Frugal!

Did you see this post on how to get five meals from five chicken breasts?? They aren't skimpy meals or increadibly unhealthy meals, either! Some of the ingredients are not exactly allergy friendly for us, but I am going to try to make substitutions so that I can try this out.  I found this post through Money Saving Mom. If you don't already subscribe to this site, you should.  I get so many free samples and find great deals all over the place from following this site, and it has really helped me with my grocery budget! Enjoy!

Mini Post Monday

• The other day, Ethan burped at the table.  Jerry asked him, "What do you say when you burp?"  His reply?  "Brruuuuuuhhhh."  Well, technically he did answer the question that was asked. 

Ethan has a new thing with sticking out his tongue when he knows his picture is being taken.  This was our best family Easter shot, except for the whole tongue thing...
• The kids were outside playing Saturday morning, and Jerry and I couldn't help but smile when we heard them shouting, "He's crucified!  Take him off the cross and get him in the tomb!"  I wonder what the neighbors were thinking?  Of course, they balanced it out.  After some angry sounding shouts about crucifixion, I heard uncontrolled giggles followed by, "Ethan tooted!"  It's all about ballance, y'all.

Family Easter picture.  Aawwwwww.
• I decided to skip the traditional ham or roast for Easter this year.  Instead, I made chicken fajitas with sauteed onions, peppers, and summer squash, guacamole, black beans, maple walnut cookies, and lemon sponge pudding cake.  My mom added fruit salad and chips to the meal.  Yummy!  What did you have?

The older boys hunting for Easter eggs.
• I am starting something big today.  I am really tired of feeling so weak and soft.  Once upon a time, I was in shape and strong.  I used to run and lift weights and look nice in shorts.  I miss those days.  So when a friend posted about these six week challenges, I decided it was just right for me.  On Mon., Wed., and Fri., I will be doing the push up challenge.  On Tues., Thurs., and Sat., I will be doing both the squats challenge and sit ups challenge.  Anyone care to join me?  Not as a competition or anything - not that I'd be a threat.  I did the initial test for the push ups this morning using a modified push up from my knees and maxed out at 21.  Now my arms feel like jello.
• Aren't my parents so lovely?

Hmmm....Who do you think I resemble?
• I actually did something crafty!  Check it out here.
• My children have a way of making any activity into a game and have fun.  While sorting laundry this morning, there was more laughter and singing from them than I have in a whole day most days.  There's a lesson to learn here.

Does this look like laundry sorting to you?

Yummy Brussels Sprouts

Okay, I know what most of you are thinking, "Yummy and Brussels sprouts cannot exist in the same sentence!" and I have to admit that I used to think the same thing.  Most people think that Brussels sprouts are God's cruel joke on man via the vegetable kingdom, but I'm here to tell you that when they are prepared the right way, Brussels Sprouts can be yummy.  I promise.  Really!

So you need to start by getting some Brussels sprouts, between 1/2 and 1 pound.  Look for smallish ones.  Wash and trim any funny looking spots from the ends.  If you buy them on the "Reduced for Quick Sale" rack like me, you'll have to do a little extra trimming, but once you're done no one will know!  Well, unless you post it on your blog.  Then your readers will know, but for me that's only like three people, so we're still good here.

Go ahead and melt 1-2 Tbsp. olive oil with 1-2 Tbsp. butter in a cast iron skillet.  I know that's a lot, but you're worth it.  You can diet next week!  When it is hot, add 2 cloves of garlic that have been given a rough chop.  Now is not the time to try to save time and put it through your garlic press.  I know you want to, but really, don't.  You need to be able to remove it later with a slotted spoon, and if you pulverize it in the press, you won't be able to do it and the recipe will be totally ruined.  Okay?  Plus, you'll thank me later when you get a burst of intense roasted garlic flavor while eating.  Mmmmmm....

Anyway, while the garlic browns, remove your baby from the drawer he likes to pull out with all the glass pots and lids a few times and pray fervently that your husband will be home from work soon. I'll pray with you, cause I know how it is.

Once the garlic is lightly browned, remove it to a small bowl, turn the heat down to medium-low, and with a slotted spoon and add the sprouts, cut side down, to the pan.  On top of the sprouts, sprinkle 2 Tbsp. of pine nuts (other chopped nuts will work, too), and a generous amount of coarse salt.  Let these cook like this for 15 minutes until the bottoms of the sprouts are nicely browned. 

If, like me, you had a doofus for a carpenter building your house, rotate your pan every now and then so the butter/oil mix doesn't pool down at one side of the pan and leave the other side's sprouts loveless.  It would be cruel to them and to the person who has to eat those sprouts. ::ahem::

When they are beautiful, remove those sprouts with tongs to a serving plate, or if you're ghetto like me, just toss them aside on anything that will keep them until the next step is done.  Then add your garlic, along with a touch more of butter, back to the pan to let the pine nuts get a nice golden brown to them. (See note on your worth and diet plans above.)  At this point, it is important to breathe in deeply, because nothing smells quite like roasting garlic with pine nuts.  Yum!

(No picture here intentionally.  Please see paragraph below for reason. Thank you for your cooperation.)

This is the time that you quickly plug in your camera battery charger, cursing politely that your camera is flashing that red "low battery" light at you, and pray that it gets enough charge in it to finish photographing the recipe since you've put all the sprouts you have in the one pan and cannot make it again soon.  Go ahead.  I'll pray with you, cause I know how it is.

After a minute, your pine nuts will be a lovely brown color and taste great.  If you followed the directions and put your Brussels sprouts in a serving dish, pour the garlic, nut, butter mixture over them and serve.  If you're ghetto like me, turn off the flame, dump the sprouts back in the pan, and give them a little shake to mix everything up.  You're done!  Taste them - aren't they good this way?

Sorbet!

Our family loves ice cream. It is our go-to dessert of choice. Especially Blue Bell Ice Cream. If you've never lived in Texas, it might be hard to understand a Texan's fascination with this particular brand of ice cream, but it is really, really good.



But with our allergies, Blue Bell Ice Cream went out of our diets. They use corn syrup to sweeten their ice cream, and we have to eliminate corn from Ethan's diet, and all the rest of us have to rotate it, so it's just not worth it. But we can still have milk twice a week, so my quest for a corn free ice cream began. I only found one. May I introduce Hagen-Dazs five ice cream?

Behold, my new ice cream obsession! All of the flavors in this line are good. All of them only have milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and one other flavor. But this one, the brown sugar flavor, is so incredibly good that I have to close my eyes and savor each bite! I purposely left eggs and milk on the same day of our rotation so that this ice cream can remain in our diets (oh, and because most baked goods are better with both eggs and milk together...)! This flavor is rich and creamy and has an almost burnt sugar flavor that is like a super rich caramel. I can guarantee you that on Tuesday and Friday evenings, you will find me with a scoop of this ice cream in my evening snack bowl!

Anyway, you may wonder with a title of "Sorbet!" why I speak only of ice cream. Our love of a daily scoop has led me to find milk free alternatives. Sorbet is the obvious answer! I do have a coconut milk ice cream recipe I still want to try, but I started with sorbet. First I made a watermelon sorbet that had just pureed watermelon, lemon juice, and a simple syrup in it. It was so very good! But it did have a problem. Most sorbets share this same problem: after a couple days in the freezer, it is impossible to get a good scoop out of the container even if you let it warm on the counter for a few minutes before scooping it! The watermelon sorbet still tastes good, but the presentation is awful! So I started to think about this problem and what kind of solution would work. I know some people add vodka to their homemade ice cream and sorbet to keep it from freezing solid, but my sorbet needs to be family friendly, so no vodka here! I decided to turn to honey for sweetening. Sure enough, the addition of honey helps keep the sorbet scoopable. It still needs a "warming" period before scooping, but after that, I am able to make nice, pretty round scoops of this! You should try the recipe, it can be used with any fruit and is so forgiving! You can add more or less of each thing, or even add additional ingredients. As long as you end up with the same amount of liquid to go into the ice cream maker at the end, it should work!

I started with three very large, over-ripe mangoes. Sorbet is a great way to use up fruit that is a bit too ripe to enjoy plain.

Chop up the mangoes and puree them in a food processor or blender. This is the base of the sorbet.

To the base, add 1/2 to 1 cup simple syrup and 2-4 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice. (To make a simple syrup, boil 1 part water with 2 parts sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Allow this to cool before using it.) I added 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 cup simple sugar, and 2 Tbsp. lime juice. After mixing all the ingredients together, put them into your ice cream maker and let it run for about 30 minutes.

This is the lovely sorbet when it is soft set! Mmmmm.....I like to freeze mine for several hours before serving it, but it is yummy right away!

Here's a scoop of the mango sorbet on top of some of the watermelon sorbet shavings! A yummy combo!

Huevos Rancheros

Mmmmmm.....Who says you can't get a large portion of vegetables at breakfast?

The Other Post

When I posted about making yogurt, I mentioned that I had tried using 1/2 cup plain yogurt as my starter with not-so-great results, but that it was a topic for another post. Well, this is that post! When I used yogurt as my starter, my end result looked like this:

Looks yummy, no? I have several theories as to what went wrong. First, I didn't have fresh milk. I mean, it wasn't past date, but it was getting close. Also, my yogurt that I used for the starter was about two weeks old. Again, not bad, but not fresh. The biggest mistakes were these: I didn't cool the milk completely down to 110. I was in a hurry, and I realized later that it was 120. Also, I read that it is best to mix a bit of the warm milk into the yogurt and then add it all back to the milk. I didn't do that. As you can see, it is all nice and solid at the bottom of my container and liquid at the top. I think all my starter stayed at the bottom.

Anyway, I guess I was feeling brave the day I made this mess and just put it in the fridge to see what would happen. The next day when it was nice and chilled, I took it out to see if anything could be done with it. I smelled it, and it smelled fine. I tasted it, and it tasted great. But the texture was way wrong. Lots and lots of whey, and a dry and somewhat grainy yogurt. I did some research and found out that you can make cream cheese at home! I actually found this out by looking up how to make whey. I use whey to soak grains to make them easier to digest. I was having a hard time skimming enough off of yogurt for this and found that you can extract the whey out of yogurt, and what you are left with is cream cheese! Who knew?

So I got a bowl and set a strainer lined with a towel in it and dumped in my not-so-perfect yogurt into the strainer and let it sit out on the counter.

I let it sit like this for several hours on the counter until it wasn't really dripping out any whey anymore. At that point, I carefully pulled up the corners of the towel and tied it around the handle of a wooden spoon and hung it over a pitcher so it could drip while hanging and get every last drop of whey out of it.

It kept dripping overnight and a few hours into the next day. When the dripping stopped, it was done! This is what was left in the towel - the most beautiful, yummy cream cheese!

I was a bit skeptical that it would actually taste good, and the knowledge that it had sat out all night creeped me out a little bit, but it was really nice. And what was really strange was that it was even a bit cool to the touch even after sitting out. And I was left with a jar full of whey (about 1 1/2 cups) and a little over a cup of cream cheese. This cream cheese is a little bit different from commercial cream cheese - not so much in taste, but in texture. It is a little bit more dry.

I am working on a recipe using the cream cheese right now, and I'll have to let you know how it turns out.

Fun With Dairy

A couple of weeks ago, the boys and I did experiments with dairy for school. It was a blast! I posted on my Facebook status that we had experimented with dairy, and Marie said I should blog about it. I didn't get many pictures of half of the project, but here it is anyway! We made yogurt and butter that day, and since then I have also made cream cheese (which has a byproduct of whey, which comes in handy for me, too!). I'll save the cream cheese for another post, though!

I saw a post about making butter over at Angry Chicken (I just love that blog, but I really don't get the name...), so I decided I needed to try it. I searched for instructions that would allow me to use my Kitchenaid, because I'm a wimp and didn't want to churn by hand or shake a jar for a ridiculous amount of time. I found these instructions, and we got busy. I bought a high quality organic cream to make this, I think it was the Organic Valley brand, and I only used a pint. It took a little bit longer than I thought it would from reading the butter-making accounts I found on the web, but it worked beautifully.

Washing the butter was a bit weird, and I wasn't sure I had done enough (which I did because this butter was used long before it spoiled) but in the end I got one cup of butter and about one cup of fresh buttermilk. The butter was smooth and sweet. It tasted great, melted perfectly, and was even better because we knew we had made it. The buttermilk was not like the thick, cultured buttermilk which you buy at the supermarket (which isn't actually a byproduct of butter making, but milk with a culture added), it was fresh and sweet/tart. Now I understand when I hear people say they loved drinking a glass of fresh buttermilk when they were young. It wasn't anything like what I picture when I think of buttermilk!

Of course, what do you do with buttermilk other than make buttermilk pancakes? Ooh, these were sooo good made with the fresh buttermilk and topped with our fresh butter! I usually put peanut butter on my pancakes, but these were so good even plain, that I couldn't bear to tarnish their purity with the peanut butter, so I used some fresh butter and pure maple syrup. I cannot wait to make these again when I have fresh buttermilk again! Making butter is no cheaper than buying it, but getting the fresh buttermilk makes it a worthwhile endeavor!

Yogurt making was not new to me. I used to make plain yogurt all the time. It was one of Ethan's favorite baby foods. I had gotten out of the habit of making it, though. Here's what you need to make yogurt:

• a yogurt maker (or you can use your oven - instructions below)
• 1 quart good quality milk
• commercial yogurt starter or 1/2 c. plain yogurt (high quality and fresh, room temperature)
• candy thermometer

First, heat the milk gently until the thermometer reads 180 degrees.

Remove the milk from heat, pour it into the container that comes with the yogurt maker and cool to 110 degrees. You can do this in the refrigerator to speed the process, but watch it closely because it cools quickly once it gets under 120. Once cooled, stir in the yogurt starter. If you are using the 1/2 cup yogurt, stir about a cup of the cooled milk into the yogurt, then stir this back into the rest of the milk.

Place the container into the yogurt maker and process as directed.

I like to process mine for a shorter time, because then end product is milder. I can actually eat the homemade yogurt unsweetened because it is mild. It is great in smoothies and with a bit of fruit or jam, too. If you don't have a yogurt maker, you can pour your mixture into a shallow glass, enamel or stainless steel container. Then place the container into a warm oven (a gas oven with a pilot light or electric oven pre-heated to warm and then turned off) overnight. Your yogurt will be ready in the morning. I've never tried this method, but I've read that it works.

Mmmmm, yogurt. Other than being able to control the tartness, the only other difference between homemade yogurt and commercial yogurt is that homemade is generally runnier than store bought. Really, if you have milk and plain yogurt, there is no reason not to try this! I tried using the 1/2 cup yogurt instead of the starter this week, with not so great results. But that is for another post...

Super Simple Sides

I really like vegetables, but I get tired of making the same old thing all the time. Our dinners usually consist of a main dish accompanied by either steamed broccoli, roasted veggies, or corn and either rice or potatoes. Boring. But my problem is that I don't want to dedicate time to making sides. I have decided that I need to have some super simple side ideas and I need to branch out a bit. This is my first attempt at that goal! I made this recipe by thinking about what flavors I might like together. Hope you enjoy!

Super Simple Sauteed Zucchini

Cast of Characters (This phrase is shamelessly borrowed from The Pioneer Woman. Check out her recipes - they rock!):

2 medium zucchini

1/2 cup corn

one large or two small shallots

2 tsp. olive oil

Herbamare seasoning

black pepper

First you need to get out your big, sturdy skillet. If, like me, you do not use non-stick cookware, spray it with a non-stick spray. Then heat about 1 tsp olive oil in the pan over medium high heat. Give the shallots a fine dice and saute them in the oil until they are nice and brown. I like to use shallots for this because they are more mild than onions and I think they match zucchini better because of that. But if you don't have shallots, by all means, use an onion. About 1/4 of a medium ought to do it.


Once the shallots are soft and brown, add another tsp of oil to the pan, followed by diced zucchini. I like my zucchini in about a half inch dice. This way the cook up nice and fast and are small enough that they are not too much bigger than the corn. I like my mixed veggies to all be roughly the same size for some reason...

When you add the zucchini to the pan, resist the urge to stir them right away. Just let them hang out in a single layer for a while so that they get nice and brown. If you have your heat high enough, this won't take too long and after you turn them once to get nice and brown on the other side, they'll have a perfect crisp-tender texture!

When you flip the zucchini the first time, go ahead and add the corn. This is best with frozen corn that has been thawed, or fresh corn cut from the cob. But I only had canned on this day, and it is fine that way too. In fact, this is a great way to use up leftover corn. After you add the corn, it is time to season the veggies. I like to use Herbamare seasoning. This is a really nice seasoned salt that can be found at natural food stores. It pairs great with veggies, fish, and chicken! If you don't have this, or another seasoned salt you like, kosher salt would work well. I also add pepper. I think some basil or thyme would be good here, too. Go crazy and try whatever spice sounds good at the time!

By the time the zucchini is browned on the other side, the corn will be heated through and this is ready to serve! Even with the chopping, this dish only takes about 15 minutes, and the results are worth the extra effort! I served this up with a yummy beef enchilada casserole! Yummy!

Migas My Way

One thing that I like about cooking is that it is not only a way to prepare nutritious food for my family, but often it is a means of self-discovery. Often times I am willing to try things in the kitchen, be brave and branch out even though I am not always willing to do that in other areas. I also learn things about my preferences, likes and dislikes, that I wouldn't learn if I wasn't trying new things. This is true about Migas. I was first introduced to Migas when Tina put them up for her entry in the recipe war on Mothers of Invention. I liked them, but I thought there were too many tortillas and I wanted more flavor. So when I found the recipe for Migas on Pioneer Woman Cooks, I was very excited to try it out! These were more to my liking.

I learned several things in the process of making these:

• I really need to learn how to take good pictures of food. That looks way more disgusting here than it did in real life!
• I don't like cilantro. Everyone else I've heard say they don't like cilantro thinks it tastes like soap. I don't think that, but I just don't like it! I guess I do like it in one circumstance. I like fresh salsa. I know there is cilantro in that, but I guess the other flavors are so strong that it is not too prominent for me.
• I do not like the veggies in something to be a totally different texture from the rest of the dish. This recipe says not to cook the peppers and onions too long so that they are still a bit crunchy, but I will cook them until they are much softer next time.
• I like migas with an equal number of tortillas and eggs. The first recipe I tried had twice as many tortillas as eggs. This one has twice as many eggs as tortillas. I think right in between would be perfect!

I fully recommend this recipe! I will make it again for sure.

Meal Plans

I know that lots and lots of bloggers post a meal plan for the week every Monday. Although I will never commit to doing that because I know I will fail more often than I succeed, I did plan a menu this week. You might notice that I have added Pioneer Woman Cooks to the links on the side of this blog. Mostly that is because I think her blog is incredible! However, I forget to check it and each time I remember, I wish I had checked it sooner. I am hoping that seeing it there will spark my memory! Anyway, this weekend, I was browsing through the 7,523 posts that she has put up since the last time I checked and realized that she has a tremendous number of recipes that I want to try. So I made my entire menu from her blog's recipes!

Meal 1: Migas, fruit, Bronco Bread

Meal 2: Zucchini Farfalle, grilled chicken

Meal 3: Beef Enchiladas, chips, black beans

Now, before you all freak out on me and think that I have forgotten how to count the days in a week or simply left off the rest of my menu, I only planned to cook three times this week. My boys are still young enough that they eat very little, so I plan for leftovers. Plus, my husband won't be home for dinner every night this week. Be honest, do you really cook a full meal for just you and the kids (if your kids are 5 and under like mine)??? I never do. And I never, never cook on Sundays. Just my little rule. So three meals it is.

I'll have to post each recipe (my version) as I make it. I am so excited about all three of these meals!

So, what's for dinner at your house this week?

Kitchen Capers

I love waffles. My family loves waffles, too. We eat them once a week. I have been on the hunt for a whole grain waffle recipe, but am yet to find one that I love. I like ones that have a variety of flours in them as well as oats. I really like oats in my waffles. Yesterday for lunch I tried yet a new recipe. Because I wanted to honor the Passover holiday (read: because I totally messed up), I decided to leave out the leavening. If you have ever wondered just how important baking powder is to a waffle recipe, let me tell you - it is vital. My first two waffles were totally baffling to me! The batter seemed runny and the resulting waffle was so thin and gross looking. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to actually have anything worth eating when I was done!

Fortunately, I was willing to admit that I might have messed up the recipe and looked. Sure enough, I left out the baking powder! Duh! Check out how different they look after I added leavening:

Sadly, after all of that, this recipe is nothing special. The hunt is still on. So if you have a whole grain waffle recipe to share, please do!


My love for loaded baked potatoes continues. I don't know what it is about potatoes, but I just cannot get enough of these things! I even had a potato and salad for lunch today! A while back I made a baked potato soup that was so wonderful I just have to share the recipe. You really have to try this soup!

After a week of being couped up in the house with one kid after another having a stomach virus, we got out to the park today. The kids were so happy to actually be out playing! Check out my super cute monkeys, er, I mean kids:

Yogurtlu Kebab and Bread

Can I just say how much I enjoy Middle Eastern food? I really like it. I mean, they take the oddest ingredients, put them together and it's absolutely delicious. Take dinner tonight: I made the standard hummus, tabbouleh and pita. For the main course I made Yogurtlu Kebab or in English Kofta with Tomato Sauce and Yogurt. Doesn't that sound sort of...icky? You should have seen the look on Del's face when I put this on the table for dinner. I should have taken a picture. Especially with "yogurt???" Oh my lordy, it was hilarious. The were all sort of silent and I could tell they were thinking, "What in the world had Mom put on the table now? What sort of strange culinary experience is she subjecting us to now?"

Basically this dish is some toasted pita pieces covered with a tomato sauce made of diced tomatoes, salt, pepper and oil cooked on the stove until hot and soft (10 minutes?), plain yogurt, a drizzle of paprika oil (olive oil with paprika in it) and the kofta on top. Kofta is ground lamb (you can use beef), onion, salt, pepper and parsley made into little one-inch hamburger patties basically. You broil them. Anyway, it did look strange and different from anything we'd ever had before, but it was delicious! There's supposed to be pine nuts on it but I forgot to put in on the grocery list so they didn't get bought.

Let me know if you'd like the recipe.

AND, I finally was able to make the bread dough tonight. I really should be ironing. But I like making bread better. Plus, Lily won't go to sleep so we're listening to Sara Groves, Del's playing a game on him game machine and entertaining Lily and I'm futzing around in the kitchen. I like it in there, even though it is really small.

I kneaded it for a full 10 minutes I think because you're totally right, the dough is so different. I hope it turns out! Oh and I used 2 cups of white, 2 cups of wheat and it felt alright to me. I proofed the yeast in all the buttermilk and honey, then added everything else and then the flour. For the record.

Bobby Flay

So I have had food network on in the background today. I did this yesterday too...out of character for me, but I am making something for dinner tonight that I saw on a show yesterday. Anyway, Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill came on. I have never really liked Bobby. He just seems so cocky to me. I think I never really liked him, but my opinion of him dropped really low after he was on Iron Chef and when he won, he hopped on the counter to cheer and happened to hop on the wooden cutting board when he did. He really offended the Japanese chefs because their boards are sacred to them, in a similar way to the way a chef's knives are sacred to them. Then after he was told why he offended them, not only did he not care, at a later date he did it again on a different show just to rub it in. That was it for me. I cannot watch him anymore without thinking of how rude he was.

Speaking of TV, I am so pumped because it is Thursday and Thursday is Lost day. Have you gotten hooked on Lost like me?