Someday A Goat

Veggies for the week

In what has been a strange development, we eat salads for a meal regularly, and our vegetable consumption is at an all-time high. I think I might have outdone myself at the farmers market today, though.

Included in this photo:

- greens - baby romaine, spring mix, butter leaf, plus swiss chard and other braising greens

- beans - long beans and green beans

- baby tomatoes for my salads

- cucumber and zucchini

Not included in this photo:

- Bought at Harry's - 3 lemons, 1 lime, 4 apples, 4 bananas, 2 heirloom tomatoes, bag of cherries, glorious Nut Thins

I don't doubt it's possible, but I'm going to be impressed if we don't waste a single thing. I'll keep you posted.

Pearson Farm Peaches

Sadly, this was the last week at the Marietta Square Farmers Market for Pearson Farm. We've been eating a ton of peaches each week, and since this was the last week, I HAD to buy two bags.

They were just picked yesterday and won't be completely ripe for a while yet.

Last week, my husband made a really fantastic peach sauce with bourbon and chipotle. Recipe. He used Eagle Rare bourbon, rice vinegar and chipotle sauce, but pretty much followed the recipe. He also added a bit of extra water, and had it on low with foil to totally soften the peaches. Berries wouldn't need as much cooking. We had the sauce on pork chops, and it's better than fun dip circa 1986.

With this big final batch of peaches, I'm thinking we need to make a large quantity of peach sauce for the low months of winter when nothing sweet is available locally.

2011 Cookfest One: Apple Butter

On Sunday, I peeled, cored and sectioned 6 pounds of apples by hand. It took much longer than I thought, but I had apple butter on the agenda.

I followed Money Saving Mom's crockpot apple butter recipe, but for the intial apple cook-down, only used 1 tablespoon of vanilla, which was plenty.

 

After about 3 hours of cooking, the apples started to go down in volume.

 

After 7.5 hours of cooking, it was time to add the sugar and spices. I only added 1 cup of turbinado sugar (1/2 cup less than recipe), and the butter was still too sweet with the variety of apples I used (Sweet Tango and Winesap). Left out the cloves, and only added a scant 2 teaspoons cinnamon. Next batch is getting some kosher salt, and perhaps something a little spicy.

2011 Cookfest One: Butternut Squash

I kicked off 2011 Cookfest One on Friday night, roasting the butternut squash. I used Once a Month Mom's method -- it worked perfectly fine, although with the convection oven it cooked maybe a little too long. I just mashed with a fork and portioned for storage. I yielded 4 cups and change from a regular-sized butternut squash.

Prepping the squash to cook.

Immediate plans for said squash:

- butternut squash risotto

- butternut cornbread muffins - Publix recipe that I don't see online yet

- harvest pancakes

Husband isn't sure how well he likes butternut squash, so we'll see if it becomes a staple.

Roasted squash.

2011 Cookfest One main post

2011 Cookfest One

Stock pot with chicken and lovely trivet, halfway through filling with water.

Besides a birthday party Saturday night, we had a blissfully unscheduled weekend. The freezer is almost empty and I've felt out of sorts for weeks, but we had a cooking and yard-work filled weekend; now everything is a bit better.

All told, we:

• cleared acorns. It's our second bumper crop year in this house. Removing untold number of acorns is pretty heavy physical labor, done almost entirely by husband. I set some aside to make acorn flour. If I can get them cracked and cooked in the next few days, it's a success.

• roasted butternut squash. I now have some stowed in the freezer for those tasty fall recipes that call for squash.

• made chicken stock. We have stock leftover from summer, but it was time for a new batch, and we also need precooked chicken for easy weeknight dinners. This one is potent. I've made many stocks over the years, and the Le Creuset cast iron trivet has made it so much easier, it was a gift from my in-laws a year or two ago. Any food-safe cast iron trivet should work just the same. I layer vegetables under the meat, and the trivet easily holds both layers down, making it easy to skim the stock while cooking.

• rendered lard. The jar of rendered lard cooling on the counter, I swear it looked as if it were filled with lemonade. Husband is going to post about the project later this week.

• made apple butter. I've been missing apple butter for the better part of a decade, I don't know why I stopped buying it. Well, now I've made it.

• chopped veggie snacks for me to take to work.

My big kitchen focus for fall is baking bread, but first I needed to get a batch of stock out of the way. Now that it's done, this week I'll be prepping dough to cook over the weekend.

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Mac & cheese cups

I never have decent lunches prepared for work, and while my husband has a lunch budget, I don't. He works at a huge corporation: big shared kitchen/fridge, no toaster oven(!), microwave with a line only. Hey, our health insurance is crazy good , so he gets to eat out. I do occasionally, but for the most part I eat at the office. Lunch is frequently cheese and crackers, but I'm trying to improve. More leftovers, more small meals batch-cooked in advance. More carrots, less crackers.

I spotted mac & cheese cups on pinterest and had to make them stat. The pinner linked to The Curvy Carrot, who adapted the recipe from the Deen Brothers. I made a few changes to Curvy Carrot's recipe: subbed panko for the Ritz crackers, used emmenthaler and aged cheddar instead of cheddar and Boursin, and spiced it up with cayenne (instead of flakes), lemon fleur de sel and a skosh of smoked paprika. I also beat the eggs lightly per the Deen Bros. recipe.

 

Emmenthaler (a perfect melting cheese) was on sale, so I risked replacing the creamy Boursin with a half-pound of emmenthaler, and a generous cup of the 3-year aged Cabot cheddar that we adore. Husband thought I might need a bechamel to add creaminess, but it didn't end up gritty. Next go-round though, I'll add some cream cheese that he suggested.

Perhaps because I was generous with the cheese and the noodles, the recipe made way more than the eight servings listed. Using tiny muffin tins would be difficult with the crust and the size of the noodles. Maybe I can find tiny macaroni noodles; it would be pretty cute.

My first bite: delicious. You can see the crust -- panko was a great choice, but I should have crushed the crumbs a little finer, and grated the cheese for the crust smaller. I had a hard time getting the crust thin. The seasoning was great -- my husband had made fleur de sel with lemon per a Thomas Keller recipe from Ad Hoc at Home, and the cayenne and smoked paprika made for a great kick after each bite. Chopped jalepenos would be a nice addition. Bake time is 20-25 minutes, this went about 22 minutes in a convection and it was a bit overdone, especially reheating the next day in the microwave. A scant 20 minutes would have been perfect.

They popped right out of the pans to cool on parchment paper before freezing. The silicone muffin tin is one of the best things ever, it's so versatile for freezing and baking cups of awesomeness. It's Oneida, but I can't find a link to it anywhere, unfortunately. I used a light coat of Pam on the all-metal larger muffin tin. Since I'm primarily making to freeze, I think I'll undercook them a bit next time.

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Waiting 4 years to waste $31.74

We've been in the house almost 4 years, and the entire time I have dreamed about hanging plants on the front porch. Never have I been able to justify the cost of purely decorative plants, and shade-loving blooms aren't cheap. In a fit of madness a few weeks ago, I came home with $31.74 worth of lobelia with deep purple blossoms. Here's how it looks now:

Awesome, right? Let's just say adding daily watering on the front porch was apparently too much to ask of my chore list. I'm admitting defeat and feeling a little sad about the 4 years spent thinking about two plants that I didn't even want.

And because we've been on a spending tear, a huge roast was exactly what we needed from the grocery store this weekend. It's one of the most expensive pieces of meat we've bought, and I'm not sure how we ended up thinking it was a good idea, but the deed is done and I'm about to have a leftover roast beef sandwich. Plus we have a new oven that needed to be tested.

In one bright note for our budget, we did make a practical choice on a temporary fix. The sprayer on our somewhat new faucet has been slowly crapping out, and on Saturday, it was the only way to get water out of the faucet. Not exactly practical. We're going to order an industrial-strength sprayer with no plastic parts, but until then, the least expensive sprayer from Home Depot is just fine. It took a while to figure out how to swap just the sprayer, but it washed cherries.

Day 2 of $53 and a week of dinners

We did both awesome and terribly today when it comes to keeping within budget. Dinner was way under budget, but the food we bought for future meals, particularly Mother's Day brunch tomorrow, was way over budget. We'll see how the week plays out. 

Menu Plan, including estimated spend (does not account for other foodstuffs already in our pantry)

Saturday: Ribs with veggies, salad and bread. $9

• We ended up going with zucchini and yellow squash with onions instead of salad. Grated parmesan and garlic butter made for some wonderful bread, and we used ribs from the freezer. Final total: $4.14, $4.86 under, for onion, squash, zucchini and bread. 

Staples: $10

• garlic, bananas, celery, lemons and milk, $5.32 ($2.18 left)

Total spend for week (2 nights)

• Dinners: $10.21, $3.79 surplus
  
• Staples: $7.82, $2.18 left

Original post in series

*Unless otherwise noted, prices and totals do not include tax. I shop frequently in counties with different tax rates, it's just too complicated.

$53 and a week of dinners

Bit by bit, routine has returned to our lives. By no means are we back on track, but I didn't expect it to be a quick process. We have started cooking on a more regular basis, although I have not kept up with the coupons and sales, and our pantry is still pretty bare. I did clear out a bunch of stuff for a garage sale, and we've replaced most of the stuff lost in the toilet fail. Life is feeling a lot more normal with no contractors in our house.

This week -- tonight (Friday) through next Thursday -- we're going to have to really push ourselves to come in under budget. We sketched out a meal plan last night, and I'm hoping to make $53 last for seven nights of dinner. I've budgeted an extra $10 for staples and $40 for lunches (husband is not able to bring lunch to work, but does a great job keeping it inexpensive when necessary).

My first shopping trip was after work, I bought a few staples and dinner fixin's. We can get produce pretty cheap at our local Harry's Farmers Market, so tomorrow I'll make a run to both Harry's and Publix for the bulk of our food for the coming days. 

Menu Plan, including estimated spend (does not account for other foodstuffs already in our pantry)

Friday: Pork tenderloin sandwiches with provolone, apple, vinaigrette, side of couscous/quinoa and appetizer of tomato. $5

• We didn't end up using the apple on the sandwiches, so I guess technically that should go under staples. We also didn't make the side, even though we had everything on hand, and just ate big sandwiches. Final total: $6.07, $1.07 over, for cheese, tomato, apple and loaf of french bread.

Saturday: Ribs with veggies, salad and bread. $9

Sunday: $26 total

Mother's day brunch: roasted tomatoes with parmesan, basil and balsamic; honey-baked ham; croissants; fruit; eggs with peppers and onions. $13

Takeout pizza: $13

Monday: Cuban sandwiches with sliced pork and ham, swiss, jalepeno, mojo and pickles with side of potato crisps. $5

Tuesday: TBD casserole with ham/pork.

Wednesday: Eggs with ham/pork, pepper and onions; toast. $3

Thursday: Chicken and broccoli. $5

Staples: $10

• white bread and lemon, $2.50 ($7.50 left)

How well we do remains to be seen. We're perfectly capable, but will we do it?

*Unless otherwise noted, prices and totals do not include tax. I shop frequently in counties with different tax rates, it's just too complicated.

Gradually getting back on track

We're coming off of a difficult 6 months of house repairs, topped off with some really expensive vet bills in the past few weeks. To say that our regular routine of cooking at home and other frugal habits have been disrupted is an understatement. We're slowly getting back into cooking at home, but with the constrained budget it hasn't been very fun. Plus I'm way behind on making staples like chicken stock and other basics that enable us to cook really tasty meals without a ton of work. I've let more coupons expire in the past 6 months than I ever have before, and the pantry is rather bare. I've got a stack of receipts still to be entered into the price book. It will be a while before we are back up to speed.

In the past week, I have been so inspired by Kris's series on Cheap, Healthy, Good about feeding her fiance for a week on $25. The series included the intro, a summary on each of the 7 days, and a wrap-up. I've always loved her site, but this series blows it out of the water -- funny, informative without massive length, and just plain good. There's no way we could do $25 a week right now, but I certainly have been thinking harder about not only the cost, but also the nutritional content of what we're serving.

It also made me think a lot about my grandmother, who fed a family of six kids on an extremely meager budget, and the challenges facing budget-strapped families today that are trying to provide as much nutrition as possible. My grandmother had the benefit of living in a small rural town where they knew local farmers and she worked in food service at the school and probably had much better access to inexpensive nutritious food than a family living in the suburbs with a laid-off breadwinner.