Category Archives: Cooking and Food

Jan 6 2012

Frugal Friday: An Organized Kitchen Is Budget Friendly

Silly, right?  Remember how I said if you keep your dishes washed you’ll save money on food?  That’s because you won’t feel as reluctant to cook if your kitchen is clean.  Add to that if your kitchen is clean and ORGANIZED.

Now let’s establish something here.  If you have ever been to my house you will know I’m not a clean freak.  The sorry state of my windows, the leaves gathered in the car port, the piles of paper everywhere in my office, and the fine layer of dust on most of the furniture (until recently) show that I’m human, and slightly grubby.

But recently, I decided to keep my kitchen clean and organized, and to keep the dishes washed.  I also did a little relocating of kitchen items to make things simpler.

The first thing I did was clean out my refrigerator.  How frugal is it to have such a messy and disorganized fridge that you keep buying Ranch dressing because you can’t find the last bottle you bought?  And now you have four bottles of it.   Or jam.  Or Miracle Whip.

How frugal is it to buy a bunch of one thing because it is on sale and then it goes bad before you can use it because you bought too much (cheese, fresh produce, bread).

If you keep things simple in the kitchen (fridge and pantry) you will be more likely to know before you go to the store what you need, what you already have, and what you can make for dinner.

So anyway, back to the kitchen reorganization and the fridge.  I cleaned that sucker out and threw away SO MUCH FOOD.  I read somewhere that American’s throw out, on average, 40% of the food they buy.  I was sick just reading that.  But I see how it can happen.

In the fridge (and I do not have before photos because it was so gross) I found, way in the back, in a Tupperware container, leftover rice with pink mold growing on it.  I found a container of sad, sad cottage cheese that looked like a science experiment.  I found leftover soup, leftover meat, leftover mashed potatoes.

Sick and wrong.  While throwing these things away, I realized what they had in common:  they were all in Tupperware containers.  I couldn’t see inside the containers and out of sight = out of mind.

So my wish list for now is a set of clear glass pyrex containers with airtight plastic lids that I can use to store leftovers and other foods in the fridge where I can see at a glance what is inside them, reducing waste.   I love Tupperware in a sentimental way, but using them for leftovers is causing a lot of food waste.

When I finished cleaning out and organizing the fridge, it looked like this (and don’t worry – I’m going for groceries tomorrow):

At the top, we have our Fage yogurt (Greek yogurt that I LOVE), applesauce, tub margarine (it’s stick margarine that I whip with the mixer and add a little olive oil to for spreading), Rabbit’s cottage cheese (she loves it) and margarine for baking.

Below that on the left is the “snack” drawer, which is actually full of cheese.  We love cheese and it’s a great meal stretcher, snack, and generally fabulous in all ways.  That top shelf used to be lower and we lost a whole set of storage which is now open below the cheese drawer.  Instead of putting the milk on the top shelf when it was lower, we now have it in the middle, along with the omnipresent pitcher of tap water staying cold, and a carton of orange juice, and a couple of cans of PC’s soda.

The bottom shelf is reserved for eggs, some leftovers (in containers with plastic wrap on top or clear plastic lids!) and my new helpful thing:  a plastic bin where I can put defrosting meat so if something drips, it stays in the container and not all over the shelf (which is what happened last week).

The veg drawer is clean and lined at the bottom with a paper towel  and always has carrots and celery in it.  Contrary to popular belief, regardless of what some people on Pinterest do, you are not supposed to store onions or potatoes in the refrigerator.  Or bread.  Did you know that?  Bread goes stale faster in the refrigerator.  Look it up.  It’s true.

By the way, you are also not supposed to store your milk or eggs in the door of the fridge, because they don’t stay as cold there.  You’re welcome.

Moving on:  Here is the fridge door.  (You can skip this if it’s boring, which it very well might be):

We are the king and queen of condiments: this is our pared down collection.  At the bottom are all those bottles of salad dressing and two jars of Miracle Whip.  Also, my jar of yeast for bread.

Above that, more crap.  Capers, mustard, olives, jam, pickles, salsa, horseradish, more mustard, tahini, relish.  And a bottle of white wine used exclusively for cooking and I know it’s supposed to be on its side but I don’t drink it so lay off me.

The butter section has butter in it.  Also?  Papers from butter and margarine wrappings that I save to use for greasing my bread pans. I told you I was a tightwad.

Next to that is ketchup, vinegar, worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, etc.

The excitement must be killing you.  So let’s move on to the pantry.

I was pretty excited to clean and reorganize the pantry, because there wasn’t going to be any food waste.  I keep that stuff pretty regimented.  What I was struggling with was fitting everything in the way I wanted it to, especially spices.

I got the spice section figured out by moving some non-spice items to a different part of the cupboard and moving the coffee stuff out of there completely.

I know, every day I think how lucky I am to have this built into the door of this cabinet.  Below is the inside of the cabinet on that side:

What I did differently is put the oils and vinegars inside a bin, and the same with the other basket, which holds syrups and honey.  I kept finding drips and spills in the cupboard and it was driving me batty.  I like this method better.  Random stuff in the middle (including a Tupperware container of homemade cookies) and spices above that.  On the top shelf, I have a basket where I collected all our tea bags and packets of cocoa mix, as well as some jars of bulk spices like bay leaves and black pepper, and a couple of cute Tupperware shakers for flour dusting, cinnamon and sugar mixture, and the nutritional yeast I sprinkle on popcorn.  Don’t ask.

The side to the right of that is most changed:  I put the onions and garlic in one basket, and on the top shelf, the potatoes are in another. All of our envelopes of seasonings and a couple of sides, as well as envelopes of kool-aid, are in a little plastic bin.  I have pint jars of couscous and falafel mix, boxes of pasta, and a cannister of small pastas in bags.  Just a few canned goods: I find that if I buy too many, I end up in chaos and not using them up, or buying more because I can’t find that can of soup I was looking for.

The lower part of the pantry cupboard is not much changed, so let’s skip that.

Here’s the fun part:  I rearranged the kitchen counters/cupboards so that on the right side of the kitchen is now a “toast and coffee station.”  PC had his giant coffee maker on the right side of the kitchen, and the bread box was right next to it.  My coffee maker was on the opposite side.  Counter space was  cluttered.

We have two appliance “garages” with tambor doors and on the right side of the kitchen, I had been storing my cookbooks in it.  The door wouldn’t close, so the cookbooks were always visible and sometimes a mess.

Now look at the counter on the right side:

I moved the bread box into the appliance nook, and store the electric knife way at the back on top of it, and the butter dish is in front of the electric knife.  There’s enough room for the bread box door to open (it has a cutting board in the door) and leave room for the toaster, my little coffee pot and PC’s giant grind and brew machine.  Morning coffee and toast, all in one place.  Also, the cupboard below this section has cereal, and the bowls, saucers and coffee cups are right above the coffee makers, with silverware in the drawer right below.

Here’s a closeup of the bread box, just because I love it. It’s probably from the 1950s or 60s and is a lot like the one my Grandpa had in his house.

Above that is the corner cabinet where we had stuffed PC’s coffee stuff, a bunch of medicines (since you’re not supposed to store them in the bathroom where it’s damp and can ruin meds) and miscellaneous junk.

Here it is now:

At the top is a basket of empty jars, as well as PC’s jar of flaxseed (he eats them like candy, by the recommendation of his gastroenterologist).  The middle shelf has a lazy Susan for common meds like Tylenol, cough syrup, etc.  The red tin box holds other medications out of sight, like Midol, foil packs of Dairy-Ease, boxes of cold capsules, and so on.

The bottom shelf has PC’s extra coffee grinder, a second set of parts for his coffee machine, and his container of coffee beans.  At the left, my jar of tiny coffee filters, an antique blue mason jar of coffee, and behind that my jar of sweetener.

The opposite counter on the left side of the kitchen now holds my crock of kitchen utensils, the salt cellar, our food processor and the KitchenAid mixer.  I had more kitchen utensils but put them in a box to see if I use them in the next several months.  If I don’t, they’re going to Goodwill.  The drawer below this counter has some smaller utensils, like peelers, etc. And the door to the appliance garage hides the cookbooks.

Oh, and a couple of jars of treats:  cookies and crackers.

Now that things are more organized and make better sense, it’s easier for me to keep the kitchen clean and feel more motivated to cook.

If you’re not asleep by now from reading this post, what have you done to make your kitchen more organized?  Do you cook a lot, a little, not at all?  What makes it easier for you?

Dec 29 2011

No Need, No Knead, No, No, No

Oh, bread. You fickle b*tch.

Remember when I was all euphoric about that refrigerator bread dough recipe? The no-knead version?

UGH! I have had the worst luck with it since I published that post.  The first few loaves turned out great and then for some reason the next two batches were just abysmal.  First I had too much flour so the loaves were dense and undercooked.  Then I had not enough flour and the loaf stuck to the pizza peel, despite the cornmeal and would not slide off, then stuck to my hands like goop, so I rolled it into pizza dough and it puffed up on the baking stone like a gigantic whoopie cushion made of bread.

I was trying to pre-bake it to freeze, since I hadn’t been planning to make pizza at 3:00 in the afternoon.

The remainder of the dough in the bowl (mercifully, I had made a single batch and not the mammoth double one) was immediately turned out onto a floured countertop and kneaded within an inch of my life.  I must have added 3/4 cup of flour to that S.O.B. and kneaded til it was smooth, elastic and unsticky.

I rolled it into a loaf, pinched each end and tucked them under, and put the whole thing seam side down into a greased bread pan and had to let it rise for almost two freaking hours before I put it in the oven.  Even then, it took 60 minutes to bake into a recognizable loaf of bread with that hollow sound when I thumped the bottom.

I’m not giving up on this recipe, because it does make for great and readily available pizza dough (provided you poke holes in the dough before you put it in the oven, and that you roll it out super-thin).

I suppose it doesn’t help that the seal on our oven is sagging (which you can see in the photo and yes, I know the oven is dirty and needs cleaning but I have to use Easy-Off or the like and don’t want to do that til it’s nice enough outside to open every window in the house, and besides, we might be replacing the whole range if we get our tax refund before the second coming of Christ) and steam pours out of the gap the entire time we’re baking.  I hate that oven.

What was I saying? Oh, yes.  The bread recipe being okay for pizza dough.  Yes, it works for that.

But I think for everyday bread, I’m going to stick with the kind you knead.  Artisan bread is fine for certain occasions, but if I’m going to replace store-bought bread with homemade for things like toast and sandwiches, I’ll stay with kneaded whole wheat and white bread.   Especially with the expense of flour if the bread doesn’t turn out right.

 

Dec 24 2011

Coasting Into Christmas

The last of my toughest holiday responsibilities are behind me, and now we coast through to Christmas.

Yesterday, Rabbit and I delivered gifts to meals on wheels clients; I had gotten an email from a member of our Realtor board that the organization in charge was desperately in need of delivery volunteers.  I called and Jim said I was the first one.  In the next 12 hours, they got two more volunteers, which were people I had recruited through facebook.  I guess nobody reads their email.

We took a load of gift bags and the list of names, and set off.  Rabbit would knock on the door and when the person answered, I’d say “We’re from Meals on Wheels and this is a little Christmas gift for you!”  Each recipient was completely dumbfounded, and then Rabbit would say “Merry Christmas! God bless you!”  I swear, she was more excited about giving these elderly folks their presents than she was last year to open any of her own.  It made my grinch-heart grow three sizes, I’ll tell you.  She is a keeper.

Afterward, we were exhausted and took two hour power naps with the cats.

I had been working on a drawing that a friend commissioned, of her nephew.  It was to be a gift for her sister and believing the adage that nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute, I finished it this morning.  I was up past midnight last night struggling to draw hair on this kid, and gave up and went to bed with a terrible headache.  I was back at the drawing table this morning and finally finished, sprayed the drawing with matte acrylic fixative, covered it with tissue paper and put it in a folder made from two pieces of stiff cardboard.

Then I had two hours of panic that the aunt wouldn’t like the picture.  She picked it up, though, and opened the folder and gasped and got teary-eyed.  ”You really captured him!” she said, while I tried not to point out that I hadn’t replicated the exact fall of his hair with my pencils and graphite sticks.  ”He’s so cute, and he’s so naughty!  You can just see it in his eyes!”  So I kept my opinions about my ability to draw hair to myself and thanked her for the check, and breathed a sigh of relief.

I had to make a trip to the Evil Empire last night for last minute gifts and a few foodstuffs: milk, peanut butter, bananas.  Some patching denim for Rabbit’s school jeans.  A denim needle for the sewing machine.  And stocking stuffers.  So I had to go to walMart.

I got Rabbit a pair of pajamas and a package of day of the week undies, as well as four pairs of new knee socks and a variety pack of earrings, including what will be her first hoop earrings.  Oh, and a princess Pez dispenser.  Everything but the pajamas and undies will be from Santa, in her stocking tomorrow.

Yesterday I made regular, knead the dough til your shoulders ache, wheat bread.  I used King Arthur Flour (which they do NOT sell at WalMart) and it was without a doubt THE best and most beautiful bread I’ve ever baked.   Both loaves looked picture perfect, and they smelled divine. The texture of the bread was gorgeous: fine crumb, soft, but not like angel-food cake the way store bread sometimes is.

You can slice bread evenly and quickly with an electric knife, which I did with the loaf above.

Today, I cooked a giant roast for our Christmas eve dinner and am waiting to serve it til after PC finishes watching his football game.  Then we’ll eat, then go to church, and only then (to Rabbit’s dismay) will we open Christmas presents.  She is dying to open them, even though she’s not said one word before today about it.  But she is READY.

Tomorrow will be Santa gifts and then Chinese food for lunch.  My big holiday meal is Thanksgiving. Christmas dinner can’t compete with Christmas presents, so we don’t even try.

May you have a beautiful and happy holiday with people you love.

Dec 23 2011

Frugal Friday: My Food Commandments

A lot of my frugal practices have revolved around food.  Here are some of my favorite  savings tips (these may not be for everyone; they’re just my guidelines):

1. Limit eating at restaurants or eating fast food.  Especially fast food, which is terrible for you. But either way, going out to eat is a budget buster.  If you do splurge and go to a restaurant, don’t order drinks, as this can add significantly to your bill.  We drink water, and often split a dish because restaurant portions are enormous.  And if you can’t afford to tip?  Then don’t eat in the restaurant.  Seriously – waiters and waitresses have families to support, too.

Mostly, though, we eat at home.    One year back when we both had regular and steady incomes and before Rabbit was in the picture, we spent $900 in six months just on restaurant LUNCHES.   Now, we usually have dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.  When we eat at a restaurant it is for a special occasion or rare treat; today Rabbit and I had lunch at a cafe owned by a young friend of ours.  Our bill with tip was $15.  That was a huge splurge for us, but Rabbit and I go to lunch together every year right before Christmas as our own special treat.

2.  Limit or eliminate convenience foods: When I shop for groceries, I try to come home with “just ingredients.”  Especially  now that work is slow and I have a lot more time at home to cook things from scratch.  When times are busier, I’ll make sure to have a couple of convenience meals on hand in the freezer, to avoid the temptation to resort to takeout or fast food.  I have a special weakness for some of Trader Joe’s convenience foods, but have done pretty well resisting the urge to splurge.

One sure-fire method to combat the convenience food trap is to keep a bowl of that refrigerator dough on hand and use some of that for pizza crust on nights when I can’t bear to cook or have very little time.  We always make sure to have a jar of pizza sauce around and if times are especially lean, I make pizza sauce out of tomato soup from a can (undiluted) to which I add onion and garlic powders, crushed oregano, crushed basil, a little salt, a lot of pepper and a little sugar.

3.  Make your own bread.  Honestly you guys. It is NOT difficult.   And I invest in good flour now because even spending $3.50 per bag on King Arthur flour (bread flour and whole wheat flour) pays off big because the bread turns out so beautifully: soft, high rising, great texture, nutritious.   You aren’t saving money if you buy cheap flour and the bread sucks so bad you throw it away.

4.  Make a meal plan for the week and stick with it.  I started doing this a few months ago, and it helps everyone in the family.  I check Rabbit’s school lunch menu to make sure we’re not duplicating (but honestly, everything on that wretched menu is convenience crap) and I try to plan at least two cook-once, eat-twice meals where you can use the leftovers from one meal to make a different meal a night or two later.  For us, this is important because it helps us plan for what to defrost, what to hold back, and what to buy.

5.  Keep your kitchen clean and your dishes washed.  I know this sounds weird as a money saver on food, but trust me.  When my kitchen is a mess, I don’t want to cook. When the sink is full of dirty dishes, I don’t want to cook.  I’m more apt to figure we’ll just get takeout and deal with the mess later.  In addition, by keeping the kitchen clean, I also mean keep your fridge cleaned of leftovers and stuff put way in the back, and your pantry organized so you know what’s in there.

6.  Keep your kitchen stocked with some basics for easy meals.   Not everyone has the same list, but for us, we always have to have lots of spices and seasonings like oregano, basil, ginger, cumin, chili powder, rosemary, thyme, whole black peppercorns, Kosher salt.  We keep baking supplies like baking powder, flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda, vanilla.  I always have beef soup base, chicken soup base, rice, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions and garlic.  I always have cans of petite diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato soup.  And always, we have a eggs, dry beans, a variety of pastas and several kinds of cheese: Swiss slices, cheddar, mozzarella and occasionally gouda.  Of course, we keep frozen veggies and a few kinds of canned and fresh fruits as well.

With these basic ingredients and meat such as ground beef, chicken and soup bones/meat, I can make tacos with homemade tortillas, numerous homemade soups, pasta dishes, chicken and dumplings, homemade noodles, gnocchi, chili, spaghetti sauce from scratch, and the occasional dessert.   I would estimate that this past month, because we already had so many ingredients on hand, I’ll feed our family of three on less than $175.

7.  Don’t get caught up in the “extreme couponing” myth.  This practice works for a rare few people who are willing to commit to obsessively gathering coupons, buying them from the Internet, cataloging them and spending up to eight hours in a grocery store pissing off dozens of customers by hauling up five carts of groceries and painstakingly working through a system of discounts on items I personally would not usually buy:  TV dinners, name brand foods, candy, laundry detergent (I make my own), twenty tubes of toothpaste, or, as in one case, over 200 boxes of tic tacs.   One lady on the couponing show had over 300 rolls of paper towels stockpiled in her basement.

Coupons can occasionally save you money, but my rule is to only use them on things I would normally buy and even then, I don’t get the Sunday paper to cut coupons out and I have way better things to do with my time than spend hundreds of hours scouring papers for coupons and organizing them in three ring binders.

The best way to save money on groceries is to make a list, buy what you need, shop the sales and get out of the store.  I’m not saying those extreme coupon people are wrong: I’m just saying they are the exception to the rule and their results are highly unusual and it’s unreasonable to expect that you can replicate them.  Use that time to bake bread or read to your kid or read a book or something.

8.  Maintain your level of frugality, no matter what your finances are like.  This might be the biggest one for us.  Since my job is commission based, it’s “feast or famine” around here.  But it doesn’t have to be, I’ve realized.  What happens is that we go without for a long time, with no income for one, two or three months (my income. PC continues to earn, but we do need two incomes to survive).  So while I’m not earning, we institute austerity measures and get by.  Then when I get a commission, we get all kinds of extra things that we really don’t need to get (hey, let’s buy five boxes of this instead of just one!) and spend it all up. Then we’re back to the bottom of that roller coaster.

Try spending the bare minimum on food and set aside a little for the occasional splurge (we all need a treat once in a while, like chocolate or a soda or something like that).  Keep up that practice even when times are flush.  Even when you get a bonus, or an extra windfall income.  Put away what you save.   For us, that would help in those emergency times when moths fly out of the checking account.

 

If you’re asleep by now, I understand. If not, share with me/us what you do to save on food, or if not, share where you find yourself splurging or making mistakes that gut your budget.

Dec 20 2011

Whiplash Subject Changes (and Gingersnaps)

Today at the office, an affiliate company that handles title insurance and escrow closing management came in and set up a Nacho Bar for us.  Now let me tell you, after receiving boxes of cookies and plates of cookies, and plates of fudge and boxes of fudge, and candy and candy canes and candy corn and everything but gallons of Maple Syrup, it was a little slice of heaven to walk into the conference room and see little paper baskets of tortilla chips and then a row of toppings:  hot nacho cheese, taco meat, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, olives, jalapenos, onions….

We were practically giddy.  For about half an hour there were about thirty of us just hanging out, trading real estate war stories, talking about our holiday plans, enjoying salty snacks and bottled water  and the incomparable contentment of warm melted cheese on chips that I didn’t have to pay for.

Last night, I had some of our youth retreat Council people over – youth and adults – for a Christmas potluck.  I made a pot of chili, someone brought hummus and pita, there were meat and cheese trays, a giant pan of chicken strips from a local chain restaurant (Rabbit had two) and various cookies and brownies.

Now I’m ready for some apples, carrots, celery and smoked turkey for a few days to detox from rich foods.

Also at the office, our main office manager/executive assistant came in with her 3 week old baby boy, for the first time since she left for maternity leave the day before Thanksgiving. He is precious and we all took turns holding him and fussing over him. He wore little black fleece pants and an impossibly small thermal long-sleeved shirt, grey, with tiny white skulls printed all over them. So CUTE.

By the way, as I skip willy-nilly from subject to subject here…I cleaned the damn house yesterday.  And by house, I mean I cleaned the kitchen, the living room and the bathroom.  My kitchen is so clean that it makes Rabbit euphoric.  I rearranged the bookcases to redistribute the books that didn’t get put into the book tree, and added to the shelves some interesting artifacts, framed photos,  small statues, vases of marbles and other curiosities.  It’s fun to look at now.

I also dusted. Sweet fancy Moses, was my living room dusty.  It was appalling.  It’s clean now and I’m pouncing on any member of my family who puts down a piece of paper on a side table or stacks homework or work papers anywhere on the kitchen table or counter.  I’m just sick of all the clutter.

Remind me of that in three weeks when I am once again buried under an avalanche of unopened mail.  *sigh*

For now, though, it is a pleasure to walk into a spotless house  (if you don’t look real close at  the kitchen floor) and it makes me happy.

Whiplash change of subject (what is WITH ME today?) but I’m on book 87 for the year, I think.  It’s “Doc” a fictionalized biography of Doc Holliday.  I’m only on page 3.  I finished “The Borrower,” and I loved it.

I made gingersnaps Sunday. I’m going to go eat three of them right now, and I don’t care who knows it.

Dec 17 2011

Bread: A Clarification And Expanding On Yesterday’s Post

It occurred to more than one reader (as well as myself) after I posted yesterday that I may have been a little less than specific in the instructions on the bread dough recipe yesterday.

First, let me clarify about the size of the batch and the size of the bowl you may need to use if you decide to make this.  Hopefully you haven’t started yet or if you have, that you have a large enough bowl.

The bowl I use for all my bread dough is a very large vintage Tupperware Fix-N-Mix Bowl that holds 32 cups of liquid.  For those who do math, that’s 2cups = 1 pint, so 32 cups = 16 pints, which equals 2 gallons.   It’s big, is what I’m saying.  It’s 13″ across and 5″ deep.  The nice thing is that it fits in the bottom shelf of the fridge and is large enough to accommodate almost any batch of dough.

I have three of these bowls, two with lids. If you don’t have one, consider mixing up your dough and storing a single batch in a tall plastic pitcher with plastic wrap across the top.    Or a stainless steel bowl (the large mixing bowls you can get at most retailers).    My big Tupperware bowl will hold the entire doubled batch of the dough and we’re talking six cups of water and 12 cups of flour in volume.

As for the texture of the mixed dough: resist the urge to make it a dough ball that you might knead.  It should be absorbing the flour a cup at a time and will be hard to mix toward the end (I suggest a sturdy wooden spoon) but if the flour is gathering at the bottom of the bowl and there’s a dough ball that you have to knead the flour into with your hands, you’ve probably gotten too much flour in there and the loaves will be dense and hard to raise and bake.

The texture of the baked bread will be crisp on the outside, with a chewy crust and a smell almost like wine because of the yeast.  The taste is not sweet: it has a good tooth-resistant heft to it and tastes moderatly tangy or even salty, but not unpleasantly so.  If you are accustomed to sweetish store breads, you may have to adjust to this. If you are used to sourdough or French baguettes, you’ll recognize the taste and texture.

For pizza dough, the reason we like it is that the other recipe we’d been using for pizza dough made in the food processor didn’t have time to rise and develop intense flavor, and had a more biscuit-like texture, floury on the bottom and almost dry and crackly at the edges.  It was still good, but we had to pre-bake it to keep the ingredients from sogging through the crust.

The pizza made from the refrigerator dough was a lot more sturdy: it was very stretchy and springy and was  a little harder to roll out thin, but once I did, it held up better than the other kind.  Once it was baked with the toppings, the texture when I bit in was substantial – you could bite through the pizza and dough, but it didn’t break off. You had to pull.  The taste of the dough was not just a backdrop for the toppings, but a whole other layer of flavor with those tangy notes and the really nice yeasty smell of the bread.  The edges were not crunchy and where the crust bubbled up, it was still chewy instead of crackly.  The sauce didn’t soak through and make a mess of the pizza at all.

For the bread in general, I have been using my electric knife to slice it once the loaf cools.  This makes it easy and accessible to PC and Rabbit to just grab a slice when they need it.

I hope this has clarified any questions and please, do let me know if you make this and how it works out for you.

If you’re interested in getting one of those big Tupperware bowls, they’re all over eBay right now, some with lids.  They come in different sizes (26 cup, 30 cup, 32 cup) but any of those would suffice. Look for the vintage ones because in my opinion, they’re better made and the plastic isn’t as brittle.

Happy Baking!!

Dec 16 2011

Frugal Friday: Refrigerator Bread Dough

If you buy bread at the store, you know how expensive it is getting to be.  Cheap bread is loaded with preservatives and not worth eating.  Good bread is super spendy, at least for us.  Making your own bread can save you hundreds of dollars a year, if you go through a loaf a week at over $3 a loaf.

And pizza?  A takeout pizza can be $10 to $20 depending on the place, while pizza ingredients can be under $3 if you work it out right.

Over the past week, I started experimenting with a bread dough recipe my friend Michele sent me, via an old article in The Mother Earth News.  It’s for a bread dough you can mix up and keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, just using what you need on relatively short notice and storing the rest without it rising too much.  Because the ingredients are simple (flour, salt, water, yeast) this bread is ridiculously inexpensive and incredibly good.  For the cost of one loaf of store bread, you can make a double batch of dough that can make up to six loaves.

The basic science or method behind regular homemade bread is pretty simple:  yeast bread made the traditional way is mixed, then kneaded, then left to rise til double, punched down, shaped into loaves, risen again and then baked.

This can make bread baking into a project that ties you to the house for half a day at least, and you either make too much bread from one recipe or go to all that time and effort for only one loaf of bread. I don’t know about you, but if I’m doing a big project, I tend to want to make a lot so I only have to do it once.  Unfortunately, with bread, a lot equals a lot of waste because we don’t use the bread up before it goes bad.

Anyway, I got the recipe from Michele and we’ve used it for about a week and I am really happy with it.  Next batch I make, I will use a little less flour so the bread isn’t quite so dense, but otherwise it’s wonderful.

I bake this bread on a pizza stone in a very hot oven.  First off, if you don’t already have a pizza stone and a pizza peel, do NOT panic and don’t feel that you have to run out and buy one.  I will say, though, that if you are going to make a commitment to frugal living and all that entails, a pizza stone is a great investment if your family likes pizza.   If you don’t have one yet or don’t want to buy one, just make sure to have a pan for the bread to bake in or a cookie sheet to put the round loaf on.  My friend Michele uses a glazed stoneware pie pan.

Another nice thing? This is a no-knead recipe.  I enjoy kneading bread on those half-day bread baking marathons or when I have to get my stress out.  But this recipe doesn’t call for it.  So that’s a plus if you don’t like to knead or don’t want to or don’t have time.

You mix up the ingredients in a large (and I mean LARGE) bowl, cover with a greased piece of plastic and let it rise for about two hours or until it is doubled and then (this is important) let it keep rising until it collapses in on itself without you touching it or helping it do so.

At that point, you can cover it loosely and put it in the fridge until you use it to make bread or pizza crust.  Let it refrigerate at least three hours before using it the first time.

When you need some dough, take out the bowl, cut off a piece of dough (about a pound) and refrigerate the rest.  Shape it into a ball on the counter (you might use a little flour to keep it from sticking.  If you’re using a pizza stone/pizza peel, sprinkle a little cornmeal on the peel to allow the risen loaf to slide off the peel onto the stone when it’s done.  Put the shaped loaf onto the peel and slash the top lightly with a knife to make three diagonal lines parallel to one another.

Cover with a piece of waxed paper or oiled plastic wrap and let it rise on the peel for about 20-30 minutes.  Meanwhile, prehead the oven with the pizza stone in it at 450 degrees.  If you want a thick chewy crust on your bread, place a pyrex container of hot water in the back of the oven to add steam while it bakes.

When the dough is done rising, slide it off the pizza peel onto the pizza stone and bake for 25-30 minutes.  Cool before cutting.  This is a dense bread and will have a taste and texture similar to sourdough after the dough has been in the fridge for a while.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups hot water (about 100 degrees, or slightly above body temperature)
1 1/2 TB dry yeast (get this in bulk if you’re serious about bread)
1 1/2 TB salt (use kosher salt if you have it)
6 cups flour (do not sift before measuring) [the original recipe calls for 6 1/2 cup but I find that’s too much)

Mix all together in the bowl before covering to raise.  That’s it.  If you want to double the batch, just remember 6-3-3-12: 6 cups water, 3TB yeast, 3TB salt, 12 cups flour.

This is for white bread – I will experiment with wheat next time.

I make this dough into pizza crust and it is wonderful.  Take out about a loaf’s worth of dough, pat it into a circle, roll it out really thin (1/4″ to 1/8″ thin) and put on cornmeal-dusted pizza peel. MAKE SURE YOUR OVEN IS ALREADY PREHEATED WITH THE PIZZA STONE.

Put sauce and toppings on unbaked dough, working fast.  Slide pizza into oven onto pizza peel and bake about 8-10 minutes or til the cheese is melted.  Crust is chewy and substantial and if you make a big batch of dough, you always have some on hand.

When you use the last of your dough, it’s simple to go ahead and mix up a new batch right away so you always have it on hand.  Just scrape down the bowl and use that in the ingredients for the next batch – it’s like sourdough starter.

If you try this recipe, please let me know and post about it on your own blog, with pictures if possible.  If you don’t have a blog, send me a picture of your dough and I’ll post it here.

Here is a link to the (long but interesting) article about the dough from Mother Earth News:

Five Minutes a Day for Fresh Artisan Bread.

Dec 13 2011

Macaroni and Contentment

Tonight for dinner I made homemade macaroni and cheese, from scratch ingredients we had on hand in the house.

I cooked 1 1/2 cups of cry macaroni and left it al dente.  I caramelized tiny minced onion pieces in butter and then added a tablespoon of flour and 1 1/4 cups of milk and some pepper to make a white sauce.  Then I added a little dry mustard, a little paprika, and 8 ounces of cheese:  half of it was shredded sharp cheddar and the other half was American cheese.

I whisked the cheese in a little at a time and kept whisking til it was all melted and starting to bubble.  I added the macaroni, and mixed it up, then added a handful of little bacon pieces.

I tipped it all into a greased casserole dish, and then topped it with buttered fine bread crumbs and some parmesan.  Into the oven it went for 30 minutes.

It was so good!!!  We had it with mixed vegetables and Rabbit had two generous helpings of both.

We’re stretching our pantry items out to last us for the next ten days til PC gets paid: we have chicken stock and several more chicken leg quarters, a pound of frozen bacon, some dry beans, frozen containers of onion soup, chili, ham and bean soup, and leftover taco meat.  We have eggs and flour for pancakes and flour and yeast for bread.  Several bags of frozen veggies, lots of pasta, canned fruit, fresh carrots and celery, plenty of onions and spices, cornmeal, some cheese.   We’ll go to the store next week to fill out the

Rabbit eats lunch at school and between now and the 23rd, there are so many holiday luncheons at work and with affiliates, I’m not going to have to bring lunch from home.  PC has been taking the lunch leftovers.  It’s been a fun challenge to plan out the meals ahead and see how many options we have from our pantry and freezer.  It’s a lot more than I would have thought.

I did find a fantastic recipe for bread dough that you make ahead of time and can store in your fridge for up to two weeks, cutting off as much as you need for a loaf or a pizza crust as you go.  It’s salt, water, flour and yeast and nothing more, so it’s been a godsend for us.

Mostly, it’s been nice to sit at home in the evening, the three of us, after dinner and before bed.  The Christmas trees are up and glowing with lights.  We’re safe, we’re happy, we’re warm and healthy.  Everything else is just a temporary inconvenience.

And man, was that mac and cheese good!

 

Dec 3 2011

Boots, Colds and German Lutherans

Why no, as a matter of fact, I am not dead.  I’m slipping in and out of holiday preparations, a little spot of depression, the first snow of the season and about six new library books on my Kindle.

I finally updated all the books I could recall having read since June on my other blog, with reviews.  Some of them very short since it had been so long I couldn’t remember the plots, or even having read them at all.

I’m at about 77 books for the year, which is short of my goal.  I could have read more but I started the year off slow and then at the end of the year discovered Angry Birds and Words With Friends on my phone, which is a bad excuse, even if it’s accurate.

Here’s a picture I took yesterday of the cats:

Shut your trap, Hazel! I am NOT getting fat.

Today, Rabbit and I slept in way too late.  It was snowing outside so after a quick breakfast, she went out to play.  Within minutes, her mittens were drenched and her coat was soaked from the wet snow and from rolling around in the yard.

She took a break, changed into warm clothes, and then played on the computer until lunch.  We had some Trader Joe’s tomato and roasted red pepper soup, oven fried potatoes and Trader Joe’s crumb-coated codfish (or, as PC calls them: fishsticks).  While we ate, I read Rabbit three chapters from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “On the Banks of Plum Creek.”

Then we had to go to Target to pick up some prescriptions, and I also had to get Rabbit a pair of waterproof mittens.  The selection was pretty picked over, with other parents as brilliant as I was, waiting until the first snow in December to wipe out the store’s inventory of mittens and gloves.  Fortunately, Rabbit is so small that we were able to find a pair of mittens in the toddler section that fit her perfectly.  For NINE DOLLARS.  God.

The snowboot situation was another pooper.  I apparently donated her last year’s snowboots this fall while de-cluttering the house and while I’m pretty sure they would have been too small anyway, I wish I’d waited to see.  The crappy snowboots at Target?  $35.99.  I was pissed, and we drove to Payless Shoes, where their ONE style of girls’ snowboots were $39.99.  And they didn’t have one single pair in Rabbit’s size at ANY of their stores.

So I got in the car and pulled up Lands End on my phone and found a pair of well-rated snowboots for Rabbit, with free shipping, for a total of $22.99. Available in four colors – we ordered white with pink accents.  She has to wait til probably Wednesday for them, but until then, she’ll just have to be careful.

And PC just called on his way home from work after a ten-hour day.  He’s sick with the man-flu (a bad cold) and is stopping at the store for provisions.  Mostly, he’s run down from working three or four weeks straight of ten or eleven hour days.  Fortunately, tomorrow he has the day off so he can sleep in and rest before going right back to the same grind.

Tonight’s dinner: ham and bean soup and homemade corn muffins with honey.  Tomorrow, I’m test-driving a different church. This one is a Lutheran church just a few blocks from our house.  Hopefully they won’t be on a journey to the birthplace of joy, or I will have to come back here and rant about it.  The thing with Lutheran churches in Nebraska around Christmas: some spectacular carols being sung in four part harmony.  Them German Lutherans know how to sing.

 

Nov 25 2011

The Turkey Iron-man Triathlon

This will be a photo-laden post about Thanksgiving preparations and how dinner turned out.  I feel as though I have been on an iron-man triathlon: one day prepping, the next day cooking and serving and eating and the third day putting things away, sorting leftovers and putting up the Christmas tree.

This is our tradition and this is how it is almost every single year.

Tuesday evening, I was standing at the sink washing dishes when a thought occurred to me that almost made me drop to the floor.  I did some math and then ran to to my office and got our mortgage statement, and dialed the toll free number.  Within three minutes, I had changed our automatic withdrawal of the payment from the 7th of the month to the 9th.  PC gets paid next on the 9th.

Crisis absolutely averted.  Enough funds to buy food on Wednesday, pay for the car repair with a check on Thursday night (the mechanic said he’d hold it til Friday) and PC’s Friday paycheck could go for bills and not have to be 100% untouched to make the house payment.

Having averted a heart attack and feeling a new lease on life, I was awake at 4:00 in the morning on Wednesday, giddy with the prospect of grocery shopping.  However, it was too early and PC and Rabbit were still asleep.  PC had to work at 6:30, so I got up and started preparing food for Thanksgiving.

I made three batches of pie dough and put them in the refrigerator.  I pureed the pumpkin I had cooked down the night before and put it in the fridge.  I double checked my list and wrote out plans for the day.

After PC had gotten to work, I woke Rabbit and fed her breakfast (“Today, can I have pancakes and an egg?”).  I loaded up on coffee and gathered grocery bags, and off we went to the store.  I had planned to start at Trader Joe’s and then head to Super Saver across town before heading home.  But instead, I just went to the Super Saver near us and skipped TJ’s all together.  I didn’t feel like driving 30 minutes to be packed into a store like a sardine with Rabbit.

At Super Saver, we got carrots and celery and oranges and a lemon and yellow potatoes and sweet potatoes.  We got sugar and pecans and karo syrup and stuffing mix.  I mean, people, we flat out shopped!  

I was appalled at the price of name brand ground cloves (the store brand was one fourth that price!):

This was for just over half an ounce!  YIKES!

After we finished loading our cart (and remembering that we have other meals to eat this week and getting some other foods to put aside after Thanksgiving), we checked out and bagged our groceries.

At home, we laboriously unpacked groceries and laid out what needed to be prepped in the afternoon.  Rabbit took herself to the other room to escape my merciless grim efficiency, at my request.  ”Honey, you don’t need to be in the way because Mommy is feeling crispy and I don’t want to be grouchy at you.”

I cut up carrots and celery and radishes.  I mixed up a batch of roll dough and set it to rise.  I rolled out pie crust for pumpkin pie and pecan pie.

The pumpkin pie turned out just fine; I need to learn to cover the edges of the pie crust to keep them from getting too dark.

The pecan pie?  A total loss.  I baked it too long and the top was a hard black crust.  There went $6 worth of pecans.  Crap.

Since I had a third piece of pie dough, I rolled it out and put it in the pan.

Then I crimped the edges, using the thumb and forefinger of my right hand pinching into a “v” and pushing into it with my left index finger, over and over around the edge of the crust, until it looked like this:

Since I had decided to make lemon meringue pie instead of attempting pecan again, I had to prebake the crust.  I lined it with foil:

And then weighted the foil down with dry pinto beans to keep it from bubbling:

Then I baked it for 10 minutes, removed the beans and foil, and baked it for another five minutes.  I mixed up the lemon pie filling (from a recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook) and poured it into the crust.  I made meringue from the egg whites I’d separated when I used the yolks for the pie filling, and spread it over the hot filling.  I baked it and this is how it looked when it came out of the oven:

While those were baking, I made up the brine for the turkey.  Two cups of salt and one cup of sugar, dissolved in a gallon of boiling water.  I added the finely grated zest of two oranges, the shells of the two lemon halves from the pie filling, five cloves of garlic, about fifteen peppercorns, dried rosemary, dried thyme, some chili flakes, and a little ground allspice.  I let it cool down to room temperature.

After I removed the neck and giblets from the turkey, I rinsed it and wrestled the 20-pound bird into the cooler.   I poured the brine over the bird and then added enough water to cover it, adding ice to keep it cold.  Then I closed the cooler and let it sit over night.

Meanwhile, I made stock from the turkey neck and giblets (I threw out the liver, though.  Nasty) and strained it and put it in the fridge.  I baked the dinner rolls after the pies were done:

I peeled five pounds of potatoes and sliced them with the mandolin cutter, then put them in a huge bowl of water in the fridge for overnight.  I did a bunch more stuff but it’s all a blur now.

Thursday morning, I got up at 8:00 and took the turkey out of the brine.  I patted it dry with paper towels and then stuffed a cut up orange and a cut up onion into the body cavity.

Then, I took a stick of softened butter and rubbed it all over the bird, and then put more butter under the skin of the breast, between the skin and the meat.  I smoothed it all out and then put the turkey in the oven at 325 degrees.  The cookbook said 4-5 hours.  It was done in 3 hours and 15 minutes because of the brine.

Then I covered it with foil to rest and started making the rest of the food: potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, Stove Top stuffing, brussels sprouts, spicy sweet potatoes, sweet sweet potatoes.

I had the iPod on the speaker dock and when Stevie Ray Vaughan came on singing “Pride and Joy,” I made Rabbit turn off the TV and come dance with me in the kitchen.  We cranked up the music and shook our butts and yelled and clapped and scared the cats.  Then it was back to work for me and back to watching the Macy’s parade for Rabbit.

Grandpa Bob showed up and Rabbit was ecstatic. PC ran to the store for wine and last minute ingredients (like green beans for the casserole).

My sister arrived with two versions of her corn casserole and a replacement pecan pie (divine!).  She finished the gravy and fixed the sweet sweet potatoes that I had made into a stew.

Somehow, we got it all onto the table in time and after all that work, it seemed our duty to eat way too much:

After dinner, we sat, stunned like carp.  Then we cleared the dishes off the table and set out pies.  Everyone backed away from the table in horror at the thought of eating one more bite.  Everyone but Rabbit, who ate a miniature pumpkin pie with Cool Whip.

Later, after naps and walks and football games, we ate pie.  It was good.

PC washed all the dishes and dried the silver and good plates.  He washed potato pots and pans and serving dishes.  We made up plates of food for friends who couldn’t make it at dinner time or who were home sick that day.  We packaged up leftover turkey – everything else was gone.

Today, Rabbit and I got up late.  My brother came over to do his laundry and while he was here, I ran to the store for washing soda to make another batch of homemade laundry detergent.  While there, I found a 7.5 foot artificial tree and since our other artificial tree bit the dust in 2009 (and since I have discovered I hate having a real tree in the house for a month), I got it.

My brother helped me set it up, and Rabbit helped me decorate it.  And while we still haven’t taken the leaf from the table or put away the silverware chest, it is clear that Thanksgiving is over and we’re headed into Christmas season.

Just the way I like it.