Universal tomato base

When your farmers' market offerings look this:

(it was really more like 12-13 pounds...)

But your canning mojo has up and went and your canning pot is only big enough for pints and you simply can't face all that blanching...

Allow me to present: Universal Tomato Base (UTB).

By roasting the (unpeeled) tomatoes with onions and couple hot or bell peppers if desired, you end up with a freezable puree that can be the base of many easy and delicious meals that taste of the height of summer all winter long. Use as is for pasta sauce, or

Combine 3 cups UTB with:

*2 cups stock, for amazing tomato soup

*1 can evaporated milk and a pinch of Italian herbs, for even more amazing cream of tomato soup or pink sauce

*1 T each bloomed curry powder and garam masala and 1 can coconut milk for curry

*Include more hot peppers in the initial preparation for a hearty dip perfect for tortilla chips

Ingredients

10 pounds tomatoes, rinsed, cored, and cut in 6-8 pieces

2 pounds red onions, cut into eighths

Colored bell peppers, if you have them

3-5 jalapenos, if desired

Kosher salt, to taste (I used 2 T for each large roasting pan)

Olive oil (greasing pan plus about 1/4 cup per pan)

Preheat oven to 350. Divide produce among greased baking dishes. The tomatoes will cook down a lot, but you want them to brown a bit at the end, not steam. Season with salt and oil. Roast 2-3 hours, until tomatoes are juicy and have some spots of char. Scoop the vegetables with pan juices into the blender and puree smooth. Three cup batches fit nicely in quart bags. Cool to room temperature, then chill overnight in fridge before freezing. Ten pounds of tomatoes cooked down to 4 batches (about 12 cups)

CL Tip of the Day: Neater wafflemaking

Saturday mornings at our house are almost always Daddy-made blueberry multigrain pancakes on more relaxed mornings or overnight waffles (made with half whole-wheat flour) on days with early obligations. In either case, we scale the recipe up by a half so that we have enough both Saturday and and a pre-Mass pick-up breakfast Sunday mornings (both the pancakes and waffles reheat well in a regular toaster). In addition to setting out the baking soda (so un-caffeinated folk don't use baking powder instead) I put the waffle-iron on paper towels or newspaper for easier counter cleanup.

Thinking ahead for your turkey leftovers

I don't know about you, but I love to spend Thanksgiving weekend curled up in front of the fire, playing board games or watching movies with my extended family. Here are a few favorite turkey based recipes for when you want a change from straight up leftovers. Most call for pantry staples, but I plan to pick up the more unusual ingredients for these meals along with my Thanksgiving groceries.

Turkey Soup (our archives)
Turn your leftover turkey bones into soup!

Slow Cooker White Turkey Chili (Williams-Sonoma)
What could be easier than a slow cooker full of chili simmering away while you enjoy time with your family and friends? I simplify this recipe by soaking dried beans overnight, and giving them a head start cooking in homemade turkey broth (3 hours on low) before adding the remaining ingredients.

Turkey Tetrazzini (The Satellite Sisters)
This comforting casserole with a homemade Marsala cream sauce has been a favorite at our house for over a decade. 

D'Amico and Sons Turkey with Dried Cherries Pasta
My kids' favorite lunch.

Turkey ala King (Food and Wine)
My husband's favorite dinner.

Pulled turkey
Cook leftover turkey (I think  dark meat holds up better) with a little water or broth in your slow cooker for a few hours until it shreds easily. You can use this meat as you would pulled pork- in tacos/enchiladas, mixed with bbq sauce for sandwiches, tossed in minestrone soup...

What is your favorite way to use up leftover turkey?

"What's for dinner?": Friday edition

I realize this may have been helpful to have a few days ago, but I just read a very helpful article entitled 12 Meatless Lent Meal Ideas: Your Strategy for Lent’s Meatless Fridays and I was inspired to actually do that for a change (instead of my desperation cheese-pizza plan).

Read the article, then, if it’s helpful to you, print a copy of the Lenten Meal Plan sheets I made and start on your own offensive strategy (offensive in the sports sense and not in the “stuff my family is sure to dislike” sense J).

You may want to start with the Church Ladies' 40 meatless meals label in the sidebar, and thanks to Taylor Marshall for the inspiration!

Meal Planning with a CSA/ farmers market

Summer is upon us, and for many people, that means farmers' markets or CSAs (community supported agriculture or farm box) have started up, which can be a fun and economical way to enjoy local produce.  But just because you could end up with any produce in any week does not have to be cause for meal planning panic! As you can see from the list below, having the staples listed below on hand means you can cook just about any fruit or vegetable as a side or incorporated in the entree.

• Omelettes/quiche: eggs, milk, flour, cheese, butter
• Pasta sauce: pasta, olive oil, cheese, garlic
• Pesto: olive oil, nuts, cheese
• Risotto: arborio rice, cheese, chicken stock
• Grilled: foil or skewers, oil
• Cold soup: stock/bouillon, sour cream, butter
• Crudités: sour cream or hummus for dip
• Salad: oil and vinegar
• Fritters: oil, cornmeal, eggs
• Taco/enchilada filling: tortillas, sauce or salsa, cheese
• Pizza topping: crust, tomatoes, cheese, olive oil
• Stir fried: oil, soy sauce, scallions, sesame seeds, rice or noodles
• Curried: spices, coconut milk, tomatoes, lentils
• Fresh fruit pie: pie crust, gelatin, sugar, whipping cream
• Fruit pie/cobbler: butter, lard/shortening, sugar
• Pickled: vinegar, pickling spices, lids
• Jam: pectin (I am partial to Ball Low Sugar flex batch), sugar, bottled lemon juice, lids
• Homemade ice cream: milk, cream, eggs, sugar
• Homemade sorbet: sugar

For more ideas, check out these websites and books:

Websites

Ten things to do with beet greens or chard

Food in Jars Recipe Index

How to Get the Most out of Your CSA

Books

Twelve Months of Monastery Soups

Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces

Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 1: egg dishes, Volume 2: cold soups)

Meal Planning - How to organize your recipes

There are as many ways to organize recipes as there are people to cook them.  Similar to the struggle between paper planners and online calendars, recipe organization can quickly become a confusing territory of notecards and bookmarked webpages.

The most you need is two steps in the process: somewhere for recipes you want to try, and somewhere for recipes you want to keep.

Having a place for recipes to try is the first step.  For recipes I find online, I use Evernote to organize them.  I have the browser add-on that allows me to save recipes from any website, so it just takes one click to "clip" them and put them away for safe keeping.  One bonus of this system is that the Evernote notebook is searchable (using both tags and the text of the note itself), so it's easy to find things again.  The downside of this is that it really works best for things found digitally; if you tend to get ideas from searching through cookbooks, the easiest option is to scan or take a picture of the recipe and send it to the notebook.

The old-fashioned way is to make a list of what you want to try (noting where you found it, obviously).  This allows you to combine print and digital sources.

Once you find a keeper, put it somewhere permanent.  It doesn't matter if this is a card in your box, a print-off in your binder, or a post on your private blog - just have one designated place for all the recipes you want to see again.  My mom's recipe box (above) is like the Ark of the Covenant for our family's favorite recipes.  We all know that the recipe box is the first place to look for a recipe we know and love.

Another option is to make a virtual recipe box by posting to a recipe blog.  This is an especially handy option if you want to share recipes among people who are geographically distant.  Our family's page includes lots of the Recipe Box classics (many of the frequently-requested recipes that Mom got tired of typing out for her long-distance daughters), as well as new things we've tried and liked.  Give it a cute name or just stick to something basic like smithfamilyrecipes.blogspot.com; it's up to you.  Like Evernote, you can add tags to each post, so that categories can be browsed.  When I'm looking for a good recipe to use up leftover chicken, I can just click on that category to see what other people and I have posted in the past.  Hands down, this may be my favorite organizational tool.

Meal Planning - A day for everything

Even if you're making your meal plan ahead of time, the question of what to make for dinner can be daunting.  I've found that it helps to narrow down your choices from the get-go.  By that, I don't mean that you should stick to the same 5-meal repertoire (unless that works for your family, of course!).  Instead, try assigning a category to each day, and pick recipes based on that.  Rather than staring into the abyss of Everything You Know How To Cook, your search is focused on one particular category.  For example:

Monday: Soup/sandwiches

Tuesday: Pasta

Wednesday: 

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Pizza

Saturday: Crock pot

Sunday: Cook's choice

Do Tuesday nights consist of running out the door to activities?  Make that an "Eat out" night.  Do you have kids old enough to put together a meal?  Assign them a night.  Would your family enjoy a designated night for Mexican or Chinese food?  Put that on the schedule.

The beauty of this system is that it combines predictability (and thus, reduced effort) with the flexibility to try new recipes or stick with your old standbys.  We all know that there are weeks when you feel up to culinary experimentation, and weeks when you just need to go with recipes you've already got memorized.

If you're looking for a place where this system is spelled out in more details, there are cookbooks like this available.

Meal Planning - the low tech version

This is a system I've been using off and on for years.  Yep, it's just what you see.  I print a calendar page and hang it on my fridge.  I then poll everyone here (and page through cookbooks) for meal ideas.  It works well when I have the discipline to actually do it, but I suppose that's the downfall for pretty much any system.  The parts I like best are:

• It's very flexible.  I always write in pencil so it's easy to erase something I know won't work on a particular day and just bump it forward a few days.
• It's visible.  If I'm not the one home when it's time to cook, any of the other responsible cooks in my house can easily take over. Also, I can easily glance at it in the morning and do prep work in advance if I want.
• I know I save money and waste less food when I do it.  Also, shopping takes less time, especially when I use my organized list.

Also, I have lots of cookbooks and have found it helpful to focus on one at a time.  Rather than being overwhelmed by thousands of choices, I've narrowed it down to the more manageable number in a particular cookbook.  It's much easier to write Chicken and Rice, p. 109 on my calendar square than to list all the info from a wide variety of sources that will help me find recipes again when I'm ready to make them.

I typically find that planning 5 meals per week is more than enough.  We are fine with leftovers occasionally, and it's not uncommon for most or all of us to be gone for work or appointments every now and then.

Meal Planning - leave it to a professional

I have a friend who swears by the service offered by Saving Dinner.  For a small fee you get a subscription that is tailored to your family (number of people/general dietary category) which includes menus, recipes, and a detailed shopping list, all keyed in to sound nutrition and seasonal considerations.  They have the freedom to recycle family favorites, but also get to try all sorts of new things.

Except for the number of family members, I'm pretty sure my friend could have written this testimonial:

Just wanted to let you know how Menu Mailer has improved my life…We are a household of 2 adults, both working full time jobs, no kids, so meals ‘should’ be easy. Right? WRONG!!! Since the menu mailer has come into our lives: 

• We have cut our fast food consumption by about 80%.

• I have cut grocery shopping time by at least 80%.  I don’t buy food that looks good in the store, but ends up spoiling because I have no real plan for it

• I’m out of the same-old-thing for dinner rut

• I’m feeling good about taking control of our nutrition, and cutting out the artificial garbage from processed food.

Your recipes are versatile enough to be cut in half, or eaten as another entire meal. So, I’m cooking 2-3 times a week, and having a ready-made meal waiting for the other days. The variety of flavors, many of which I’d never considered putting together before, have been wonderful.
Best of all, we don’t spend an hour playing the “what do you want to do for dinner game.” “What do you want?” “I don’t care, what do you want?” and on and on until we end up running out to grab something quick, mediocre, and unfulfilling. So, you don’t need to have a big family to find huge rewards from the menu mailer.

Try the Daily Dish offer on their home page to get a week of sample menus and shopping lists.

HELP! I hate meal planning

I could cook all day, but for some reason I absolutely hate meal planning.  It seems so simple on the surface (just take something out of the freezer), but I'm busy or gone in the morning and by the time I give it any thought, I have about enough time to plan breakfast-for-dinner.  (Good, but not every day.)  Anyway, inspired by our friend Kate, we are going to spend a little time this week on a variety of meal planning ideas. We hope you'll find some useful ideas and we look forward to your comments.

First of all, you want to check out what Kate has done.  Using google tools, she listed their 30 go-to meals on a rotating calendar that both she and her grocery-shopping husband can access.  It's easy to edit and to look ahead to see what's on the menu for the upcoming week.  Genius!  Visit her blog for details and links to helpful tutorials to set it all up.