In last week's meal plan, I had a bit of a cooking adventure in store for me. On Wednesday, I used my pressure cooker for the first time for COOKING instead of canning. Tuesday night, I scoured a couple cookbooks for a recipe that looked good and would use one of the huge pieces of meat from our 1/8 cow that I always have trouble using up. I settled on a crock pot recipe for beef barley soup using round steak.
I'm sorry I don't have a picture to share, but it was DELICIOUS! Seriously, delicious. I had been in the mood for something like that lately, with the weather getting cooler, and it was exactly what I wanted.
The pressure cooker was awesome! I chose a crock pot recipe, since the moist, long, slow cooking of a crock pot is perfect for tougher meats that take a long time to tenderize. A pressure cooker works well for similar cuts of meat, but uses very high temperatures and pressure to achieve similar results. The best part about using the pressure cooker is that it took 25 minutes of cooking time once all the ingredients were in the pot!!!. Amazing. My new Nutrimill grain mill and my pressure cooker might just be my favorite kitchen appliances (besides the dishwasher!) right now.
Below is the recipe I used in my 10 quart pressure cooker. This is doubled from the original recipe, and it filled my pot just over half-way. You might want to reduce it if your pressure cooker is smaller, since you don't want to fill a pressure cooker more than 2/3 full. Also, my pressure cooker only has one pressure setting, 15 pounds, so adjust accordingly if yours is different.
Beef Barley Soup
adapted from Fix Freeze Feast: Prepare in Bulk and Enjoy by the Serving
3 pounds round steak, cut into small bite-sized pieces
3 cups sliced carrots
3 cups sliced celery
2 cups chopped onion
1 large green bell pepper, diced
2 (14 1/2 oz) cans diced tomatoes, undrained
2 cups any tomato sauce (I used pizza sauce I bought and didn't like on pizza)
2 quarts beef broth
1 tablespoon beef boullion
1 cup pearl barley
2 teaspoons salt (can be reduced)
1 teaspoon black pepper
1. Brown the meat in a little bit of oil and remove from pot.
2. Add carrots, celery and onion and saute for 7-10 minutes, or until they begin to soften.
3. Add back meat and all other ingredients, stir.
4. Attach lid to pressure cooker and turn heat on high to bring it up to pressure. Once steam starts coming out (or whatever your particular pressure cooker does to indicate it is up to pressure), reduce heat to low-med and cook for 25 minutes. Reduce pressure according to your pressure cooker's instructions. Once all pressure is gone and it is safe to open the pressure cooker, open it, stir the soup and enjoy!
Recipe makes 5-6 quarts, so be sure to freeze some for another day.
Do you have any tips or great recipes for using a pressure cooker? Please share!
Showing posts with label fall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Surprise, a Productive Fall Weekend!
This weekend, my husband and I had a chance to catch up around the house. For him, that meant spending two full days collecting the millions of leaves that have fallen on our yard and getting them mulched with the mower and into the compost pile. For me, that meant a few things: putting our vegetable garden to bed for the winter, doing some cooking ahead and... playing with my new Nutrimill grain mill! I love when it happens this way - I didn't really plan to get all of this done, so the fact that I did was a huge bonus!
Here's what I was able to do:
:: Put our vegetable garden to bed for the first time in the 5 years I have lived in this house. It always seems to get really cold really fast, and the fall ends up being such a busy time for some reason. I always have the best of intentions, but I have never actually pulled up all of the old plants and organized the beds for next year... until now! Not only did I clean out the dead plants, but I gave each bed a thick blanket of mulched leaves and grass clippings, that will hopefully block out some of the weeds in the spring and also add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. We didn't have a stellar year in the vegetable garden, and I just didn't spend the time out there like I usually do, so I'm hoping my little bit of extra garden love this fall will translate into a more productive season next year. It certainly can't hurt!
:: Cooked now so we can eat later without a lot of fuss. I love cooking from scratch and eating healthfully and frugally, but there are only so many hours in the day, so I try to be efficient about it. On Sunday, I made a big pot of of brown rice and black beans for the freezer, a small pot of chili for lunches this week, some sausage/potato/bean soup, a loaf of bread, and since the oven was on for the bread, I threw in some potatoes to bake to eat with the chili this week.
The rice and beans are something I do regularly. For the rice, I make a big pot, and then portion it out in approx 2/3-3/4 cup servings in plastic sandwich bags, freeze, and then pull out any time we have a meal that goes with rice. Since brown rice takes a good 45 minutes to make, I don't have to worry about planning too far ahead for the rice when I have portions ready in the freezer. To eat, we just put the frozen rice (without the bag) on a plate and microwave 2 minutes. Not only is it a time-saver, having rice portioned out saves our waistlines too. We know we can always heat up another bag if we want more rice, but we never really feel like it once we finish our first helping. On the other hand, if we had a big pot of rice... we probably would eat more.
For the beans, I randomly chose an amount of 4 cups of dried black beans from my recent bulk purchase you can read about here. I soaked them in water overnight, and then put them in a crockpot with a bunch of water. I cooked them on high for a good 8 hours or so - it took a long time to heat up. Once the beans were tender, I let them cool a bit, and then portioned them out without the liquid into 1 cup bags for the freezer. Now, when I'm making soup or burritos or some other recipe that calls for canned black beans, I just go to my freezer instead. I ended up with 10-11 cups of cooked beans from 4 cups dry. This way is cheap, took almost no work on my part, and the beans don't have all the added salt or packaging that canned beans have. No work and a great final product? I'm all over it.
:: Last but not least, my grain mill and food grade buckets with gamma seals arrived! It was a pretty busy week so I didn't have a chance to store my bulk purchases or try out my grain mill until Sunday. I cleaned out the buckets and seals during the week, and then let them dry for a few days to make sure all of the lid parts were completely dry before storing my beans, oats and wheat. The gamma seals on the 5 gallon buckets are supposed to keep the critters and moisture out. We'll see!
As for my Nutrimill grain mill, it is wonderful, I love it!!! I used hard white wheat from my recent bulk purchase and made some finely ground flour. It was so easy. Then, I made a loaf of bread with my current favorite recipe. It was INCREDIBLE. Seriously, I could have just kept on eating it until the whole loaf was gone. It turned out lighter and fluffier than my bread usually is when I use store-bought whole wheat flour. I'm never going back! I knew I would love my new grain mill, and I have not been disappointed.
I'm always looking for more ideas to save time in the kitchen without sacrificing quality or $$. What kinds of time- or money-saving cooking projects do you do?
Here's what I was able to do:
:: Put our vegetable garden to bed for the first time in the 5 years I have lived in this house. It always seems to get really cold really fast, and the fall ends up being such a busy time for some reason. I always have the best of intentions, but I have never actually pulled up all of the old plants and organized the beds for next year... until now! Not only did I clean out the dead plants, but I gave each bed a thick blanket of mulched leaves and grass clippings, that will hopefully block out some of the weeds in the spring and also add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. We didn't have a stellar year in the vegetable garden, and I just didn't spend the time out there like I usually do, so I'm hoping my little bit of extra garden love this fall will translate into a more productive season next year. It certainly can't hurt!
:: Cooked now so we can eat later without a lot of fuss. I love cooking from scratch and eating healthfully and frugally, but there are only so many hours in the day, so I try to be efficient about it. On Sunday, I made a big pot of of brown rice and black beans for the freezer, a small pot of chili for lunches this week, some sausage/potato/bean soup, a loaf of bread, and since the oven was on for the bread, I threw in some potatoes to bake to eat with the chili this week.
The rice and beans are something I do regularly. For the rice, I make a big pot, and then portion it out in approx 2/3-3/4 cup servings in plastic sandwich bags, freeze, and then pull out any time we have a meal that goes with rice. Since brown rice takes a good 45 minutes to make, I don't have to worry about planning too far ahead for the rice when I have portions ready in the freezer. To eat, we just put the frozen rice (without the bag) on a plate and microwave 2 minutes. Not only is it a time-saver, having rice portioned out saves our waistlines too. We know we can always heat up another bag if we want more rice, but we never really feel like it once we finish our first helping. On the other hand, if we had a big pot of rice... we probably would eat more.
For the beans, I randomly chose an amount of 4 cups of dried black beans from my recent bulk purchase you can read about here. I soaked them in water overnight, and then put them in a crockpot with a bunch of water. I cooked them on high for a good 8 hours or so - it took a long time to heat up. Once the beans were tender, I let them cool a bit, and then portioned them out without the liquid into 1 cup bags for the freezer. Now, when I'm making soup or burritos or some other recipe that calls for canned black beans, I just go to my freezer instead. I ended up with 10-11 cups of cooked beans from 4 cups dry. This way is cheap, took almost no work on my part, and the beans don't have all the added salt or packaging that canned beans have. No work and a great final product? I'm all over it.
:: Last but not least, my grain mill and food grade buckets with gamma seals arrived! It was a pretty busy week so I didn't have a chance to store my bulk purchases or try out my grain mill until Sunday. I cleaned out the buckets and seals during the week, and then let them dry for a few days to make sure all of the lid parts were completely dry before storing my beans, oats and wheat. The gamma seals on the 5 gallon buckets are supposed to keep the critters and moisture out. We'll see!
As for my Nutrimill grain mill, it is wonderful, I love it!!! I used hard white wheat from my recent bulk purchase and made some finely ground flour. It was so easy. Then, I made a loaf of bread with my current favorite recipe. It was INCREDIBLE. Seriously, I could have just kept on eating it until the whole loaf was gone. It turned out lighter and fluffier than my bread usually is when I use store-bought whole wheat flour. I'm never going back! I knew I would love my new grain mill, and I have not been disappointed.
I'm always looking for more ideas to save time in the kitchen without sacrificing quality or $$. What kinds of time- or money-saving cooking projects do you do?
Sunday, October 25, 2009
This Week's Meal Plan
Uh oh, I almost went to bed without posting my meal plan for the week. I have to say, posting my meal plans for the last few weeks has been interesting! There is nothing like making a commitment and putting it in WRITING to inspire me to do more cooking. I feel like I am more accountable this way, which is motivating even when I'm tired and don't feel like cooking something interesting. I have pretty much followed my meal plans so far, though sometimes the days are rearranged based on what is going on and what we feel like eating.
This week, my husband is out of town for work until late Tuesday night, so dinner is just Molly and I for those evenings. Last night I made a one-dish-meal of spanish rice, and tonight I made a cheesy lasagna (and two small loaf-sized lasagnas for the freezer) for us to have for a few meals. Since I had the oven on for the lasagna, I decided to also try a new recipe for baked oatmeal to have for breakfasts and snacks this week. It turned out pretty well - Molly gobbled up a piece before bed tonight. I think next time I will experiment with some dried fruit or maybe pumpkin puree instead of applesauce (I skipped all but about a tablespoon of the oil) to change things up and add a greater variety of nutrients. I made a half batch, cut it up in pieces, and we will enjoy it warmed up this week.
Here is our meal plan for this week:
Monday: leftover spanish rice that I made with ground beef from our 1/8 cow, carrots from my father-in-law, green peppers and corn that I froze from the farmer's market, taco sauce that I canned and homemade chili seasoning, organic green salad from Costco
Tuesday: leftover lasagna, the last of the zucchini from our garden
Wednesday: baked Mediterranean chicken, Brussels sprouts, garlic bread
Thursday: roasted beets, potatoes, broccoli, marinated pork chops
Friday: Friday night pizza using this recipe for crust, Italian sausage from the 1/4 pig we bought this summer, green peppers that I froze from the farmer's market and any other leftover morsels that would be good on pizza
This week I am working Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday's meal is more easy-going than it looks. It is already prepared and waiting for me in the freezer, so all I have to do is thaw it in the refrigerator the night before, pop it in a baking dish when I get home and put it in the oven. Eat well and enjoy your week!
This week, my husband is out of town for work until late Tuesday night, so dinner is just Molly and I for those evenings. Last night I made a one-dish-meal of spanish rice, and tonight I made a cheesy lasagna (and two small loaf-sized lasagnas for the freezer) for us to have for a few meals. Since I had the oven on for the lasagna, I decided to also try a new recipe for baked oatmeal to have for breakfasts and snacks this week. It turned out pretty well - Molly gobbled up a piece before bed tonight. I think next time I will experiment with some dried fruit or maybe pumpkin puree instead of applesauce (I skipped all but about a tablespoon of the oil) to change things up and add a greater variety of nutrients. I made a half batch, cut it up in pieces, and we will enjoy it warmed up this week.
Here is our meal plan for this week:
Monday: leftover spanish rice that I made with ground beef from our 1/8 cow, carrots from my father-in-law, green peppers and corn that I froze from the farmer's market, taco sauce that I canned and homemade chili seasoning, organic green salad from Costco
Tuesday: leftover lasagna, the last of the zucchini from our garden
Wednesday: baked Mediterranean chicken, Brussels sprouts, garlic bread
Thursday: roasted beets, potatoes, broccoli, marinated pork chops
Friday: Friday night pizza using this recipe for crust, Italian sausage from the 1/4 pig we bought this summer, green peppers that I froze from the farmer's market and any other leftover morsels that would be good on pizza
This week I am working Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday's meal is more easy-going than it looks. It is already prepared and waiting for me in the freezer, so all I have to do is thaw it in the refrigerator the night before, pop it in a baking dish when I get home and put it in the oven. Eat well and enjoy your week!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
This Week's Meal Plan
Once again, 5 minutes of meal planning saves me much needed time, sanity and money. See my posts here for more of an explanation on how. Here is our meal plan for our dinners this week:
Monday: Tofu stir-fry with veggies from the freezer and brown rice that was cooked as a big batch and frozen in single serving sizes (microwaves in 2 minutes)
Tuesday: Crock pot beef stew using carrots and potatoes from my father-in-law's garden and stew meat from the 1/8 of a cow we bought last year, organic green salad from Costco
Wednesday: Marinated and grilled chicken breasts, organic green salad from Costco, perogies
Thursday: Dinner salad of organic greens, leftover chicken, veggies and chopped up apple
Friday: Friday night pizza using this recipe for crust
I try to choose very low-maintenance meals on days I work - this week it is Tuesday and Thursday. On those days I only have about an hour or a little more to get Molly fed and to bed as well as get our dinner going so we can eat at a decent hour. If I plan easy meals in advance, I don't feel quite so overwhelmed. Eat well and enjoy your week!
Monday: Tofu stir-fry with veggies from the freezer and brown rice that was cooked as a big batch and frozen in single serving sizes (microwaves in 2 minutes)
Tuesday: Crock pot beef stew using carrots and potatoes from my father-in-law's garden and stew meat from the 1/8 of a cow we bought last year, organic green salad from Costco
Wednesday: Marinated and grilled chicken breasts, organic green salad from Costco, perogies
Thursday: Dinner salad of organic greens, leftover chicken, veggies and chopped up apple
Friday: Friday night pizza using this recipe for crust
I try to choose very low-maintenance meals on days I work - this week it is Tuesday and Thursday. On those days I only have about an hour or a little more to get Molly fed and to bed as well as get our dinner going so we can eat at a decent hour. If I plan easy meals in advance, I don't feel quite so overwhelmed. Eat well and enjoy your week!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Last Canning Project of the Season??? Honey Apple Butter
This week I made honey apple butter, which was wonderful. We had been accumulating quite a selection of apples in the refrigerator, and I am almost out of the maple apple butter that I made 2 years ago. Maple syrup was an incredible accompaniment to apple butter, but it is pretty expensive and I already used my stash of maple syrup in some fabulous maple blueberry jam this summer. Also, we had our first honey harvest this year and have lots of honey to get creative with! No problem. I like a challenge like that.
Sweet Cider Apple Butter, adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving
yield: about 16 - 8oz. jars (this is a double batch!)
12 pounds apples (I like to use a combination of varieties)
4 cups apple cider
1 quart honey
1 teaspoon cloves
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Directions:
First, a picture of my little helper/apple thief Molly.
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Once the apple butter cooked down to a consistency I prefer, I processed 8 oz jars for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner.
Try a sandwich of cream cheese and honey apple butter on this homemade whole wheat bread... YUM.
Sweet Cider Apple Butter, adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving
yield: about 16 - 8oz. jars (this is a double batch!)
12 pounds apples (I like to use a combination of varieties)
4 cups apple cider
1 quart honey
1 teaspoon cloves
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Directions:
First, a picture of my little helper/apple thief Molly.
All the apples went into the sink for a good wash first. Before I started cutting apples, I put my frozen (from last season) apple cider in an 8 quart stockpot on the stove. As the cider melted, I quartered, cored and peeled all of the apples, throwing them in the pot to start cooking and soften. To be honest, I forgot how many apples 12 pounds is! I wished I had taken out my apple/peeler/corer/slicer to speed up the process.
Once the apples were pretty soft, I took my handy stick blender and pureed the apples until they were nice and smooth. I like my apple butter silky smooth, so blend them as much as you prefer. The recipe says not to liquify it.
Then I added my honey and spices, stirred, turned the stove down to low and cooked slowly all day, stirring occasionally. See how dark it got? You just want it to thicken slowly without sticking to the bottom of the pan or popping up and splashing out. This takes several hours, but the house smells incredible as it cooks. For some people, the whole process would NOT generally take an entire day to do, but I had many, many distractions and interruptions hanging out with little Molly that it took longer than it would have had I been by myself. But... by the end of the day it was done and that's what counts!
Once the apple butter cooked down to a consistency I prefer, I processed 8 oz jars for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner.
Try a sandwich of cream cheese and honey apple butter on this homemade whole wheat bread... YUM.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Until Next Year...
Over the weekend we harvested the last of our garden for the season: tomatoes, zucchini and a few small onions. My birthday was on Saturday, and it seems that every year my birthday is the turning point between summer and fall. We still have some kale (lacianato and Red Russian) and broccoli that I will leave in the ground and keep picking until the plants or I give up. Apparently kale tastes sweeter after a nip of frost anyway. I actually feel lucky to have harvested what I did this year. With the addition of toddler Molly this year, I just didn't have the time or energy to spend in the garden like I have in years past. The weather was also cooler than usual this summer, so the plants didn't do as well as they usually do. However, considering the little time I did spend gardening, I am thankful for what we ended up with! I'm already dreaming of next spring; hopefully we will have tons of asparagus and strawberries again next year.
Even though it seems like our garden didn't produce as much as usual this year, I am thankful I was able to take advantage of our local farmers markets to buy extra fresh fruits and vegetables in season and mostly organic so that I could preserve them (relatively inexpensively) for our long, cold winter in Michigan.
This is what I froze this year:
:: Corn, blanched and cut from the cob
:: Strawberries (ours)
:: Blueberries
:: Zucchini, some grated, some diced (many were ours)
:: Green and red peppers, diced
:: Three kinds of pesto: basil, basil/parsley and basil/spinach
And this is what I canned this year:
:: Spaghetti sauce (some tomatoes were ours)
:: Jalapeno salsa
:: Cayenne jalapeno salsa
:: Habanero jalapeno salsa
:: Dill pickles
:: My grandma's sweet pickles
:: Danish cherry sauce
:: Strawberry sauce (our strawberries)
:: Strawberry lemon marmalade (our strawberries)
:: Low sugar cherry jam
:: Summer solstice jam
:: Peach jam
:: Low sugar peach jam
:: Peach and honey jam (this was before our honey harvest)
:: Honey apple butter (our honey)
:: Cherry chutney:: Low sugar blueberry maple jam
:: Grape juice (our grapes)
We also have some potatoes from our garden, tomato juice canned by my parents and green beans and stewed tomatoes canned by my father-in-law. 95% of the fruit and vegetables that we put away for the winter were grown either by us, our parents, my grandfather or the farmers at the farmers market. It's good to know where your food comes from! I'm always looking for new ideas for preserving fruits and vegetables. What kinds of produce did you preserve this year?
Monday, October 12, 2009
Meal Plan For This Week
Spending just 5 minutes planning out our dinners for the week saves me a lot of things:
:: Time - no wasting time thinking about it during my busy day at one of my two jobs: working outside the home or staying home chasing my 14-month-old Molly.
:: Angst - no more fretting over what to make for dinner when I've already thought about it and defrosted what I need.
:: Money - no stopping for take-out because I'm too tired and overwhelmed to prepare a nice meal. Also, meal planning helps me look at what food I already have that needs to be eaten and get creative instead of deciding on a meal and then going to the store and buying all of the ingredients, on sale or not.
I always regret it mid-week when I haven't made a meal plan. I am guilty of stockpiling food with the best of intentions and then forgetting about it in the pantry, freezer or fridge. Meal planning helps me remember these items and get them onto our plates! So, when you see strange items in my meal plan, it is probably something I'm trying to get out off my shelves :)
Here is our meal plan for this week:
Monday: Cranberry Chicken from "Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer", organic green salad from the farmer's market, perogies from the freezer
Tuesday: Turkish Pork Loin Chops from "Fix Freeze Feast," kale from our garden, corn on the cob (probably the last of the season!)
Wednesday: Black Bean Chilaquile from "Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites" using onions from our garden, corn I froze this summer, home-canned salsa and tomatoes from my father-in-law's garden
Thursday: Friday night pizza with homemade crust from this website for one of my favorite books. Toppings will include zucchini and onions from our garden and diced bell peppers I froze this summer. I know it's not Friday, but we're traveling Friday night and we didn't get to have homemade pizza last Friday either!
Friday: Ham or Turkey sandwiches on homemade bread from this great website, apples we picked at the orchard and some kind of treat for our road trip for a family wedding this weekend.
Between the usual chaos of my days at home with Molly, I'm also attempting to make some honey apple butter today with apples we picked at the orchard and honey from our bees. Yes, our bees! Stay tuned for a future post dedicated to our first honey harvest this year.
:: Time - no wasting time thinking about it during my busy day at one of my two jobs: working outside the home or staying home chasing my 14-month-old Molly.
:: Angst - no more fretting over what to make for dinner when I've already thought about it and defrosted what I need.
:: Money - no stopping for take-out because I'm too tired and overwhelmed to prepare a nice meal. Also, meal planning helps me look at what food I already have that needs to be eaten and get creative instead of deciding on a meal and then going to the store and buying all of the ingredients, on sale or not.
I always regret it mid-week when I haven't made a meal plan. I am guilty of stockpiling food with the best of intentions and then forgetting about it in the pantry, freezer or fridge. Meal planning helps me remember these items and get them onto our plates! So, when you see strange items in my meal plan, it is probably something I'm trying to get out off my shelves :)
Here is our meal plan for this week:
Monday: Cranberry Chicken from "Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer", organic green salad from the farmer's market, perogies from the freezer
Tuesday: Turkish Pork Loin Chops from "Fix Freeze Feast," kale from our garden, corn on the cob (probably the last of the season!)
Wednesday: Black Bean Chilaquile from "Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites" using onions from our garden, corn I froze this summer, home-canned salsa and tomatoes from my father-in-law's garden
Thursday: Friday night pizza with homemade crust from this website for one of my favorite books. Toppings will include zucchini and onions from our garden and diced bell peppers I froze this summer. I know it's not Friday, but we're traveling Friday night and we didn't get to have homemade pizza last Friday either!
Friday: Ham or Turkey sandwiches on homemade bread from this great website, apples we picked at the orchard and some kind of treat for our road trip for a family wedding this weekend.
Between the usual chaos of my days at home with Molly, I'm also attempting to make some honey apple butter today with apples we picked at the orchard and honey from our bees. Yes, our bees! Stay tuned for a future post dedicated to our first honey harvest this year.
Friday, October 2, 2009
HOT Salsas
I didn't want to spend the time taking out the seeds and veins of the peppers partially because they are so darned small and I had so many peppers, but also I didn't want that hot stuff touching my fingers! Most of my canning escapades happen during my daughter's nap time or after she goes to bed, so time is always of the essence. To save some time, I threw all of the cleaned and trimmed ingredients in the food processor to be chopped up for a slightly smoother textured salsa. This moved things along a bit and didn't make too big of a mess.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
This Week's Meal Plan
I don't know about you, but I work much better if I have a plan, especially in the kitchen. I love cooking, and mostly from scratch, but I am often terrible about keeping track of what I have on hand in the refrigerator, pantry and our two (yes, two!) extra freezers. The fact that we have two freezers probably gives you a clue that we often have quite the stockpile of food.
In the past several months I have been making more of an effort to simplify, reduce waste and save money, and one area I have focused on is food. A few minutes of meal planning each week has done wonders to help us eat the food we have grown or spent hard-earned money on before it goes bad, rotate our food supply and lose the 5pm panic of figuring out what to have for dinner.
Each person/family is different, but for us, I prefer to just plan out our dinners. Breakfast is usually cereal, fruit, bagel and cream cheese, PB&J or oatmeal with bananas, raisins and maple syrup during the week, and pancakes or eggs and toast on the weekends. Lunch is usually anything - leftovers or a sandwich. It's not usually too hard for me to come up with breakfast and lunch. Dinner during the week is the struggle, but really important, especially since this is where our lunch leftovers come from! If I don't cook for a couple days, our lunch options begin to dwindle and the temptation of going out to lunch gets stronger and stronger. That option is neither wholesome, healthy nor frugal, so this is where meal planning comes in to save the day.
Here is our meal plan for this week:
Monday: Casserole of potatoes, kale, onions and smoked sausage with sauerkraut and German mustard
Tuesday: Spaghetti with meat sauce, zucchini, garlic bread
Wednesday: Indian dal and butter chicken simmer sauce with brown rice and naan (Yuck, when will I ever stop thinking that what comes out of a jar will taste anything like what you get in a restaurant??) I have BAD luck cooking Indian food. Any advice is appreciated.
Thursday: Disappearing zucchini orzo and salmon burgers
Friday: Homemade pizza using this recipe for the pizza dough (stay tuned for a future post about our Friday Night Pizza tradition)
So far we've stuck to the plan, and I'm so glad I'm back on the meal-planning wagon. We eat far better and it's less stress for me, even though I typically end up cooking more this way. All it takes is 5-10 minutes a week and a couple of peeks in the fridge and freezer to see what needs to move along. Result: less rotting produce, happier bellies and healthier bodies.
In the past several months I have been making more of an effort to simplify, reduce waste and save money, and one area I have focused on is food. A few minutes of meal planning each week has done wonders to help us eat the food we have grown or spent hard-earned money on before it goes bad, rotate our food supply and lose the 5pm panic of figuring out what to have for dinner.
Each person/family is different, but for us, I prefer to just plan out our dinners. Breakfast is usually cereal, fruit, bagel and cream cheese, PB&J or oatmeal with bananas, raisins and maple syrup during the week, and pancakes or eggs and toast on the weekends. Lunch is usually anything - leftovers or a sandwich. It's not usually too hard for me to come up with breakfast and lunch. Dinner during the week is the struggle, but really important, especially since this is where our lunch leftovers come from! If I don't cook for a couple days, our lunch options begin to dwindle and the temptation of going out to lunch gets stronger and stronger. That option is neither wholesome, healthy nor frugal, so this is where meal planning comes in to save the day.
Here is our meal plan for this week:
Monday: Casserole of potatoes, kale, onions and smoked sausage with sauerkraut and German mustard
Tuesday: Spaghetti with meat sauce, zucchini, garlic bread
Wednesday: Indian dal and butter chicken simmer sauce with brown rice and naan (Yuck, when will I ever stop thinking that what comes out of a jar will taste anything like what you get in a restaurant??) I have BAD luck cooking Indian food. Any advice is appreciated.
Thursday: Disappearing zucchini orzo and salmon burgers
Friday: Homemade pizza using this recipe for the pizza dough (stay tuned for a future post about our Friday Night Pizza tradition)
So far we've stuck to the plan, and I'm so glad I'm back on the meal-planning wagon. We eat far better and it's less stress for me, even though I typically end up cooking more this way. All it takes is 5-10 minutes a week and a couple of peeks in the fridge and freezer to see what needs to move along. Result: less rotting produce, happier bellies and healthier bodies.
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