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Archive for the ‘Dinners’ Category

We had a big neighborhood bar-b-que tonight and my contribution was a medley of vegetables. I actually was really surprised by how much of a hit they were considering they were, well, vegetables and they had to compete with everyones favorites: hamburgers and hot dogs. However, everyone raved and inquired as to how I made the tofu actually taste good (apparently others are used to it being rubbery).

The recipe is quite easy, actually, and you can make it under the broiler or on the grill! Cut up chunks of zucchini (from 4 small zucchini), and one sweet onion. Halve some button mushrooms and wash some cherry tomatoes (make sure they aren’t from one of the areas affected by the salmonella outbreak). Finally, cut up some firm tofu into 2 inch cubes.

Marinate the veggies and tofu for 1 or 2 hours in 3/4 cup of lemon juice, 3/4 cup of soy sauce, 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of sesame oil. You can thread them on skewers and then put them on the grill or you can spread them out on a baking sheet and put under the broiler for 10 minutes, stirring once at the half-way point. If broiling, you might want to take the mushrooms, tomatoes, and tofu out at this point and broil the onions and zucchini for another 5 minutes if you don’t think they are done enough.

I served them in a big bowl all mixed together and people ate them with their fingers. Enjoy!

A Week of Cabin Cooking!

The theme for this week’s worth of dinner recipes is cabin cooking. And the cookbook with the recipes is

Okay okay, so I know this cookbook is OLD but it is time-tested and cheap! We make stuff from it on a regular basis. It came to me by way of my husband and wow does it have some good recipes in it! It contains very easy, simple, and classic American recipes. A lot of them do take some time to cook, though, so get out the crockpot or make some of these on a Saturday and freeze for the week if you aren’t home.

On The Menu
Cottage Cheese Spinach Quiche p.45 / Sweet and Sour Chicken Wings p.121
Mandarin-Cashew Salad p.77 / English Muffin Pizzas
Pot Roast Supreme p.113
Steamed Artichokes see here / Pesto Pasta
Hamburger-Wild Rice Casserole p.89 / Garlic Bread

With regard to the very first recipe, I know it sounds weird to put cottage cheese in the oven, but we just had this very recipe tonight and trust me, it  was delicious! Make 2 quiches because it does not make “6 servings” as stated in the book. More like 3!

The English Muffin Pizzas are a staple around here. Here’s how to make them: toast the English muffins, then put a dollop of spaghetti sauce on top of each, on top of that put 1 or 2 slices of cheddar cheese. If you have a toaster oven, pop them in there for about 5 minutes until hot and bubbly. If you don’t have a toaster oven then just put them in a regular oven on a cookie sheet as the cheese can melt over the sides.

For the pesto, just put one clove of garlic (peel it first), a cup of basil, and 1/2 cup of olive oil in a food chopper or blender. Boil whatever noodles you choose and top with the pesto. Add some grated Parmesan if you want.

For the garlic bread you can buy a pre-made loaf at the store or just make your own very simply with regular ‘ol sandwich bread. Toast the bread (in the oven if making a bunch), smear on some butter, sprinkle with garlic powder.

The onion powder in the shopping list is a substitute for the Lawry’s seasoned salt called for in the Cottage Cheese Spinach Quiche.

The Shopping List

Cottage cheese, large tub (2 cups)

Frozen chopped spinach, 20 oz.

Eggs, 3

Salt

Garlic powder

Onion powder

Parmesan cheese, 1 cup grated

Paprika

 

Mandarin oranges, 3 11-oz. cans

Lettuce, 2 heads

Salted cashews, 1 cup

Medium onions, 2

Oil and vinegar salad dressing

 

Wild rice, 1 cup

Ground beef, 1.5 pds.

Cream of mushroom soup, 1 10.5 oz. can

Cream of chicken soup, 1 10.5 oz. can

Canned mushrooms (fresh would be better though!), 1 can

Water chestnuts, 1 can

Beef bouillon cubes, 2

 

Beef roast, approx. 3 pds.

Flour

Carrots, 6

Potatoes, 6

Onion soup, 1 10.5 oz. can

 

Chicken wings, 20-25

Soy sauce, 1 cup

Pineapple juice, 1 cup

Sugar, 1 cup

Salad oil, ¼ cup

Ground ginger

 

Dried or fresh noodles of your choice

Fresh basil, 1 cup

Olive oil, ½ cup

Garlic, 1 clove

 

Artichokes, 2-4

English muffins

Spaghetti sauce, 1 cup

Cheddar cheese

Bread

 

A few days ago we had nothing planned for dinner. In days past, I would have a) gotten take-out or b) ran to the grocery with a recipe in-hand. Since I am now in the save-money mode, these two options aren’t the best. Take-out is too expensive (and not usually healthy) and running to the grocery for just one meal wastes time and gas money.

So instead I dug through the cabinets and found half a box of whole wheat noodles and a large can of tomatoes. Ah ha! Not only that, but I also had some fresh asparagus that I hadn’t cooked yet. Since I am not totally well-versed on making pasta sauce I looked up some recipes on Epicurious and looked at the major ingredients. Thankfully I also have an AeroGarden with basil, I always keep a few heads of garlic around, and I had some left-over wine. Here’s what I came up with: A beautiful-looking pasta sauce with canned tomatoes, crushed basil, garlic, and wine. Topped with some cheese and a few small basil leaves. Add to that a side of asparagus and it looked as if I had planned this meal out! Take a look:

This is the great reward for those of us who know a little bit about cooking: we can save money by putting together ingredients that we have lying around. It is also really helpful to keep in-stock some of the basic cooking ingredients in your well-stocked pantry (see my post on that subject!). 

What Steps Do You Take To Learn To Cook?

The way I learned to cook was in steps:

1) Use recipes for everything (from age 10-19)

2) Watch someone else cook who knows how to whip things up without recipes/from memory (age 20)

3) Use a combination of recipes (80% of the time) and trying to create things on my own (20%) - age 21-29

4) Use a combination of recipes (50% of the time) and trying to create things on my own (50%) - age 30-31

Do I think everyone learns to cook this way? No! I am sure there are plenty of people who taught themselves from books or just from trial and error. I assume they had a lot of errors along the way, though. I am a bit more risk-averse so I was probably slower than most to start trying things out on my own.

Pasta Recipe

In case you were wondering what that pasta recipe is that I came up with, I will try to record the gist of it here:

Boil the whole-wheat pasta according to the box directions. In a pot, put a tbsp. olive oil, heat it up at medium heat, then add two cloves of crushed garlic and saute for about 20-30 seconds. Throw in a can of plum tomatoes (if whole, use a potato masher or something to crush them up in the pot). Simmer for 10 minutes. Add 3/4 cup of white or red wine and a tbsp. of sugar (to sweeten the tomatoes if they are too acidic). Simmer for another 10-20 minutes. Add 2 tbsp or up to 1/4 cup of crushed or chopped basil depending on how much you like basil. Add other herbs if you like those better. Simmer for another 10 minutes. Top the pasta with the sauce and some cheese. Serve with fresh, steamed, or broiled vegetables.

If you are trying to be healthy I would aim to make the veggies the same proportion as the pasta - like 50% veggies and 50% pasta on your plate. Before you take seconds of the pasta eat more veggies. We Americans do not eat enough vegetables!

I just found another website that offers a dinner planning service called MenusForMoms that looks promising. I think you might want to check out this one in addition to the ones I listed here and also keep checking my site for more menus like the one I posted yesterday. I like my own menus because they are relatively easy, good for kids, and utilize a lot of the same foods throughout the week which saves you money by enabling you to buy in bulk more often.

MenusForMoms has a service whereby you can get the menus for free if you view their add-laced pages or pay $5/month for add-free menus. Their menu for this week includes a Cinco de Mayo casserole, pork chops, cheeseburger pie, baked salmon, and grilled chicken. If you like to have meat every night in your dinners then this site might be for you! We are more on the meat 2x a week schedule and we quite frankly can not figure out how or why people would want to eat meat more than that. It has recently come to my attention that a lot of people expect to eat meat every day. Weird. 

I especially like some of the articles on the site, including the one about the well-stocked pantry. Check it out here (if you are a dad or a single person, I guess this link won’t work for you. Just kidding. :P) They are also going to come out with a frugal dinner menu service soon…
 Save time and money with Menus4Moms’ dinner menus for busy moms!

Earlier I posted about some meal planning services and a book that can help you out when you are just too busy to create your own. I am still a little frustrated with those options due to them either taking too long to make or just not being very tasty. So I decided to make a menu and shopping list of my own to share with you. I sure hope it helps you out! I’ve made all of these recipes multiple times for my family and we love them all.

These are super-easy meals with the only thing that could be remotely difficult being the crepes. But you need a little challenge in your life, right?! They are so yummy that it is worth trying to make them. Here are the 5 meals for the week:

• Homemade Macaroni and Cheese / Asparagus
• Your choice of Meat / Frozen Vegetables / Mashed Potatoes
• Homemade Broccoli Soup / Bread
• Spinach and Cream Crepes
• Grilled Ham and Cheese / Spinach

SHOPPING LIST:

Meat (buy whatever is on sale, whatever cut: beef, chicken, or pork)

1 bunch of asparagus

2 onions

1 head of garlic

4 baking potatoes

1 bag or box of frozen vegetables – whatever you like to eat

2 boxes of frozen spinach (10 oz each)

16 oz. fresh or frozen broccoli

Optional: frozen fruit like peaches or strawberries

1 lb cheddar cheese

Butter, unsalted

5 cups of milk

Whipping cream (small)

Sour cream (small)

3 eggs

Flour

8 oz. of noodles like macaroni or penne (buy a wheat blend to be healthy!)

Seasoned breadcrumbs (only if you bought chicken on sale)

Brown sugar (only buy if you bought pork on sale)

3 cups of low-sodium chicken stock

Olive oil

Vegetable oil

Bread

Sliced deli ham

RECIPES:

1. Homemade Macaroni and Cheese / Asparagus

Man N Cheese: This is from McCall’s Cookbook and is absolutely wonderful! It has been a staple in my family for a LONG time.

Set oven to 375 degrees.

Cook 8 oz of noodles using package directions.

Melt 1/4 cup butter in a small saucepan (don’t burn it!), remove from heat and use a whisk to blend in 1/4 cup of flour, when all the lumps are out return it to the heat and gradually add in 2 cups of milk, just a little bit at a time at first while you whisk it in. Add all the milk and bring to a boil while stirring and boil for 1 minute. You can raise to med-high or high heat if you stir it constantly to get it to boil faster. That’s the white sauce.

Drain the noodles and put half of them in an 8″ square baking dish.

Grate 2 cups of cheddar cheese.

Put 1 cup of cheddar on the noodles, then put the other half of the noodles on top of that, then put the rest of the cheddar on those. Pour the white sauce you just made all over the noodles and cheese.

Bake 15-20 minutes.

Asparagus: This is in season right now so get it while it is good and relatively cheap! Wash it and cut off the thick ends a few inches up. Boil them in 6 cups of water for 5-10 minutes, 5 if you like them crisp and 10 if you like them rubbery. We like ‘em done for 8 minutes. Take them out, serve, and eat.

2. Your choice of Meat / Frozen Vegetables / Mashed Potatoes

Meat: you’ve purchased whatever was on sale. If chicken, dip it in a milk/egg bath, then dip in seasoned breadcrumbs (add cumin and/or garlic powder to the breadcrumbs if you like), then bake. If beef, season simply with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, then bake or grill. If pork, smear a crushed garlic (one or 2 cloves) and brown sugar (1 cup) mixture over the pork and then bake.

Mashed potatoes: Peel 4 baking potatoes, cut them into quarters, then boil them in water until they are quite soft. Dump the potatoes into a kitchen aid and beat them with some butter (2 tablespoons), 1/2 cup milk, some cut-up chives, cut-up parsley, or any combination of those ingredients if you have them on hand. If you don’t have a kitchen aid mash them up with a potato masher or back of a ladle. Only serve 1/2 of the mashed potatoes! Save the rest for tomorrow night.

Veggies: take out of freezer and prep as per package directions. 

3. Homemade Broccoli Soup / Bread

Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a big pot, heat it up w/ medium heat, then put in a few cloves of crushed garlic for a few seconds. Then put in 1/2 cup of chopped onion. Saute the onion and garlic for about 6-7 minutes. Then add 3 cups of chicken stock and 3 cups of water. Add the left-over mashed potatoes from last night and broccoli (if fresh broccoli, wash and cut it into pieces first). Raise the heat, bring to boil, simmer for about 10 minutes. You can eat it like this if you don’t have an immersion blender (I wouldn’t fuss with putting it into a regular blender - too much trouble!), just add a few cups of grated cheddar cheese, stir it in until melted, and eat. If you do have an immersion blender, blend the soup first, then add the cheese, stir, and enjoy! Serve with bread.

4. Spinach and Cream Crepes

Use the recipe found here, it is delicious! For the spinach filling: heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium saucepan. Add 1 cup of chopped onion, saute for about 6-7 minutes until translucent. Add 2 boxes (10 oz each) of spinach and stir until the spinach is soft. If there is a lot of liquid in the pot then you can drain some of it out into the sink. Stir in 1 tablespoon of salt and maybe 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg if you like it. That’s the filling! For the cream, combine 1/4 cup of whipping cream with 1/4 cup of sour cream. Dot some of the cream mixture on top of spinach filling before wrapping the crepe up. (Use the cream sparingly!)

Only use 1/2 of the spinach filling for tonight’s dinner! Save the rest for tomorrow night’s dinner.

If you get crazy, make sweet crepes for dessert. Heat up a bag of frozen fruit in a pot with a few tablespoons of butter and about 1/2 cup of sugar. Heat until the fruit is syrupy and very soft. Put in crepes. Whip the left over whipping cream with a whisk in a Kitchen Aid or other mixer and then add some sugar, to taste (start with like 1/4 cup sugar). That’s your whipped cream to put on top of the dessert crepes!

5. Grilled Ham and Cheese / Spinach

Soften some butter in the microwave (just 10 - 20 seconds will do, don’t melt it), then spread the butter on one side of a bunch of pieces of bread. Put a slice or two of cheddar cheese on one slice and a slice of deli ham on that. Keep the butter facing out. Put another slice of bread on top, butter side out. Heat skillet to medium and put the sandwich on it. Let it brown on one side, then flip and brown on the other side. Make as many as you need and serve them with the spinach from last night, heated up in the microwave, as a side dish. Tell the kids that this is like eating a fancy breakfast - except for dinner!

We broke down and ordered take-out tonight. It was excellent, of course; expensive - of course; and I ate too much - of course! My youngest (3.5 yrs) ate half a spring-roll, then was excused to go play, then declared “I want something to eat!” about 5 minutes later as if there weren’t 5 boxes of food on the table. At least this time it wasn’t my own cooking that was so easily dismissed. Hopefully our little dalliance will not put us over our food budget for the month ($800).

About a year ago I started searching for a website or book that would give me tasty and quick recipes to make for a whole week along with a shopping list for the ingredients. I thought that it would be great to just photocopy or print a shopping list and not have to think about meal planning or list-making. What a tall order this seemingly simple want turned out to be! I will share my results with you here. Please let me know if there are any services or cookbooks that I have missed out on!

DinnerPlanner - This is a great website that you should definitely check out.  They even have a free week’s worth of menus (and the shopping list) to try out. The service costs $15 for 3 months worth of recipes delivered to your email. I paid for it and made most of the meals during my 3 months. Things we liked: not planning meals, not planning the shopping list, pretty good recipes most of the time plus a few standouts. Things we didn’t like: the recipes take 30 minutes to 1 hour to make.

SavingDinner- This website is more professionally done than DinnerPlanner’s and has a lot more menu-types to choose from (like heart-healthy, frugal, lunch, kid-friendly, etc.). The service generally costs $10 for 3 months of recipes and shopping lists. I only tested the sample menu, about a year ago, so I can’t vouch for the rest of the menus and recipes. The reason we chose the other service was that the recipes took over an hour to make and we didn’t necessarily even like them better. The sample menu has changed since then so perhaps you would get a different result.

The Weeknight Survival Cookbook: How to Make Healthy Meals in 10 Minutes - My sister gave us this book when we were so busy with our work and our little ones that we were barely able to get ourselves fed. I have to say that it is a really good book overall. First off, the meals seriously only take 10 minutes, which is absolutely wonderful for busy people like us! (The Sunday meals take longer though.) Second, it reuses food in order to minimize your cooking. Like this: it has you make 2x the potatoes that you need one night and the left-overs go into the potato-broccoli soup the next night. You get 3 months of recipes and shopping lists. We have gone through most of the weeks. What we liked: super fast and easy meals, no planning needed, nutritious and balanced, spent a lot less money on food because these are cheap meals. What we didn’t like: the food is decent but not great.

Last night’s dinner was delicious, easy, and cheap. In all, it cost somewhere between $10-$15 and made 4 helpings. We bar-b-qued the chicken on our super-cheap charcoal grill that we bought on sale last fall ($50 at Home Depot). Thankfully we finally had a nice day with which to use it!

• Blackened Chicken: 4 chicken thighs covered in a sauce made of tomato paste, red wine vinegar, and orange juice. Grilled for about 25 minutes, turning 4 times.
• Home Fries: Two baking potatoes cut into 1/2 inch strips, mixed with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of fresh chives from the AeroGarden, and a teaspoon of salt. Baked for 20 minutes, turning once at 400 degrees. Browned a bit under broiler for the last 2 minutes (watch closely!).
• Vegetables: One bag of frozen mixed vegetables heated in microwave

Okay, so I have this thing called an AeroGarden Pro 100 with Gourmet Herb Seed Kit. I got it as a Christmas present and it has been producing a great quantity of herbs, including basil, for the last 10 weeks or so. Let’s just say we have been enjoying a lot of pesto pasta lately! It looks as if we will be doing so again tonight since I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer last night that I thought we would make tonight. So pesto it is. Good thing we love pesto pasta. The crop of basil this week was exceptionally large:

A few weeks ago I had to give some to my neighbor because we just had too much and wouldn’t have eaten it all. The great thing about the herbs that come from the AeroGarden is that you don’t have to wash them off before using them. With the mint, for example, I simply snip off a leaf or two and put it right into a glass of water for a refreshing drink. To change things up a bit tonight, I’ll try putting some tomato into the pesto (that probably makes it not technically pesto anymore, right?) since I have half a can of tomatoes left over after last night’s bean dish.

Inspired by the recent Slate article on buying beans during a recession, I bought a few bags of them during our last trip to the store.  Although I was very confused as to why our bags were priced at $2-$3 per bag while the article quoted $0.69 bags, I bought them anyway.  The recipe I am using tonight - Red Beans and Rice - is from The New Basics Cookbookand takes about 3.5 hours in total cook-time, though the prep-time is minimal.  It is nice to have a home-office so that I can start these kinds of meals ahead of time.  I would guess that a crock-pot would do the trick if you were gone all day.