting (which won’t work in my canner). And I made up several bags of the mix for those yummy breakfast cookies, as well as a batch of copycat onion soup mix to use later this week.
I guess I was feeling like my pantries were running low today, huh?
08.24.09
When Life Gives You Pink Lady Apples . . .
at 99 cents a pound, make applesauce! I also used a couple of big Granny Smiths, and an apple type I had never seen before. HEB had samples of the “Tentation” apples, and they tasted good, like a cross between a really sweet apple and a crisp pear. They also felt much lighter than other apples. It was kind of surprising to find out that they are a Golden Delicious cross. I have never found any apple that has the word “delicious” in the name able to live up to the name.
I think I love making applesauce. And homemade applesauce is soooo delicious! I hate the store bought stuff, always have. This is my second batch and both have been FABULOUS! I am never buying store bought again. And I am definitely going to learn to can my own.
I love that the kids can and want to help with this too. DD is my apple peeler and Boogie Boy adds the spices at the end. This time DD was at school, so I had to peel them myself. I’ll definitely do the next batch on the weekend.
Small Batch Applesauce
makes about 6 cups
4 pounds apples (get a mix of varieties, whatever you like)
1 T. lemon juice
1 t. Cinnamon
1/2 t. cardamon (optional, but yummy)
Peel, core, and roughly chop apples. Put into a smallish slow cooker (I use my rice cooker, which has a slow 
cook function). Splash lemon juice on top. Measure (or eyeball) spices into a small bowl. Call over your 3 year old and have him dump the spices in. If you only use tart granny smiths you might want to add a little sugar. Cook for 6 hours on low. Mash, put in jars. Enjoy. Preferably in things like:
Big Breakfast Cookies – tomorrow’s breakfast and I have 3 more packets made up in the pantry.
10.07.08
Not Bento Tuesday: Ramen Recipes
A friend of mine wanted to know ways of eating ramen noodles, that weren’t ramen noodles, because he’s frankly tired of eating them. I figured someone else might be in the same boat, and well . . . this is easier to me than posting them in an email for him.
- Ramen Egg Foo Yung – very cheap, and nice and versatile
- Creamy Ramen Noodles – Mmmm, fake alfredo for pennies.
- Hamburger Skillet Supper – I would probably add more noodles for 4, but that’s me
- Oriental Coleslaw – apparently this is a big thing somewhere, though I haven’t seen it on any buffet lines down here.
- Yakisoba – I actually made this for my husband and I the other day, and YUM! It’s in my Budget Stretcher cookbook and my Asian Gems cookbook on Zaar.
- Bok Choy Salad – Bok Choy tends to be pretty cheap in my market (as are most of the various cabbages), and pairing it with candied ramen noodles sounds fascinating . . .
- Ramen with Peas and Parmesan – I love the description, “About as non-gourmet as non-gourmet gets!” Add a little bacon (or bacon bits) and you have fake carbonara, though.
- Ramen Taco Bowls – And for something completely different, Mexican ramen!
- Almost Instantaneous Corn Chowder - I want to try this when the weather gets just a bit cooler! And it looks like I could make this for my 6 person family for about $3, total.
- Noodles Top Ramenoff – Yup, I like the name, and if it was just me and my friend eating, I would use a bunch of fresh garlic!:)
- Sesame Fried Ramen – this sounds nummy, and uber cheap (if you have sesame oil already)
- Steve’s Tuna Boona – yeah, so the name got me, sounds good and cheap, too, though.
- Ramen Noodle Surprise - so $2 for a pound of ground beef, and 15 cents for the ramen . . .
- Cheap and Easy Ramen Dessert – because you need dessert, even if it is made from deep fried noodles
Not all of these are the cheapest thing in the world, except that most of them start with a brick or more of ramen, which in my stores runs about 15 cents each, not on sale. Most are Asian style, but I have tried to have a bunch in there that aren’t. Mexican ramen . . . *shakes head*
09.30.08
Bento Tuesday
Tuesday
Chicken nuggets, honey mustard, grapes, carrot sticks, cheese sandwich, juice.
Wednesday
Don’t remember what it was, forgot to take a pic
Thursday
Ham and cheese roll-ups, homemade granola bar, grapes, and juice.
Friday
No school, no bento
Saturday
For me (DD and DH went to a baseball game, so I treated myself): Ham, rooster sauce and mayo sushi; cream cheese and cucumber sushi; ginger chicken; and bok choy.
Monday
Chicken salad sandwich, carrot sticks, bean cake, apple, and juice.
Today
For DD: Chicken Nuggets from the freezer, broccoli from the freezer, salad with ranch, gummies, and juice.
For DS and me: Yaki Udon for both, shrimp for me, mandarin oranges plain for him, mandarin oranges in a salad for me. He had a little apple before this and a big pile of rice after.
09.29.08
Convenience Food – Salad Dressing
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Scout, I agree with the pizza. The lasagna was a no brainer, but salad dressing? You’re out of your stinking gourd!” No, I’m not and I will show you what I mean.
The cheapest I have ever been able to find salad dressing (not counting BOGOFree or on sale with coupon free) is about $1 a bottle. These bottles will either last 1-2 recipes, or a couple of weeks of salads, or just about forever because they taste nasty and I just can’t bring myself to throw them out. Or the bottle of Russian salad dressing you buy for reuben sandwiches and then stays there waiting for you to have another craving. What a waste of money. I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating.
Salad dressing doesn’t have to be mundane. It doesn’t have to taste like the bottle it came in. It doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to taste good. And it certainly doesn’t need to sit there, taking up valuable room in your fridge for months.
Just one night this week, if you don’t already, make up a fresh batch of salad dressing. Just enough for that night. Mix it up in the bowl you’re going to serve the salad in, and estimate 2T. or less per serving. A good salad doesn’t really need that much dressing, but a great salad dressing can really bring a salad together.
Tonight I am making up a fantastic salad for dinner, and I am going to top it with an equally fantastic dressing, which enhances, not detracts from, the flavors of the salad. This dressing has a lot of ingredients, so if this is your first time, here’s a few easier ones:
Creamy Pesto
Honey Mustard
Russian
Italian
And I started a cookbook of salad dressing recipes, too, which has all our favorites. Can you tell we like creamy and sweet dressings?
Grab a whisk, and make some dressing. It will be the most rewarding 5 minutes of your cooking tonight!
Asian Food Week (^.^)
Yay! We love Asian food weeks at my house, just not the shopping for it so much. Usually I go alone, but there is a new Asian market in town that is really nice, really clean, only smells weird in the kimchi area, and has the biggest selection of Japanese items at any local Asian market (other than the tiny Japanese market, which doesn’t have enough selection for me to be able to go there for regular grocery shopping). But it is a long, long way away. So, I prefer not to go to this one alone. And besides, it has food stalls in front with really yummmmmmmy food (the mayo shrimp is excellent, DH said the sushi was great for fast food, next time I want to try the noodles, or a bento if they have them).
Unfortunately, I tend to totally blow the budget when I am doing an all Asian week. I do things like buy a 20 pound bag of rice for $18 (try getting Kokuho Rose for that price at Randalls/ Safeway), knowing that it will be at least a couple of months before I need to get more. ^.^
The other thing that gets me in trouble is that I have to go shopping twice: once at the Asian market and once at my regular market. That is because, while some things are MUCH cheaper at Asian markets (produce, rice, fun Japanese sweets), some things I need each week are MUCH cheaper (or frankly only available) at my local market (like the g diapers we have switched to, milk, eggs). Also HEB actually had some great stuff on loss leader this week like asparagus for $2/pound (half the usual price) and whole chickens for 79 cents a pound (it’s been over $1 for months). The asparagus was a good enough deal that I changed my menu plans around for it.
And my lovely husband decides to help. His ideas of shopping are a little different than mine. We work well together, but sometimes I just have to smile at him. His idea is not necessarily to buy stuff only when it’s cheap, but to stock up on stuff when it is good stuff at a very cheap price or at limited availability. So when I go to grab the 20 pound bag of rice, he doesn’t bat an eye, he just moves the cart closer. When I send him to go grab a bottle of Kewpie mayo (makes the best sauce for sushi), he comes back with two, saying “Well, we went through the first bottle pretty quick, and we don’t have to open the second one until we’re done with the first one.” This was the point where I was just smiling.
So what’s the plan for Asian Food Week? Here you go:
Monday – $1.58/serving
Erika’s Favorite Salad with Sake Steamed Shrimp (I’ve got lots of shrimp which will be making appearances in lunches throughout the week) and Japanese Creamy Sesame Salad Dressing
Tuesday – $0.41/serving
Lazy Mini-Okonomiyaki with Asian Tomato Salad (I had planned something else, but the Asian market had tomatoes for 50 cents a pound, CHEAP!)
Wednesday – $2.33/serving
Very Traditional Japanese dinner (well, an attempt): Big bowl of rice and Japanese Onion Soup, with Vinagered Carrots, Sesame Asparagus, Nibuta (poached and marinated pork roast), and Cucumber and Wakame Pickles
Thursday – $1.48/serving
Ginger Noodles with Japanese Crispy Chicken, Peanut Ginger Dipping Sauce, and Cucumber, Bean Sprout, and Red Onion Salad
Friday – I’m not figuring it out but it’s cheaper than our favorite sushi bar.
Sushi Night! – Edamame, Kappa Maki, Ya-Taki Onigiri, Teriyaki Chicken Onigiri, Firecracker Roll, Crunchy Shrimp Roll, and Twinkie Sushi for dessert (cuz I’m a dork!)
A lot of stuff is going to be made ahead of time, and stuff will be put into bento boxes. My rice pot is pretty much going to be going all week long, freezing extras for sushi making.
09.23.08
Bento Tuesday, After the Storm
So DD didn’t go to school all last week, as the district tried to get schools back on power and cleaned up and whatnot, so I only have bento pics from this week for you. Don’t bother clicking them to get a better look, this is as good as it gets. I need a new camera.
Monday
Roasted Sweet Potato, cheese wedge, bacon and broccoli fried rice, OJ
Tuesday
Homemade Chicken Nuggets, honey mustard sauce, grapes, carrot sticks, cheese sandwich
09.22.08
Slowly Restocking the Freezer
Since our power was off about 1 day too many, I had to clean out my fridge and freezer of almost anything. If it didn’t have a high acidic content, a high alcohol content, or some other factor for food preservation, I chucked it. Now I have to start restocking. So, on the menu for the week (including restocks):
Monday ($1.04/serving):
Chicken Nuggets (make 12 servings, freeze half), Garlic Green Beans
Tuesday ($0.96/ serving):
Wasabi Tuna Cakes, Green Onion Pancakes, Japanese vinagered cucumbers
Wednesday (meatless) ($2.51/serving):
Lentil Nachos, Southwestern Vegetable Saute
Thursday ($0.99/ serving):
Ginger Chinese Chicken with Cole Slaw (double and freeze half), Bok Choy with Oyster Sauce
Friday ($1.64/ serving):
Monte Cristo Skillet, Broccoli and Corn Casserole (make 12 servings, freeze half)
And by the end of the week, I will have one main dish, one side dish, and one basic freezer builder in the freezer. I think I need to make pasta sauce next week.
Convenience Food – Chicken Nuggets
Okay, so I am trying to get back in the swing of things after Ike. My area is slowly coming back to life, and grocery stores were almost completely stocked (yeah, frozen food aisle!). So tonight I am going to start filling the freezer back up. I am making a large batch of Chicken Nuggets. As you can see from the recipe, this is not your ordinary nuggets recipe. There is no buttermilk, no egg, no multi-step process, and no frying. These are recipes I like. I LOVE breaded foods. Tonkatsu, fried chicken, tempura anything, fish and chips type fish, eggplant parmesan. I love it all. And I HATE doing it. Dip in a dry, dip in a wet, dip in a dry . . .YUCK. Takes too long, gets too many dishes dirty, not the healthiest of foods. I hate it. Only when a recipe is truly worth it (Tonkatsu, I’m talking about you, or more specifically your leftovers) do I go through this.
But Scout, you cry, there are alternatives! Right in your frozen food aisle, they have packages full of prebreaded, prebattered, precooked goodies. Gah, half of that stuff isn’t really food, and the other half is unhealthy, expensive, and/or just as time consuming as doing it yourself.
So when I found this recipe, I was really excited to try it. No wet dip, but nice marinade. Check, I can do that. No dry dip, shake and bake. Oh, big check – I can do that! No frying? Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! And when I make a triple batch, I can flash freeze half for chicken nugget goodness another night. Oh, Scout is a happy momma.
And what can you do with frozen chicken nuggets once you have them? Well, for starters, I think DD will think they are a fantastic lunch with a dipping sauce (ranch, BBQ, or tonkatsu). And you can make Buffalo Chicken bites instead of wings, fried chicken salad, mini-chicken parmesan, mini chicken sandwiches, “Southern Style” chicken breakfast biscuits, apparently fried chicken is really good on waffles (though I wouldn’t know).
And the best things about this recipe? Since chicken breasts were on sale for about $2/pound, it comes out to about 60 cents per serving – using homemade breadcrumbs from homemade bread. See if you can beat that in your frozen food aisle. I’ll let you know how they work out, although the reviews are promising.
09.17.08
Shopping after the Hurricane
We’re fine. We got hit, but we were very lucky, and we are fine. We lost power for almost 3 days, and I am very glad to have my air conditioning and internet back. But we lost everything in our fridge and freezers. So I went grocery shopping yesterday with no list, no menu, no plan at all; since I had no idea what the grocery store actually had. I knew I wanted milk, eggs, bread flour, sugar, and some household products. I knew I wanted fresh produce and meat for 4 for the rest of the week (the roommates evacuated north) as well as lunches for me and the kids. And I have an empty fridge and freezer.
And that was as far as I could plan.
I felt so unprepared. I wandered the store aimlessly, staring at the half empty shelves waiting for inspiration to hit. And I do mean half empty. And the prices were higher than usual. I am not exactly sure why, but my Randalls hadn’t stocked any meat that would have cost less than $3/pound (or it was gone before I got there). No ground meat of any kind, but lots of high end steaks. Only 2 sad little whole chickens left in the huge case, for too much money. Some pork chops. That was pretty much it. The produce section was thin, too, with lots of empty shelves. No mushrooms, no tomatoes, no bananas, no potatoes. The frozen foods were still marked off with police tape (you know, the kind they mark crime scenes with), inaccessible and unbuyable. And there was no eggs, and the only milk left was the super premium organic for $5 per half gallon. I just decided to wait on the milk and got some cheese instead for dairy.
So what did I come up with? Well, last night we had a yummy salad with green leaf lettuce, half a brandywine tomato, celery, carrots, diced ham, and feta. The brandywine was expensive, but I have been wanting to give them a try to see whether they were worth all the buzz they have been getting. If the grocery store ones taste that good, I can’t wait to grow my own. Tonight we are going to have roast beef with roasted sweet potatoes and onion and a Yorkshire pudding (if DH can get some eggs on the way home). Tomorrow night we are having either pan fried or grilled sausage with some steamed broccoli (and maybe a cheese sauce) and rice. I ran out of inspiration at this point, but I have bacon and a bunch of stuff in the pantry (I barely had to touch the stuff I bought for my 72 hour kit), so I will just wing it.
Gah, I hate the thought of having to rebuild my fridge and freezer, but at least I can try to avoid things that we won’t eat, things we shouldn’t eat. And my freezer has a chance at being organized! Maybe.
