Another Broke Mom

Wrangler Pie

2012-01-29T19:18:00.000-09:00

It's still miserably cold outside, and more comfort food is in order. Looking at what I had in to work with I settled on a variation of Shepherd's Pie, which led to an interesting Facebook conversation. The basic formula here is a pot pie or casserole with a potato topper. Neil in Great Britain assures me that Shepherd's Pie is traditionally made with lamb and carrots, and that the American version made with beef is really Cottage Pie. What I had was ground turkey, so cousin Corey dubbed this Turkey Wrangler Pie (if you have a better name for a turkey shepherd, let me know!). My niece Chelsea asks if there is a vegetarian version.

Phew! So, here's a link to traditional British Shepherd's Pie. It's from the BBC, so I suspect it's pretty good. Here's a link to another traditional version if you're not fond of the BBC. Here's a link to the recipe I found on McCormick's website, which is what I started with tonight and is what Neil called Cottage Pie. And here's what I actually made, which shall henceforth be known as Wrangler Pie.

Wrangler Pie
1 pound ground turkey
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 cups turkey gravy
1 can mixed vegetables
1 can green beans
3 cups prepared mashed potatoes

Preheat oven to 350°F. Brown the ground turkey with the onion, being sure the meat is completely cooked. Drain the two cans of vegetables and add them to the meat with the gravy.

Pour the meat mixture into a 9 x 13" casserole. Top with mashed potatoes. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover and cook for 10 more minutes. Serve hot.

Drake had his with
shredded Cheddar on top.

Now, there's a lot of shortcutting going on in that recipe. I had a can of generic Veg-All which just didn't have enough green in it so I dumped the can of green beans in. I had two packets of Idahoan Mashed Potatoes which totaled six servings. I used McCormick's Poultry Gravy Mix to make my two cups of gravy. But the result was a Wrangler Pie so good that even Junior loved it, and he hates gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

One last piece of business: here's how I'd make it if Chelsea, who is vegetarian, was coming to dinner. This recipe is untried, but should give good results.

Gardener's Pie
1 package MorningStar Farms Meal Starters
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 cups vegetarian brown gravy (two packets)
1 can mixed vegetables
1 can green beans
3 cups prepared mashed potatoes

Prepare as for Wrangler Pie, above. While the crumbles won't need cooking, you'll want to heat them up with the onion for flavor. This one will be more like Cottage Pie. You can make it vegan instead of vegetarian by omitting the dairy from the mashed potatoes.

Whether you make this with lamb, beef, turkey, or vegetarian meat substitute, you just can't go wrong with mashed potatoes and gravy on a cold night.

How to tell whether or not your recipe was a success.

Chocolate Cobbler

2012-01-20T21:44:00.000-09:00

When it's cold out (and it's been around -30° F for the last little bit) I just want to bake. Warm yummy comfort food just seems like a great idea on a cold cold night! This recipe I stumbled over on Facebook. It reminds me a lot of my Hot Fudge Pudding Cake, except with a sponge cake instead of a fudgy brownie-type cake. The original is over at justapinch.com.

Chocolate Cobbler

1 cup (two sticks) butter

The batter and chocolate
layers, waiting for the butter.
Batter Layer
1 1/4 c sugar
1 1/2 all-purpose flour
1 3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c milk

Chocolate Layer
1 c sugar
6 Tbsp cocoa powder
2 c boiling water

Preheat oven to 350° F. In a 9x13 glass baking dish, melt the butter in the oven.

Meanwhile, sift or whisk together the dry batter layer ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the milk and vanilla and mix well. The batter will be stiff. Once the butter is melted spoon the batter over the butter, but do not stir.

In a separate bowl mix the cocoa and remaining sugar together and sprinkle on top of batter. Do not stir.

Pour the 2 cups of boiling water on top of that (don't stir) and bake for 30-45 minutes. I bake mine until I have a nice golden brown crust. In my oven this usually take about 35 minutes. Serve warm. Great with ice cream or whipped cream.

I didn't have the self-rising flour the original calls for, so I punted using a guide on about.com and it came out great. The original also says to pour the batter over the butter, but it was way too thick for that so I used a spoon to help the pour along and distributed it as evenly as possible.

Yummy stuff, and very easy! I've decided (after we all had some and I slept on it) that the cake is very sweet, and that when I make it again I'm going to cut the sugar in the batter in half. I don't think it will suffer for it.

Blueberry Muffins

2012-01-15T20:30:00.002-09:00

It's -40 out. The temperature dropped Friday and it's not getting much warmer than -30 for the next week or so. We're all cooped up and it's just feeling chilly, so I turned to the kitchen. I have blueberries in the freezer!

As you know I'm a huge fan of my 1975 edition Joy of Cooking, but to me their blueberry muffin recipe doesn't stand out like their banana bread recipe. They use a basic muffin recipe and add stuff to it, and I've always found their base muffin kind of bland. AllRecipes bailed me out with a nice blueberry muffin recipe. Is it really to die for? While I've yet to meet a muffin for which I'd commit murder these are really very good and will be made again. Probably tomorrow.

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, cubed
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.

Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.

To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 1/4 cup butter, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done. Makes 8 servings.

I got ten muffins out of the batch - I filled the muffin cups to about 1/4" from the top to leave room for the crumb topping. They rose up just lovely! I used a pastry cutter to make the topping and I had twice as much as would fit on the muffins. I saved it for another batch.


Kiddo also approved of the crumble topping.

Getting Thrifty: Losing Cable TV

2012-01-06T11:38:00.000-09:00

Because we use an astounding amount of internet bandwidth we used to have a package deal that gave us unlimited internet bundled with phone and full cable television. At the time it was the only way for me to stop paying overage fees, and actually saved us money. But as the world moved on our internet service provider added internet plans for people with very high usage and made them available without a bundle.

We killed the landline phone that we never used any more, and got a great price on what we needed for internet throughput at a higher speed. They still try to get you to bundle: for cable internet you either must have cable TV or pay a $9.99 "cable access fee". I decided I wanted to keep the local TV channels and chose their smallest TV package (all the local stuff plus 60 channels of music we never used) with an extra converter for upstairs to the tune of $33.06 per month. Our overall savings was $60 a month including Netflix and the occasional Redbox rental, and we were pretty darn happy with that. The moral of that story is call your provider occasionally and see if you can improve your services and what you pay. But I missed another savings opportunity.

The two GE antennas that worked for us.

What I misunderstood during the whole Digital Television Conversion a few years back was that television is still available for free over the air. I somehow got the impression that you had to plug into cable TV to get it. It's probably mixed up with the fact that in the old days this condo was in a TV reception hole and could only get two channels. But when I saw a digital TV antenna on 1saleaday the penny dropped and I started researching. Several really good Amazon reviews and websites like killthecablebill helped me make my decision.

We can't have outside antennas here, so we needed something like rabbit ears. I started by buying a $15 antenna just to see if we got any reception here, and to my joyful surprise it worked beautifully! The downstairs TV was harder to tune in so I bought a $20 antenna for that one. I figured if needed I could return them for a slightly better one until I found an antenna that worked.

I paid $35 for two low-end GE antennas, and will save $23 a month in recurring cable costs. And here's a bonus: there are extra channels tucked in on the digital signals, so we actually gained channels.

The little black square to the right is the antenna. For some reason it works best with its back to the room.

Try it. Go buy a cheap antenna and see if it'll work at all. You can get help fine tuning your reception from this guide. If it works you can join me in returning all the rented equipment to the cable company.

Product Review: FUN da-middles

2012-01-04T08:41:00.000-09:00

I love trying new stuff. Last year when I first saw FUN da-middles in the store I waited for a coupon and bought a box to try. And then it sat on the shelf until the kids and I were going to drive each other crazy over Christmas break.

FUN da-middles are filled cupcakes, done without the mess of a piping bag. The box comes with cake mix and a filling packet. You'll need cupcake paper liners, eggs, and oil. You make the cake, fill the cupcake cups 1/3 full, add some filling, then cover it up. Bake according to directions.

And they taste delicious! The cake is moist and tasty and the chocolate filling is fudgy. They do not taste like Hostess or Little Debbie Cakes, they're yummier and less sugar-ful. The only issue I have is that Better Crocker is a little over-excited about them in their press.

The baking process is as easy as they say, but because the batter must be placed with precision and the filling must be covered completely it's not the best project to have a five-year-old help on. If any of the filling leaks out you're going to have a horrific, burnt on mess. Also, one of their ads says "Out of the oven and DONE!"

This implies that you can eat them right out of the oven, which is completely untrue. The instructions warn you that the filling is very hot, and you cannot even remove them from the cupcake pan to cool for 20 minutes. I suspect to try and eat them hot would invite severe burns.

So my one-line review is: Great product, with slightly over-enthusiastic press. Pick some up if you're looking for a treat.

He's not bored with it, really, it's the only pic he wasn't giggling and blurry in!

Biscuits

2011-12-03T08:21:00.001-09:00

I love biscuits! We had a cold snap recently and delicious southern-style biscuits hot from the oven were just what I needed to keep the chill off. They're easy, economical, and use ingredients I always have on hand. For my non-American friends, these are a light flaky non-yeast bread that is probably closest to a scone.

I used to use Bisquick, but I've since discovered that I like scratch biscuits better. Here's the very best biscuit recipe I've found, from La Belle Cuisine. The author notes that lard, which is rendered animal fat, makes a crisper biscuit than vegetable shortening. I don't keep lard around and these are pretty crisp with Crisco; one day I'll try them with lard.

If you do not keep buttermilk or buttermilk solids around you can use 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice in enough milk to make one cup total (remember the acid will flavor the milk, so white vinegar is best). Let it stand five minutes so the milk sours properly.

Southern Biscuits
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons lard or solid vegetable shortening
3/4 cup buttermilk
Makes 25 to 30 biscuits

Sift the dry ingredients into a roomy bowl. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or fork until the mixture has the texture of coarse corn meal. Add the buttermilk and mix with your hand, lightly but thoroughly. Add a little more flour if the dough is too sticky. Knead for 1 minute. Wrap in wax paper or foil and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Roll the dough out 1/2 inch thick on a lightly floured surface or pastry cloth. (Always roll from the center out for tender, crisp biscuits.) Cut the dough into the desired size biscuits.

Place the biscuits on a dark baking sheet and bake until golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes.

I used a 3-inch biscuit cutter and got 12 biscuits. I don't have a dark baking sheet; the difference is whether the pan absorbs or reflects heat, but mine came out fine. Serve them warm with butter or jam; smother them in country gravy for breakfast; or use them instead of bread in your sandwich!

Stuffed Green Peppers

2011-11-20T15:10:00.001-09:00

Stuffed green peppers are Midwestern comfort food. Hubby remembers his step-mom Mary's with great fondness. My mom (also a Mary!) used to make them, and I remember protesting at the peppers but ultimately enjoying them. The basic formula is green bell peppers stuffed with a rice, hamburger, and tomato sauce mix. Since I haven't tried to make them since the early 90's I'm working from Mary Lanam's recipe and one from Allrecipes. That, and I'm punting with the potential ingredients we have in the house.

Here's Mary's recipe:

Here's what I ended up doing:

Stuffed Peppers
6 large green bell peppers
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground turkey
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 cup rice
1 can Hunt's Onion and Roasted Garlic Spaghetti Sauce
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

Cook the rice according to package directions. Brown the meats together with the onion and drain off the fat.

Cut the tops off the peppers (save the tops!) and clean out the seeds and membranes. Make sure the peppers will stand up in whatever pan you use, even if you have to shave a little off the bottom.

Mix together the meats, rice, and half the spaghetti sauce. Stuff the peppers. Top with the remaining sauce and replace the pepper tops. Put them in a shallow baking dish (I used bread pans). Bake at 400° for 45 minutes. Remove the pepper top lids and sprinkle mozzarella cheese on the peppers. Bake an additional 10 minutes.

So here's a couple of things that might come up when discussing making stuffed peppers, and what I learned:

Do you blanche the peppers before stuffing? Some recipes say to; Mom says if you do so the peppers are less likely to be bitter, but they are harder to stuff. If you want to pre-cook them Mom recommends the microwave.

Do you cook the stuffing before stuffing or not? Many older recipes have you stuff the peppers with uncooked meat and rice and cook it twice as long; I cooked up the stuffing before hand and thought it was fine, and I didn't have to worry about raw meat hitting a safe temperature.

Do you baste the peppers? Some recipes say to baste the peppers with more sauce every 15 minutes to keep the peppers from drying out. Here's where Mary's tip to save and use the pepper "lids" comes in. Our peppers were so juicy one squirted Jack in the eye, and the stuffing was not dry at all. You don't need to add water to the pan to steam the peppers for the same reason.

Creamed Beef on Toast

2011-10-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

Creamed beef on toast has a variety of names, the most common of which is probably S.O.S., or Stuff on a Shingle. The classic mess hall recipe used canned chipped beef. I've never seen chipped beef anywhere, but it turns out you can use just about any beef ground or chopped small in this recipe. I've been using BEEF.

This stuff is cooked crumbled beef in fat and juices. I heat it up in a sauce pan and pour off all the drippings before I use it and it looks just like ground beef. Creamed beef is easy: you're just serving beef in a white sauce. An overwhelming number of people insist this must be served with peas, which works for me (although not for Junior, for whome the only vegetable is corn). It definately qualifies as yummy, not-diet comfort food! I got this recipe from Food.com.

Creamed Beef on Toast

1 lb ground beef or 1 lb ground chuck
1/2 cup butter
2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
salt and pepper
1/2 loaf bread, for making toast

Brown ground beef in a medium sized skillet. Drain off fat.

In a medium sized sauce pan or pot melt the stick of butter. Add the flour and cook over medium/medium-low heat to make a thick paste or rue. Keep stirring till it is a smooth consistency. Takes just a few minutes or so.

Add the milk and stir till thickens to the consistency of cooked pudding. When this mixture cools down it thickens even more, so don't overcook or it will be too thick!

Add in the ground beef and stir till incorporated well.

Toast your bread. Serve with ground beef mixture on top of the toast. Salt and pepper to taste.

You could also serve creamed beef over rice or egg noodles, and I'm thinking about putting it in bread bowls.

Apple Butter

2011-09-26T13:21:00.000-08:00

Let me preface this blog carefully: I have never made apple butter. I've seen lots of recipes, but I've never tried it. Hubby is from Ohio and tells stories of the Johnny Appleseed festivals where people would make cauldrons of apple butter over an open fire, stirring them with a oar, and I think I'm a little intimidated trying to live up to a childhood apple butter memory.

Today my Uncle Gil sent me an apple butter recipe, saying "Try this!" The first thing I notice is it requires a slow cooker; I don't have a slow cooker any more. But Uncle Gil assures me that one can do the first step on the stove top and the rest in the oven, and I have a nice cast iron Dutch oven. So what the heck, I'm making apple butter.

Another caveat: I actually have not made this yet, but I promised my friend Christie I'd blog the recipe today. So here you go:

All Day Apple Butter

Apples, ready to cook!
5 1/2 lbs apples
3 cups sugar
2-3 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt

Peel, core and chop the apples. Place in slow cooker. Combine the rest and pour over apples; mix well.

Cook on high 1 hour covered. Cook on low for 9 - 11 hours. Stir with a whisk until smooth.

Spoon into freezer containers leaving 1/2" head space and freeze or refridgerate.

Makes 4 pints.

Uncle Gil says any pie or cooking apple will do. I got half Gala and half Granny Smith because I couldn't decide (and I couldn't find Braeburn, which I love). I'll be canning the apple butter instead of freezing it; the Ball Blue Book says to leave 1/4" headspace and process 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner (following proper hot canning technique, of course). It also notes that if your apple butter gets too thick add apple juice or water until it's the desired consistency. Uncle Gil says the cookdown can take up to two days, so don't be in a hurry. If it's not thick enough, keep cooking.

I tried to discover what temperatures slow cookers work at to only learn they don't regulate temperature, they regulate wattage. So I read a lot and decided to cook the apples on medium-high for an hour and then put them in the oven at 200°F. So far it smells wonderful!

I'll follow up with pictures of the apple butter when I finish it!

Ridiculously Easy Fruit Desert Pizza

2011-09-10T17:23:00.000-08:00

Desert pizza is really a re-imagining of a tart. There's a variety of ways to make them, premise being a crust covered in desertish things. This versatile version is best served cold (or room temperature) because of the cream cheese sauce. Once the crust is baked and the cream cheese softened this takes maybe five minutes to throw together for awesome results.

Fruit Desert Pizza
1 pie crust, uncooked
1 8oz package cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Fruit

Soften cream cheese. You can use any variety of cream or Neufchatel cheese as long as it's block, not whipped.

Roll out the pie crust onto a pizza pan and bake according to recipe (or box) instructions for unfilled crust. Let cool completely.

Meanwhile, cream together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla. When crust is completely cooled spread with cream cheese mixture. Arrange fruit on top of cheese. I used blue berries, but as you can imagine about any fruit will do. Try sliced strawberries and kiwi, just about any berry, canned Mandarin oranges, canned peaches or pineapple rings.

Garnish with a dusting of powdered sugar or whipped cream, if desired. Be careful cutting, as a cold pie crust can be brittle. Enjoy!

Product Review: Planters Peanut Butter

2011-08-17T13:00:00.000-08:00

Kraft First Taste is a wonderful program which gets its members new Kraft products free or very cheap for sampling. This week they have a coupon for $2 off new Planters peanut butter. We usually get Safeway's store brand for economy, but Walmart had the Planters at a good price: on Monday the 24 ounce jar was $3.88 a jar, but on Tuesday it was $4.18. (isn't that interesting?). For comparison here are the prices for other 24oz jars in Safeway: Skippy SuperChunk $5.49; Adam's Natural $5.49; Safeway, $3.99.

What can you say about peanut butter? It can be too dry, too oily, or have poor taste. There's certainly mediocre peanut butter. I'm a fan of Skippy SuperChunk, and the Safeway brand is fine. I had high expectations of Planters because as we all know, Planters knows nuts. I was not disappointed.

Naturally it comes in creamy or crunchy; it's no contest here, my whole family is nuts! The ingredients are straight-forward: peanuts, sugar, oils, salt. The crunchy is stuffed with nuts but still very spreadable, and is neither dry nor oily. It has a wonderful roasted peanut taste that sent me back to the jar for a spoonful! The kids loved it. Hubby loved it on his pre-workout morning toast. It's a hit in our house, and I already spent all the $2 off coupons I printed so we could stock up on it cheap! While I expect the price point to eventually match other premium peanut butters, the introductory price is quite attractive. I'm happy to recommend Planters Peanut Butter to peanut butter loving families!

Product Review: Johnsonville Original Bratwurst Patties

2011-08-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

So, I got had a buy-one-get-one coupon for Johnsonville Original Bratwurst Patties. I didn't think I'd get to use it because this is a really new product and the awesome BOGO coupons usually expire before the products get to Fairbanks. Imagine my surprise when I found them at Walmart! They were $8.32 a box, which was six patties (two pounds). A little expensive for our everyday budget but a nice price for a specialty premium meat.

The first thing I notice is they are 350 calories and 28 grams of fat each: this is not diet food. The second thing I notice is they are almost as thick as a regular bratwurst. As the grill was low on gas Hubby did them on my griddle. Following instructions resulted in a perfectly cooked patty. We served them with sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms on Orowheat Whole Wheat Sandwhich Thins. With mustard, of course. Let's have some pictures.

Brat patties on the griddle.

Dinner is served!

Doesn't that look delicious?

Final Review of Johnsonville Original Bratwurst Patties: HOLY COW this is some serious cave-dwelling he-man carnivore food! The patties are probably 3/4 of an inch thick and taste, well, just like a Johnsonville Brat. I'm reminded of Stephen King's story "The Stand" (the novella, not the movie) and the boys making "cowboy drumsticks" by molding burger around sticks. Absolutely delicious. Now, if I had my druthers I'd like to see a thinner "petite" version, because it was probably as much meat as three brats. However I'm of the minority opinion on size: Hubby ate two, Kiddo had one and a half, and picky eater Junior ate all but a bite of his. If you like brats and grilling I would totally give these a try.

As I write this on July 31 the BOGO coupon is still available online. I don't know how long it will be there, but you can try... click here.

Product Review: Tide Stain Release

2011-07-31T14:35:00.006-08:00

UPDATE: Tide responded to this blog. See their letter at the end.

Here's another unsolicited review. I received a free sample of Tide Stain Release and some Tide to go with it. Tide Stain Release comes in little gel packs, like dishwasher detergent. I've tossed a couple in with my regular laundry, but I haven't paid much attention to them. Until Kiddo went to summer camp.

Summer camp this year was a week at Camp Habitat, the camp at Creamer's Field. There's a lot of water and muck at Creamer's Field, and Kiddo came home every day completely happy and soaked, bug-bitten, and thoroughly filthy. Wednesday evening as I'm looking at his socks I realize I have the perfect trial for the Stain Release. This one is going to take a lot of pictures, folks (click the pictures to enlarge them). Here's the before:

Now these clothes were certainly not new and I didn't expect them to come out looking new. I was looking at two things: the new grass stains on the knees of the jeans and the socks. The socks in the center are my control; Kiddo wore them Tuesday and they were almost as bad as the socks on the left before I washed them with my regular load (using Arm and Hammer Free and no special treatment, if you're wondering). I decided that the Tide Stain Release should be able to get those nasty socks at least as clean as that pair.

Reading the instructions I see that really heavily stained stuff might require two Stain Release packets, so I give Tide the full benefit and wash the filthy clothes (along with Junior's Tee Ball uniform) with the Tide sample and two Stain Releasers. I washed them in cold water on the longest cycle.

Okay. Let's skip through the exciting wash and spin cycle. I did check the stains before I dried, them, and decided since they were old clothes to start with I'd just dry and let you see for yourself. If I were more concerned I probably would have washed them again. Here's the after pictures. The socks are in the same order, so the pair in the middle are the control pair.

As you can see, the grass stains are still there, and even the less-soiled socks didn't get as clean as my control pair. I was really disappointed. I probably could have done better with a pre-soak of plain old detergent.

Final review of Tide Stain Release In-Wash Booster: don't bother. On freshly heavily soiled clothes the addition of two Tide Stain Release packs gave no better results than detergent alone. I'm glad this was a free sample and I didn't pay for the lack of results. I'll stick with traditional pre-treating.

Tide's Response: I always contact companies when I blog-review their product. In this case I got an email from Tide just now. I'm publishing it un-edited (including the font size jumble) for you:

Hello Amy,

Thank you for contacting Tide and sharing your comments.

I apologize the Tide Stain Release didn’t remove the stain and I’m sharing your comments with the rest of the team. Please be assured this is unusual. Tide Stain Release is designed to help remove the most common tough stains. In addition, the liquid can be used to pretreat tough stains.

Since your satisfaction means a great deal to us, I'm sending compensation by postal mail. You should receive my letter and replacement coupon that will be good for any Tide Stain Release within the next 2-3 weeks.
Thanks again for writing.
Kathleen
Tide Team

Product Review: Open Nature Ice Cream

2011-07-26T14:38:00.001-08:00

Safeway has a new 100% natural product line, Open Nature. I'm a fan of probably 95% of Safeway's house brands, so when I got a coupon for free Open Nature Ice Cream (no restrictions), I was open to giving it a try. That, and it's free ice cream, duh.

This is the bit where I mention that this is an unsolicited review. I got the coupon through a freebie-spotting site and while I got free ice cream, no one has asked me to review it.

The ice cream comes in the standard not-quite-a-half gallon container, and is found near the super-premium ice creams like Breyers. Here the price point was $4.49; for the life of me I cannot remember if that's regular price or ad price, but it's in the pocket for super-premium ice cream on sale. There were a half-dozen or so flavors including the classic three, but I picked the Cherry Vanilla to take home.

No artificial colors or flavors; no unpronounceable ingredients (although I had to look up "carrageenan"). No corn syrup, no hormone treated cows, no alkalized cocoa. The artificial colors thing is my main concern; we never get strawberry or cherry ice cream because of the Red40.

Oh, yum. This is some good ice cream. I think it misses super-premium by a half a point of creaminess (it's not as creamy as Dreyer's Slow Churned, for example) but it's definitely top shelf. The vanilla is lovely, and the cherries are big and red and scrumptious.

So, the review: Open Nature ice cream is definitely worth the premium price. It's nice to have a natural product that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. It's rich, creamy and very yummy. I will definitely try the other flavors.

Doncha Love Summer?

2011-07-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

That's right, it's the time of year where I forget to blog because we're having so much fun with summer! The boys and I just got back - they went to Grandma's, I went to Vegas for SOE's Fan Faire - and I thought I should at least put up some pictures!

Lunch at the Alaska Veteran's Memorial.

My co-worker Ann and I at Fan Faire, showing our ZAM's.

Creamer's Field. I'm still taking pictures at the same spot while I walk, though I'm not walking as much as I should.

The boys in the DCUO Capes from Fan Faire.

Our garden in panorama. Everything looks great except the greens!

More Coupon Savings

2011-06-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

The trick to couponing really is to stack your coupons with good deals. Safeway has some buy-one-get-one deals this week, and I've been saving the coupons for just such an occasion.

Savings on the stuff in the picture, 62% ($26.52 regular price, I paid $10.52). Add the produce I bought back into the equation and I saved 52%. I actually earned 75 cents on one deal!

Summer Time!

2011-06-18T23:17:00.000-08:00

Yep, summer in Alaska! Solstice is just about here, and it's just been too busy to blog. So here's some of our summer for you!

We've been to Creamer's Field a lot. I'm doing an album of pictures from the same spot throughout the year.

Junior is in tee-ball; hubby is assistant coach.

A little rock throwing at Ballaine Lake.

There've been some awesome rainbows.


And some dramatic clouds.

Coming soon: I do stuff with blueberries and other fruits!

Extreme Couponing

2011-06-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

We've heard about them for years: people who save THOUSANDS using coupons. They even have their own television show now! For years I've wondered how they do it and recently several friends have been discussing couponing on Facebook. Seems it's almost a lifestyle; coupiniung casually won't get you big results.

First, extreme couponers spend a lot of time staying organized and doing research. One shopper at Safeway told me she spends about 30 hours a week on it. They have binders. They organize by product and date. They collect ad circulars from their neighbors.

The bit that I've only recently figured out is they are not doing this on their normal grocery run. Extreme couponers hoard their coupons and then look for sales and stackable coupons (store coupons and manufacturer coupons often can be used together). They buy in bulk for long-term savings. The idea is to rack up the discounts until you're hardly paying anything at all, then buy as much as you're able to maximize the savings.

Now, I'm not about to buy a year's worth of laundry detergent or sports drinks, if only because I've nowhere to put it. But there are items we use all the time that I'll stock up on. Yesterday I saved $17 on six jars of Skippy peanut butter. Normally I buy the house brand, but this was 50 cents cheaper than that on the best day, so I maxed it. That's about two months worth of peanut butter in our house!

I had some coupons and Safeway had some deals, so I got organized and here's what I did today:

That's $73.00 worth of groceries for $37.91. Okay, maybe not EXTREME extreme couponing, but I'll take a 48% savings. I did this with a combination of store rebates and coupons (at Fred Meyer, where I got the Quilted Northern), and sales, store coupons, manufacturer coupons, and e-coupons combined with a mix-and-match discount (at Safeway). Maybe I'll get better with practice!

Buy This Book!

2011-05-31T09:23:00.002-08:00

This is a short blatant plug for a new book by my friend Adam "Ferrel" Trzonkowski. I did a couple podcasts with Ferrel on View From the Top last year, which were a blast, then got to meet him at SOE's 2010 Fan Faire. Now he's written a book for MMO guild leaders out there.

So here you are, in hardcopy and Kindle editions. Note that all proceeds through the end of June will be donated to the Fisher House Foundation, which provides a "home away from home" for military families to be close to a loved one during hospitalization for an illness, disease or injury. Hardcopy is the left image; the Kindle edition is on the right.

Pigs in a Blanket

2011-05-21T07:39:00.002-08:00

Since it's the first weekend of summer vacation I thought I'd make something special for breakfast: Pigs in a Blanket. I should mention that this is the American breakfast version; there's a croissant-dough-wrapped lunch version and apparently the British version is bacon wrapped sausage. This one is pancakes and sausage, and very easy.

I really cheated, with pancake mix and heat-and-serve sausage. 6:30 is just too early to make anything complex. You'll need two or three sausages per person for most folks and a similar number of pancakes. I used a single batch of Golden's Malted Pancake Mix. Make the pancake batter a little thin, as cakes from a thick, cakey batter will break when you wrap it around the sausage. I made a single batch of pancakes but added an extra 1/4 cup of water.

Heat the sausages according to package directions. If you're not serving these right off the griddle, warm the oven up to hold them (200°F will do). As the pancakes come off the griddle let them cool slightly and then roll a sausage up in them. Lay them in a pan, seam side down, snuggled together. Cover them with a tea towel and put them in the oven to keep them warm.

My kids eat them right out of the pan, but you might enjoy dipping them in syrup. Tasty! If you're watching your calories like us, this particular batch worked out to 110 calories per pig, which isn't bad at all for a yummy breakfast treat.

Junior says I have to add Kiddo's picture too, so here you are:

Product Review: Orville Redenbacker's Pop Up Bowl

2011-04-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

When it comes to popcorn on a budget, I feel that if you're buying kernels to pop on the stove one brand is as good as the next, but there's a real difference in microwave corn. I personally prefer Orville Redenbacker, who seems to have gotten the whole oil/salt/fake butter ratios right, and whose Pop Smart version can really save you a lot of calories.

So when they came out with these Pop Up Bowls at the same price as their usual, I had to try it. It just looked nifty. Yeah, that's right, I'm not reviewing the corn, I'm reviewing the bowl! Short version: It works precisely as advertised, is very cool, and it's now my preferred corn. Long version:

It starts out looking like a standard microwave popcorn bag.

It pops up nice. Instead of opening an end, you pull the cellophane off.

And POOF! It's a bowl! Just watch your fingers when you open it, it's hot!

I didn't fluff the corn in this picture, that's just how it looked when I got the top off.

Oh, this would be a good place to mention that this review was neither solicited nor was I compensated for it in anyway. Not that I'd mind some more of this popcorn!

Ridiculously Easy Peach Upside Down Cake

2011-04-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

I've blogged peach upside down cake before. It's a lovely, easy desert that travels well and impresses served warm or cold.

Once again I found my pantry overflowing with canned peaches, and since we're dieting I wanted something simple, tasty, and easy to carry out of the house so I wouldn't eat it! I took the recipe I blogged back in 2009 and one I found on Cooks.com, and came up with this:

Ridiculously Easy Peach Upside Down Cake

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup brown sugar
2 15 ounce cans of sliced peaches, drained
1 yellow cake mix
juice from the canned peaches
Oil and eggs for cake mix, per package instructions
1 tsp cinnamon

Melt butter and stir in brown sugar until it's all liquid. Pour the liquid sugar into a greased and floured 9 x 13 inch cake pan. Arrange peach slices on the brown sugar in a single layer.

Prepare the cake mix according to package instructions but: substitute peach juice for water (add water to make the total required amount, if needed) and add cinnamon. Pour the cake batter carefully over the peaches and sugar. Bake according to the cake mix directions.

If you're serving it immediately, cool five minutes and turn upside down on a serving dish. This also travels well and can be served cold, turned out of the pan or not. Excellent with whipped cream.

This one I baked in a disposable pan (a very nice pan that I'm going to try to reuse). Hubby took it to work and turned it out into the lid. It's served cold, making the peaches and sugar more of an icing than a glaze. Still yummy, and very very easy! This makes a simple and delicious potluck or snacktime dish.

Simplifying Salad

2011-03-21T14:39:00.003-08:00

Since we've been dieting we've been eating more salad. Naturally. We've always meant to get more raw fruits and veggies in our diets, but never quite managed. Part of it, it turns out, is that sitting down and making a really nice salad from scratch is time consuming. So I decided to build us a salad bar.

Okay, not a real salad bar, but I wanted stuff for salads all cut up and ready to go. If I have to take 20 minutes to prep a salad, I'm not going to eat that. I'm going to go for something quick. I also didn't want to have to take a half-dozen small containers or bags out. The solution was simpler than I thought. Remember those Tupperware-style hors d'ouvre carriers? I found one at Wal-Mart at a reasonable price. Now I prep our salad bar in one of those.

The salad is pre-prepped too, so now it's just a couple minutes to a diet friendly salad! If the nummy veggies in here start looking limp we just make pasta sauce; most of this you can saute up and add to sauce, no problem!

About three minutes later Junior there had eaten half the cherry tomatoes. That kid loves cherry tomatoes!

Couponing

2011-03-05T18:30:00.008-09:00

I've been doing really well with couponing recently, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite coupon sources. Manufacturers are trying to get you to try their product, but don't go buying a bunch of stuff you don't use just because you have a coupon. At the same time, coupons do you no good if you aren't going to use them.

There are a couple of coupon printers on the 'net; if you haven't used a required one before you'll be prompted to add it to your browser. I've never had a problem with coupon printers, but always check the source. These coupon printers are a service which keep you from abusing the coupon, but if you hit your browser's "back" button you can usually get two copies.

For maximum value, watch for sales to stack with your coupons. Most coupons printed online are good for a month, so you don't have to run right out and redeem them. E-coupons are not usually allowed to stack with identical paper coupons, but present your paper ones anyway; their system will kick it back if it's a duplicate of an e-coupon.

Better Oats Oatmeal: When hubby got the word that his cholesterol was getting high we started eating oatmeal. We tried a lot of varieties and fell in love with Better Oats Oat Revolution, which are just the tastiest instant oatmeal varieties we've tried. Their Facebook page has been having regular BOGO and buy-two-get-one coupons. You'll have to "Like" it first. The BOGO coupons bring our cost per serving to 14¢.

Ronzoni: Mmm, pasta! Ronzoni has the nicest whole wheat pasta I've tried as well as a couple of other healthy varieties. Their website has had coupons monthly for three different Ronzoni varieties. You have to sign up but you can skip the newsletter. With sales I've been getting this high-quality pasta for $1.50 a box, which here is an awesome price for premium pasta.

Campbell's: They do more than just soup! Hit their website for coupons on V-8, Pepperidge Farm, Prego, and Pace. Oh, soup too!

Proctor and Gamble: If you use Proctor and Gamble products you absolutely must hit their website. You can print coupons or pre-load them onto your supermarket club cards. Note that the P&G Saver and the P&G Sampler are separate programs, check them both out. Their brands include Crest, Nice & Easy, Tide, Downy, Puffs, Cover Girl, Swifter, Always, Tampax... just lots of quality brands.

Grocery Store Sites: Your favorite grocery stores may now allow you to pre-load coupons onto your membership card. I use Fred Meyer and Safeway.

MyPoints: I've been a MyPoints member since it was Bonus Mail (yes, if you click that link and sign up I get points). They now work with Coupons.com and Smartsource.com for printable coupons, and using these coupons earns you more points. You could go directly to those two coupon sites, too; they tend to have different offers.

Shortcuts.com: This site lets you print paper coupons and also load them on your store club cards.

Chicken and Rice: Joy of Cooking Chicken and Rice Casserole

2011-03-04T08:01:00.001-09:00

I've found another chicken and rice recipe. I have to confess, I haven't made this one as the calories are high for hubby's diet, but it's been on my desk for two weeks now and I wanted to share it. This one is from my Joy of Cooking calendar. It uses leftover chicken, cooked rice, mushrooms and nuts, which I'd never think to do.

Joy of Cooking Chicken and Rice Casserole

6 tablespoons butter
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced (3 cups)
1/2 cup flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups milk or half-and-half
4 cups chopped cooked chicken
3 cups cooked rice
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, almonds or pecans
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon melted butter

Preheat oven to 400°. Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking dish.

Melt 6Tbs butter in a large saucepan. Stir in mushrooms and cook until softened (about 5 minutes). Stir in flour until well blended. Slowly add chicken broth and milk (or half-and-half). Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook until the sauce is thickened and smooth (about 5 minutes). Mix in the chicken, rice, and nuts.

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish. Mix together the bread crumbs, Parmesan, and 1 Tbsp melted butter and sprinkle on top.

Bake until the sauce is bubbling and the topping is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.

I'm hoping to make this over the weekend, as we're going snowshoeing and will burn some serious calories to make up for all that yummy sauce and rice! I'm considering topping it with some French's Cheddar French Fried Onions I have in the pantry (I love those things!).

Snowshoeing at Creamer's Field

Product Review: Carbon Waffles

2011-02-26T09:52:00.001-09:00

So after I blogged waffles last week I started getting mysterious Facebook messages from my Uncle Gil about packages and brown trucks. On Thursday it arrived: one canister of Carbon's Golden Malted Waffle & Pancake Flour. Apparently if you're from our neck of Michigan and Indiana it's darn near part of your heritage. Uncle Gil says "The elder Carbon came up with this a long time ago, it is mainly a commercial product used in food service. A long and interesting story. Started in Buchanan and now headquartered in South Bend. It is a malted waffle flour and yes it is YUM!" Their website is over here, if you're interested.

I've never seen this stuff locally, but the price is quite reasonable over on Amazon (yay SuperSaver shipping). Uncle Gil ordered it drect from the company. So we gave it a try. Despite my admonishment to always separate your eggs and fold the stiffly beaten egg whites into the batter last, I didn't this time. Nor did I add my touch of vanilla. For a proper product review we followed their recipe exactly.

Note: This review was unsolicited and uncompensated. Apparently you have to say that now, even if you're just being spontaneous.

Original Golden Malted Waffles
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cups water
2 cups Golden Malted Flour
4 tbsp. butter, melted

Beat eggs and water together, then add flour and mix well. Stir in melted butter and make sure to mix well again. Ladle onto hot waffle iron and remove when golden brown. Makes 5-6 waffles.

This made eight four-inch waffles (two batches in my waffle maker) that rose up high and light. They were a beautiful golden color. The malt and cornmeal are subtle, and give the waffles a rich flavor. Not to mention it's much easier than whipping egg whites pre-coffee! Thoroughly enjoyable, and I'll be sure to buy this again when we finish the canister Uncle Gil sent me!

Waffles

2011-02-20T08:28:00.000-09:00

A couple of hams having waffles.

Junior and I were shopping yesterday and he started clamoring for frozen waffles. Frozen waffles are so yucky! Okay, they've improved vastly since I was a kid, but I'd rather make them. Waffle batter is a little more complex than pancake batter, and therefore a little more challenging when I'm pre-coffee. You see, there's a reason that just using pancake batter makes a thin, limp, lifeless waffle. Two reasons, actually.

The first is richness: waffles have several eggs and some butter or oil which make the lovely crisp outside. The richer the batter, the crisper the waffle. The second is air: you need a light, fluffy batter to make a light fluffy waffle. And the trick to that is stiffly beaten egg whites. Every good waffle recipe I've tried held back the egg whites and had you beat them to stiff peaks and fold them in just before cooking.

Here are two great waffle recipes for your morning pleasure.

Joy of Cooking Waffles
1 3/4 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
3 egg yolks
2 to 7 tablespoons melted butter or oil
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 egg whites

I just use all-purpose flour, but I sift or whisk it before measuring. Combine all dry ingredients and re-sift or whisk. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add the butter (I used 3 tablespoons; the more oil, the more crisp the waffle), milk, and vanilla.Combine with a few swift strokes. The batter will be slightly lumpy, like muffin batter. If you want to add anything like nuts or chocolate chips to the batter, now's the time. 1/2 cup is about right for most additions.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, but not dry. Fold them into the batter until barely blended.

Cook according to your waffle maker's instructions. On mine that's about three minutes, or until steam stops coming out. Makes 12 4" square waffles.

Oh, the vanilla is my own addition, and not part of the original recipe. I just like it in my waffles and pancakes. If you're holding your waffles instead of eating them right out of the waffle maker and want to keep them crisp, warm your oven to 200°F and put the waffles on wire racks instead of a tray or plate.

Mr. Breakfast's Whole Wheat Waffles
1 and 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup milk
2 large eggs
4 Tablespoons melted shortening
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Beat egg yolks well; add milk and shortening. Combine salt, sugar, and flour. Add to first mixture. Beat until smooth. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Sift baking powder lightly over the mixture and fold in quickly. Bake in hot waffle iron. Makes 6 waffles.

If you have leftovers, make frozen waffles that aren't yucky! My waffle maker's squares just fit in a sandwich baggie. The trick to re-heating them in a toaster is to let them thaw first, which takes about 3 minutes sitting out or 30 seconds in the microwave. Then pop in the toaster and they get their crispness back.

Valentine's Hearts

2011-02-17T14:23:00.003-09:00

Just a quick blog about the Valentine's Day snacks I made for the kids' classes this week! I've blogged the pan and recipe before, but it was so much fun I thought I'd share again.

I made my chocolate zucchini bread recipe, a double batch. Then I used my Wilton 12-Cavity Petite Heart Pan. Now, when I was planning this I thought it was a double pan like my mini muffin pan, and it's not. Each of those hearts holds a teaspoon of batter. So even at 8 minutes to bake it took a really long time to bake them all. I'll be watching for another pan at the clearance sales.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups zucchini (grated)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups flour
1 cup nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift all dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, combine sugars, oil and eggs. Add dry ingredients, zucchini and nuts until all are moistened. Grease and flour bread pans. Bake in standard cupcakes tins about 18 minutes, mini bread pans for about 35 minutes. For large bread pans, bake about an hour. For itty bitty mini hearts, 8 minutes. Use a cake tester to test for doneness.

A Double batch made 144 mini hearts - 12 batches at 8 minutes each! However, the results were worth it. We dusted them with powdered sugar and they were a big hit!

Chicken and Rice: Chicken Mozzarella

2011-02-13T18:55:00.002-09:00

Finally we get to Nizdaar's chicken idea, which I keep not getting to. This is the same oven-fried chicken recipe we keep playing with, with an Italian twist that's really easy.

Chicken Mozzarella

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 eggs
Spaghetti or other Italian-style sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350°.

Pat the chicken dry. Pound the chicken breasts thin: place them one at a time between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper and use a meat mallet or rolling pin until they're the desired thickness. I trimmed them to 4 ounces each and breaded the smaller bits for the kids. Put the breadcrumbs on a flat plate. Scramble the eggs in a separate flat bowl. Bread the chicken by first pressing it in the crumbs (both sides), then the egg, then the crumbs again. Repeat until it's all breaded, adding more crumbs or egg if needed.

Put the chicken on a cookie sheet and bake uncovered at 350° for about 40 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the oven. Spoon a little spaghetti sauce on each piece and top with shredded cheese. Return to the oven until the cheese is melted.

Serve with rice.

Okay, I served ours with pasta. I had a coupon deal for Ronzoni Healthy Harvest pasta, which is one of the nicest whole wheat pastas I've tried, and I really wanted a break from rice.

Fat Free Spinach Dip

2011-02-07T18:12:00.002-09:00

So if you hadn't noticed we've been dieting. My weight loss has been stalled at 20 pounds lost (but I quit smoking and haven't gained a bunch, so I'm happy with that) and hubby's lost 65 pounds as I write this.
Dieting is tricky on a budget. Carbs are cheap and fresh produce isn't. But we're managing.

Vegetables are the saving grace of our diet. When you've cut your calories you can get a lot of mileage out of a huge salad (salad greens average 7 calories per cup!). For Superbowl I was looking for a way to make plain veggies more interesting, instead of skipping the dip (light Ranch dressing is 80 calories per 2 tablespoons!).

I've never made spinach dip but I love to eat it! Like most standards it has a lot of variations, but I went with this for a totally doable diet veggie dip. Note: This recipe makes a huge amount of dip, about 5 cups. You might want to cut it in half. This came out at 59 calories per 1/4 cup, which is a nice healthy serving.

Fat Free Spinach Dip
The Ingredients

2 10 ounce boxes frozen spinach
2 cups fat free mayonnaise
2 cups fat free sour cream
1 packet Lipton onion soup mix
1 packet Knorr vegetable mix
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

The trick to good spinach dip (I saw this on some cooking show) is to use frozen spinach, thaw it, and literally wring it out. You want it as dry as possible.

Combine the wrung-out spinach and all other ingredients. Mix well. Chill over night. Serve with veggies, crackers, whatever you like to dip.

You can adjust your favorite dip recipe to do the same thing. Use fat-free cream cheese or neufchatel cheese. Use steamed artichoke hearts instead of ones packed in oil. Use fresh onions and peppers instead of a mix to reduce the sodium. Have fun with it and happy snacking!

Mmmmm, spinach dip!

Chicken and Rice: Cheesy Oven-Fried Chicken

2011-02-06T08:29:00.005-09:00

I keep thinking about the oven-fried chicken idea Nizdaar at ZAM gave me: pound the chicken thin, bread it, bake it, and just before it finishes add some sauce and cheese. Yum! My brain insists on making it an Italian-style thing, and every time I go to make it I haven't the right stuff. So Friday I punted and came up with:

Cheesy Oven-Fried Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 eggs
chicken gravy (one packet mix prepared per instructions)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350°.

Pat the chicken dry. Pound the chicken breasts thin: place them one at a time between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper and use a meat mallet or rolling pin until they're the desired thickness. I trimmed them to 4 ounces each and breaded the smaller bits for the kids. Put the breadcrumbs on a flat plate. Scramble the eggs in a separate flat bowl. Bread the chicken by first pressing it in the crumbs (both sides), then the egg, then the crumbs again. Repeat until it's all breaded, adding more crumbs or egg if needed.

Put the chicken on a cookie sheet and bake uncovered at 350° for about 40 minutes. In the meantime, make the gravy and shred the cheese.

Remove the chicken from the oven. Spoon a little gravy on each piece and top with shredded cheese. Return to the oven until the cheese is melted.

Serve with rice.

Chicken and Rice: Chicken a'la King

2011-01-31T21:09:00.000-09:00

Chicken a'la King is just about classic American comfort food. Chicken in a rich creamy sauce, often with vegetables, served over toast, biscuits, noodles, or rice. There is a lot of variations to the recipes, but the basic format is cooked chopped chicken in white sauce.

White sauce is easy. It's melted butter with flour stirred in to make a paste, then add milk and whisk the hell out of it until it's smooth and bring it to a boil until it's the desired thickness. Along the way you season it for whatever you're making. If you figure out white sauce you can use it almost anywhere you'd use a cream soup for sauce.

Here's my Chicken a'la King recipe. I love it over biscuits or toast, but since our theme is Chicken and Rice we'll go with that. I also recommend you Google the recipe for variations, and don't be afraid to play with it!

Chicken a'la King

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 8 oz total)
1/4 c chopped onion
1/4 c chopped celery
2 fresh mushrooms, chopped
1/4 c butter
1/4 c flour
2 c milk
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp chicken bouillon granules
1 c frozen peas and carrots, thawed and drained

Cook the chicken breasts. I like to just toss it in my frying pan, brown it on both sides, put a lid on it and let it cook until done. Take the chicken breasts out and let them cool.

Put the butter in the same pan at medium-high heat stirring all that good chicken flavor into it while it melts. Add the onion, celery and mushroom and sautee them until they are soft.

Remove the pan from the heat and rapidly stir in the flour with a whisk. Return to the heat and add the milk, chicken bouillon and seasonings. Stir extremely well, getting all the flour-and-butter paste (called roux) mixed into the milk, then whisk it until it comes to a boil. Once it boils whisk the heck out of it, stirring very well, until it's the desired thickness.

Turn the heat down as soon as it's thick. Add the peas and carrots. Cut the chicken breasts into small pieces and add them to the pan. Stir well.

If it's too thick, add some milk; too thin, bring it back up to a boil briefly. Be really careful not to burn it. Remove from heat. Serve over toast, egg noodles, biscuits or rice.

I've cooked the chicken special for my recipe, but this is an ideal use for leftovers. I would go for about two cups of chopped cooked chicken and increase the bouillon by another teaspoon for flavor. You could have almost any "creamed meat" with the same basic formula. And if you really want a fast version, use cream of chicken soup instead of making white sauce!


Junior's not too sure of any meat in sauce, but it was his turn to be in the blog.

Chicken and Rice: Chicken Stir Fry

2011-01-17T20:36:00.000-09:00

What's stir fry? It's actually a cooking technique. Well, two cooking techniques. You're cooking meat and vegetables very fast at very high heat so the food retains its nutrients and textures. You can make a huge variety of dishes by changing the sauces or the food combinations. In my house it's "something we can make cheap and eat with chop sticks". Crystal and her fans from Adventures in Bento Making may chuckle at me when they see this, because I cheat so much on stir fry! I did learn to do proper stir fry in cooking classes a couple decades ago, really I did!

I find stir fry great for using up any kind of leftover meat. If you are using raw meat cook it first, stir frying it and removing it from the pan before you cook your vegetables.

If I'm using frozen vegetables I always thaw the vegetables first, no matter what the package says. I find it takes the dense vegetables much longer to cook than the others and what you end up with is mushy, soggy vegetables. So in the winter when it's cheaper to buy a frozen stir-fry mix I always let them thaw first. If you're using raw veggies start with the most dense ones and end with the delicate ones (like mushrooms).

I also use bottled sauce. My two favorites are Kikkoman Stir Fry Sauce and La Choy Orange Ginger.

Chicken Stir Fry
2 tbsp oil
2 cups cooked chicken, cut bite-sized
2 14-oz or 1 28-oz bags of Bird's Eye Ultimate Stir Fry Vegetables, thawed
1/4 - 1/2 cup Stir Fry sauce

In a hot skillet or wok, heat the oil. Stir fry the vegetables until almost hot. Add chicken. Add sauce to taste. Stir fry two minutes to coat everything in sauce and remove from heat. Serve over rice.

Kiddo is still working on the chop sticks.

Chicken and Rice: Breaded Chicken with Tomatoes

2011-01-13T17:22:00.003-09:00

Kiddo loving chicken & rice.

As I set off on my mission to not be bored to tears by a diet of chicken and rice, I of course asked my co-workers for ideas. Nizdaar, who used to work in the meat industry and has a wealth of good cooking ideas, immediately suggested pounding it flat, breading it and baking it. Pikko, who has not one but two food-related blogs, suggested I use her Tonkatsu recipe on the chicken.

The interesting bit is not an hour before I found this recipe over on Betty Crocker's site, which also calls for pounding and breading the chicken. So one option for chicken (and pork!) is to pound it thin, bread it, and either bake or fry it.

Breaded Chicken with Tomatoes

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1 lb)
1 cup Progresso® panko crispy bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
3 large tomatoes, chopped (3 cups)
2 medium green onions, chopped (2 tablespoons)
1tsp garlic powder

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Between pieces of plastic wrap or waxed paper, place each chicken breast smooth side down; gently pound with flat side of meat mallet or rolling pin until about 1/4 inch thick.

In shallow medium bowl or pie plate, mix bread crumbs, cheese, salt and pepper. Coat chicken with crumb mixture, pressing to coat well on both sides.

You want a deep skillet for frying.
In 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat. Cook chicken in oil 6 to 10 minutes, turning once, until golden brown on outside and no longer pink in center. Remove chicken from skillet; cover to keep warm.

To skillet, add remaining 1 tablespoon oil, 2 cups of the tomatoes, the onions and garlic; cook and stir 2 minutes. Stir in vinegar; cook 30 seconds longer. Remove from heat; stir in remaining 1 cup tomatoes and the oregano. Serve tomatoes over chicken, with rice on the side.

For the kids I cut one flattened chicken breast into "nuggets" before breading and frying, which went over well with Kiddo, but not so hot with Junior who claims to hate chicken and any meat that is not hot dogs or bologna. I can see a lot of possibilities for this kind of breaded chicken, but I'm saving them for future Chicken and Rice blogs!

Chicken and Rice: One Dish Chicken and Rice Bake

2011-01-10T21:55:00.000-09:00

Lately, due to specials and power shopping, we've been eating a lot of chicken and rice. A lot. Really, quite a bit. Needless, I am about sick of chicken and rice.

But you eat what you have, and be thankful you have it. I naturally turned to the internet for chicken and rice ideas. I thought I'd do a series of blogs on the chicken and rice recipes that made it into my Big Green Ugly Binder.

Today's recipe is a classic: Chicken and Rice (surprise!). This variety is made with cream of mushroom soup, and I've seen baked and stovetop versions using both boneless and bone-in chicken of a variety of cuts. I like the baked variety and I got the original from the Campbell's Kitchen.

One Dish Chicken and Rice Bake

1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 1/3 cup water
3/4 cup uncooked regular long-grain white rice
salt and pepper to taste
4 boneless chicken breast halves
2 qt (9 x 13) baking dish

Stir the soup, water and rice, in a 2-quart shallow (that's the 9 x 13 one) baking dish. Top with the chicken. Season with pepper and black pepper. Cover the baking dish.

Bake at 375°F. for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the rice is tender. Serves 4.

You can also stir vegetables into the rice mixture, but you might want to reduce the water by 1/3 cup if you do. I wish I had a better picture to share, but it didn't stay on anyone's plate long enough!

Ridiculously Easy Donuts

2010-12-26T19:08:00.003-09:00

I was looking for an easy but special Christmas morning breakfast, as our morning routine goes completely out the window when there's a tree full of presents involved. I was actually having a hankering for beignets (diet be damned), but had that time consuming project derailed when Dyadem, one of the EQ2 ZAM regulars, mentioned donuts in IRC. There are an awful lot of gamers at ZAM who are also excellent cooks!

Anyway, Dyadem linked a picture of beautiful donuts he had just made, then said there was no recipe involved. His secret? Pre-fab biscuits. I was skeptical. I figured if you fried a biscuit you'd get something that tasted like fried biscuit, right? Wrong. You end up with something close enough to a donut as to make no difference at all. The flaky layers apparently don't flake when you fry them. So here's how I did it.

Ridiculously Easy Donuts

1 can refrigerated biscuit dough (I like the large ones)
at least one quart of oil for frying
Toppings (see below)

Heat the oil for frying. I use a kitchen kettle, but you could do these in a frying pan if you had at least an inch of oil. Joy of Cooking says the easy way to remember the proper temperature for frying oil is to think of the days of the year: 365° is right on the money.

While the oil heats open the can of biscuits and separate them. Dyadem said he used an empty salt shaker to cut the holes, and that worked well for me too. Fry the biscuits a couple minutes on each side until they have a lovely golden color. Remove from the oil (a slotted spoon works great) and let drain on paper towels. Don't forget to fry the holes!

Toppings

For sugar donuts, top them with powdered or granulated sugar while they're hot.
For chocolate donuts, Melt 1/4 c chocolate chips in the microwave by heating on high 30 seconds at a time, stirring each time, until they are melted.
For glazed, take 1 cup powdered sugar and add up to 4 tsp milk one tsp at a time until it's the right consistency.
For quick and dirty maple icing, substitute maple flavoring or syrup for some of the milk in the glaze.
Sprinkles stick best to glazed donuts.

Tis the Season.. for Leftovers!

2010-12-22T22:18:00.000-09:00

We eat a lot of casserole in this house. It's an inexpensive way to get maximum value from your food dollar. And as a bonus, the kids love anything with noodles and cheese melted on top. But at work the other day the conversation in the #EQ2 channel turned to pot pie, and I decided to shake up those casserole fixings.

Leftover Pot Pie isn't terribly different from Leftover Casserole, except you need a larger quantity of leftovers to fill the pie. And of course, no noodles (although I suppose you could do noodle pie if you were on a carbohydrate binge). Here's the pot pie I made the other night. Mix and match whatever you have with a cream soup and leftover gravy. This was a deep-dish pie and I probably used five or six cups of filling.

Leftover Casserole

The filled pie, ready to bake
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
1 cup frozen carrots
10 tater tots, cooked and cut in thirds
2 cups cooked turkey, cut bite-sized
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1/2 cup chicken gravy
2 Pilsbury Pie Crusts

Follow the instructions on the pie crusts - they need to come to room temperature before you unroll them. Pre-heat oven to 425°F.

In a large bowl, stir together all ingredients except pie crusts. Season to taste. Add water if necessary; the consistency should be gravy-like unless you want it sloppier. Unroll one pie crust into a 9" deep-dish pie pan. Spoon filling evenly into the pie pan. Unroll the second pie crust and place it over the filled pie. Cut, crimp, or pinch the crusts together to seal. Cut four slits in the top crust to vent.

I recommend you bake the pot pie on a baking sheet in case of spills. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake 20 more minutes.

Let cool 5 minutes before serving. Makes 8 healthy slices.

The Gingerbread House

2010-12-19T17:28:00.001-09:00

Every year since Kiddo was small we've done a gingerbread house. They've gotten much better since I took a cake decorating class and learned to use a piping bag correctly! They also get better as the boys get older.

I suppose I could do lots of research into the myriad forms of gingerbread and the correct one for construction, but the fact is every year when the Christmas stuff goes on sale (around Halloween, these days) I pick up a kit for around $8. Here's the results this year!

All the candy came with the kit except for the chips. I picked up chocolate, cinnamon, and buttercotch chips for cookies, and Junior put them in the swirls on the roof. Kiddo was the artistic director on the shutters and gumdrop "shrubberies", and personally added the rooftop gumdrops.

Impulse Buys will be the Death of My Budget

2010-12-05T17:27:00.000-09:00

I'm not the best shopper. I'm great at finding bargains, but it seems that every other day I've run out of something that we have to have and I make another trip to the store. I am apparently incapable of running into the store for just one thing. I have to check the discount bins and specials fliers which sends me all over the store, and I end up buying $30-$40 worth of stuff I probably didn't need. Do that several times a week and you're impulsing yourself into the poor house.

So I started meal planning. Breakfasts and lunches are pretty easy as we're boring about it, but dinners require some variety. It's not hard to do, but you do have to take the time to think it all out in advance.

First take a look through what you have and see what you've got to work with. Start with the entree or meat, and plan meals around that. Keep in mind anything going on during the week; for example, Hubby has school Tuesdays and Thursdays so I tend to make a kid dinner around macaroni and cheese (with a big salad for me) and I don't need to plan a full "grown up" dinner. Allow at least one meal designed to use up leftovers.

Next, make a grocery list of everything you need to make the meals you've planned. Don't forget to inventory staples like bread and peanut butter (Kiddo's favorite school lunch), cereal (Junior's favorite breakfast), and coffee (do not run me out of coffee!). Check shampoo, toilet paper, laundry soap, all that stuff that might make you dash to the store.

Get online and check the store specials. Many stores allow you to load coupons onto your club cards. Safeway is currently my favorite for this, as they have all manufacturer and store coupons available for loading on their website. Check for specials that stack with coupons. Try to do all your shopping at one store, as driving to several stores costs gas.

Got it all together? Great! Now go have a snack, because you're more likely to impulse buy at the grocery store if you're hungry. Call your husband/roommate/pets/kids and see if there's any last-minute additions to your list.

Now head to the store, and stick to your list. Religiously. Or else. Since you've done all your research you shouldn't need to go cruising for bargains. Keep your head down and your eyes on your list!

The first couple times I did this I scared myself because I spent $70-$80, which seems awful when you're used to grocery trips costing around $35 each. But when I did the math I found I was spending $120-$150 a week making several small trips, which makes shopping this way a real savings. Since many places now have minimums for their bonus offers (like gas discounts or cash coupons), I'm also getting more savings in other areas.

Right now I feel like I'm spending half my Sunday on this exercise, but I do enjoy not having to think about what I'm going to make for dinner and I seem to have a little extra money at the end of the week. If I can make it a habit it should really add up!

Next I want to go through my pantry and get rid of all the miscellany that has been sitting there just taking up space. Betcha most of it was impulse buys.

Removing Stickers from Books

2010-12-02T12:54:00.001-09:00

My boys have too many books. I never thought I'd say that! I take a lot of books to our local used book store for used book credit, but they won't take book club books or Imagination Library books. Our school librarian said she could take the Imagination Library books for the preschoolers, yay!

The problem is that the books now come with the address label on the book instead of the wrapper. Not only does it have our names and address on it, but who wants a book with an address label on it? And blacking them out with a marker looks icky. Fortunately they are easy to remove. You'll need an iron (I suppose a blow drier would also work) and some Goo Gone. This works on any book with a shiny cover.

I set the iron on the lowest cotton setting and lay a tea towel over the book to prevent scorching. You are warming up the adhesive, so leave it on for about a minute.

Work up one corner of the sticker (my thumbnail worked fine, but be careful, 'cause it's hot!) and carefully peel back the label. If you're lucky you'll get it up in one piece. If not, re-apply the iron until the adhesive is warm again. You don't have to get it off perfectly, so if a bit of paper remains don't panic. There will be some adhesive left on the book.

Apply some Goo Gone (I'm told lighter fluid also works, but Goo Gone smells better) to a rag, then rub it all over the remaining adhesive and paper. Keep rubbing, and all the sticky comes off! Wipe off any remaining Goo Gone.

Tah-dah! Our books are ready for the preschool box at the school library!

Bigger is Not Necessarily Better

2010-11-30T11:57:00.004-09:00

Just a quick reminder that, when shopping for your household staples, bigger is not necessarily better. I took these pictures at Walmart this morning.


Eggs at Walmart on November 30, 2010

One the left we have one dozen eggs from Olympia Valley for $1.88. On the right we have 18 eggs from the same company for $6.22. Wait, what? The dozen egg pack works to 15.667 cents each, and is about the normal low price for our area (usually only found at Sam's Club or with a coupon deal). The 18 pack is 34.556 cents per egg, and I can get 5 dozen eggs at Sam's Club for less than that.

A closer examination of the shelf tags reveals that Walmart is unhelpful. The price per unit is in the orange box on the upper left of the tag. One is per 100 eggs, the other is per package.

The moral: Do the math before you buy. Work out the price per unit yourself if the units don't match on the tags for like items.

Happy Birthday Auntie!

2010-11-17T21:01:00.001-09:00

My sister has been gently reminding me that I'm long over due to blog. Since today was her birthday and I'm out of practice, I thought I'd blog the cake I made her!

She has a long history of working in coffee shops, from the first roastery she worked at in Chicago to management at Starbucks, to the lofty heights of the Second Story Cafe at Gulliver's Books here in Fairbanks. So I made her a Coffee Cup Cake.

I used my trusty Betty Crocker Bake 'n Fill, selecting the un-filled dome cake. Since coffee was the theme I was thinking a yellow cake for the "cup" (the outer, larger dome) and a dark cake for the "coffee" (the smaller, middle dome). Here's the easiest mocha cake you ever made: Take a dark chocolate cake mix and substitute strong coffee for the water. Really, you have to try that! I found a vanilla mix for the "cup" and added about a half a tablespoon of cinnamon to the mix. I'm sure I've mentioned before that, having made scratch cakes, I just can't make them as cheap as the box cakes, and the quality of box cakes these days is very, very good.

The layers put together, with the "cup" iced. You can see a crack in the mocha cake, I filled it with chocolate icing. I sliced off the top of the big dome to make it sit flat.

The "coffee" icing added, and the "cup" icing sides built up.

Gotta have a little foam on your mocha!

And a sprinkle of cinnamon! The handle is a frosted sugar cookie.

I couldn't have the rest of the sugar cookies sitting around tempting me, so we served them with the coffee!

My concern was would the cake pull apart, since I was using the large end as the top, and yeah, it did a little. We grabbed some toothpicks to hold it together until slicing. If I try that again I'll bring back-up icing for repairs.

The flavor combination of cakes was great, it tasted just like a cinnamon mocha!

Mission: Socks for All!

2010-08-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

I've been putting it off until the school sales were in full swing, but it was time. Everyone needed socks. Our Fred Meyer rewards came in and I knew they were having hot before-school sales, so I hit their website looking for deals. Fred Meyer has joined the growing list of companies who have given up and now allow you to print their newspaper coupons online. So here's what I started with:

After reading carefully to make sure they all stacked together, we headed out. Along the way I also grabbed a buy-two-get-one coupon on kids socks and underthings.

There were great deals on socks for everyone but women. Seriously, we need socks as much as the men and kids! So I didn't take advantage of a buy-two-get-one on adult socks, as the prices on women's socks were "normal" instead of cheap. Hubby got a 6-pack, Kiddo got a 6-pack, Junior got two 6-packs as he was down to about three pair of socks, and I got one three pack that at least had a 25% off coupon. Total retail price: $55. My total cost for all those socks? $27.35. The discounts really piled up (the receipt total savings is skewed because I also used a buy-one-get-one on vitamins). It was fun to watch a $75 balance go down to $49 with coupons!

The moral of the story is know when things that you're going to need are seasonal, 'cause that's when they're cheap. Another good deal right now is Old Navy, which has kids' jeans and other basics on a $10 sale.

Hurry! These deals all end soon, the 19th I think!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins

2010-08-13T09:35:00.001-08:00

"Gee," I thought, "We sure have an awful lot of peanut butter!" We usually do. Between WIC and TEFAP we're buried in peanut butter. In fact, that's why I make my own jams and jellies (that, and it's fun to make jam!). But we had a serious overstock. Meanwhile I've been making and freezing muffins for when it's my turn for snacks at Junior's preschool. So I thought "Why not peanut butter muffins?" Then I remembered that as a kid I'd make jelly muffins from Bisquick, and figured peanut butter and jelly muffins would be a great kid treat. (I'm setting aside extra banana muffins for kids with nut sensitivities).

The original recipe is from Jif. I doubled it and got 30 nice muffins! Doubling your recipe will use exactly one 16 oz jar of peanut butter, which is convenient. Peanut butter is a pain to measure.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup milk
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup jam or jelly

Heat oven to 375ºF. Spray muffin pan with no-stick cooking spray. Stir together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl.

In a large bowl combine milk, eggs, cup sugar, peanut butter and oil. Blend on low speed of electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Add dry ingredients and combine until just moistened. Do not over beat.

Fill prepared muffin cups evenly with half of the batter. Place 2 level teaspoons jam or preserves in the center of each muffin. Evenly divide remaining batter between muffin cups. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar. Bake 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool in pan 5 minutes.

The catch to these is the jelly is going to get VERY hot and goosh out while cooking. Just after you take them out of the oven run a sharp knife around the muffins where jelly has escaped to keep the muffin from gluing to the pan. The pan will be a pain to clean, so get it in hot soapy water immediately!

Be sure to let them cool well before giving them to kids. That jelly is hot!

New to Me!

2010-06-26T16:24:00.001-08:00

Just a quick blog to show off some more repurposing. I've never been into refurbishing things, but I found a cute plant stand that really just needed paint and a little repair. I also ran into a little table that was pretty rusty, but will survive a couple summers on the deck with a coat of paint. Along the way I learned that Krylon paint is inexpensive and the new sprayer they're all hot about right now really works. I also learned a couple things about overspray and getting too close with the can, but all in all I've very pleased with my first attempt at a little refurbishing.

This was after the first coat of paint.

The table just got the black paint (it's covered with stuff now, and I'm really looking for something better). But the plant stand got some color.

The plant stand without and with the Marigolds that Just Won't Bloom

Cost of the whole project: $7.98 for paint and some time. So I'll be a little braver, I think, when it comes to fixing stuff up that can be repurposed!

Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins

2010-06-23T10:14:00.001-08:00

I was cleaning out my pantry yesterday. I have to do it now and then, and look at the weath of canned goods getting dusty and the odd baking ingredients I don't use often. What I discovered is that I once again, thanks to TEFAP, have a wealth of applesauce and oatmeal. They also gave us a gallon of frozen blueberries. It seemed like muffin time to me!

I looked at several recipes and in the end combined one from Recipezaar and one from Joy the Baker. These are whole grain, low fat, and quite tasty. Recipezaar's includes a tasty crumble topping that I didn't use, because these will be frozen for preschool snacks this fall. Joy's incorporated the blueberries. I also doubled the recipe, as those little kids can eat a lot of muffins!

Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins

1 1/2 cups oats (quick or old-fashioned)
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 egg white

Heat oven to 400. Line 12 medium muffin tins with papercups.

Combine oats, flour, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda. Add applesauce, milk, brown sugar, oil and egg white. Mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Add blueberries and mix only until distributed. Fill muffin cups almost full.

Bake 20-22 minutes until deep golden brown.

Too much STUFF

2010-06-20T15:07:00.001-08:00

I'm a fan of Clean House. This show is like Hoarders Lite: they come into a home overwhelmed with clutter, help the household let go of stuff and have a yard sale. The proceeds go to redecorate and organize their now clutter-free home. The Clean House team also tries to help the household with any issues that are causing them to cling to possessions.

This probably explains the anti-clutter run I've been on the last little while. That might seem counter to my Transfer Site haunting, and is why I have the one-week rule about bringing home reusables - I have one week to find a place or purpose for whatever it is, or it goes back.

It seems to me when you're broke you tend to hang on to everything. Waste not not! You might need it! And you might not be able to afford it when you do! Well, if you're not using it, you're wasting it. Here's some rules for getting rid of stuff. You'll probably have exceptions to these rules (I know I do).

When did you use it last? Have you used it in the last year? What's it for - do you even DO that any more? If you can't even recall the last time you used it, it can go.
When was that last in style, 1992? When did you wear it last? Does it even fit any more? Is it appropriate for your life now? If it's been hanging in the back of the closet forever, it can go.
Does it have a purpose? Does it have a place? If it's something you never actually use and you just keep moving from place to place because it's in the way, it can go.
How many do you have? Do you need that many? Can you use more than one at a time? Pick one, maybe two - the rest can go.
Is it sentimental? Do you need a thing to validate a memory? There's nothing wrong with keepsakes, but if you're buried in them remember: stuff isn't memories. Memories are in your heart, and you'll have them whether there is stuff or not.
Is it broken? How long has it been broken? When can you get it fixed? Do you know how? How much will it cost? If it's been sitting there broken a long time chances are it's not getting fixed any time soon.

It all sounds really good, but in practice it's very hard. I give myself and my family a little lattitude because we have a crawl space for storage. We're allowed to box stuff up, label and date it, and revisit it later. But this spring I went down there and looked at my 30-ish boxes of books, boxes of stuff from my divorce in the late 90's, and boxes of handmedowns and decided it was time.

It's amazing what was no longer important to me. I made a Precious Things container for items I have no where to display or can't actually use right now like Great-great-great-great Grandma's tea cup and the kangaroo fur platypus toy Dad brought me from TDY in Australia when he was in Viet Nam. Hubby's Precious Things box includes memorabilia from his father and uncle.

The stuffed animal box I've drug around since I was 16? Two toys remain. The box of stuff from my study back when I got divorced? Three things stayed, including my mother's metronome. The books? I've been through about 20 cases, and of those 20 boxes four boxes remain (and they'll get another going through).
The surround sound system we haven't turned on in five years because the speakers are too large (and the sound is too big) for our tiny place? Gone. My espresso machine that's been in storage because my kitchen is too small? Okay, I kept the espresso machine. One day I hope to have a kitchen it will fit in.

So what do you do with all your stuff? Half the battle for me is I cannot stand to throw away perfectly good stuff because it's not garbage, it still has plenty of use in it. Fortunately, you don't have to just toss it.

Sell it! Have a yard sale. With four households contributing we made $300 in one day at a yard sale (alas, our second day was rained out). Try E-Bay or Craig's List. Check around for consignment shops, or even pawn shops.
Donate it! There are lots of charity organizations that will take your donations. Power-of-giving.com and donationtown.org have lists of places which will happily find a place or purpose for your discards. Look for a Really Really Free Market. Here you can also leave it at the Transfer Site reuse pads. Our yard sale remainders went to the local woman's shelter, which also passes donations to two other organizations.
Spread it around! This is especially good with memorabilia or heirlooms. I had a black peignoir that belonged to my Nana that had been in storage forever. I called everyone in the family that might be interested in it in the family before I put it in the yard sale. Most of the family has furniture my grandfather made, and you bet the family is always called before someone gets rid of a piece. You may not need or have room for it, but your siblings might love to have it.
When in doubt, trash it. Seriously, 286 parts? Garbage. Rusty fishing poles? Garbage. That VCR that broke that you always meant to fix? Garbage.

So, how much clutter did we eliminate? Well, we figure we sold half our stuff at the yard sale and the remainders filled up two Aveos to the brim (you can pack a LOT into a Chevy Aveo!). In my case much of this was from storage and didn't make a big impact on our living space. But I am already eying the living room and thinking toward a sale next summer.

The Transfer Site

2010-06-13T23:08:00.009-08:00

I've mentioned our Transfer Sites from time to time and I guess it's time to blog 'em, because when I talk about them I hear "Gee, I wish we had something like that around here!" At first glance it's socialized dumpster diving or trash day corner cruising. In concept it's closer to a completely unorganized Really Free Market that goes on 24/7/365.

To understand the Transfer Sites you need to know that there are two governmental units here, and where you live determines how your trash is handled. There's the City of Fairbanks, then there's the Fairbanks North Star Borough (generally speaking you can think of our Boroughs as a County). The City has trash pickup, but outside of city limits you have to take your trash to the Borough landfill or contract for trash pickup. To facilitate good trash habits the Borough has Solid Waste Transfer Sites scattered around the area. They have tons of Dumpsters and places to safely leave chemicals, batteries, and other hazardous materials. Our property taxes pay to keep these sites tidy and transfer the waste to the landfill.

Five of these sites also feature Reuse Pads. These are covered concrete pads where folks can drop off stuff they don't want but that still has some use in it. As I understand it part of the idea was to keep people out of the Dumpsters (it doesn't help that much), but the Reuse Pads have become the place to do baseline free repurposeing. And Fairbanksians love it. These days there's often a crowd, looking for reusables and dropping off stuff they no longer need.

This time of year (it's yard sale season!) I am checking out the two Transfer Sites closest to us daily, maybe a couple times a day on the weekends when people are cleaning. I'm always on the lookout for clothes for the boys. Now, somewhere someone just said, "You dress your kids out of the trash?!?" Nope. These are yard-sale remainders or clothes people have chosen to leave free for the taking. I've found clothes new with tags. I pick up fleece blankets to repurpose into hats and gaiters, which I take to the school nurses for when school kids forget theirs. I pick up books and take them to our local used book store, where I either get used book credit or they are donated to the Literacy Council. I've found furnishings, dishes, lamps, and I bring them home and use them, as the person who dropped them off wanted.

And sometimes you just get lucky. Here's some of the neat stuff we've found. With pictures!

Here's the find that finally prompted me to write this blog: A marble chess set. Hubby has wanted a marble chess set since he was a kid! One piece had been repaired and it needed cleaning, but much to my surprise all the pieces were there. The price tag on the back says $85; they're about $70 on Amazon.

This is a loose leaf tea steeper. I looked around the 'net and couldn't find anything quite like it. It was quite elegant and I couldn't believe the box of kitchen stuff I was digging though had all the pieces. I don't drink a lot of tea (especially loose leaf), so my sister took this one. It was just too cool to let end up in the landfill. Behind the tea strainer is a set of matching black enamel canisters I found. I've always wanted a set but I'm just too cheap to spend $25-$30 on them. I did some mucking and re-arranging to make room for them on my counters, and I just love them there.

We get lots of toys here. I try and avoid toys with lots of parts, both because they get lost and they're awful to step on, but this Hot Wheels set is self-contained. The kids loved it, to the point of almost mostly sharing and taking turns! Of course germs are a concern; this is technically the trash and you don't know where it's been. My rule on bringing home reusables: if it can't go in the washing machine or dishwasher, or survive a good hit of bleach solution it can't come home.

I just love this cool stacking planter. I think it really needs strawberries, but Fred Meyer had flower 4-packs for $1.99. I had dirt left from my seed-starting supply (from the garden last fall) and got more from a flowerbox someone had abandoned here at our condos. Looks like it can be hung too. These go for around $35. My total cost, with dirt and flowers: $7.96.

Can't forget the clothes! Kiddo loves to wear a tie to school, and begs me to do so. The tie and shirt (and maybe even the jeans) are all repurposed. This was on the day of his last school concert.

I've just discovered that I have way more pictures here than you'll probably put up with. The long and the short of it is that "shopping" at the Transfer Site not only saves us money on clothes and sometimes furnishings, but lets us have some stuff we just can't afford right now and make our house a home. It's a means of being sure the stuff you don't want any more has a chance of being used by someone without putting dollars in a corporation's pocket. Every time I have clothes Junior has outgrown I remember the seven cases (yes, seven diaper cases of size 4 clothes!) I had in the crawlspace when he needed them and where I got most of them. We actually had way too much, I sorted out what I wanted and took the rest back.

That's the other thing about shopping the Transfer Sites... the return policy is great!

Leftovers

2010-06-10T12:07:00.003-08:00

When you're on a budget and really pinching pennies you don't throw any food out. Of course, then your fridge fills up with lots of little containers with not enough of one thing to do anything with. What to do? Here's a couple of things that I do to get another meal or two out of leftovers. The basic idea is to take a little bit of something and make it something new while using it up.

Leftover Casserole: This is really easy. Just take your basic casserole formula and throw in all your leftovers. Rice, macaroni and cheese, veggies, all that stuff. Cut any leftover meats up bite-sized and add those (you really need only a cup or so of chopped cooked meat). You can slice up hot dogs, crumble burgers, strip the meat of chicken wings. Cook enough noodles to fill up a casserole dish with all the leftovers, and stir in a can of cream-of-something soup and enough milk or water to get the consistency you like. If it the combination doesn't seem tasty, try adding cheese (I'll layer American Cheese slices into the casserole, the kids will eat anything with cheese on it). Bake at 350F until hot through, probably about a half an hour.

Bits and Gravy: I keep a large container of Tone's Brown Gravy mix around just for this and dishes like it. Chop up leftover steak, roast, or even burger into bite sized-pieces. Meanwhile, make two cups of brown gravy and enough rice for healthy portions. Toss the meat in the gravy as it thickens. Add mushrooms for fancy. Serve it over the rice, with veggies on the side. Yum!

Bento: Pikko and her fans from AIBento will no doubt chuckle at me, but I make leftovers into bento too. Okay, it's really just Americanized Asian food in a Glad box, but that's lunch, right? If the basic dinner is meat, rice, and veggies, I always make extra rice. Fill a two-cup plastic container (I really like the Glad ware) 2/3 full of rice. Add bite-sized leftover meat and veggies and top with a couple tablespoons of your favorite Asian-type sauce. I've done it with Kung Pao sauce, Thai peanut sauce, teriyaki, and just plain soy. I'm sorry, I ate my leftover pork tenderloin Kung Pao before I took a picture!

You say Toh-may-toe!

2010-06-04T11:45:00.002-08:00

Sis and I have decided that this is the last year we muck about with seriously growing tomatoes in the garden. They cost about $4 each at the greenhouse, and we're just not entirely happy with our home-started tomatoes. We got past the spindly issue this year with good lighting, but they didn't temper and took forever to acclimate to the garden when we transplanted. Since the idea is to save money with the garden, we're going to use that space for more reliable, freezable crops. I wasn't enjoying peeling and canning tomatoes anyway.

So naturally my friend Feldon (who also is the voice of EQ2 Wire), just published his definitive Tomato Seed Staring Guide on the South East Texas Tomato Festival site. This is a great guide for most folks; us Alaskans would have to keep them indoors much longer and follow a different timeline when it comes to dates. In the Interior of Alaska where I'm at you'd start your seeds indoors in mid-April, and not plant them outside until Memorial Day at the very earliest. Feldon's advice is very sound, and I've always enjoyed his writing (even when we hopelessly disagree with each other).

We might even try tomatoes again next year!

You Say Po-tay-to

2010-06-01T20:19:00.001-08:00

It's summer! Time for eating outside 'cause it's too nice to be indoors! We go to Grandpas for holidays in the summer; he grills up some corn on the cob and a good cut of meat, Sis brings some fruit, I bring the potato salad.

It took me a long time to figure out potato salad, mostly because I was trying to figure it out on my own. My friend Bonnie put me on the right track: you add the dressing when the potatoes are still hot. The other thing she advised is never use Miracle Whip, even if you love it. The first I really should have figured out, because when you put the dressing on cold potatoes you get, well, mayo covered potatoes. And I don't like Miracle Whip, so no problem there.

I experimented a lot, with mixed results. My ratios always seemed to be off, and one flavor or the other was overwhelming the salad. One day in a burst of inspiration I looked up the Best Foods recipe (Hellman's mayonnaise on the other side of the Rockies). Bam, almost perfect potato salad. I've since tweaked it here and there: the biggest change was reducing the salt drastically. So, here's my potato salad recipe.

Basic Potato Salad

3 lbs. potatoes cut into 3/4-inch chunks
1 & 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. stone ground mustard
3 Tbsp. vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. ground black pepper
3/4 cup thinly sliced celery
3/4 cup chopped onion

I don't peel my potatoes, just scrub them good, but you can if you like.

Cover potatoes with water in a large sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and cook 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Drain and let cool slightly - not much more than 10 minutes (this is called steam-drying, and lets some moisture escape).

Combine mayo, vinegar, salt, sugar and pepper in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and toss gently. Serve chilled or room temperature. I like to let it refrigerate over-night so the flavors mingle well.

You could add a couple chopped hard-cooked eggs, or crumbled bacon. You could decrease the mayo and add a good measure of yellow mustard for yellow potato salad. From this recipe you can probably figure out how Grandma did it.

Here's a picture of a batch I made in June 2011 with red potatoes.

Meat Bonanza

2010-05-30T23:06:00.000-08:00

After singing praises of Safeway the other day, I struck gold again. Junior and I popped in for a gallon of milk (holy bananas, these boys can drink a lot of milk!) and running by the lunchmeat section I saw real meats in their clearance bin.

What you may not be able to see in the picture is they are all marked at $2.99; their sell or freeze by date was today. The three-pound ground beef chubs are regularly $7.99 and the pork tenderloins are regularly $10.99, although they were on buy-one-get-one-free this week. That's at least eight meals (probably a couple more with leftovers) for $14.95, and a savings of $31.00 or 67%.

Needless to say, Hubby grilled burgers for dinner! I made the rest of the burger into one- and two-pound packs for casserole and grilling. I really contemplated loading up on burger, as there were probably 20 of those chubs marked down in the meat section, but we just didn't have the cash to spend today.

Pork tenderloin are really expensive for our budget so I couldn't resist the treat. It's a tasty cut of meat and Hormel does a good job on the seasonings. If you've never cooked one they're ridiculously simple (and there's instructions on the package). Just pop them in a 350 degree oven for about 50 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. Slice and serve!

More Bargain Hunting - Safeway

2010-05-27T21:19:00.006-08:00

If you live anywhere with one of the Safeway chain stores (Safeway, Carrs, Vons, Dominick's, Genuardi's, Randalls, Tom Thumb, or Pavilions) keep your eye peeled for a sweet coupon book in those stores now. There's the requisite recipes utilizing the products they're pushing, of course, but there's $26 in coupons for the dairy department. From Toll House cookies to cottage cheese, these are coupons for stuff I actually buy, which is unusual for me with these promotions.

I'm a bit late on this one, but for Earth Day Safeway (the whole chain) teamed up with Cheerios. I'm still seeing a box here and there with a coupon on the back for a free reusable grocery bag, no strings attached. The bags are only $1.49, but they're very high quality and a good size. If you're buying Cheerios anyway, see if you can find the Earth Day box. (Note: don't try and print and use this picture, because the bar code is on the back!) A side note - you can go to the Cheerios web site and request $4 in Cheerios coupons right now.

While Safeway is no longer giving big gas discounts for purchases with their Club Card, it is still quite worth joining their Club. They've gone on a rollback-style campaign and prices have dropped on just about all the staples. They're being quite good about putting every day items like eggs, bread, cheese, and baking stuff on sale regularly, making it easy to stock up. They've also gone digital, and there are several sites you can use to pre-load your shopping card with coupons, which are automatically used at checkout when the requirements are filled.

I've also discovered the magic day and time when "my" Safeway does markdowns. They take stuff that's close to the "sell by" date and mark it cheap to they don't have to dispose of it. If you have a freezer, take advantage! The deli meats, dairy, and meat areas are where you'll usually find these extreme deals. At "my" Safeway the magic time is 9am on Fridays. The lovely lady who works the deli meats tells me that she marks them lower that day because she doesn't want them sitting there over the weekend. And it works! Just remember when you thaw whatever it is that it only had a couple days left before the sell-by date hits. Not so important with preserved meats, but some stuff you'll want to eat as soon as it's thawed.

Update:
I went to Safeway today to check the markdowns: I got pork chops, some London Boil tips, and four packages of high-quality lunch meat for $14.53. That's $15.32 or 51% savings off the full price! And here's a tip if you're freezing mark-down meat: Find the "sell by" date and use a permanent marker to write how many days it had left when you froze it! Then when you thaw it you know exactly how quick it needs to be eaten.

Note: This was not a solicited or sponsored blog.

Raspberry Jalapeno Sauce

2010-05-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

My sister had a wonderful raspberry jalapeno dipping sauce at a restaurant this winter and wanted to try and make some. We Googled it and came up with recipes from the simple to the very complex. Some used pectin, some used cornstarch, some had no thickener at all. The ingredient ratios tended to be consistent, so we took our base recipe came from BigOven.com. And decided to punt.

The results were very nice: Sis says that the flavor is just as she remembers. It's a little thin (the sauce she had at the restaurant was almost scoopable) but she prefers that over a thick jam consistency. So here's what we did:

Raspberry Jalapeno Dipping Sauce
4 cups (2 bags) frozen sweetened raspberries, thawed
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup key lime juice
6 fresh jalapenos, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 tsp butter or margarine to reduce foaming (optional)

Prepare jars and canner as for jam or jelly. Heat ingredients to a roiling boil which cannot be stirred down. Boil for three minutes and remove from heat. Ladle into hot jars leaving 1/4" headspace. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Yield: 5 half-pints.

Fresh berries would work very well, in fact we're planning another batch during berry season.. The raspberries we used were only sweetened with sugar, and not very much of it. Don't buy berries in syrup, as it will throw off the sugar ratio.

This makes a great dipping sauce for chicken strips. Use it as a ham or pork glaze. Serve it with cream cheese as a cracker topping. Combine it with a bit of balsamic vinegar for grilled chicken.

More Quick Deals

2010-05-21T13:10:00.002-08:00

It pays to keep track of prices at your local stores. Here's two great budget savers at our local Sam's Club:

Eggs: I thought they were low-prices last time! Today a carton of five dozen eggs was $3.86. That's 77 cents a dozen! For comparison, the best price in Fairbanks right now is one dozen large eggs, 3/$5. Regular price has been running between $2.39 and $2.89 per dozen locally.

Veggies: My sister pointed me to this deal. Sam's has a four pound vegetable tray for $9.98. It's a very nice variety, and no one said you couldn't use them in cooking. The dip's pretty good too. For comparison, if you swung by a salad bar for some veggie munchies, you'd pay $5.99 a pound.

I was actually considering letting our Sam's Club membership lapse, as we never buy big stuff there and that's where the major savings are. But at these prices the eggs along will pay for the membership in a couple months.

In a completely unrelated note, the kids and I took a drive and saw a moose. It's either a cow or a very hungry yearling.

Free Movies

2010-05-15T19:48:00.001-08:00

My boys are out of school for the summer. There's lots of great kids stuff happening in the summer, but I'm always on the lookout for the free stuff. Today we went to Alaska Fish and Game's Kids' Day, which was awesome: Junior got to go fishing (we didn't get a trout, but it was fun to try!) and Kiddo got 3 of 5 cans with a BB gun.

If you have a Regal Cinema's in your area, you should know that they have a Free Family Film Festival every summer. Tuesdays and Wednesdays from late June until late August they run G and PG movies for families. They aren't this summer's newest hits of course, but there's several on this list that I'd love to see in theaters and I sure won't mind taking the kids to. Click this link to see if this program is available in your area!

Getting Dirty

2010-05-13T12:18:00.001-08:00

You know, I love my shower cleaner and my Swiffer Wet Jet, and neat stuff that makes the cleaning jobs faster and easier. But when it comes time to pinch the pennies until they squeak, convenience cleaning gadgets aren't in the budget. I recently stumbled on a free copy of Shameless Shortcuts, which reminded me that you don't need fancy toys to keep your place clean. There are good, inexpensive, tried-and-true cleaning methods that homemakers have relied on for decades. What you'll lose is time: it takes longer to scrub a tub than to push the Scrubbing Bubbles button. What you gain is cash.

Make your own all-purpose cleaners: For a light-duty cleaner, fill a 32 ounce spray bottle (save one when you use up what's in it) with water and add 3 teaspoons of dishwashing liquid. For stronger stuff, combine equal parts white vinegar and water in a spray bottle. For windows, it's 2 tablespoons of vinegar to a gallon of water.

DIY Furniture polish: Mix 3 parts olive oil with 1 part white vinegar. Although at today's prices a bottle of Pledge might be cheaper.

Vinegar is a great all-purpose cleaner and is cheap! Use it to decalcify your coffee pot, disinfect your washing machine, remove lime deposits (apply vinegar-soaked paper towels to the deposits and come back in an hour). Pour some in the toilet bowl and let it sit while you tidy up to disinfect.

Steam your microwave: You don't need fancy exploding sponge thingies to clean the zapper. Fill a microwave safe dish halfway with water and zap it a few minutes until it boils. Some folks like to add a little lemon juice. The steam softens the tried-on crud. You can neutralize stinky sponges by getting them wet and microwaving them for a minute. The temperature of the steam kills the microbes making the stink (let it cool before you take it out).

Wax your tub: Yes, grab some car wax and wax it (not the floor, though, it'd be too slippery). Wax makes water bead up and roll away, taking with it dirt and water spots. This works on sinks, appliances, basically any surface the wax says it's safe on.

Baking soda: Make a thick paste of baking soda and water for scouring. This works great on anything stainless steel, on dishes or china that need a scrub, and while it's abrasive it won't scratch. Sprinkle dry baking soda on a damp cloth to wash your fridge and freezer (remember to rinse afterward) to clean and deodorize. Sprinkle baking soda on your carpet before you vacuum to pull out smells. Put a half cup in your laundry to fight stains.

One thing I'm not quite ready to give up: My Swiffer Duster. I adore my Swiffer duster, and so do the boys: they will actually fight over who gets to dust with it. Junior asked if he could spring clean this morning and dusted half the house, including a ceiling fan that was embarrassingly dusty.

A Little Chubby

2010-05-12T21:05:00.007-08:00

When you're on a budget it's hard to pass up inexpensive meat, especially when you can stretch a small amount into a family dinner. One of those odd things you'll find good deals on is turkey chub, which can be an affordable substitute for any unseasoned ground meat. This comes up because our local Safeway had a buy-one-get-one-free deal on them making them $1 per pound, so I've got some in the freezer now. You might see them in the meat department, but they are usually in the freezer section with pre-formed beef patties and frozen turkey breasts and such.

You may be thinking, "Okay, sounds good, but what is turkey chub?" Gee, I'm glad you asked!

"Chub" is the sausage-like packaging. You'll see ground beef in this kind of package too. Turkey is, well, turkey. A closer inspection of the package reveals that this is "mechanically separated turkey". Well. That doesn't sound very comfortable. Or appetizing. According to the USDA, mechanically separated meat is "a paste-like and batter-like meat product produced by forcing bones with attached edible meat under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue." They further note that beef processed this way is not approved for human consumption, but pork, chicken, and turkey are. Meat must be labeled "mechanically separated" if processed this way, I supposed so you don't think it's ground from identifiable parts. My friend Hez would probably say it's "reclaimed meat".

So you get past the name and forgive me for giving you way too much information on mechanically separated meat, and bring some home. If you're defrosting it in the microwave, remember to cut the little metal clips off each end of the chub first. It thaws pretty quickly: I can take one out in the morning and it will thaw in plenty of time for dinner, even in the fridge.

It really looks like gray-pink paste (actually, the color reminds me of the fish sausage Pikko uses to embellish her bentos). Throw it in a pan and brown it to crumbling like you would hamburger or ground pork, because it looks much better cooked. It doesn't have a strong turkey flavor, and this brand is lightly seasoned. What it doesn't have is the rich flavor you would expect with pork or beef, so I recommend adding it to anything you might use ground beef crumbles in. I've put it in spaghetti sauce, chili, casseroles, and even faked a stroganoff with it!

Don't be shy about this budget meat. Turkey is full of lean protein and this works great in all your stretching the budget type recipes!

Next blog: Something just as cheap (or cheaper) but less gross.

Quick Deals

2010-05-11T10:43:00.002-08:00

If you're in Fairbanks, here's a couple of super-cheap deals:

Bounce Fabric Softener: Safeway has the 240 count box of Bounce Free for $5 off. Making it the same price as the 100 count box. That's enough fabric softener for the rest of the year for me, since I usually rip them in half.

Eggses: Sam's Club's five dozen box of eggs is $4.87 as of this morning. That's less than a dollar a dozen!!

WFHM

2010-05-10T22:14:00.004-08:00

That's short for "Work from home Mom." Which, as y'all know, I do. Right now I'm researching more ways to earn money online without compromising myself. How about paid blogging? Hmm. Well, it's not nude pictures, so let's look into that.

To that end, I'm required to post: "How will a pulp result?"

Makes me think of fresh orange juice. Lemonade? Or writing a bad novel. First aid? Oh, I know, making jam.

Speaking of jam, I'm stretching the budget by adding pureed fruit (for fiber and vitamin content) to canned juice for jelly. I'm planning a batch tomorrow, I'll blog how it goes!

Thanks for putting up with the randomness!

Prioritizing

2010-05-10T16:28:00.003-08:00

I didn't realize how long it'd been since I blogged. And then I was like, "Whoa, what was I so busy with?" Well, kids, of course, and since Hubby is going to UAF part time and working full time I'm on my own a lot. And work, yeah, since February it's been really busy over at work. But that was all true last semester, so what's different?

It struck me while watching SNL this last weekend. It's all Facebook and Twitter's fault. Betty White hosted SNL (at 88 1/2!!). Here's her monologue:

She's right. Facebook and Twitter are great, but they suck up an awful lot of my free time. I'm already on the internet a lot more than the average person 'cause I work online, and those social media sites are just too accessible.

I find myself posting more and more about less and less, until I'm randomly tweeting/fbing pretty much nothing at all. I miss the more substantial communication in blogging, even if my audience is smaller.

So I'm taking a break. Oh, I'm sure I'll still used Bejeweled Blitz to take a short break, but I'm going to limit myself to checking my media once a day. There are just other things I'd rather be doing. Like making muffins, Banana-Cherry today! School ends this week, and I'd rather take the kids to Grandpa's to weed the garden than sit here waiting to see if anyone finished my Family Feud game for me!

Fry Bread

2010-03-23T20:22:00.007-08:00

I was reading one of Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's books, The Godmother's Web, when I got a hankering for fry bread. Read the book, you'll see why! I know fry bread as Elephant Ears, sold at the Tanana Valley Fair every year with powdered sugar or other assorted sweet toppings. I always liked it best with a dusting of plain ol' sugar. But I know nothing about making fry bread, so I went looking.

While fried dough not a new innovation (fried breads have probably been around as long as humans have had flour and some sort of oil), the American fry bread tradition dates back to the atrocities inflicted on Native American Indians in the late 1800's. The rations they were given when they were forced into camps were very non-traditional to them and not the best quality, but they made do. The delicious fry bread we enjoy at Fairs and in Indian Tacos is a quiet legacy of the tenacity and endurance of those Peoples.

There are lots of traditional Indian fry bread recipes; I'll link some below if you'd like to try them out. I looked at the basic needs and techniques and faked some lovely fry bread. The fry bread at the Navajo Hut at the Fair is better, but my kids liked this just fine.

Fry Bread

Bread Dough
Oil

Fill a heavy pan with enough oil for frying. The oil should be deeper than your dough is thick; you could also deep fry. Cast iron is recommended in a lot of recipes. Get the oil hot enough to fry - test the oil by dropping a pinch of dough in it, the dough should bubble immediately.

While the oil is heating cut the dough as big as you want the fry bread, but no bigger than what you're frying it in.

Place the dough in the hot oil and fry until it floats up; turn it and fry a couple more minutes until it's brown on the bottom. About 3 minutes a side worked for me.

Put the hot dough on paper towels to drain and sprinkle with powdered or granulated sugar if desired. Best eaten warm. It makes a good bread for scooping or dipping and an excellent dinner side dish.

You could use any bread dough you have handy if it's ready to bake. I completely cheated and bought a tube of Pilsbury Thin Crust Pizza Dough. My tendinitis just won't let me knead dough any more. I chose pizza dough because it was conveniently already rolled out thin. I unrolled the pizza dough on my big cutting board and made 4" squares (more or less).

Other bits I learned during my research:
"Bannock" is fry bread. I'd read the word but never looked it up.
Eskimos have fry bread! Bad Alaskan me, I feel like I should have known that.

Resources:

Product Review: Fruit Snacks

2010-02-14T16:58:00.009-09:00

One of Kiddo's regular disappointments is that he can't have Red40. (Please insert my usual ADHD and Red40 diatribe here.) No Fruit Loops, no Jell-o, and no Fruit by the Foot.

I am very pleased to have found a wonderful organic fruit snack while traipsing by the diet and nutrition aisle at Sam's Club. Clif, who I always associate with organic energy bars, makes a fruit snack option that meets all my very picky standards and yet still tastes good and has a good price point. May I introduce you to Clif Kid Organic Twisted Fruit.

These resemble a licorice whip made from fruit leather. They come in a wide assortment of flavors and I'm loving this big box that I get at Sam's Club for around $12. Since they're organic, they have no artificial dyes (which is my primary concern), but I was also pleasantly surprised to discover they have no added sugar, corn syrup, and no gelatin. They're made mostly from apple sauce, and use pectin to make them firm (pectin is what makes jams and jellies firm up, and is naturally found in lots of fruit, primarily apples).

Here's the nutrition panel from the box in my pantry. Click to see it bigger, but the short version is the ingredients are apple sauce, apple juice, pectin, and natural color and flavor. They've fortified them so there's some additional nutrition benefits. They are one serving of fruit, and they're absolutely yummy. I can eat several in a sitting myself. Basically you're giving your child an apple, fortified and naturally flavored to taste like a special treat.

Just for comparison I'm going to post the nutrition panels from a couple other national brands of fruit snacks.

Fruit by the Foot, by Betty Crocker. Points for the pear base, but look at that: sugar, corn syrup, a variety of gums, and all the artificial dyes ADHD kids are supposed to avoid.

Then here's Fruit Roll-Ups by General Mills. Again with the pears (used because it's really easy to flavor), then we have corn syrup, dried corn syrup, and oil, with all the yukky colors. Dried corn syrup? Oil? Really?

Anyway, if you'd like to avoid giving your child all this garbage and sugar disguised as nutrition but still give them the fun fruit-leather type treat, look for the Clif Kid Organic Twisted Fruit. You're more likely to find it in the organic, health food, or nutrition section of your store than with the snacks, but they are worth seeking out.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-07T14:28:00.006-09:00

Okay, I'm a little early for Valentine's Day, but as busy as I've been I thought I'd better get a blog up while I could! Over at EQII ZAM the EQII Team (and a couple other people!) are up to our ears in Sentinel's Fate, the next EverQuest II expansion. The Non-Disclosure Agreement was just lifted, so we're grinding out content at an insane rate.

But family trumps EQII every time. The boys will be celebrating Valentine's Day at school this week. Here's another red candy holiday that causes issues for us because of Kiddo's ADHD and the Red40 connection. And the teachers aren't very fond of the influx of candy into the classrooms - Kiddo's teacher has a "no sugary snacks" policy.

So to foster the spirit of celebration without loading the kids up with sugar and Red 40, I'm baking. I've got my favorite Chocolate Zucchini Bread recipe, which is a no-brainer for the red chocolate holiday, but I also have a bunch of bananas that need to be baked up TODAY or else.

A little research showed that making chocolate banana bread is easy - just add cocoa powder. If you're not avoiding sugar some chocolate chips would make this a marvelous chocolate overload. So here we go:

Chocolate Banana Mini-Muffins

1 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 1/4 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cups shortening
2/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups ripe banana pulp

This works best if all ingredients are room temperature. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl blend shortening, and sugar until creamy. Add eggs, vanilla and banana to the sugar mixture.

Add the sifted ingredients in about three parts to the sugar mixture, beating the batter after each addition until smooth. Fold in any nuts or other goodies.

Line a mini-muffin pan with mini-muffin cups. Fill with one heaping tablespoon of batter. Bake 10-13 minutes. Alternatively, place the batter in a greased bread pan and bake for one hour or until done. For regular muffins, bake 15-20 minutes. Makes one loaf or 12 muffins.

I didn't want to frost these. First, good frosting is all sugar. Second, have you ever frosted 70+ mini muffins? I won't be doing that again! I topped the muffins with red sugar before baking. Well, I forgot on one batch and learned that you really can't put the sugar on after baking, it just comes right off. I discovered that Wilton Red-Red Icing Color has no Red40 (lots of other artificials, though). I took a generous dollop of Wilton Red Red and a cup of sugar and stirred the heck out of it until it was well combined. The sugar's a little clumpy because you've added moisture to it, so you have to spoon it on. Works great, though! I'll use it on the chocolate zucchini mini muffins too. I think the banana version is richer, but I've already bought the zucchini!

So there you go. Red chocolaty Valentine's Treats that aren't junk!

One Ringy-Dingy

2010-01-23T11:07:00.011-09:00

We've made the decision to do away with our landline. Is landline even a word? We're dumping our traditional phone service.

Like lots of households, we ended up with several cell phones and a traditional phone. My cell was a Lifeline account, which was dirt cheap but didn't give me all the services I need (I work with people all over the world, and sometimes the Internet isn't the best means of communication). Hubby is on ATT. We took a good look at our budget and got a family plan, which is affordable if a) I kill the Lifeline phone, a no brainer, b) get whatever "free-ish" phone is on special, and c) we turn off our landline phone.

Turning off the landline makes me nervous, and I can't figure out why. It's not like we use it a lot, or that there's an advantage to it now that we have Nationwide serivce (every call is a local call, isn't that cool?). I might keep it if it were still an analog phone, which doesn't require power to function, but they're all digital now.

I feel like we're at the mercy of our phones. It's been a slow evolution, but I think phones are actually part of some alien plot to condition us to our new masters. Probably the cats, now that I think of it.

Does anyone remember when you'd call someone and sometimes no one would answer? It'd ring and ring and ring, and you'd assume no one was home and try again later. There were no answering machines, voice mail, or automated systems to help you if no one was there, and no caller ID to help whomever you were calling to avoid you. We were programmed with a Pavlovian response: if the phone rang, you jumped up and answered it. On the other hand, if you chose to ignore the ringing, it was just a matter of time until it stopped. If you had an emergency and needed to wake someone up, you could let it ring until they got up, cursing that someone had better be dying at this time of night to get them out of bed.

Then came answering machines, which were pretty cool. Not only would it take a message for you, but you could screen your calls. But if you weren't fast when you jumped up to answer the phone, it would be answered for you. If you didn't want to get up and see who was dying at 3am the machine would answer it, but it would beep at you until you got up and listened to your message.

Next we had cordless phones, and were no longer restricted to talking in one place (unless you were lucky enough to have the 30-foot phone coiled cord, which was guaranteed to be tied in knots). We could multi-task! You could talk on the phone and change the baby, wash the dishes, or use the bathroom. How efficient!

With the advent of computerized phone systems we got voice mail. Now if you didn't want to roll over and answer the cordless phone you left on your bedside table you could have it go straight to voice mail and have a peaceful night's sleep, never knowing that you were needed at the hospital because your cousin was having an emergency appendectomy. But instead of a machine that beeped politely (but insistently) when you had a message, the only clue you'd have was the broken dial tone you heard when you picked up the phone. To check for messages you were constantly picking up the phone. Then you had to dial and navigate through a menu to hear your messages instead of just pushing "play".

Add to all that convenience mobile or cellular phones. Now we can have all those benefits anywhere we go! In the car, at the store, in the sauna, or hiking through a national park, you won't miss that call from Aunt Edna wanting your recipe for the crab dip. It doesn't even have to sound like a phone ringing any more. Everywhere you go it's a symphonic medley of music from all genres, nicely masking the Muzak. No one knows what their personal ring tone actually is: walk through any well-populated area, play a snatch of random music and watch 50% of the people grab for their phones to see if it's for them.

Our Pavlovian response to phones is stronger than ever. We answer our phones in our cars, in our bathrooms, at our kids' schools, and in movie theaters. It has to be a conditioned response: everyone has caller ID these days, so you can probably tell if it's an emergency or not. Seriously, you do not need to answer your phone during your annual physical, yet turning the phone off or setting it on vibrate seems physically painful for some people.

Obviously our alien masters the cats have conditioned me so well that getting rid of the physical landline phone in my home is causing me psychological pain. I can do it. I know I can.

As soon as I feed the cat. Call me.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T21:18:00.005-09:00

Well, we survived the holiday season! As you can tell from my lack of posts, it's been a busy one. I thought for my first post of the new year I'd share some recipes I found over the holidays.

I was looking for a "real" crueler, which is a type of doughnut that has an eggy cake rather than a raised cake. Turns out what I wanted was a French crueler, which is made from pate a choux. I haven't got it quite right; I suspect that the texture I'm looking for inside happens when you bake the dough, not fry it, but I learned how to make beignets. It seems every culinary tradition has some kind of fried dough; this one is French.

Pate a Choux is the pastry dough used to make cream puff and eclair casings. I've seen it worked with when I was in catering, but I've never made it. It was remarkably easy, just follow the directions meticulously. I found a dandy visual guide at Culinary Alchemy. The recipe is from Foodista.

Beignets

Oil for frying
1 cup flour
4 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup water or milk
1/3 cup butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs at room temperature

In a large heavy skillet or deep-fat fryer, heat 3 inches oil to 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, combine flour, sugar and nutmeg, set aside. In medium saucepan heat water or milk, butter and salt over medium heat until boiling and butter is melted. Add vanilla, then add flour mixture all at once. Stir briskly with a wooden spoon until mixture leaves sides of pan and forms a ball. Continue stirring a few minutes more to dry. Remove from heat and beat until slightly cooled. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Using 2 spoons, shape a generous tablespoon dough into an oblong and drop into hot oil. Fry 3 or 4 at a time, turning beignets as they rise to the surface. Fry 3 to 4 minutes, until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle immediately with sifted confectioners' sugar. Repeat with remaining batter.

Because of my current bagel obsession, I have been following LoveMyPhilly on Twitter. I discovered Philly's Cheesecake Customizer that way, the results from which inspired this recipe. I started by making peach pie filling (I halved the recipe) out of those canned peaches.

Peach Walnut Cheesecake

Crust:
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp sugar

Cheesecake batter:
2 8oz packages cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup peach pie filling
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Topping:
1/2 cup peach pie filling
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, with the ends extending well over the sides. Mix crust ingredients; press firmly into the bottom of the pan and bake for 10 minutes.

Beat cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl with an electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until just blended. Fold in sour cream. Stir in pie filling and nuts. Pour over crust. Sprinkle with remaining walnuts and top with remaining pie filling.

Bake 40 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool completely and refrigerate at least 4 hours. Use foil handles to lift cheesecake from pan before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.

Last but not least, a really simple brunchy-type thing that we had the day after Christmas and there wasn't a single crumb left. This is easily adaptable: I've made it with sausage crumbles and pepperjack cheese and I think smoked ham and asiago cheese would work well too. Here's the original recipe from Grouprecipes.

Bacon-Cheese Pull-Aparts

1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
1 can refrigerated biscuits
1 2.1 oz package precooked bacon, cut into small pieces
3 oz (3/4c) shredded Cheddar cheese
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions

Heat oven to 350F. Spray an 11x7 or 12x8 inch glass baking dish with cooking spray. In a large bowl beat tge egg and milk until smooth. Separate the biscuits into individuals and cut each one into quarters. Gently stir the biscuit pieces into the egg mixture to coat evenly. Fold in bacon, cheese and onions. Spoon the mixture into the baking dish, arranging the biscuit pieces in a single layer.

Bake at 350F for 23 to 28 minutes or until golden brown. Cut into squares.

Random Bits

2009-12-05T10:43:00.013-09:00

Seems things always get busier as the holidays close in upon us, doesn't it? At work EQII is getting ready for Game Update 54 and the release of Sentinel's Fate and Free Realms has a big update coming mid-month, so things are busy there. At home we're trying new ADHD meds for Kiddo and getting ready for the holidays. Hubby is finishing his first semester of college, and Junior is making progress on potty training. Just a really busy time.

So here's some tidbits that aren't really enough to make a whole blog by themselves.

Caffeinating Your Kid

I never ever thought that giving my kid caffeine would be a good thing. Kiddo has hyperactive ADHD, and sometimes he just needs a little extra help keeping control. With ADHD kids stimulants suppress their symptoms (it's like they work backwards and slow them down). Caffeine is easy and readily available. Since we've been ramping him up to a target dose on his new meds we've needed a little help.

Problem is, Kiddo doesn't like hot drinks. Coffee tastes foul no matter how I hide it and he doesn't like hot chocolate. Tea was rejected, iced tea tolerated only with insane amounts of sugar added. We ended up giving him diet soda, which just makes me cringe and caused jealously issues with his little brother. I was at a loss, having rejected giving him NoDoz (it just seemed wrong, the kid has to take enough pills).

A couple weeks ago I had a burst of inspiration: tea-infused juice. Sure, juice still has sugars, but they're natural sugars and there's at least vitamin benefits. Black tea has too strong of a taste so I went with green tea. Bring a couple cups of water to a boil. Remove from the heat (if you boil the tea bags it gets bitter) and steep four bags of green tea for about 20 minutes. This gives you a green tea concentrate. Use this to reconstitute juice concentrate according to the juice instructions, making up any shortage with water. If you use a strong flavored juice (I like the Dole blends) you just about can't tell the difference.

Reading Instructions

I do a lot of laundry. Lots. Lots and lots and... good gods, I'm going to make everyone go nekkid. How can one kid under three feet tall generate four full loads of laundry a week?

Anyway, I felt like I was going through laundry soap terribly fast, even given the vast quantities of laundry in my house. I use All Free and Clear. I tried a lot of detergents because of Kiddo's dry, sensitive skin and I've been very pleased with results I get from the All. This time I bought the really big container because I felt like I was running to the store for more all the time. Here's what I discovered as I threw out the empty bottle of 2x:

The larger containers of All laundry detergent all have the same measuring cup. But read the instructions: there are four measure lines on that cup and the different concentrations of All use different measures.

Doh. The 3x uses line 1 for a regular load. The 2x uses line 2. Using line 2 with the 3x I was literally using twice the soap I needed to. Talk about a money-waster!

Flat-Rate Boxes

I've mentioned these before. If you're mailing a lot of Christmas presents you really need to look into the USPS Priority Mail flat-rate boxes. These now come in three sizes at different rates. I find them awful handy because a fruitcake and jar of jam together weigh over two pounds. You get fast service (parcel post no longer has any kind of guaranteed delivery time and get shoved to the back of the plane) and you can save a lot of money. They determine the price by which zone you're mailing to and from. An additional bonus: the boxes are free, and you can have them sent to your home from the USPS website. If you're very organized you can estimate and pay the postage online and they'll come pick them up.

I'm not quite that organized, but today I took seven medium-sized flat-rate boxes to be mailed. They cost me $10 and a bit each. For fun I took the last one and had the machine calculate it as though it weren't in a flat-rate box, and determined I saved $7 per box. That's almost $50!

I'm off to do laundry (grumble), go to the post office, and take Kiddo to Barnes & Noble to choose a book for being sheerly awesome with his little brother all week (we're liking these new meds!). Remember in your holiday dash to stop, breathe, and remember that it's not about presents and doing, it's about loving and sharing.

Giving Thanks

2009-11-29T19:05:00.005-09:00

What a great holiday weekend. Wednesday I was bemoaning my lack of a nice holiday table cloth and suddenly realized how petty that was given the abundant blessings we do have. We have a roof over our heads and food on the table in times when many families are losing even those basics. Sure, money's tight as ever but the kids are happy, healthy, and smart. Hubby's doing well in school trying to further himself and I still have a great part time job that lets me stay home and raise my own kids.

So, no recipes today. My only advice is: stop and take stock in what you do have, especially when you feel you're wanting for something.

Junior in the turkey hat he made at school

Major bed jumping!

All our Fairbanks family over before Thanksgiving dinner.

The feast!

A toast to family.

Mega train construction. The boys are getting really good at playing together.

Hurray for the Pumpkin Pie

2009-11-25T09:37:00.008-09:00

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I am thankful that we've the makings for a feast that will keep me cooking for two days!

Honestly, I cheat a lot due to a very small kitchen. I use instant mashed potatoes, Stove Top Stuffing, and other things that help me get it all on the table at the same time while it's still hot. A lot of my Thanksgiving cooking happens in that 30 minutes when the turkey is resting before carving. But one thing that cannot be done right ahead of dinner is pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin pie is a custard, which means it cannot be eaten hot. You need to give it a couple of hours to cool or chill it in the fridge. So the day before Thanksgiving I make pie. A couple of years ago I blogged pumpkin pie from scratch, but this year let's look at the pumpkin pie recipe as defined in the U.S.: The Libby's Pumpkin Pie Recipe. This recipe has been on the back of the Libby's pumpkin can since the 1950's, and in some ways has defined how we eat the vegetable.

Libby's Famous Pumpkin Pie
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 large eggs
1 can (15 oz.) LIBBY'S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
1 can (12 fl. oz.) NESTLÉ® CARNATION® Evaporated Milk
1 unbaked 9-inch (4-cup volume) deep-dish pie shell
Whipped cream (optional)
MIX sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger and cloves in small bowl. Beat eggs in large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk.

POUR into pie shell.

BAKE in preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° F; bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve immediately or refrigerate. Top with whipped cream before serving.

Of course you can adapt this; it's pretty forgiving if you keep the basic ratios consistant. Use pumpkin pie spice instead of the cloves, ginger, and cinnamon if that's what you have. Heavy cream will stand in for evaporated milk. One 12 ounce can of pumpkin happens to be 2 cups: any winter squash would work (except maybe spaghetti squash) if you wanted to bake it and pulp it. I find myself wondering if the basic recipe would work for sweet potato pie.

If there's a trick to pumpkin pie, it's to make sure the filling is very well blended, which is why the recipe has you beat the eggs separately and stir the rest into them. Use a scraper to be sure there's no pumpkin trying to evade you on the bottom of the bowl. The first picture is the filling all ready to go (it doesn't look orange because the bowl is reflecting the flash and washing it out).

With custard pies I recommend putting the pie pan with the prepared crust on a baking sheet on the oven rack and then pouring the filling in. Carefully put the rack in and close the oven door gently. I've slopped filling over the edges getting the pie in the oven, and the filling will scorch and burn on the crust, spoiling the taste. The second picture is the filling in the prepared crust just before I put it in the oven.

Recipe: Cherry-Berry Sauce

2009-11-22T15:44:00.007-09:00

This is actually a re-blog of a recipe I posted a few years ago. I have just made a huge batch of it, taking pictures, and decided I really wanted to dedicate a blog to it.

This is a simple, fun recipe that has a lovely sweet-tart taste different from straight cranberry sauce. It's really easy to make it a day ahead and take to a pot luck or as a hostess gift. I give it for Christmas with other holiday goodies, so I can it. It also fills your house with yummy holiday smells while you're making it.

Cranberry and Dried Cherry Sauce

Raisins or dried cranberries could easily stand in for the dried tart cherries.

1 12-ounce container frozen cranberry juice cocktail, thawed
1 cup water
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 6-ounce package dried tart cherries
1 12-ounce bag cranberries

Bring first 5 ingredients to boil in heavy medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Add cherries; cook 2 minutes, maintaining the boil. Add cranberries; cook until berries pop, stirring occasionally, about 9 minutes. Transfer to bowl. Cover; chill overnight. (Can be made 1 week ahead. Keep chilled.) Discard cinnamon. Serve cold or at room temperature. Makes about 4 cups.

It's really as easy as that. I tie the cinnamon sticks into a bit of cheese cloth to make a spice bag because they like to hide in the sauce. You can see it in that first picture, hanging out as I wait for the concentrate, water, and sugar to boil. The second picture shows the cranberries floating; they do that, you just need to stir occasionally so they get into the boiling liquid to cook and pop. The last shows the popped cranberries with the dark-brown cherries peeking out. It's very thin at this point. It will thicken in the refrigerator overnight or with canning.

The Ball Blue Book says to can cranberry sauce in a hot water bath for 15 minutes, so I do that (and add 5 minutes for pint jars). If you're making a large batch for canning be sure to stir it really well before putting it in the jars: the cranberries float and the dried fruit sinks. A quadruple batch gave me nine pints - that's a lot of sauce! I can it in different sizes: cute little half-cups for my single friends, pints for Grandpa Jim who's allergic to corn syrup (and anything corn) and therefore doesn't get a lot of sweets and thinks this stuff is the bee's knees.

My jars look dusty because our water is a little hard. I've just taken them out of the canner and they're still too hot to wash off.

Serve it where you would serve cranberry sauce. Mom says she's spooned it over cottage cheese and tossed it with fresh cut melon for a fruit salad. Grandpa Jim eats it right out of the jar (so do I!) The sweet-tart flavor lends itself to a lot of recipes. I find myself wondering if it'd made a good ham glaze, or might go nice with a ricotta cheese filling.

Feelin' Peachy

2009-11-15T21:43:00.010-09:00

I was looking in the pantry this evening and noticed we've got a wealth of canned peaches courtesy of TEFAP. Yum, peaches! I grew up on canned fruit because in Alaska in the 70's we didn't get the freshest produce unless it was grown in-state, and tree fruit doesn't do very well here.

Now, when you're on a budget something you should consider is how many mouths you can feed with your food. A can of peaches (if you believe the label) is 3 1/2 servings. Doesn't go very far. Here's two recipes for turning canned peaches into yummy deserts that serve well more than three people!

Canned Peach Pie

The trick here is to make the syrup from the cans into something thicker so you have pie filling instead of nasty dried-out peaches. The original recipe is for and old fashioned deep dish pie with only a top crust; I use a top and bottom crust. I'd guess you'd use 3 - 15 ounce cans for a regular pie pan.

2 - 29 ounce cans or 4 - 15 ounce cans of peaches
2 cups juice from the canned peaches
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Drain the juice from the canned peaches into a measuring cup. You need two cups; just add some water if you're short.

In a very large saucepan, combine the cornstarch, sugar and nutmeg. Gradually stir in the peach liquid, and the lemon juice. Stir to dissolve the cornstarch. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring very frequently. Bring the mixture to a boil and boil for at least a minute, or until the mixture is very thick. Remove the pan from the heat and gently stir in the canned peaches. The mixture will thin out some.

Line a pie pan with an uncooked pie crust. Turn the thick peach filling into the pie crust and top with a second pie crust. Crimp the edges together (a fork works well, though some people like to pinch it to make fluting). Pierce the top crust a few times to let steam out.

Bake it at 425° for about an hour. The top will be golden brown, the filling will be bubbly, and it will be very hot. Allow it to cool for a little bit before serving.

I overfilled this pie - it bubbled over and got filling juice everywhere. Fortunately I was thinking ahead and baked it on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper! You could probably reduce the recipe to 3 to 3 1/2 cans of peaches easily.

Peach Upside Down Cake

This works just as well with canned apricots, nectarines, and other pit fruit. You really don't need peach halves, slices can also be arranged prettily. I've never bothered with the maraschino cherries as I never have them in the house. You can also pass on the orange zest if you don't have a fresh orange to grate, but the flavor of the cake is brighter with it. And I think it makes a good breakfast too!

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 cups canned peach slices, drained
6 maraschino cherries, halved
1/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
1/2 cup orange juice

Spread butter in bottom of 8-inch round cake pan and sprinkle with brown sugar. Arrange peaches and cherries on brown sugar. Cream the shortening and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the egg and beat well. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together; add to creamed mixture alternately with mixture of the orange peel and juice. Pour batter over peaches, taking care not to disturb fruit. Bake at 350° for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean.. Cool for 10 minutes. Invert over serving plate and remove cake pan

Okay, by now everyone knows that I'm lazy and use pre-made pie crust whenever I can afford it. I do make my own crust, I swear. I found a wonderful guide on everything you ever wanted to know about pie crust (and then some) that you might like to read if you'd like to make your own or have a fear of pie crust. Making the Perfect Crust.

Product Review: Hunt's Spaghetti Sauce

2009-11-06T08:42:00.009-09:00

Spaghetti is a great budget dinner. Not expensive, simple to make and full of vegetables, it fills the bill for tasty, cheap, and nutritious. Somewhere along the way I was trained to think that canned spaghetti sauce is evil: if you don't make your own you are doing your family a grave disservice if you buy anything but jarred sauce. And since great sauce is apparently something only tiny ancient Italian nanas can do well, you'd better buy it in the jar or risk terminal embarrassment. (My husband, by the way, makes phenomenal sauce, but that's another blog.)

Some time last year I was shopping on my usual tight budget and I see Hunt's Spaghetti Sauce (in a can, oh horrors!) on sale for $1.25. Looking closer I see it's the same size as the usual jar of sauce, which is on sale two for $5. I'm willing to give most products a try if it might save me money, so into the cart it went, hidden behind the paper towels to cover my shame at buying canned sauce.

It seems to be the great unsung hero of the Hunt's tomato line - it's not even listed on their website. I never see coupons for it, although you will see it on store specials. It's always on the bottom shelf in the pasta isle, although it comes in a lot of varieties so it takes up a fair share of shelf space.

Opening it, it's a nice thick sauce. It's not chunky, but you can see herbs in it. It doesn't look like plain old tomato sauce. It's not that horrid orange-pink that indicates it's full of sugar and fillers, it's a lovely tomato red. Click on the picture - that is not a high-speed action shot, it's really that thick. I should have done video.

The flavor is quite good, I'd put it up against most of the fancy brands. It's not overly sweet, which is great as I hate super-sugared sauces like Chef Boy-R-Dee. Nor is it so tart that it makes you pucker. Truly a nice balance. I neglected to get a picture of the ingredients and nutrition information, but this is just nice sauce without a lot of junk and with all the nutrition you'd expect from a quality food. It does have corn syrup, but it's usually 3rd or 4th on the list of ingredients instead of right up top. It really doesn't even need "doctoring" unless you're a garlic nut or want to add meat.

The price point is very attractive: About $1.50 normally and $1 on sale for a 26 ounce can. Jarred sauce runs about $2.50 on sale and sometimes over $4 regular price. Catch some pasta on sale and you've got dinner for four for two dollars.

Another budget bonus: it's less expensive than plain tomato sauce. You can use this anywhere you might use tomato sauce: lasagna, baked noodle casseroles, pizza sauce, over a meatloaf. Spaghetti sauce is quite versatile: I've added chicken and broccoli with egg noodles for a pasta bake and the family loves it. Use it on pita bread for kid friendly pizzas.

Final Review: Sheer awesomeness. This is a quality product that is incredibly affordable. I've stopped making my own sauce because this product is not a compromise and it's cheaper than I can make it. This is a permanent addition to my pantry; whenever it's on super sale I get as many as I can afford, and I don't hide it in the cart. When you eat a lot of casserole, this can break up the monotony nicely! Go buy some! I've enjoyed every variety I've tried, but my favorites are: Cheese and Garlic, Classic Italian and Mushroom.

Penny Pinching: Fluff Coffee

2009-11-03T18:38:00.009-09:00

The Twitterverse is on fire with Starbucks holiday coffees. I have been just dying for a Gingerbread Latte, but we're in penny pinching mode to make a nice Christmas and a $4 coffee just isn't in my foreseeable future.

Fortunately you can fake a latte. Ideally you should have an espresso machine with a steamer and some really good espresso roast coffee. I've faked it with a little french press I got at the recycle pad and a milk frother my sister gave me. But let's do it with nothing but this can of MJB I've got sitting here and the stove.

Making "Espresso"
In your regular drip coffee maker, use 1/4 cup coffee grounds and 1/2 cup water. This makes 2 - 4 ounces of coffee concentrate, about two shots. Be warned this also concentrates the caffeine (oh darn!).

"Steaming" Milk
Some food safety warnings here: between 41F and 135F milk is considered unsafe. It's really easy for bacteria to grow in it. You'll want to heat your milk to at least 140F. On the other end of the thermometer, the scalding point of milk is 180F. You don't want to scald it, it changes the taste. My sister, a coffee shop manager who trained at Starbucks, tells me that Starbucks makes their milk about 165F, with a kid's cup at 140F and extra hot at 170-175F. You can use any cooking thermometer (like a meat or candy thermometer) to monitor the temperature.

That's all a bit complex. I heat mine until I can see it steaming. In the microwave, heat 1 cup of milk a minute at a time until it's hot enough. On the stove top, use a metal pan and low heat so it doesn't scorch. When it's hot use a whisk (or even a fork) to whip it nice and frothy.

You can adjust the coffee and milk amounts until it suits you. Pour the hot frothy milk into the hot coffee and ta-dah! You've got a basic latte. (Trivia: A latte is about 1:3 coffee to milk with a little foam. A cappuccino is 1:1 coffee and milk with lots of stiff foam.)

Fancy Coffee
The reason we all go to Starbucks is for the indulgent fru-fru flavored coffees. Here's where it gets a little tougher on a budget, but it's not impossible. You can, of course, buy the coffee syrups fairly inexpensively (try your local warehouse store instead of a specialty shop). Whipped cream is cheap, buy a house brand in the spray can and it'll last almost forever in the fridge if you never let it sit out.

Vanilla Latte
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
sugar to taste

You can also make your own syrup by flavoring simple syrup:

Vanilla Syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Stir the sugar into the boiling water until it's dissolved. Add the vanilla extract. Reduce heat and cook a bit to reduce it, stirring constantly. Cool and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. Add one or two ounces to a latte for flavor.

You can skim some calories on an eggnog latte by getting fat free eggnog. It won't be as thick, but the flavor is still there. Do not bring your eggnog to a boil, it will change the flavor.

Eggnog Latte
for the milk use:
1/2 cup eggnog
1/4 cup milk
Combine the eggnog and milk and heat.
Add coffee.
Top with whipped cream and a sprinkle of nutmeg if desired.

This is my absolute favorite. I need to get some more ginger!

Gingergread Latte
For this one you really need a syrup.

Gingerbread Syrup:
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the water, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla in a small to medium saucepan. Medium is probably better since the syrup could boil over the top. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes. When done, pour into a melt-proof container and let cool. It will thicken a bit more once cooled.

Add 2 ounces to your latte. Top with whipped cream and cinnamon, if desired.

Another favorite, and Starbucks always runs out way too early in the season.

Pumpkin Spice Latte #1
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon canned pumpkin
1 tablespoon sugar or sugar substitute - you can halve this amount
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

For the steamed milk, combine milk, pumpkin and sugar and heat as noted above.
Top with whipped cream and sprinkle pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, or cinnamon if desired.

Pumpkin Spice Latte #2
Make a pumpkin spice syrup.
1c sugar
1c water
2 tablespoons pumpkin spice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Stir the sugar into the boiling water until it's dissolved. Add the pumpkin spice and vanilla. Reduce heat and cook a bit to reduce it, stirring constantly. Cool and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

Add one or two ounces to your latte. Top with whipped cream and sprinkle pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, or cinnamon if desired.

This one's for Gnobrin, my favorite Starbucks addict:

Peppermint Mocha or White Chocolate Mocha
I tried this with peppermint candy and peppermint extract. It really needs a syrup too. Again, we just flavor simple syrup.

Peppermint Syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon peppermint extract

Stir the sugar into the boiling water until it's dissolved. Add the peppermint extract. Reduce heat and cook a bit to reduce it, stirring constantly. Cool and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

To make a mocha, add chocolate or white chocolate syrup to your milk. You can also melt 3 tablespoons of chocolate or white chocolate chips in your milk. I like a delicate peppermint flavor, so I only add one ounce of syrup. Top with whipped cream.

If you want to get really really fancy, make peppermint whipped cream.

Peppermint Whipped Cream
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons totally pulverized peppermints
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Beat the cream, pulverized peppermints and sugar until stiff peaks form.

This one is just for Kiara.

Chai Latte
For this you need a Chai syrup concentrate. You guessed it, we're going to make simple syrup again! In this case it's not quite as sweet, it's more like the base for sweet tea.

Chai Tea Syrup
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2-3 Chai Tea bags. I prefer Tazo, which is Starbuck's brand

Boil the water and add the sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Add the tea bags and turn off the heat. Let it steep until it's really strong, 15-20 minutes.

For sweetened Chai, add hot water to about 2 ounces of the syrup. For a Latte, add hot frothed milk.

A Note on Ounces, Shots, and Tablespoons
Those all seem to get bandied around a lot in coffee talk, don't they? It's pretty easy: there are two tablespoons in an ounce (by measure, not by weight). 4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup = 2 ounces.

A "shot" is a little vague; in coffee, my sister tells me, it can be an ounce to an ounce and a half depending on the coffee strength. If you're using a shot glass, be aware that they come in measurements from 3/4 of an ounce to 1 1/2 ounces. Get your tablespoons or measuring cup out if you want to know what size it really is.

Penny Pinching: Snacks to Go

2009-11-01T22:11:00.009-09:00

If you're a parent, you're busy. Seems you're always on the go for one thing or another, and at some point those kids need to be fed! How often do you find your self going for pre-fab snacks for convenience? It's pretty easy, what with 100-calorie packs being all the rage and those big cups of Nabisco snacks lurking right at the checkout next to the animal crackers. Problem is, they're expensive.

Take those handy little 100 calorie snack packs by Nabisco et. al. You're paying roughly three dollars for six snacks - 50 cents per. It doesn't sound bad unless you have a couple of kids eating them a couple times a day. And those cups of Teddy Grahams? I approve of Teddy Grahams as a snack, but there are three servings in those cups! Again, you're spending about 50 cents a serving.

It's really easy to make your own snack packs, it just takes a little preparation. The first thing you need is a box of snack-sized zipper-close bags (they're about half the size of a sandwich bag). Walmart's house brand is about $1.50 for a box of 50. Then get some snacks. Look for store-brand alternatives to the expensive national brands. Fred Meyer and Safeway have snack crackers and snack grahams in fun shapes that run about $2.00 a box on sale, and there's 9 servings in a box, so do this just once and you've paid for the bags.

You can just toss handfuls into bags, or check the nutrition information on the box for serving sizes. If you're counting calories, do the math and make your own 100 calorie packs. Spend a half hour on the weekend and fill a box or bin with your own pre-packed snacks and you're prepared for lunches, on-the-go snacks, and portion controlled munchies.

I like to avoid anything that needs refrigeration so that if you don't use the snack it doesn't go to waste, but that doesn't mean that you're stuck with crackers. Hit the fruit section for raisins, dried cherries, and yummy yogurt covered fruit. You can get a big bag of store brand raisins much cheaper than the national brand of little raisin boxes, and they won't go stale in a zipper bag like they do in a box.

Other easy and inexpensive snack ideas are dry cereal, popcorn, pretzels, and Chex Mix (make your own, it's tastier and more nutritious). I've even made cookies, frozen them two to a bag, and grabbed those on the way out the door (they thaw very fast).

Halloween!

2009-10-31T09:17:00.007-08:00

I love Halloween. I used to spend months designing and constructing costumes. Not so much any more, things are just too busy with the boys. Junior is finally old enough to have an idea about Trick or Treating, and to enjoy wearing a costume. Kiddo's been wound up for it all month!

Kiddo settled on a Bakugan costume. Bakugan is a trading card game with creatures that fold up into balls. Very cool, actually. We don't get the show here but he recognized the main character right off. For Junior I saw this very cool Wubbzy costume (a Nick Jr. show), but Walmart wanted $35 for it. Since Wubbzy is basically a big yellow square, I hit up the remnants bin at JoAnn's and made the costume for less than $7.

We've had a lovely long fall. The snow finally hit this week, and while it's staying above zero there's been a bitter wind. Now, back in my day we Trick or Treated in all kinds of temperatures (the first time I really remember it was -30F), but I'm a wimp now so we're looking for alternatives. Last year we went to the malls, and it was just insane. We just stood in long lines for candy; it was boring and noisy, and No Fun.

Local schools to the rescue! Junior's school had a Fall Carnival last night. Classes and clubs had activity booths that cost 25 cents (or you bought tickets) to raise money for field trips and such. We had a great time! This afternoon my old high school is also having a Halloween Carnival, so we're going to that one too. I really like getting more than one wearing out of the costumes.

Here's some pictures from last night.

Required poses with Storm Troopers!

Kiddo climbing the "web". He got way up there!

The whole family. This is an awesome picture, and my prize for the evening.

Coming soon: A review of the Swifter Wet Jet Automatic Mop, and a re-blog of my fruitcake-haters fruitcake.

Review Follow-Up: Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner

2009-10-22T09:45:00.005-08:00

Last week I blogged my trials and tribulations replacing my beloved Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner. The device gave me fits, but I was beyond pleased with the level of customer service I received from SC Johnson.

It took six days for my replacement coupons to get here (rather than the 10 - 14 they said). The full-cost device coupon was for $17, which concerned me as I paid over $21 for mine, but they sent two free refill coupons when I was only promised one. I also received a coupon book for SC Johnson higher-end cleaning and fragrance products. I was able to get a new device at Walmart for less than the $17.

Opening the box, the first thing I notice is it's not the same as the one that was dead upon opening. The unit is subtly more streamlined, but what jumped out was that the hanger assembly was very different. This leads me to conclude that not only is our local Fred Meyer overcharging, but they have really old stock on their shelves. In my opinion Fred Meyer corporate has some issues that are problematic at the local level, but that's a blog for another day.

Out of the box, put in the batteries that were in the bottom of the box (despite the warnings that batteries were not included), push the button... "Beep, beep, beep." It lives!

So I have a nice new Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner, two bottles of cleaning fluid (one from the original dead box), two coupons for free refills, and a shower that no longer requires scrubbing despite two boys who could make a bathtub ring out of thin air.

Final Review: I don't have enough thumbs! The product works as well as its hype; if you can afford buying the refills regularly, get one! And I cannot say enough good things about SC Johnson's level of customer service. If you ever have a problem with any of their products, do not hesitate to contact them. They are very serious about making sure you are happy with them.

Fleece Hats and Gaiters

2009-10-19T12:10:00.011-08:00

You don't have to be crafty or a sewing expert to save money making your own hats and scarves or neck gaitors! I see fleece on sale at JoAnn's all the time, and I thought "How hard could a hat be?"

Well, never having made a hat and not being the type to reverse engineer one, I went to the internet. It was interestingly hard to find instructions, but Martha Stewart came through for me. (I like Martha Stewart's crafts, but I find they often aren't appropriate for the budgetarily challenged.)

First, acquire some fleece. Note that fleece comes in different weights and qualities; I prefer the "no pill" variety. With a good sale or your 50% off JoAnn's coupon (you signed up for that mailer, right?), you can get it as low as $3 a yard. I can get six hats out of a yard, or three hats with matching gaiters. If you have fleece scraps you could also piece some together to make a patchwork or motley hat.

You're going to need thread (contrasting thread can look nice, so check your sewing box before you buy), scissors, and a measuring tape. A sewing machine makes these go REALLY fast but they are simple enough to hand sew.

Hats:
1. You'll need one panel of fabric to make this hat. To determine the width of the panel, measure the circumference of your head (around your ears), or use the size chart below; add 1/4 inch on each side for seam allowance. The length for an adult hat should be about 13 inches; for a child's hat, about 10 inches. Note that fleece has a stretch to it one way - be sure to make the longest edge in the direction of the stretch. Cut out the panel.

2. Sew the short ends, right sides together, to form a tube. Martha says to trim seam allowance closely. I just finger-press it open (don't iron fleece, it's plastic). Keep it inside-out for now.

3. To make the hat's cuff, fold fabric up about 3 inches (the hat is still inside-out); fold in again 1/4 inch. Sew hem close to the turned edge.

4. Sew along the top of the hat, leaving a 1/4-inch seam allowance. Trim seam. Turn hat right side out.

6. Join the two corners of the top of the hat together with a single stitch. Using strong thread, bring the needle through the inside of one corner and through the other point. Pull thread tight so the corners meet at the center. Tie off the thread. On one hat I did not join the corners; I put a pom-pom on each point instead, to make them easy to tell apart. Kiddo says it needs bells!

Poms-Poms:
1. For a large pom-pom, cut a strip of fleece 24 inches in length (9 to 12 inches for a smaller pom-pom) and as wide as you would like the pom-pom to be. Fold the strip in half the long way.

2. Lightly draw a line down the center of the fabric lengthwise. Cut fringes to the left and right of the line, leaving about 1/4 inch uncut in the center. The fringes can be as narrow or as wide as you like. Roll up the strip of fabric.

4. Using strong thread such as upholstery thread, bring the needle through the core of the pom-pom (you may need a thimble), and wrap the thread tightly around the center a few times. Bring needle through the core again, and tie a knot as close to the pom-pom as possible. Use the excess thread to sew the pom-pom to the top of the hat.

Gaitor:
A neck gaitor is just a tube of fabric worn like a scarf. They're much harder to lose than scarves, and there's no ends always coming untucked. This is also really easy.

Single-layer Gaiter:
1. Cut a panel identical to the hat panel described above.

2. Right sides together, sew the short ends together to form a tube. Leave it inside out.

3. Turn under each raw edge about a half inch and sew all around.

4. Turn right side out.

Double-layer Gaiter:
1. Use the measurements for a hat, but double the shorter measurement (the crown measurement in the list below).

2. Sew the crown measurement sides together to make a tube. When sewn the stretch should be perpendicular to the seam, so the stretch goes around your head.

3. Fold the tube so it's doubled on itself, seam side IN.

4. Pin up the unsewn edges about a half inch each as for hemming. You may like to baste them, I don't. Sew these two edges together, on the RIGHT side (the seams should all be inside, including the ones you just pinned up).

5. If you like, go back to the folded edge and sew a matching decorative seam all around.

Scarves:
Scarves are really really easy.
1. Decide how long and how wide you'd like your scarf.

2. Cut a piece of fleece that big. Stretch should go the long way.

2a. For extra warmth, cut it double-wide, sew one seam the long way and turn it right side out. Finish with a matching seam along the folded side.

3. You can get fancy by fringing your fleece. Sew a single line 4-6 inches from the end of the scarf. Cut even lines in the fleece to about 1/4" of the line.

Martha's Average Head Sizes Chart:
Newborn (6 months and younger)
Circumference: 14 to 17 inches
Crown: 8 to 10 inches

Infant (6 to 12 months)
Circumference: 16 to 19 inches
Crown: 11 to 12 inches

Child (12 months to 3 years)
Circumference: 18 to 20 inches
Crown: 11 to 12 inches

Child (3 years and older)
Circumference: 20 to 22 inches
Crown: 13 to 14 inches

Adult Woman
Circumference: 21 to 23 1/2 inches
Crown: 13 to 15 inches

Adult Man
Circumference: 22 to 24 1/2 inches
Crown: 14 to 16 inches