Frugal, Semi-Healthy, Toddlerific Lunch

Sometimes (ok, often) we have mac'n'cheese for lunch on the weekends.  Yes, we're all apparently under the age of 5 in our house!

In order to lessen the guilt, and stretch one box to feed 3 people, I've begun preparing it this way:

1 box mac'n'cheese (we get organic from WF or Trader Joe's)
2 cups frozen organic foursome veggies from Trader Joe's (beans, corn, carrots, peas)

When the water boils, dump in the frozen veg and let the water heat back up.  Add in the pasta and cook until it's done.  Drain and add butter, milk, and cheese powder.  Divvy up and devour!

It's pretty good.  T.J. said it's "not his preferred method", but Joseph eats it up like no one's business!  And there is plenty for the three of us at this point for a lunch.

Total cost: about $3 - and it's all organic!

Beans and Rice, Rice and Beans

Have you ever tried to cook a bag of dried beans? Did you succeed? Me neither - UNTIL TODAY!

Since I'm so excited about this, and I know that those who've tried and failed in the past are dying to know, let me share my secret:

1) Overnight soak
2) 7 hours in the crockpot on low
3) 2 hours in the crockpot on high

I'm sure there are a thousand combinations that would make this work. When I checked my beans after 7 hours on low, they were still hard and I figured it was another FAIL. I cranked it to high before going to the park in desperation, but stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home and bought canned beans because I thought it was futile. It worked, though! Amazing.

I know - those of you who have not spent half of their lifetime trying to decode this riddle are thinking "Jen, just go get a freaking can of beans". Let me tell you why you should cook them from dried, though:

1) It's cheap - a bag of beans cost $1 and makes almost 4 cans of beans. Try to beat $0.25/can.
2) It's better for you - unless you are buying a few special brands of beans, your cans are coming with a side of BPA. Garden of Eatin' and Trader Joe's are two of a few that sell bpa free cans of beans, but it'll cost you. Only $1.20/can at TJ's, but over $2 for GoE!
3) It's better for the environment - a one pound bag of dried beans equals four cans. Each can ways 14.5oz. So you are trucking almost 4 times the weight around with cans for the same amount of food.
4) It's FASTER - really - it took me about 30 seconds to fill up the bowl with water last night. Another 30 seconds to drain and refill this morning. 15 seconds to taste test at 4pm, but it took me a half an hour to pit stop at the grocery store on the way home to get the cans. And now I have the equivalent of 4 cans to put up for later. Sweet.

By the way, we made vegetarian tacos tonight for dinner. It's our meatless meal of the week. I'm hoping that by the end of the year we'll be up to eating 2 or 3 vegetarian dinners per week. That'll keep room in the budget for Niman Ranch bacon. If you've never had it, go forth, and feel free to lick your fingers when you are done.

Eating Safe

I was going to title this post "Eating Healthy", but before that can even be addressed, you have to consider if you can even eat safely in the U.S. There are so many pesticides, herbicides, diseases in CAFO animals, etc... that it's hard to even make heads and tales of what you should and shouldn't eat.

One of my favorite not-for-profit organizations, the Environmental Working Group, has done great work in making it easier to keep your family healthy with their Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen food lists

But my latest obsession is reducing the amount of BPA in our bodies (probably an impossible task). Canned goods, glass jarred goods (the lids), waxy paper used for food wrapping, checkout reciepts, etc... can all contain BPA. I've been avoiding cans lately, but that is frankly causing me to eat LESS healthily, or give up entirely and go to Chick-Fil-A.

So I did a little research on BPA free cans the other night. Here are some brands that have BPA free canned goods:

1) Eden Organics - beans
2) Trader Joe's - beans, veggies, seafood
3) Vital Choice - tuna
4) Oregon's Choice - tuna
5) Wild Planet - tuna
6) Eco Fish - tuna
7) Edward & Sons - fruits, veggies, coconut milk

Notice that tomatoes aren't listed for any of these companies. So sad. And even if you can your own, the lids are pretty much guaranteed to have BPA in the lining. So what can you do? There are plastic canning lids (but really, what do those have in them that we just don't know about?), or live with it, I guess. I went ahead and bought a couple of cans of tomatoes at Whole Foods the other day, and just gave a big sigh about it. :) At least they are organic, right?

Oh, and I want to report that I'm pretty sure that the giant can of tomatoes I bought at Costco appeared to be unlined of any plastic coating! If that Italian company can do it, why can't the U.S. companies?

Frugal Gourmet Pasta Sauce

I came across this recipe a year or two ago, but figured that it was out of my price range. I thought San Marzano tomatoes were $5/can, but I guess I was wrong! I saw them at Publix for $2.50 the other day, and I picked up a #10 can of them at Costco last week for $3.59!

So, I'm planning to cook this pasta sauce soon - I scaled it up for my giant can. The link above has a normal size if you need it

San Marzano Pasta Sauce

1 #10 can (6lb, 10oz) of San Marzano tomatoes
2 sticks + 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 yellow onions, peeled and cut in half

Throw it all in a pot and simmer for 45 minutes. That's it. (!)

In total, this makes about 3.5 jars of pasta sauce. It cost me about $5. Not bad! Of course, this is a non-organic sauce made from BPA laden canned tomatoes, so I'm not sure I'll go this route on a regular basis, but I wanted to give the recipe a try since it got such rave reviews. I will update when I have a result!

Oh Martha!

Oh Martha, watch out. I'm on my way to becoming you (hopefully without the stay in jail... though it'd give me lots of time to knit).

Yesterday I made melted snowman cookies for my mom's group cookie exchange. They turned out so great! I am not all that excited to eat them, as they are just sugar cookies with marshmallow and royal icing, but they are AWFULLY cute.




Basic idea:
1) bake sugar cookies
2) top (sloppily) with royal icing
3) soften marshmallow in microwave and plop them on cookie
4) decorate with colored icing
5) try not to crunch them all on delivery.

Beef Stew

If you're looking for a yummy fall meal, look no further! I made beef stew (based on my dad's "recipe" for venison stew) and it turned out AWESOME

Jen's Beef Stew-pendous!

1 lb stew meat
1/2c flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp thyme
1/2c canola oil
1/2c dry red wine (cabernet sauvignon)
32 oz beef broth
3 carrots, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 lb mushrooms
5 russet potatoes
2 roma tomatoes, peeled and diced
2 bay leaves

Heat oil in a big heavy pot over med/high heat. Combine flour, salt, pepper, and thyme in shallow dish. Dredge meat and put in hot oil. Sprinkle any additional flour in on top of the meat when you are finished dredging (helps build the rue). Brown meat on all sides, remove with a slotted spoon.

Deglaze the pot with the wine. Cook for about 30 seconds and add the beef broth. Add all the veggies, the bay leaves, and the beef into the pot, and bring to a simmer for 1 hour. If you are rushed for time, just cook till your potatoes are done. But it'll be better if you simmer longer.

Serve with some Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day!

2,158

2,158 is the number of calories in the organic vanilla ice cream I made today. And 158 grams of fat.

It supposedly makes 5 cups, and serves 8.

We'll see. Ha!

Here's the recipe I used (modified from this Williams Sonoma recipe:

3c heavy cream
3/4c sugar
6 egg yolks
1.5 tsp vanilla

Heat cream until just before a simmer. Meanwhile, mix egg yolks and sugar until lightened. When cream is hot, temper by slowly pouring cream into sugar and yolk mixture while beating quickly. When about 1/2 is in there, pour the whole thing back into the pot. Reheat while constantly stirring until it coats the back of a spoon - about 5 minutes. Chill 3 hours. Pour into running ice cream machine and churn for 30 minutes. Try not to eat too much while you are putting it into a freezer safe container. Wait one hour. Consume.

Little Apartment in the City

The other day, I channeled my inner pioneer. In the morning, I hosted a bread making playdate, and taught 9 of my mom friends how to make bread the easy way (google "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes per Day" if you are interested). I made the equivalent of 9 batches of dough the night before (which took 25 minutes to make - I said it was easy!) and spent the morning before they arrived baking. We had 2 loaves of wheat, 2 boules of white, a coronne of white, a loaf of french bread, and 2 focaccia. I sent the last piece of dough home with a friend to make a pizza.

Nom nom nom

Cole was stoked that he got to take the pizza dough home!

That evening, I started peeling apples. Peel, peel, peel. Chop, chop, chop. I ended up with my 8 quart stock pot completely full of apples! Cook, cook, cooked it down, and blended it with my stick blender. Then I used my new hot water bath to can them! I ended up with a little over 4 quarts of applesauce. It was a little time consuming because of all of the steps, but the actual prep time wasn't much - maybe 25 minutes of peeling and chopping. The whole process took me a couple of hours. Next time I won't use an entire tablespoon of cinnamon, though - apparently 1T for a gallon of applesauce is a bit much. Still tasty, though! T.J. and Joseph are already digging in!

First 4 jars - all of them sealed!

I finished out the evening by continuing work on my knitting - Joseph's stocking... Gotta get that done so we can decorate the new house! Closing is 2 weeks and a day away!

click-click-click

It was a fun mix of old world turned new world activities. Joseph had a great time playing with his buddies, too!

Joseph was doing laps babbling and laughing - it was uber cute.

The Incredible Pastured Egg

I'd been hunting for pastured (wanders in a pasture, not pasteurized) eggs for some time, and upped my search efforts after watching Food, Inc. I found them at Whole Foods, but at $6/doz, I was ready to give them up before paying that price!

Enter the wonderful Nature's Harmony Farms. I may have posted about them in the past, as we get our free range ground beef from them (and I got a stewing chicken). I also got pastured eggs from them for $4/doz!
Since I've been doing a lot of baking, I've really been going through eggs. I picked up a dozen of organic "free range" eggs from Trader Joe's to help round me out until I can get more eggs from the farmer's market. While making pudding the other day, I used 3 of the pastured, and one organic egg.

Can you tell which is which?


So what? You say?

At first, googling I found a story that made it seem like there was no real difference, but all you had to was click on a link in THAT article to get the real info.

From Mother Earth News (who lists several studies as well as their own), pastured eggs have:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

Huh.

I might go buy a package of regular conventional eggs and try to compare all three. I think it'd be interesting.

Blueberry Picking, Part 1

Last week Joseph and I went blueberry picking at DJ's U-Pick Blueberry Farm. They were super friendly, had cute goats to feed, and lots of organic berries to pick! I managed to get a whole gallon before we both melted in the hot Georgia sun.

The reward: pie, scones, muffins, more muffins, and bread with blueberries, plus as much as you could want to eat fresh!

We head back tomorrow for a second attempt. I'm planning to freeze most of those for future eating endeavors. Maybe I'll make a cobbler or blueberry sauce to go over my homemade organic vanilla ice cream (yum!)

Checking each other out

Blueberry? What blueberry? I didn't see any blueberry here...

The herd closes in

Num num num

High-Cal Food Chronicles: Ice Cream (Mommy Edition)

I'd been searching for an ice cream recipe to make at home - regular ice cream has so much junk in it, and the organic stuff is $6/container! My friend Kat tipped me off to this ice cream recipe - it requires no machine! Since I'd been to the farmer's market and picked up heavy cream, it seemed the perfect time to try it out.

Yields: 1 quart
Ingredients:
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1/4 cup of sour cream
1 1/4 cups of heavy cream

Mix condensed milk, vanilla, salt and sour cream until well combined. To it add…

for CHOCOLATE variation: add 5-6 tablespoons {or more to your liking} of chocolate syrup

Mix your heavy whipping cream on high {it would love a cold bowl and cold whisk too} until stiff peeks form {3 or so minutes}. Whisk some of the whipped cream into the condensed milk mixture until incorporated and then gently fold the rest of the whipped cream in. Place in an airtight container and freeze 6 hours before serving!

The results:
I added the chocolate sauce, but it was too sweet for us. I think coco powder would be a better alternative. The mouth-feel is a bit icy due to not using a machine, and I think I could have whipped the cream a little bit more stiffly, but frankly, it's delicious! A great way to control what you are eating... if you can control yourself from eating it all!

I did buy a can of sweetened condensed milk before finding this recipe to make your own... a little bit of work, but worth it to skip the BPA laden canned stuff.

Pot Pie!

I'm so excited... I made a pot pie today and it tastes awesome - even the crust! I have always pretty much failed at pie crust. This one uses shortening, which doesn't thrill me, but I'll try again w/ butter next time.

Jen's "Get in the Kitchen and Make Me a Pot Pie!" (modified from this recipe)

1 bag frozen mixed veggies (carrots, corn, green beans, and peas)
1 pound chicken breasts
5T + 1 tsp butter
4oz pearl onions (note - I just used the leftover from making coq au vin this week... regular onion would be fine)
1/3c flour
1/2t salt
1/4t pepper
1/4t celery seed
1 3/4c chicken stock
3/4c whole milk
2 - 9" pie crusts

Poach chicken for 10 minutes in salted water. Add the frozen veggies, bring back to a boil, and cook 6-8min more. Remove chicken and shred with a fork. Drain veggies in colander.

Melt butter in skillet and add pearl onions. Cook about 10 minutes on medium heat with salt and pepper. Add in the flour and celery seed and stir for 2 minutes until brown and bubbly. Add in the stock and milk and cook until thickened. Remove from heat.

Make your pie crusts (I used a recipe from my BH&G cookbook, it was 1 1/4c flour, 1/4t salt, cut in 1/3c shortening, and in 4-5T water one at a time, form ball, pat into disk, roll to 12") and put one in the pie pan. Add the chicken and veggies, put the onion and gravy mixture on top. Top with second pie crust. Crimp, trim, and vent the top. Bake at 425 for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Spice Patty Cakes

For Joseph's birthday, I wanted to make a more "baby friendly" cake that was low in sugar. None of the recipes I found sounded very appetizing, and I used to make a great pumpkin spice muffin with a boxed spice cake mix and can of pumpkin, so I thought I'd try to duplicate a scratch recipe for that. It still doesn't get as light and puffy as box mix, but it tastes pretty good!

Jen's Pumpkin Spice Patty Cakes

3/4c butter
1/2c sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2c applesauce
15oz can pumpkin
1.5T pumpkin pie spice
2c all purpose flour
1t baking soda
3/4t baking powder
1/2t salt

Combine flour, spice, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Beat butter for 30 second on high. Add sugar slowly, beat for 3-4 min. Scrape down the bowl, and beat 2 more minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and applesauce and mix together. Alternate adding pumpkin and flour mixture while mixing on low. When it comes together, beat 20 more seconds. Pour batter into cupcake cups, filling almost all the way to the top. Bake at 350 for about 20 min. Makes 18 cupcakes.

Ice with a cream cheese frosting - beat 8 oz of softened cream cheese until smooth. Add powdered sugar slowly until you get the right texture. Add a tsp of vanilla and mix in. I think I used about 4c of sugar. Normal recipes call for 6 or so.

Meat and Potatoes

Yesterday in the middle of my baking frenzy for mom's group March Babies Birthday Party (more on that later) I realized that

1) I had a whole organic chicken in the fridge that needed to be cooked. At $12.50 a pop, we don't let that go bad!
2) I needed to make dinner for Joseph and myself without using up the oven.

So I went on a search for something to do with this chicken that wouldn't mess up my baking. Voila! Crockpot Rotisserie Chicken. I modified a little:

1) Rinsed chicken and pat it dry with a towel
2) Season liberally w/ Lawry's
3) Fill cavity with diced onion (about 1/2 medium onion)
4) Wrapped 4 small peeled Yukon Gold potatoes in aluminum foil (had them left over from making soup)
5) Put potatoes in, and put the chicken BREAST SIDE down (let gravity help keep the breast moist)

I cooked it on low for 5 hours. It was so freaking good! Joseph even ate some chicken and potato! Score!

Perhaps the best part of the whole thing was the drippings. After I deboned the chicken and put the rest of the potatoes away, I saw all that juicy goodness at the bottom of the crock. So I poured it right into my gravy separator and stuck it in the fridge. Today I had some yummy, gelatinous stock. It's so good (I think because of the Lawry's salt). I took the fat off and added some to potatoes for Joseph's dinner tonight, and also to his chicken to give it some more flavor and moisture. He ate all of both things! Maybe he's a meat and potato kind of guy, after all. Dessert for him was homemade apple sauce with cinnamon.

I'm planning to make a chicken pot pie with some of the leftovers, and maybe some enchiladas. The bones are in the freezer waiting for another day to make a real batch of stock.

Seat of My Pants Potato Soup

I had a bunch of potatoes and veggies to use up, so I thought I'd make a soup. I get bored looking at recipes for soup though, so I just started chopping and cooking. It was pretty yummy.

1T olive oil
1 small onion, diced, small
1c diced carrot, diced small
3 stalks of celery, diced small
1tsp salt
8 or so small yukon gold potatoes, diced small
2-3c stock (I used turkey)
4T butter
4T flour
1c milk

Saute the onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil for about 10min with the salt, until soft. Add the stock and the potatoes. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a fry pan. Add the flour and whisk for 2-3 minutes, until it starts turning a golden brown. Add the milk slowly, whisking all the time. Cook for a minute or two until thickened. Add to the veggies and broth and whisk together. Cook for about 15-20 minutes, or until the potatoes aren't hard anymore. Be careful not to boil it.

While my stock is super flavorful (thanks, Ina!) the soup was missing something - fresh herbs, I think. Dill or maybe parsley would be a great addition, but I didn't have them on hand. Topping with cheese and/or bacon is encouraged.

Joseph and I both enjoyed this for dinner last night!