Adventures in Eating -- Cooking from the Pantry

Jumping to the present time, for a moment, since it only takes me approximately 5 minutes to forget whatever it was we just did, I want to talk about something small that I'm doing right now that is making a bigger impact than I expected on my kitchen attitude.

Simply, I've put my mind and energy to really using what is in my (fairly extensive and eclectically-, if not well-stocked,) pantry. You see, I had just completely lost my motivation to cook or do anything in the kitchen; there was no creativity in it any more. I mean, I made up an 8-week rotation of menus, I would go buy the stuff, I would cook the stuff, we would eat the stuff. Good stuff, but really boring for the kitchen help.

Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to create something from "nothing". I guess it comes from growing up with little money and few toys. Once the creative spark is planted as a child, and, as a child, you make very pleasant and useful and pretty things from "nothing," -- found objects, cast-offs, what-have-you -- well, it is kind of a let down to be able to get whatever you want to make whatever you want. It feels spoiled and, frankly, boring.

I've always preferred scrappy quilts to designer quilts, just for this same reason -- the pleasant surprise of never knowing quite what you will find put together in it, but knowing that whatever it is, if a clever person put it together, the end result will be delightfully more than the sum of its parts.

Well, that is a very long way of saying that my cooking has gotten to be like a designer quilt, and my pantry has gotten to be like a hoard of scraps, leftover from my designer (not gourmet, lol) habits. It's a boring way to live, and it can turn out to be wasteful, too.

We aren't going to do that any more. It's time to find a use for the random tins of coconut milk and seaweed flakes, before they go bad. It is definitely time to not be so squeamish about the squash bugs and just get out there and pick the dang squash and then not let it turn into fruitfly food, but actually USE it (btw, I still do have a butternut squash in the pantry that we harvested LAST fall, will try to do something with it tomorrow!)

We celebrated Gater's birthday recently, and instead of going out and buying gourmet goodies, I used what we had. I only had to purchase sandwich meat and cheese, lettuce, and bread for sandwiches. And a bit of generic pop. The rest -- homemade baked beans, potato salad, 3-bean salad, homemade cherry pie, the birthday cake, and the other assorted goodies, were assembled within a couple of days, from pantry and fridge goodies. I used up ALLLL of some veggies that normally get discarded before they are completely gone...celery, for example (embarrassing, but true. I'm sorry.) It's not that I don't know what to do with the stuff, it is just that using it all up doesn't fall as conveniently into the schedule as I would like it to.

Anyway, (and it is very late and I fear I am rambling), we had leftover birthday cake (will do a birthday post soon) last night, and this was the verdict from Wannie:

At Gater's party, the first time we had the cake, I had to pry the empty plate out of Wannie's cold dead hands. Not literally, but that was definitely the message she was giving. Oh my.

The cake was a Pig-Pickin Cake, deliciously fresh-tasting and moist, and made with pantry/freezer ingredients.

Well, as though two birthday cakes and a cherry pie were not enough dessert-y goodness for one week, today I went cleaning out the fridge in preparation for (rather random) grocery shopping tonight. I located 2 elderly packages of cream cheese and a just-out-of-date tub of sour cream -- and I had just processed a whole bunch of opened-but-not-finished packs of graham crackers into crumbs. And I had this leftover apple caramel dip that I had made for the party, plus some leftover pineapple and some leftover cherry filling from the pie...so naturally I had to make this:

Caramel-swirl cheesecake

and a half-dozen plain mini-cheesecakes to top with that leftover cherry filling and pineapple.

Oh, sooooo bad, but honest, I had to do it. Those ingredients had to be used up. It's the right thing to do.

A Gift for a Friend

Remember this post?

Well, our dear friend has been faithfully delivering Panera bread and bagels as often as she has them -- usually, weekly.

I have thanked her, but wanted to do something a (very little) bit special for her, since it's Mothers' Day coming up and she has always been an example of a mothering, gentle heart, to me.

She was the first person I ever knew personally who homeschooled, braided rag rugs, made tortillas from scratch, home birthed, belonged to a food co-op....
in short, she was a whole new breed of woman to me as a young wife and new mother.

She nurtured me and was always available to help me out when I needed it. If I was sad, or hurt, her eyes would fill with tears.

Her advice and help was in action, not words.

And it still is, now, about 13 years and a lot of life-changes later.

Thankyou, M, and Happy Mothers Day!

(oh -- in the crocheted box: two crocheted dishcloths; a box of Celestial Seasonings Fruit Sampler tea; a bottle of Mrs Meyers Geranium-scented Dish Soap (smells wonderful!), and space for a jar of freshly-made, still-warm lemon curd.)

Tea for Two (cents)

I was attempting to get a week's worth of groceries, including paper products and cleaners, for $75 tonight. I am very well stocked up at the moment, so I have to use some of the things I have already bought. So, it will take some time to work out how much it actually costs to feed us all.

All that to say:

Now I really *need* to experiment with store brands. I usually buy store brand "everything" but I almost always buy Lipton tea. If you have been reading this blog for long, or if you know me IRL, you know I have a love affair with tea. I'm not too picky, I like most tea; but of all the teas I've tasted in my life (and there have been a LOT,) Lipton suits me best.

However.

Lipton costs around $4.50 a box, which is 8oz, or 100 tea bags. (It is about $4/lb for loose tea which you would put in a teapot, but that's not always time efficient.) We go through about a box per week. Yes, that would be 100 tea bags every week, so for Lipton, it costs about $230/year.

The store brand tea at Aldi is $1.69 / box, and the Value brand at Kroger is $1.49 / box (8oz, 100 tea bags.)

I was buying Aldi brand, because most of their products are, IMO, good value for the cost, in terms of quality and flavor.

Their tea, though...well, it's sort of gamey. It tastes like it has a good bit of Darjeeling in it, with its pungent, green-ish flavor. It doesn't really taste at all like Lipton.

So tonight, I bought a little ol' box of Value brand from Kroger, the cheapest on the rack. No tags. Gotta dig the soggy little teabags out of the cup with a spoon. That's fine though -- less waste, less cost. Both good things.

The flavor was surprisingly good! None of that Darjeeling gamey flavor -- it's not the quality of Lipton, but it was quite good. Really.

So...my first post of "Better Than" goes to Kroger Value tea bags, for being better than Aldi in flavor and cost. And it is definitely a good enough flavor to keep me happy while saving more than $150 per year. :-)

I can get a lot of yarn for that much money.

Tongue Tied

Hi all!

So, this is a pic of me at 23 wks pregnant. I like this pic because it makes me look skinnier than I really am.

Spring is continuing to spring on us, and here are a few pics of Baby's Day Out.
Daddy and Joman have been tending to the square foot gardens -- one is planted now, and the other is still waiting until a little later in the season. We sure have a LOT of bunnies around, and no fencing yet...so we'll see what happens.

This spot I am claiming as my own. I'd like to pull up the edging, rototill the whole area between the path and the wall, pave a little area towards the middle, plop a lovely bench there, and lavishly plant up the whole area with a bright mix of perennials and herbs. The "wall" is actually a huge planter box. I think we will get some big pots of plants that will climb and/or spill over that wall, only they will need to be shade-lovers so any suggestions for this whole project are welcome. I haven't even started yet but I'll update when I do. What do you think?
And here's a project I haven't shared with you yet. I found a tutorial online showing how to fuse plastic grocery bags, by ironing them, into a thicker yet pliable plastic material that can be stitched. So I delved into our overflowing stash of grocery bags, processed them, and came up with these not-so-pretty but very satisfying totes. I was going to make cloth ones, but you can't beat free. I'll make cloth ones as these wear out, if ever they do, and if ever I get to the bottom of the huge pile of grocery bags.
Baby has a new trick. He thinks springy-dirty-outside-toes are delish.Love you all, and so glad you are here.

Made This Today

I needed a peg bag, so I found some scraps and that's what I made.


I love spring, don't you?

Hmmmm....

Fun Shopping

Fun shopping at the thrift store last night. In 20 minutes, I found FIVE wool sweaters in pretty colors for felting; a scalloped pillow sham that matches our bedspread; two wooden toy doll chairs for Miss Rose; a beautiful vase bowl; a picture frame with a double oval mat to be used for a scherenschnitte piece; a strawberry cushion made from felted wool; two heavy brass bookends; and a large cherry-red basket to hold our fresh fruit.

Organizing

I'm still finding myself feeling like a fish-out-of-water when it comes to the planning and organization of my household. It's funny, that IRL I tend to not follow the plans that I make, and that's okay, but if I don't have a plan to (not) follow, then I'm lost. Sometimes I feel like I must have ADD. (and yes, I could use a little "H" in there, but unfortunately for me, it's a bit more ADLD -- attention deficit lethargic disorder) .

I chucked my old menu plan that we used in Australia. I had a 4-week rotating meal plan which worked fairly well, as I made the plan using the basic cheap ingredients which don't tend to go on fantastic sales, but were always cheap regardless. I carefully thought out how to cook some of the ingredients in bulk, then using the parts (eg chicken meat, broth, cooked vegetables from boiling a chicken) during the week or freezing for use in the next weeks' recipes, so that nothing (time nor ingredients) was wasted. I liked it -- I always knew what we were having; grocery shopping was easy; my fridge wasn't full of ingredients waiting to be cooked who-knows-when, (I hate having a cluttered fridge, LOL). It worked for me.

You know what is screwing me up here in the US? The sales. Too many choices. The fact that so many unhealthy ingredients are either extremely cheap, or extremely (and frequently) discounted. Hot dogs. Bologna. Cheapo tinned biscuits (scones). Cookies and those scrummy little cheese crackers (Cheesits?)

Now I have a conflict. Is my priority to save money, or to eat well? It was never a conflict in Australia, where the two went hand-in-hand. There, the unhealthy/processed food is still considered a "treat" and is priced accordingly. Here, well, heck -- the "food" manufacturers seem to do their level best to convey that their chemical conglomerations are, in fact, food -- but priced according to their true non-food status--i.e., cheap.

Okay, and I have to admit, that I am a sugar-fat-a-choc-a-holic, and I'm also lazy, which means that some of that junk appeals to both my tastebuds and my innate work ethic. Hmmmm. Cheap, tasty, easy. Tasty, easy, cheap. Now, you see, my brain is confused.

Now, to add to the confusion: the sale cycle.

I don't get it yet. In Australia, the "sales" aren't worth much, to be honest. Usually when something was on "sale," you're talking a difference of maybe 20 cents. Not enough to really make a heck of a lot of difference. And the sales were EXTREMELY predictable. You would know that the chicken would go on sale every other week, and the ground beef would be on sale at "x" shop if not at "y" shop, and the sale prices would not be extremely variable from store to store. AND, whatever was on sale would be advertised. Very simple, very easy.

Here -- whoa -- Kroger has these 10 /$10.00 sales, which they do not advertise -- I've been trying to plan using their store flyers, only to go to the store to find that they have actually discounted MUCH more than they had advertised. It makes preplanning extremely difficult. It also makes impulse buying extremely easy. So I might stock up on something that is 10/$10.00, which leads to mental and physical clutter, which I can't deal with. Or I have to go and re-arrange my menus again, which wastes time and energy. Or I say, screw it, let's go out to eat, which is what I've been doing.

I think I need to go back to Deb's adapted Hillbilly Housewife plan. Deb is amazing, did you know? LOL.

Anyway, the jist of it is that there are only certain ingredients that are purchased -- flour, oats, sugar, milk, peanut butter, cheese, fresh fruit and vegetables, beans and legumes, rice, tinned tomatoes, ketchup and condiments, eggs, and cheap cuts of meat (although Deb is vegetarian for the most part, so not for her). When items on this small list go on sale, they are purchased in bulk. Deb would not get confused by all these 10/$10.00 sales; she doesn't buy that stuff, so it's not a problem. She doesn't get the mental clutter of having "unusual" ingredients (purchased at discount prices) sitting around waiting to have a recipe found to use them up. She eats healthfully.

Okay, I do believe I need to go back to that. Stop evaluating and re-evaluating all the other junk.

If you see a lady in the store, with eyes closed, fingers in ears, singing "lalalalala, can't hear you...can't see you....", heading straight for the peanut butter section, that will be me.

Oh, and by the way, it is extremely ticking me off that a 2lb bag of carrots is $1.49. Come on Kroger, you can do better than that.

I wonder if the tinned version is cheaper....


AAAAAAAAGH!!!

Now -- the quiz -- which of these items was most expensive? That's right, folks, the lovely mix in the crockpot -- carrots, celery, onion, and bacon, all of which I "processed" myself. Next in price was the lentils, purchased in the biggest bag I could find. (They went in the crockpot too.) The blueberry muffins are from an Aunt Martha mix, which I purchased for pennies, on sale with a double coupon. The flavor was "Blueberry Cheesecake" with real (?) little bits of artificially-cream-cheese flavored dough and artificially flavored artificial blueberries. Pretty, aren't they?

The garlic was free from my organically-proficient neighbor :-)

How do YOU stay trim and healthy?

Seriously, I do want to know. I cannot understand how anyone in this country (or at least this city) can possibly do it. There is a certain grocery store I go to, beginning with the letter "K." It is a fabulous grocery store. It is so big and bright and chock full of stuff. CHOCK FULL OF STUFF. Like 76 different varieties of Pop-Tarts; 4 or 5 aisles of potato chips, corn chips, soda; aisles of candy and sugar cereals; and in between those aisles are the ready-to-heat'n'eat meals; shake'n'bake this and stir'n'squirt that....

Wayyyyyyyyyy back in the back corner, alllllllll the way past the racks and racks of zombie food bread and donuts and cakes and pies and twinkies and Little Debbies, is the produce section. It's an okay produce section, it really is. They have a nice stock of regular and organic produce. It's just that it's so daggone hard to GET there with your eyes closed.

Meat. Oh, meat is another story. You can find the meat ALLLLLLL the way on the back wall of the store, past the rows and rows of assorted, previously mentioned artifically flavored, extra-processed, prodigiously-preserved and super-sugared stuff; but before you actually get to the meat which you might have to COOK, you must peruse the fridge-fulls of meat which you only need to HEAT. Hot dogs, polish sausage, ready-made breakfasts, pepperoni already sliced, patties and slices of this and that which are ALREADY COOKED AND IN THE BOX, waiting for you and your handy microwave.

The item that really scrambled my eggs was this: for the time-strapped homemaker who does not have time to boil eggs (or who doesn't know how):
Pre-boiled, pre-peeled eggs. Ready to serve!

No, wait: the item that really fried my bacon was: hotdogs ALREADY IN THE BUNS for those too busy to shove a dog in the (pre-sliced) bun themselves.


Oh no, wait....the item that really nuked my potpie was the "Crockpot Classics."

Watch Instructional How-To-Reheat-RTE-Food-In-Crockpot Video

Ahhh, and for the seriously time-crunched child, who just can't manage to down that bowl of SuperSugarCereal in time to catch the school bus, and NEEDS that sugar-high to jumpstart their school day, there are these:
Description: Straws are crunchy cereal shells with a delicious layer of flavored crème coating on the inside. "Dip ­ Sip ­ Munch" is the slogan for Kellogg's Cereal Straws. Dip the straws, Sip the milk and Munch the straws, available in two varieties ­ Fruit Loops and Cocoa Krispies.

Seriously, people, SERIOUSLY!!!!

Americans, why let yourselves be taken by all this garbage?

Who is buying this stuff? Why are the store aisles loaded with stuff that a)ought not be eaten by humanity and b)steals the money right out of your wallets? You're being robbed *twice*!

Oh, ugh. And the very worst part, the part that really fizzes my pop, is that if you actually wanted to buy, say, a loaf of bread that is actually made from actual whole wheat, and other items *you would use* if *you were baking it yourself*, well by golly, you can just pay three times as much. I have found it to be true of almost every item in the store: if you want it healthy and natural, you will pay for it.

Unless you learn to buy the ingredients you need to make your meals from scratch. Neither of which is hard. Both of which will save money, and probably your and your childrens' health.

Mommas, it's time to get gutsy. Learn how to cook, learn how to manage your time, shop thriftily, save your money, do your job at home feeding your children the foods they *ought* to be eating.

Stop making a market for the scammers who are trying to make a buck off of your babies.

Okay, jumping off soapbox.

Brass Tacks Cookies

Simply the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened (no substitutes)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1 scant tsp salt
3 cups flour
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

note: this recipe is so good it's the first one to be entered into my new journal!

Cream the butter and sugar; add eggs and beat in one at a time. Mix in the vanilla, the salt and the baking soda dissolved in the hot water.

Stir in the flour and chocolate chips.

Place generous spoonfuls onto an ungreased baking tray.

Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. The cookies should be very lightly browned and JUST set.

Try to stop at two.

A Slice of Life Today

Today we did some of this:

Blueberry and Cream Cereal and Brownies

And a LOT of this:

Laundry, of course!

The kids got all of their work done today:

Can't do this in a classroom!

Even Littles like to do school.

Went here:

Soccer Training

And the non-soccer players?

Love it when Bigs help Littles.

After Dinner, playtime!

Love it when Little plays with Littlest!

The babies love each other.

And after everyone is tucked in bed, Mamma makes a couple of these:

Crocheted cotton thread dishcloths and dishpad.

What's For Lunch?

Oh my. I've been thinking. A lot. About a lot. Mostly old thoughts that I'm cycling through again. Must be a sign that things are getting back to normal after the baby. One of the things I've been thinking a great deal about is the frugality of our lifestyle. Meaning, it's not frugal enough. I got pretty slack with the arrival of the new baby. He's still in disposable diapers (and so is the 2-yr old Jr Spragus), until he stops pooping every 15 minutes . I've gotten lazy with the laundry -- it's going straight in the dryer because I don't want to take the time to hang it out and get it down again. Apart from the OAMC, I've only been preparing the easiest of meals and throwing out whatever's left in the fridge that I just can't be bothered with.



Really, in my defense, the little one isn't on any kind of schedule yet, and he prefers to eat every 1 - 2 hours. He naps at various times, or sometimes not at all; and he's notorious for being up every hour during the night. So I've been trying to manage everything with a major sleep (and time) deficit.



Nevertheless, I am trying to get back to frugal habits. I recommitted myself today to NOT throwing out any more food. Period. NOT letting stuff sit in the fridge until it's unusable. So, for lunch today, I did a little fridge shopping. I knew I had a half-lettuce in there that was a couple weeks old (it's a Romaine and they do last longer...) and some tomatoes of similar vintage; leftover Dominoes pizza from Friday night; sorta past-it cheese slices; and maybe a couple other things.



Well, the lettuce was unusable, even for lettuce soup (okay, I don't know what lettuce soup would taste like, but I was going to give it a try ). It was only good for the worm buckets. Black. Slimy. Nuh-Uh.



However, I did find the following ingredients to be unappetizing, but usable. 3-day old dried out pizza, 3-week old tomato, and kinda ugly old cheese slices.

Well, I've had worse to work with. Sooooo....what sounds good? How about THIS?:

Yes folks; that's Italian Pizza Egg Casserole. Here's how it works:



Start your oven heating; grease your casserole dish; chop up the pizza into small pieces and chuck them in the dish. In this case there was not enough pizza so I used a few slices of stale hard bread and chucked them in there too. Sprinkle with salt to taste, and about 1/2 tsp of Italian seasoning. Top with cheese slices.

Get out your powdered milk (yep, I know the kids won't drink it, but it's perfect for this recipe!) Use about 1/2 cup milk and mix it with 2 cups water. Stir in 4 beaten eggs, and pour it over the top of the cheese slices and bread mixture.

Now top it all with your yummy (old) tomato slices. Voila, now you have a yummy looking casserole. Well, it even looks like you planned it!

Bake it in a medium-temp oven until it's done (stick a knife into it to test -- the knife should come out clean, except for a little cheese maybe). This was delicious. The older kids ate more than half of it themselves, and Daddy has lunch for tomorrow. (Incidentally, he took a couple of pieces of this same pizza to work with him today and ended up throwing them out. We'll see if he likes the new improved version tomorrow!)



Since I had some stale bread still left over and a hot oven, I made the kids a cheapo treat.

Cinnamon Toast. They gobbled this up too. Oh, and we ate some delicious first-of-the-season plums along with our delicious old lunch.





Bon Appetit!

Baby Wrangling

Thanks to the MOMYS, I was introduced to this great site: www.mamatoto.org

I bought this for $15 (Actually, it was a full-width piece of cotton/lycra t-shirt fabric, 5 meters for $30, which I split lengthwise for 2 long thinner pieces). And the 2-year-old is optional .

Following the instructions for the front cross carry on www.mamatoto.org

we went from this:

To This:

in 2 minutes flat.

Here is another pic of Toby in the wrap:

Happy 1 month birthday, TOBY!