Roasted Chili Peppers

Check out my tutorial for roasted chili peppers (I used Anaheim Peppers from my garden) at Feminist Mormon Housewives. 

Another Food Post

Clearly I need to post about gardening stuff more often, because now I have two food posts in a row.  I've been a bit sidetracked.  My beans and corn never came up.  At least not more than a handful of plants.  I'm not sure if birds ate the seeds as they sprouted, or if my hand watering just didn't go deep enough and the seeds were too dry to germinate.  I replanted beans in one bed, and got a couple of pumpkin plants to fill in the other bean bed.  I also replanted the corn bed.  Then I bought soaker hoses so hopefully they'll water more deeply than my spraying-with-hose method.

In good news, the winer squash plants are growing like crazy, and I have several more jerusalem artichoke plants up.

The thing that has kept me the most busy for the last few days has been the cherries.  So far I've been juicing and dehydrating them, but I'm still planning on freezing some for smoothies and pureeing some for cherry fruit leather.  Hopefully I'll get a post up soon on the cherry harvest.

Back to the food: I'll be contributing semi-regularly to the blog Butter, with a side of Bread.  My most recent post is Spinach Chicken Pasta Salad. It's a really good light summer dinner, or a great dish to bring to a potluck or BBQ.

An Egg-volution

We didn't dye easter eggs at my house this year.  Our eggs are already multi-colored and my kids don't seem to mind not doing it.  I did decide to make hard boiled eggs though, to snack on, and for making egg salad sandwiches (I love those).

Enter the only negative thing about having your own chickens, and "farm fresh" eggs.  Fresh eggs DO NOT peel.  At all.  It's a huge mess and leaves you with a piece of egg that looks like someone took a very small machete to the outside of it.  Eggs from the grocery store are not nearly as difficult to peel because they are older than the eggs you gathered from your chickens that day.  It can take several weeks for eggs to reach your local grocery store.

I've tried adding oil, adding baking soda, and adding salt to the water, all of which are supposed to make it easier to peel fresh eggs.  None of those things worked.

Enter the pressure cooker.  My parents bought it for me for Christmas last year and I've been enjoying trying all sorts of things in it.  I hadn't done eggs in it before, because it doesn't save much time, but then I read that something about the pressure makes even fresh eggs easier to peel.

I'm converted.

Place the trivet in the bottom of your pressure cooker and add one cup of water.  I used my silicone muffin cups to keep the eggs separate (and I did two layers).  I did have a couple crack but the cracks didn't seem to affect the finished product at all.

Seal the lid, and set the pressure cooker to cook on high pressure for 4 minutes.  When timer goes off, allow it to release pressure naturally for 4 minutes (I didn't pay close enough attention and didn't get to them until 5 minutes had passed- but they turned out perfectly).  Release any remaining pressure, remove the eggs and dip them in ice water to cool them down.  

The shells will come off easily.  

Tempura

My Mister decided to make sushi for dinner on Sunday, and we thought it would be fun to invite friends over.  With company coming, we needed something besides sushi to fill everyone up, so I decided to try something new.  Tempura veggies.  

Image Credit: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-tempura-fried-vege-138702

I've never made them before, so I started googling and found a couple of recipes that looked promising, and combined them a bit and came up with this:

The key to good tempura is the batter. You want it to be light and runny you aren't making fish sticks.

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

2/3 cup ice cold seltzer water or gingerale

Put the egg in Ice Water and mix with chopsticks. Don't mix it perfectly. Dump all of the dry ingredients in. Give it a few choppy mixes with chop sticks. Don't attempt to blend all of the items together. It has to be lumpy for a true tempura texture. Dip and then fry until golden brown.

Enjoy!

I doubled the recipe so we'd have plenty, and it was just barely enough to fry a good sized zucchini, an onion, a sweet potato and several mushrooms.

Once I had the recipe I needed a little more understanding of the How To, and found this website that walked me through all the steps (it's also where the picture came from since we ate ours up too fast to take a picture):

1. Prepare Vegetables
You can tempura fry just about any vegetable you have in the kitchen. In this case we used mushrooms (halved), onions (peeled and sliced), sweet potato (peeled and sliced into rounds), and broccoli florets (from the freezer, no preparation required!).

Other suggestions might include: Bell peppers, carrots, cabbage, green beans, snap peas, cauliflower, baby corn.

2. Heat Your Oil
Bring the oil in your deep fryer or Dutch oven/cast iron pot to 360°F. Some electric fryers only allow you to increase the temperature in specific increments, so if that's the case, go for less temperature and longer frying time for root vegetables and a higher time for things like broccoli that won't require as long of cooking.

3. Prepare the Batter
In a medium to large size mixing bowl, add the rice flour and seasonings (if you wish). Next add the club soda, ensuring that it is cold before mixing. You're looking for the consistency of pancake batter. It should be loose enough to coat things easily, but not drip off completely on the way to the fryer. If the batter is too thick, add club soda or ice water 1 tablespoon at a time until mixture loosens. If too thin, add rice flour 1 tablespoon at a time until it comes together. Bubbles are good, lumps are bad, make sure to mix thoroughly!

4. Coat the Vegetables
Most vegetables can be tossed in the batter bowl ahead of time and allowed to sink a little to coat each one. It's far easier than hand dipping, which means of course that you have one batter covered hand the entire time (not always awesome). Toss items in and help them sink or roll to be coated with the batter. A flat whisk works wonders for this.

5. Fry the Vegetables
Next, lift vegetables out of the batter with your whisk (a fish spatula or large slotted spoon can also work out with success) and allow them to drain slightly, scraping the back of your whisk on the side of the bowl to remove excess. Drop vegetable pieces into the oil one at a time, ensuring that they don't touch. Most everything will immediately sink to the bottom (although mushrooms float). Use a spider strainer or long handled utensil (like a metal skewer) to loosen them and keep them moving. This will allow them to cook evenly on all sides. Cook root vegetables for 4 minutes and all others for 3 This time might differ if your oil is at a different temperature.

6. Remove From Oil
Remove your freshly fried pieces from the oil with a spider or the basket the unit comes with (though truth be told, we like to use the spider no matter what we're cooking in). Place them on a few layers of paper towels to allow remaining oil to drain. Give them a light sprinkling of salt and allow to cool slightly.

7. Return Oil to Temperature
Before dropping in your next load of veggies, make sure your oil comes back up to temperature. If it doesn't, things can get a little soggy and although they'll still be tasty once removed from the fryer, they will be a little greasy instead of crispy and chewy.

8. Repeat
Continue repeating steps 4 through 7 above until all of your vegetables have been coated, fried and hopefully enjoyed! This is a great way to entertain — simply tell people you'll provide the oil and ask them to bring a few of their favorite vegetables and gather round the table! Fry, nibble and chat away and let the good times roll!

Additional Notes:
• On Club Soda: Try tossing your club soda into the freezer while your oil heats up. It will be enough time for things to chill without freezing, allowing you to have perfect tempura pieces coming out of your fryer for longer! The colder the batter, the crispier your crust and less soggy your veggies will be!

Funeral Potatoes without the "cream of..." soups

I love funeral potatoes.  It may be a Mormon thing, I don't know.  What I do know is that aside from actual funerals, I don't think I ate "real" funeral potatoes until I was married and my Mother-in-Law made them for dinner (along with a ham, because that's what you do).  My mom made "Cheesy Potatoes" which are also delicious, but they're not the same thing.

My Mother-in-Law's recipe is the gold standard to which I hold all other funeral potato recipes:

6 boiled, peeled and grated potatoes

Combine:
1/4 cup melted butter
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup grated cheese
1 cup sour cream

2 cups corn flakes, crushed

Put half of the potatoes in a 9x13 baking dish.  Spread with half the mixture, repeat with remaining potatoes and sauce.  Cover with crushed corn flakes.  Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

Now, I'm trying to get away from using cream of anything soups, because they're full of stuff that's hard to pronounce and maybe we shouldn't be consuming.  I'll keep eating funeral potatoes made this way when other people make them, because they're still delicious, and it's not every day, but I decided when I make them myself I'd try to find a way to make them without the cream of soup can.

Looking around the internet, I found a recipe that looked promising at realmomkitchen.com.  I made it as directed at it was really very good.  I think I'd leave out the thyme, and I used Better than Bouillon added directly, and then just milk in place of the chicken broth.  It was really easy to make, not much harder than the gold standard (easier if you use store bought hash brown potatoes) So here's my version:

{Photo Credit}

-3 Tbsp butter
-1 medium onion, finely diced
-1/4 cup flour
-1 Tbsp chicken flavored Better than Bouillon soup base
-2 1/2 cups milk
-1 1/2 tsp salt
-Pepper to taste
-2 1/2 cups (or so) shredded cheddar cheese
-1/2 cup sour cream
-6 potatoes peeled, boiled and shredded OR 1 26 oz bag of frozen shredded hash browns, thawed
-2 cups lightly crushed corn flakes

In a large pot over medium heat, melt the butter and saute chopped onion until the onion is soft and starts to caramelize (caramelized onions make everything taste better).  Add the flour and stir until it is combined well with the onions and butter.  Add the chicken Better than Bouillon and stir, then add the milk.  Whisk.  Add the salt and pepper.  Heat until almost boiling, but not quite, whisk until the mixture begins to thicken.  Remove from heat and stir in all but a little of the cheese (save some for topping).  Place half of your potatoes in a baking dish, and top with half of the cheese sauce, repeat with remaining potatoes and cheese sauce (you can stir everything together if you want, but it tends to mash the potatoes more, especially if you're using real potatoes you shredded yourself).  Sprinkle remaining cheese and crushed corn flakes over the top and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  In a pinch you can use crushed corn chex or other similar cereal.

Chopped

This is what happens when you have 20 minutes before dinner has to be on the table, you haven't been grocery shopping all month, and you spent an afternoon in a Las Vegas hotel room watching Chopped on Food Network (I wish Netflix had food network shows, but it's probably good it doesn't).  It's kind of hard to make something fancy in 20 minutes with food storage food, but here it is...

Salmon Patties with white rice and dill sauce, and broccoli.  My kids thought it was fun anyway.

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Balsamic Browned Butter Sauce

I've been craving butternut squash ravioli for awhile now, and since we have church at 9am this year, it gives us plenty of time to make fancier dinners (if we feel like making them).

I had some leftover butternut soup but no eggs...

I found a recipe for eggless pasta that I thought would work for ravioli here, the recipe made a lot of pasta, we got tired of making ravioli and turned the last few pieces into thin noodles, which we'll use for dinner tomorrow maybe*.  

My Mister ran the pasta roller while I took the leftover butternut squash soup, which had thickened quite a bit during it's week as leftovers, and added a bunch of parmesan cheese.  My 4-year old wanted to help too, so I set him up cutting the strips of pasta into little rectangles.  I spooned teaspoonish amounts onto the little rectangles of pasta, wet the edges, and crimped around the edges with a fork (on both sides).  

When we were about ready to eat, I boiled the ravioli for 3-4 minutes, until they looked cooked, and as my mister was setting the table and draining the ravioli, I made the best part of the dinner.  

Online, the suggested sauce to serve with butternut squash ravioli is sage browned butter sauce.  I don't like sage, so I looked around a bit and decided to go with a balsamic browned butter sauce instead.  I figured I've made a butternut squash dish that had balsamic vinegar in it before, so how could I go wrong? (Usually, when I say that to myself it doesn't end well, but this time it worked out.)  

Balsamic Browned Butter Sauce

6 TBSP unsalted butter

2 TBSP balsamic vinegar

The complete recipe can be found here, but I decided I wasn't in the mood for nuts, so I called it good.  I melted the butter, and watched and stirred.  Of course the second you look away, it will turn brown, so don't get distracted.  As soon as it turns brown, remove from heat and stir in the vinegar- be careful it shoots little sparks of hot liquid at you when you do that.  

Immediately spoon over your ravioli, add a little salt and pepper and parmesan cheese, and you're good to eat. 

*The pasta turned out more like wonton wrapper than pasta.  Next time I think I'll need to get the right kind of flour, or make our regular egg noodle pasta, or maybe we rolled it too thin.  I'm not a pasta expert, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to ideas.

Over all, it turned out really good.  I've thought about what I would use for filling if I didn't have the butternut squash soup, and I think it would be fine (or even better- mine was pretty soft consistency, and I think a little texture would be nice) to just bake a squash and mash it up with some butter and salt and parmesan cheese (and brown sugar if you want it sweet).  It would just be one more step that you'd have to do before you could fill the pasta.  I loved the browned butter sauce- I didn't measure, and I don't think I put enough balsamic vinegar into the butter, but the flavor was wonderful.  Next time I'll make sure to pre measure the vinegar so I don't miss out on the full flavor.   With a better pasta recipe, this would really be an amazing make-it-yourself dinner.  If you wanted to make it even easier, you could buy the ravioli and just make the sauce- it was really good.

Butternut Squash Soup

The other day I remembered the shelf full of squash that is out in the garage and decided we'd better start eating more squash so none of them end up wasted.  I've been wanting to try butternut squash soup for awhile, and since we didn't have any other ideas for Sunday dinner, butternut squash soup it was.

My Mister was skeptical, but once he tasted it, he was converted.  It wasn't quite as good as the carrot soup we had at The Farm in Park City, but it wasn't too far behind in taste.  I may try the recipe with less squash and more carrots sometime...

I used this recipe from AllRecipes.com with a few alterations based on what I had and the reviews which suggested adding some things to make it not-so-bland.  Not-bland soup seems like a good thing.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 medium carrot, chopped
• 2 medium potatoes, cubed
• 1 medium butternut squash - peeled, seeded, and cubed
• 1 (32 fluid ounce) container chicken stock
• 
  

Melt butter in soup pot.  Add chopped onion and celery (unless you're using dried onions and celery, in which case, you can just add them at the same time as all the other vegetables.  Also, my addition- add 1-2 cloves of garlic, minced.  Chop and peel carrot, potatoes, and squash (it would probably be easier to cook the squash first, but you have to cook the carrot and potatoes anyway, and peeling the squash with the potato peeler wasn't that bad).  Add chopped veggies to pot, cook on high stirring constantly until the veggies are browned slightly (I didn't cook mine that long- I waited until they started sticking to the pot, then decided to just go ahead and add the chicken stock- which in my case was chicken base and water).  The recipe says to add just enough broth to cover the veggies, but it took all of it for me- I guess my squash was bigger than "medium".  I also sprinkled a shake or two of curry powder.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer on low for 40 minutes.  (after 25-30 the veggies looked soft enough to me, so I didn't keep cooking them).  Next, you blend portions in the blender (or a stick blender would work, right in the pot) until it's all blended.  

Serve with salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, and crunch bread.   You could use vegetable broth if you want to make it vegetarian.  My kids actually ate it without complaining- too much.  I was surprised.  It turned out to be a very nice consistency and the curry wasn't overpowering- I didn't add much, but I could just taste a hint of it.  I like butternut squash when it's not covered in brown sugar (I like it sweet too, but this was a nice savory change).

Pasta with Roasted Butternut Squash and Sausage

Inspired by our recent trip up to Park City, and our dinner at The Farm, My Mister and I decided to branch out a bit from our regular meals, and try some new recipes using food from our garden.  (The Farm uses mostly local ingredients.)  I found the recipe at allrecipes.com and made a few changes based on what we had available and what sounded good.  It turned out really well, so we'll probably make this one again.  CP loved it and gobbled it up, A and J weren't fans of the squash, but ate it without too much coercing.  The squash and onion came from our garden.  See the link for the original recipe, below I've written it based on the changes we made.

2 TBSP Olive Oil

1 Butternut Squash cubed and peeled

1 Large Onion, chopped

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 box rotini pasta (14.5 oz)

1/2 lb hot italian sausage (we used buffalo, but pork or turkey would work well too)

1 TBSP flour

1/2 C milk

1 clove garlic, minced

2 TBSP balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a glass oven safe dish with the olive oil. Place the squash and onion in the pan, and season with salt and pepper. Roast 30 minutes, or until squash is tender. (Don't overcook the squash or it will be mushy, ours was perfect right at 30 minutes)

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Place pasta in the pot, cook for 8 minutes, until al dente, and drain.

 In a large skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage until evenly brown.  Mix in the flour and garlic. Transfer the cooked squash and onion to the skillet.  Pour in the milk.  Continue cooking until heated through and milk thickens slightly. Gently mix in the pasta. Transfer to a large bowl, and toss with balsamic vinegar to serve.

Top with Parmesan cheese.

Raspberries

When I was younger, I used to climb this doorway just like CP is doing in the picture (A taught him how).  I'd get to the top and my siblings would say, "RAAAASSSBERRRIIIIEEEESSSS".  If you've seen Thoroughly Modern Millie you'll know why that was funny enough to make me fall.  That's not what this post is really about, but that's how my brain works..

Thursday, some friends from my former neighborhood posted on facebook that they were getting a really great deal on cases of raspberries from their produce coop, I ordered three cases.  We ate a lot (it was nice to have enough that I could just let the boys eat away without feeling like the fruit scrooge), we gave some away, I froze a gallon bag full for use in smoothies, and made a batch of jam.  We debated making more jam, or freezing more, but thought we'd try something different. 

A couple of weeks ago I took the boys to the county fair, when we walked through the 4H building, I noticed there were several entries for canned raspberries.  I thought about some of the things we'd use frozen raspberries for- cooked for a topping on ice cream or cheese cake especially- and thought that would work with canned ones, minus the risk freezing seems to carry around here (we haven't had the greatest luck with freezers, combined with children who like to leave freezer doors slightly ajar for some reason).  Canned raspberries are beautiful.  I wish I had bought several more cases (assuming they taste okay in whatever I use them in- I don't plan on eating them plain).  

Ratatouille (AKA More Things to do with Zucchini)

My sister gave me an eggplant, and some unusual-type tomatoes, so I thought I'd try making ratatouille.  Turns out it's pretty similar to my italian summer stew.  I've just never added eggplant before, because I think it's disgusting, and don't ever buy/grow it.

Turns out it was pretty good.  The kids even sort of ate it.  Baby E LOVED it, and I had a hard time scooping it onto his tray fast enough.  I started out just giving him slices of zucchini, since he's had that before, but before too long, I was just scooping piles of everything and letting him have at it.

I sort of got my recipe from the Joy of Cooking and a recipe a friend posted on facebook awhile back, but I don't follow recipes very well, and also thought that instead of chopping the veggies, everything should be sliced thin like in the movie.

Ratatouille

Thinly slice onions, and sautee them in a pan with lots of olive oil and garlic until they're almost carmelized.  Remove from pan and set aside.  Layer thinly sliced eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes (tomatoes don't really slice thinly, but do what you can), and some of the onions, some chopped bell pepper (red would be pretty, I only had green anaheims, so I used those), and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Repeat until your pan is full or you've run out of veggies.  Top with a liberal splash of olive oil.  Cover and cook on very low heat for 20-30 minutes.  Add a little water if necessary- if things dry out, the bottom will burn...  Remove lid and simmer for 10 more minutes if there's a lot of liquid in it still.

I served mine over pasta (with parmesan cheese, of course), because I knew the kids wouldn't eat it as the only thing for dinner.  It worked out great.  The best thing is that a large portion of dinner came out of the garden right before I cooked it.

(I'm thinking I should relabel my blog, "things to do with zucchini".  We tend to eat it just about every night at this time of year...)

Remaking a College Standby

In college one of the "fancier" meals my roommates and I prepared was creamy chicken on rice.  With a side of green beans, and rhodes rolls.

I have several happy chickens that I cooked in the crock pot recently, that are or were waiting in the fridge to have the meat pulled off the bones, and this dinner sounded good.

The original dinner is made by cooking chicken breast in the george foreman grill, then smothering it in a can of cream of chicken soup, and putting the whole thing over white rice. Here's my grown-up version (I do sometimes use cream of whatever soup, but they're really terrible for you, and don't actually taste all that great, so I try to avoid them).

4 TBSP Butter
4 TBSP Flour
2 TBSP Chicken Base (I like this better than bouillon, I get mine at costco)
4 C milk
2 cloves Garlic, minced
2 C shredded chicken
Rice

Melt 4 TBSP of butter in pan, add 2 TBSP of chicken base, Add flour until all the butter/base is absorbed (somewhere around 4 TBSP). Slowly whisk in 4 C of milk, a half cup or so at a time, stir over low heat until thickened. Add minced garlic to taste (I used one clove, but two would have been better). Add cooked chicken (about 2 cubs shredded, but adjust according to how much chicken your family likes) and heat over low until chicken is warm. Don't let it boil or the gravy will be lumpy.

Serve over rice, I used a mix of 2/3 brown rice and 1/3 wild rice mix. Serve with a vegetable (we had broccoli and peas, separately, because I had tiny amounts left in the freezer of both...). I had a little, then went to a meeting, then on a bike ride, and when I finally got home, it was all gone, so I guess everyone liked it. Next time I'd increase the recipe a bit for my family of 6 (even the baby ate it).

Another Vegetarian Dinner Recipe

Feminist Mormon Housewives has a post up announcing a presentation about meat and the word of wisdom at Utah Valley University (it's really hard for me to think of the school as UVU, not UVSC...) the comments following the post talk about whether Mormon's ought to eat meat or not, based off of various scriptures, some which say we shouldn't eat meat, except for times of winter and famine, and some say not at all, and some say we shouldn't tell other people not to eat meat.

I think regardless of which scripture you're going off of, it's probably pretty safe to say, that, as a whole, we members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (Elder Packer said we should use the whole name, but it really is easier to just type "mormon") eat way too much meat.  I like meat.  Every once in awhile a quality hamburger really sounds good, and every once in awhile i actually want a steak.  I'm also kind of a lazy cook, so making vegetarian meals is actually less work.  No killing and plucking the chicken first... (or defrosting the package of ground buffalo).  Whatever your view on the amounts of meat we should be eating, or your reasons for eating it, or not, a nice quick vegetarian dinner recipe is handy (plus it's good for your budget to skip the meat now and then).

my 9-year-old took this picture

Tonight's dinner was a variation of one of my summer stew recipes, but it turned out really good.

Saute a small, chopped onion, and one or two cloves of garlic, minced, in some olive oil.  Add sliced yellow squash, two cans of diced tomatoes, a couple shakes of dry oregano.  Cook over med. high heat.

Bring pot of water to boil, and add pasta (we had linguine).

While linguine is cooking, stir sauce, and add salt and pepper to taste.  As a last minute addition I threw in some pine nuts and a splash of balsamic vinegar.  OH MY, did that balsamic vinegar make a difference.  Yum.

Drain pasta, add sauce, and top with liberal amounts of parmesan cheese.  I think it would also be good with some red pepper flakes added to give it a little kick.  My kids are not so appreciative of the kick yet so we skipped that.

J and A reported that it was not terrible (they didn't want to taste it at first, because they thought it looked terrible), but not great either, just okay.  I thought it was so good, that even though I'm full, I'm salivating and thinking about having another plate.

how come my 9-year-old can take pictures that are clear, and then 1 minute later my picture, using the same camera is all blurry?

Using Kale

My produce coop included kale in the last basket, and after doing some googling on what to do with it, I decided to make a variation on my Moroccan summer stew.  It turned out really good.  The kids ate it okay, just minor complaining.  They're allowed to pick out one item from any stir-fry type meal which they don't like- but they do have to taste at least one of that item, in case they've started liking it since last time.  They all picked the green peppers not the kale, which surprised me.  

Blurry, but delicious.

(amounts depend on how many people you're feeding)

Saute onions and garlic in olive oil.

Add a liberal amount of cumin.

Add green peppers, and pine nuts, continue to saute.

Add chopped tomatoes, and drained garbanzo beans.

Turn down heat to low.

Prepare kale by rinsing well in a bowl of water, draining, then cutting the leaves off the stem, and chopping into smaller pieces.  Add kale to the saute pan, and a little water if it's dry.  At this point if you can't smell the cumin, add some more (I'm not sure it's possible to add too much cumin...).  Cover and allow kale to steam for 15-30 minutes (depending on how cooked you like it, and how tender the kale was to start with).  

Serve over quinoa, and salt to taste.  

Baked Ziti (or Penne, rather)

Dinner tonight was just something I kind of threw together, but I have to say, it was really tasty, so I thought I'd share...

Cook pasta, drain.

Brown ground beef, some garlic and a small chopped onion  (I cooked probably a pound or so, and put half in the fridge for another day)

Add 1 small can of tomato paste, and 1 regular sized can of chopped tomatoes (I used some that had italian seasoning in them already, so if you just use regular tomatoes, add a tsp or so of italian seasoning, or a combination of basil and oregano.  

In a separate bowl, combine 1 carton of cottage cheese, or ricotta cheese, some shredded mozzarella (Maybe 1 cup or so?), and half a cup or so of shredded parmesan, add 1 tsp salt.

Layer the pasta, meat sauce and cheese sauce in a casserole dish, add a little more cheese to the top and bake at 350 F until the cheese is melted (I like it a little crunchy around the edges).

Serve with salad or whatever.  :)  (the cherry tomatoes in the salad pictured are from the plant that we grew over the summer in a pot and now have inside.  It's mostly dead since I never water it, so I imagine these (very tiny) tomatoes will be the last we get from it.)

Fajitas

This month, I went to Costco and the grocery store and spent most of my grocery budget.  I actually went on October 27th or something.  Pretty bad to spend most of your November budget before the month even starts, but I've decided it won't be all that difficult to stick to my budget, even with Thanksgiving.  I made a month schedule for dinner every night (including leftover nights, although my Mister has been eating leftovers for lunch so often lately, that we may have to come up with alternatives to leftover night...), based off of things I have in the pantry or freezer.  We also have some tomato plants growing in the greenhouse, which yield a tomato here and there.

Tonight's dinner was one I wasn't sure about throwing together out of the pantry/fridge/freezer, but I haven't been to the grocery store since October 27th.  (I get milk delivered every week)

I partially defrosted a buffalo rump roast, sliced it, then cut each slice into strips (cut against the grain to make the meat more tender).

Once the meat is cut into small strips, place it in a pan and cook- I don't know if it was the fact that the meat was still partially frozen, but it ended up with a lot of liquid (not a lot of fat though- buffalo is very lean), leave the liquid because it makes the meat nice and juicy without having to add anything to it.  Once the meat is cooked, add onions and multi-colored peppers (I had bags of chopped peppers in the freezer- some from the garden and some leftover from a family party a couple of months ago).  Season with garlic, chili powder, and a little cumin.  Cover and turn on low to simmer until peppers and onions are cooked.

I served the fajitas on corn tortillas (I keep a package in the freezer, and take out however many I need and defrost them in the microwave) with sour cream, shredded cheese, salsa, spanish rice (my easy spanish rice is just rice cooked with some tomato sauce, chili powder, garlic and salt), olives, lettuce and tomatoes.  Avocados would have been nice, but they're not really a food storage sort of food.

These were really easy (aside from cutting up meat- I don't like handling raw meat, though having it partially frozen makes it a little less disgusting), and the kids even liked most everything (they didn't like the peppers, and would have complained about the onions, but didn't notice them).  Writing this post and looking at the picture is making me want more- they were really good.  Maybe I'll have leftovers for lunch tomorrow too...

Food Storage Alfredo (sounds yummy doesn't it?)

(This isn't really called food storage alfredo- I just happened to have everything to make it in my fridge or pantry.  The name sounds mormony and maybe a little disgusting though doesn't it?)

  Lacking inspiration for dinner several weeks ago, I scanned the list of frugal dinner ideas at my friend Jessica's blog.

Here's what I found:


Alfredo Sauce

Ingredients:

• 3 TBSP butter
• 1 1/2 -2 TBSP flour
• 2 cups whole milk (I used 1%)
• Half a block of cream cheese {cut into chunks. Low-fat varieties work just as well!}
• 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese {can use fresh or Kraft}
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder (I used minced garlic)
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions:
Melt butter in a saucepan on medium-low heat. Once melted, whisk in the flour. Gradually add milk, whisking to combine as you go. I generally add it about 1/2 cup at a time, whisk, then wait for the milk to heat up and thicken a bit before adding more.

Once all the milk has been added and it's hot {do not boil!} add the cream cheese. Whisk to combine. Heat the sauce back up before adding the Parmesan cheese. Simmer this until all is melted, and mixed well. Add salt, garlic powder and pepper to taste. Serve over noodles, with chicken, in a pizza, or however you like it! Tips: I normally double this recipe, so that I can use the whole block of cream cheese. I freeze about a cup in small containers, for future dinners. I love this sauce and use it in a variety of ways, however my favorite is in the pasta dish described below. It's so easy and versatile! If it's summer, add zucchini, cherry tomatoes and fresh basil. In the winter, I add eggplant, collard greens and frozen bell pepper. Really, I use whatever vegetables I can get inexpensively! I don't actually have a recipe for this, I just toss things in and call it good! 


I mixed the sauce with some green beans and tomatoes from the garden, and some frozen broccoli, and tossed that with the pasta.  A little sauce can go a long way, and makes for a light summer dinner.  Next time I'd put about 40 times the amount of vegetables in it that I used this time.  Other than that, It was a big hit!

Rice and Beans

The kids asked what we were having for dinner tonight, and for lack of a better name, I said, "rice and beans".  If I had used white rice, the entire meal could have been ready to eat in 20 minutes.  I used brown rice so it took a little longer.

In saucepan, saute onions and garlic in olive oil.  Add a can of chopped tomatoes (hopefully by next month, I'll be using fresh tomatoes), a can of kidney beans and a can of black beans.  I drained the beans, but left the liquid from the tomatoes in to make a sauce.

Add plenty of cumin, and a little salt.  Serve over rice.  Fast, easy, tasty dinner.
(The picture is my 8-year-old's second helping.  He gave the meal a 9 out of 10, claiming it lost a point because it had onions.)

June Updates

The week that school got out we planted a large crop of beans and corn and various melons at my parents' house, then we spent several days frantically trying to get the watering systems working so we could safely go on vacation.

We left around 10am in the morning for a long drive across Nevada and California, to reach our family cabin in the woods, a mile or so off the coast.  


Our first item of business once we arrived (after sleeping that is), was haircuts.  The boys had really gotten shaggy.  I love this picture of A.  He was constantly brushing hair out of his eyes.  We decided that summer buzz cuts would be great (although it was tempting to leave A's as shown in the picture).  :)


Once they were all buzzed and showered, they enjoyed some hot tub time with dad.   

One day of vacation we hiked to a waterfall.  Here we are by the "smiley face tree"

We ate lunch by the water fall.

We got up early one morning to go see the tide pools.  We also took our usual trip into the town for fresh seafood lunch, and shopping at the toy store and book store.  The boys spent a huge majority of the vacation working with grandpa building their tree house.  

We were very happy to see everything alive and growing well when we got home.  Here are the green beans.

The corn in the three sister's bed is three or four inches tall now, and we planted the vining beans as well as the squash, so hopefully those things come up soon.  This picture is a good one of our new watering system that my Mister worked so hard to get operational before our vacation.  He used a length of hose to connect the tap to the pvc pipe.  He drilled holes in the pipe to correspond with the locations of the plants.  Nothing is glued together, so we can take it apart for winter storage and use it again next summer.

This section of the garden was also going to have the pvc pipe system, but we ran out of pvc pipe.  Rather than go buy more, we made due with what we had, which was a length of old hose (the one we had been cutting up to attach the pvc pipe system to the faucets in the other raised beds).  He again, drilled holes in the hose to correspond with each plant.  It will be interesting to see how it holds up compared to the pvc pipe.

After planting the beans in the three sisters bed, we realized that our experiment wasn't going to yield us very many beans, so my Mister constructed this lovely trellis for more beans to grow up.  We had a small section of raised bed with nothing growing in it, so it worked out well.

One morning I decided to break down and do some pruning.  I have a hard time cutting healthy growth off of plants, but driving through all the vineyards in northern CA, I convinced myself that it needed to be done.  I thinned out the grape vines so that there is one or two vines going to the lower wire, and one or two that we will continue to let grow so it can reach the top wire.  It looks much better now.

The strawberries that I transplanted several weeks ago have perked up, and have started to send out new runners.  By next year there ought to be another nicely established strawberry patch here.  This picture also shows one of the other irrigation types we have.  This one uses funny pipe and sprayers that direct the water exactly where you want them.  A little more pricy than our other types, but really nice to use.

We've been researching flowers to plant to attract beneficial insects and deter harmful insects.  We'd also like to attract hummingbirds.  We planted alyssum, marigolds, salvia, nasturtiums, and a couple others I can't remember now.   Most are spaced around the yard, but the extras were all planted under the hummingbird feeder.  I haven't seen any yet, but I have seen a couple of big fat bumble bees.  Usually we just see wasps, so I was excited to see more useful things.

At the nursery, while we were looking for flowers, I saw the basil, and instantly though of one of my late summer meals where we're trying to use up the prolific zucchini.  It's zucchini, tomatoes and onions sauteed in olive oil with garlic and oregano.  Fresh basil will be a really nice addition.  

We've also been trying to maintain an organized schedule this summer.  The kids have a list of jobs and homework that they have to do every day before they can play.  J's homework mostly involves practicing his multiplication tables, and A's is anything from the 1st grade section of the ABCya website.  The fourth and fifth grade sections have some fun games that J has been playing around with.  Hopefully they help him with his typing skills a little too.

Finally, at church yesterday, one of the nursery leaders came and got me out of relief society and said that CP needed help going to the bathroom.  I was confused and said, "you mean he needs his diaper changed?"  She restated, that no, he needs help getting his pants off.  I said, "do you mean A needs help?"  She must have been getting frustrated with me, because she said, "no, CP, the one with the red hair."  I was really confused, because CP isn't potty trained.  

I got to the nursery and took CP into the mini bathroom (the nursery room has it's own bathroom with a tiny sized sink and toilet.  CP wanted to use the little toilet.  I took his diaper off, which was only a little wet, and sat him on the toilet.  He went!  Then we put his slightly wet diaper back on him (the diaper bag was with dad) and washed his hands.  I'm guessing he saw the little potty, and saw other kids going into the bathroom and decided he wanted to also.  So, figuring that this week is better than any other weeks this summer, we're potty training.  He's had two minor accidents, and lots of good trips to the toilet.  I just wish we had a mini potty at home.  He's loving his big boy underpants though!

Also, as long as I'm giving updates, today CP said to me, "mom, when you do your email, it makes me irritated".  hehehe...

Unusual Baking Techniques for Desserts

Yesterday as we were cooking dinner, (wild rice, chicken on the grill, and broccoli) we started thinking that we'd like something for dessert.  I suggested a cake with coolwhip topping since we have kind of a lot of coolwhip right now.  The only problem was that turning on the oven didn't sound like fun.  I started looking around online and came across this website that had instructions for baking cakes in your bbq grill.  We actually made apple-strawberry crisp.  The picture is a little blurry, but it was delicious.

Prepare Your Barbeque and Cake

1. Light the BBQ and allow it to preheat.
2. Prepare the cake batter from a mix or follow your favorite recipe.
3. Grease and flour the cake pans.
4. Pour the cake batter into the pans.

To BBQ Cake with Indirect Heat

If you have three elements on your BBQ, you can use indirect heat.

1. Turn the two outside elements to low and turn the center element off.
2. Place the cake pans on the center grill above the element that is turned off.
3. Close the BBQ lid and allow the cake to cook for 20-25 minutes. Avoid opening the lid to check the cakes during this time so the heat stays inside and creates an oven effect.
4. Check the cakes. They are done when they feel springy to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. If they are not done after the initial time has passed, close the lid and continue cooking for 5 more minutes and check again.
5. When they are cooked, remove the cakes from the BBQ and place on a cooling rack.

To BBQ Cake with Direct Heat

If you have two or fewer elements, you can use direct heat.Turn all the elements to low.

1. Place an empty pan upside down on the grill above the element
2. Put the batter-filled pan on top of it. The extra pan adds a little more distance from the heat and helps to keep the cake bottom from burning.
3. Close the BBQ lid and allow the cake to cook for 20-25 minutes. Avoid opening the lid to check the cakes during this time so the heat stays inside and creates an oven effect.Note: When cooking on direct heat, the cake cooks a little faster.
4. Check the cakes. They are done when they feel springy to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. If they are not done after the initial time has passed, close the lid and continue cooking for 5 more minutes and check again.
5. When they are cooked, remove the cakes from the BBQ and place on a cooling rack.

When the cakes are cool enough to touch, remove them from the pans, If desired, cool cake completely and spread with icing or serve them warm with ice cream. Enjoy!