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Resolutions and Recipes: Flounder with Lemon and Dill–or not

9 Jan
Flounder with Lemon and Dill (Tilapia)

We are lucky, all our kids like fish.

The title of this post is a bit misleading, and I’ll tell you why. The recipe that I wanted to feature is one I grew up loving: Flounder with Lemon and Dill. It was one of our regular Friday night dinners. The only thing is I didn’t have Flounder this time, I had Tilapia, so you have to change the name to Tilapia with Lemon and Dill. Except we were out of Dill, so the green is parsley flakes instead. So now the new name of this recipe could actually be Tilapia with Lemon and Parsley, but I’m going to share the real recipe with you anyway because it’s basically the same method as we used to make tonight’s dinner.

This is an easy recipe and for us it’s inexpensive because we buy our Tilapia or Flounder flash frozen and individually packed in a family pack at Aldi’s for about $4.99 a pack, and keep it on hand until we need it. The white rice we buy in bulk and the broccoli is either fresh or frozen (tonight was frozen) depending what we have on hand. Altogether the meal that doesn’t cost more than $6 or $7, which is great for a seafood dish. I am thankful that our kids all like fish. This is one of three different ways we typically make it (poached like this, pan fried or baked-stuffed,) and no matter which of the three ways we choose, the bag of fish works well.

Flounder with Lemon and Dill

Whether flounder or tilapia, this is a delcious dish.

FLOUNDER WITH LEMON AND DILL

INGREDIENTS

3 Tablespoons Margarine or Butter

3/4 tsp. Dill

1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice

1/4 cup white wine

1/4 tsp. salt

1 pound flounder

DIRECTIONS

In a frying pan over medium low heat combine butter, dill, lemon juice, wine and salt until butter is melted.

Add flounder last and simmer until fish is cooked through.

Serve on a bed of white rice.

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Resolutions and Recipes: Overnight French Toast

8 Jan
Overnight French Toast

This is the version o overnight french toast that we make most often.

Those of you who know me, know that French Toast is one of my all-time favorite breakfasts. I like thick, thin, cinnamon, stuffed…..you name it, if it’s french toasted, I generally love it.

A few years back on Mother’s Day, my cousin Kim brought an Overnight French Toast to the brunch that was just amazing. I had to have the recipe. Ever since then we have used it almost any time we have a brunch here. Most recently we had it last Monday as our “last hurrah” breakfast before going back to school.

The recipe is quick and easy, and inexpensive to make which are my top qualifiers for a good recipe. We often host a birthday brunch for our family birthday parties since it’s a less expensive option than dinner, and this is a recipe that we use each time.

In the future I’ll also be sharing a couple of other Overnight French Toast recipes that I’ve had and are delicious as well. Today’s recipe I have shared on Facebook before, but the other two I have not shared before, so be on the lookout!

OVERNIGHT FRENCH TOAST

Mix and put on bottom of 9×13 pan:
1 1/2 sticks melted butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar

Layered and ready to go into the fridge overnight.

Layer Pepperidge Farm Big Bread or Texas style French Toast Bread 2 layers deep and fill in the spaces. (I get my Texas style bread either at PriceRite or Walmart. The one at Walmart is made by Wonder.)

Mix 6 eggs and 2 cups milk and pour on top.

Into the fridge it goes.

Leave overnight in fridge.

Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes.

Top with maple syrup (generously) and broil for about 10 minutes until lightly browned and slightly crispy.

When we serve ours we usually cut the pieces in half since each half is two slices high.

Enjoy!

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It’s the little things that matter most

6 Jan

One little comment from Elizabeth yesterday totally made my day.

Let me start by saying that it’s posts like this that are the reason why I changed my blog to The Whole Bag of Chips; I wanted to be able to post anything and everything rather than just write about crafts or foods or kids and then nothing else, ever.

Today’s post is a kid post and it came about because of a totally random comment that Elizabeth made yesterday, that completely made my day.

A little background information: in the mornings our set routine goes like this- I make the coffee and the kids’ breakfasts at the same time that Don is making the kids’ lunches. God Bless him for taking on that task because it’s like being a short order cook: crunchy peanut butter or plain? Jelly or Fluff? Strawberry, grape or boysenberry? Do you like fruit snacks or fruit roll ups? Apple for fruit or orange? Are you sitting at the peanut free table today or not? Does this snack contain peanuts? Do you like granola bars? Which kind?….You see what I mean, I’m sure. With three kids who have a variety of tastes, you can’t really just bang out one lunch for all three and expect them all to like the exact same thing. Meanwhile, I’m sticking six waffles in the toaster, cutting up a piece of fruit for them to share, and I’m done.

Anyway, when he asked the “what do you want for lunch” question yesterday, Elizabeth asked him for turkey and cheese. He asked her if she wanted it in bread and she said no, that she wanted roll ups, the turkey wrapped around the cheese and rolled up. He did a few, put them into a tupperware and off they went.

Later that night, he asked her how her lunch was and she said it was great, and that it was great *because* it reminded her of when she was little and I used to make roll ups for them for lunch and cut them into little spirals to eat. I was shocked. I’d forgotten that I used to do that. It’s been a bunch of years that she’s been eating lunch at school already, so that had to be during the preschool/kindergarten years and maybe even before.

Besides the fact that I was amazed that she remembered the lunches I used to make, I was touched that something so little and so random was a special memory for her. As a mom, you know that it’s the little things during the day that mean a lot to you, but you never do know what memories you are creating specifically for your kids. You just hope you’re doing an okay job and you hope that the memories that they have are *not* the ones where you lose your mind and scream at them over something, but you don’t really ever know until they tell you. Sometimes as a mom, a Type-A kind of mom, I go over and above to try to create an experience that is fabulous so that they’ll always remember it (or so I hope) and think of how fabulous it was. But meanwhile, it’s not always those things, it might just be the little things.

I wonder if my mom knew way back then, what special memories she was creating for me?

As a kid, one of my memories from my mom is that whenever she baked a pie, she’d roll out her crust and she’d use what she needed for the pie but then she’d take the rest of the crust, cut it into strips (I assume) and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar onto the strips. Then she’d roll them up into spirals and bake them. I *loved* that treat and to this day I still think of them although I’ve never done that myself because I used boxed crusts that roll out to EXACTLY what you need for the pie- there’s never any extra.

The turkey and cheese roll ups remind me of that, and although for my mom it might have been a random thing that she did for us, I bet she didn’t realize back then that it was something I’d still be thinking of 40 years later.

It took Elizabeth’s random comment yesterday to remind me that it’s the little things that matter and to reassure me that at least some of the time, I’m getting something right along the way.

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Resolutions and Recipes: Chicken Marsala

5 Jan
chicken marsala

Tonight's dinner!

Chicken Marsala is one of my favorite meals. Don makes a great one. Each time I had a baby, the night before we went to the hospital (or in Alex’s case the night before the first of four times we thought we were going to the hospital) he asked me what I’d like for my “last meal” and it was Chicken Marsala every time.

Chicken Marsala is also one of those cheap meals that we keep in our rotation of meals. We don’t make it every pay period by any means, but maybe once every month or two. Did I mention it’s one of my favorite meals?

Here’s what we spent on tonight’s meal at PriceRite and Aldi’s:

Mushrooms: $1.99

Whole wheat spaghetti at Aldi’s: $1.09

Bag of frozen chicken tenders at Aldi’s: $5.99 but we only used six of the tenders, not the whole bag, which is usually about 18 tenders, so we used about $1.99 worth of tenders.

TOTAL: $5.00 plus we had a salad so add another dollar or so.

For our Marsala wine, we use Holland House Cooking Wine that I keep on hand all the time (I keep both Marsala and Sherry cooking wines on hand.) We used about 1/4 cup tonight.

Here’s the thing about Don though: he’d make a great video blogger chef or a great webinar blogger chef because he cooks without a recipe. He’s a fantastic cook but it’s almost always out of his head.

So tonight, we did our best to get his recipe out of his head and onto a piece of paper (rather, onto a paper napkin) so that I could pass it along.

Here it is:

Step one: cook the chicken.

Take 6 chicken tenders (or however many you think you need) thawed and cubed, and cook them. You can bake them, fry them or saute them. He fried them tonight, which in my opinion is the best, but not the healthiest way (shocker.) Tonight before frying them, he rolled them in flour first and added a little salt and pepper too.

Technically they don’t even need to be cooked all the way through because they’re going to go back into the pan in a little while.

Take them out and set them aside. He puts them in a dish that has paper toweling on it, to catch the grease.

In the same frying pan, saute the mushrooms in either butter or olive oil. We buy fresh, whole mushrooms and either slice them as we did tonight, or cube them, depending on what we’re cooking.

Put the chicken back in and saute together.

Next, de-glaze the pan by adding in the 1/4 cup of Marsala and 1 cup of chicken stock.

While the pasta is cooking, add the Marsala Wine and the Chicken Stock.

You can be cooking your pasta at the same time.

Cook chicken, mushrooms, marsala and chicken stock together until it boils.

Cook the chicken, mushrooms, Marsala and chicken stock together for a minute or so until it comes to a boil.

Season with salt, pepper, garlic and basil.

At this point Don likes to thicken up the sauce to just how he likes it. In his words, “I take pats of butter and roll them in flour and add in enough pats of butter and flour until it’s the way I like it.”

He said you can also make a rue of butter and flour if you would like, or you can just add the flour to thicken.

Once the pasta is done, we toss it all into a serving bowl with the chicken and Marsala on top. He sprinkles parsley on top for looks.

We used to always make a bed of rice for under the chicken, and sometimes we still do, but when we lived in New Jersey, one of our favorite Italian restaurants served it over pasta, and ever since then, that’s an option for us as well. That’s the way the kids like it best. Using the wheat pasta makes it a bit healthier too.

Enjoy!

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Resolutions and Recipes: A tip I can share, and a recipe I can’t

4 Jan

Our gravy recipe is top secret!

When I was growing up, the day my mother “made the gravy” which some of you call sauce, was a huge deal. It was an all-day affair and included the cooking of both the meats (pork chops and meatballs) and the sauce. The house would smell incredibly good all day long and we knew that at the end of the day (literally, not figuratively) there’d be macaroni and meatballs for dinner.

The recipe was top secret. No one knew it and it was a combination of recipes from both grandmothers, according to my mom. When she was cooking the gravy you had to stay out of the way and not touch anything, not even the wooden spoon that sat in the pan all day. That spoon was part of the reason the gravy tasted as good as it did.

The gravy recipe yielded more than enough gravy for just one meal, and my mom would divide up the extras into “Newport Creamery” ice cream containers and freeze them that way for future meals. (Those of you in New England know what Newport Creamery is!) Then, on a busy night, instead of having to cook an entire meal from scratch, one of us could just take out a container of gravy and transfer it into a microwave bowl for reheating. Boil some pasta, make a salad, and there’s dinner.

My dad used to joke that he couldn’t “trade her in for a newer model” because my mom would take with her the secret to making the gravy and without that, he would never survive. That and a whole bunch of other things, but really that’s a whole other post. 🙂

When I got married and it was the day of my bridal shower (August 6, 1995) I received a small wrapped box from my mom; it hardly weighed anything at all. But, what was inside was worth its weight in gold, and more. It was….the recipe for the gravy, along with a card which read, “From me to you, one of the secrets to a good marriage. Love, Mom.”

The recipe and the card, in the original box, truly is one of the secrets to a good marriage.

Clearly, I can’t share the recipe with you. It’s top secret. I keep it in the original box, with her card and the box is labeled down the side because I store it like a cookbook with all my other cookbooks, and also because when I was working as a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator one day, I got a cell-phone call from my husband (who usually had to make the gravy since I worked weekends.) I whispered into my phone, “What’s wrong??” because he never called me when I was working. “I can’t find the recipe for the gravy,” he said. Hence the red Sharpie title down the side of the box.

For several years I made the gravy myself, but I did let him in on the secret when I started my Stampin’ Up! job so that we didn’t miss out eating it just because I was working. What I can share with you though is this: Making your own gravy and meatballs is a huge money-saver and so much more delicious than not.

See the wooden spoon? Very important.

The total cost of our gravy according to yesterday’s PriceRite receipt is as follows:

Crushed Tomatoes: $2.97 total for the three cans needed

Tomato Paste: $1.56 total for the four cans needed

Grd. Beef for meatballs: $12.72

Pork Chops for the sauce: $8.57

Total: $25.82

We store ours in ziploc bags in our freezer, marked with the date.

That amount of money gave us EIGHT meals. Our pasta is 88 cents per box so you need to add that into each meal as well, plus the cost of your salad that night if you make one.

So for about $5 per meal (that includes the salad and the pasta,) you get an AMAZING dinner that feeds five of us, and I mean amazing. There is nothing like a homemade macaroni and meatball dinner. That’s one dollar per person, per meal. Can you beat it?

homemade meatballs

The kids rolled these, they get more and more uniform each time they do it. Although we did get the question, "Can we make these any shape we want?" No...

There is the opportunity for the kids to help out if you’d like, when rolling the meatballs. The recipe makes for a ton of meatballs so once again, having the extra sets of hands does make a difference and their pride in being able to say, “We rolled all the meatballs,” as you take your first bite, is priceless. Some day our girls will each have the recipe as well, so it’s good to give them this experience early on.

You can make it in the crockpot or on the stove. We had a lot of meatballs this time, on purpose, so it took up two stovetop pots.

So there you have it, the recipe I can’t share with you but the tip for saving money and eating well that I can. I hope that at least that part of it helps you in your meal planning and budgeting!

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Donut Wars: New Year’s Eve 2011

3 Jan
Babyckaes Donut Maker

My new toy!

This year for Christmas I received a Babycakes Donut Maker from my mother-in-law in Virginia. I don’t know how she could’ve known that I had looked at this longingly in EVERY store I went to, but it’s not something I’d splurge on myself. I thought it would be a fun gift; fun for playdates and birthday parties, things like that.

My sister-in-law, Jessica in Virginia received one from her as well, and we spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Virginia with them, staying at my sister-in-law’s house. Between us we have five girls ranging in age from 6 to 12, so we look for fun activities, crafts and special things to do when we’re together, but especially on New Year’s Eve when we have a long night ahead of us.

Since we both got the same gift and my sister-in-law has a large kitchen space, we decided to create a Donut Wars event for the kids on New Year’s Eve, to christen our new Babycakes Donut Makers and to make yet another unforgettable New Year’s Eve for our kids, three of whom made it to midnight this year.

The Festivus Christmas Team, I was their team captain.

The Pinkalicious Team, Grandma was their team captain.

To start our Donut Wars, we came up with two teams based on the cake mixes we were going to use for our donuts. You can use the recipes included in the box or cake mixes. For our first time we opted for cake mixes, although I do plan to eventually try out some of the recipes that come with the maker. My sister-in-law had a Funfetti Christmas cake mix and a Strawberry Cake mix, so we named our two teams the Festivus Christmas Team and the Pinkalicious Team. We paired the kids up into two teams of two and each team had one adult captain. (Jessica’s youngest wanted to be a judge, the two daddies were judges and Jess was a floater.) To make it even more fun, the kids dressed up in funky clothes and accessories.

Common Ingredients for all to use

The two teams were each given their cake mix and a vanilla frosting, all the mixing bowls and measuring cups they needed, a Babycakes Donut Maker, and a counter full of Common Ingredients that they could use for their decorating no matter what team they were on. We set one team up on the island and one team up at the kitchen table with the Common Ingredients between them on the end of the island.

Once we got the teams set up with their captains, judges waiting in the wings, the teams got started.

Here’s what followed:

Some egg cracking,

Some egg separating,

Some oil measuring,

They took turns mixing,

had frequent visits from our primary judge, Abbey,

And the Festivus Team had technical difficulties with some faulty ziploc bags.

but overall, things were going well!

The kit came with its own cooling rack and fork for taking the donuts out of the machine, both of which were very important.

Aunty Jessie helped both teams.

While *some* of us took the opportunity to get a nap in before the big ball dropping later on.

Soon the donuts were done for the Festivus Team

and for the Pinkalicious Team, who actually finished first.

and it was time....

...to judge...

...the donuts!

The judges were each given an index card with the team’s name on top. Each team had picked three donuts or sets of donuts to showcase for the judges. The judges had to go to each team and critique the donuts on taste, creativity, presentation and then give and overall score (just like that show we watch, Four Weddings, on TLC!) Jess and I had prizes for both teams as well as for both captains, so no matter what it would all work out. (We love our respective Dollar Tree dollar stores for things like that!)

Christmas Wreath and Snowman face from the Festivus Team- creative!

Presentation: the 3D Festivus Donut on a spackled frosting dish

Hand-chopped candy canes top the Festivus Teams third set of donuts for judging.

Pinkalicious's VERY pink donuts with marshmallow centers for judging.

Hand-shaved chocolate, shaved by team captain Grandma, for the Pinkalicious team's presentation table.

Beautiful pink and white candy cane donuts from the Pinkalicious Team for the judges to eat.

Overall, a grand time was had by all! We found the Babycakes Donut Maker to be easy to use, to include all of the items we needed, and we loved that we had the option to use cake mixes instead of making the donuts from scratch. With that many kids, it was much easier using the mix than working from scratch, especially for the first time.

A few things to note:
1) The donuts are tiny (so you can eat a whole bunch!)

2) The donut maker gets HOT and the directions say so several times in several different places, but even still we had a burn victim no less. Caroline accidentally leaned against one of them to get a common ingredient and burned her stomach. Hello Neosporin. She still finished out the entire competition, with an ice pack on her stomach.

3) Overall it took about an hour to go from start to finish and that’s with captains and floaters. If I were doing this for a playdate I’d make the donuts ahead and let them decorate them. This would help with time, space and less of a chance of anyone getting burned.

4) One cake mix makes about 42 donuts from our count (so we had almost 100 donuts by the end!)

5) The donut maker has a very short cord, perfect for my tiny kitchen corner that has an outlet right there, but depending on your space you might need to plug into an extension cord first.

I’m glad we have the Babycakes Donut Maker and I can’t wait to use it again (neither can the kids) and to try out some of the “from scratch” recipes. There’s also a zillion different cake mix flavors out there, so no matter what our hearts desire, we can have donuts in any flavor we want as time goes on. Alex was already planning on a baking party for her March birthday, which she’s been planning since October, so this just added to her plans. I see aprons and chef’s hats as possible craft ideas!

I definitely recommend this product if you’re considering it, and so do our Donut Wars Team Participants!

All of the Donut Wars contestants and their judge, Abbey

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Resolutions and Recipes: Shepherd’s Pie

2 Jan

Shopping on a budget takes practice!

Yesterday I shared with you a recent goal that we set to pay off all of our debt in a relatively short time and how it affected our grocery shopping, but not our cooking or eating. I promised to share with you some tips and recipes this month that have helped us maintain our goals of eating good, homemade meals while sticking to a lean budget with a large family.

The first thing I’ll share with you today is this: when we were pregnant with our third daughter, my husband was working full time and in school for his masters degree full time, and I was working my home-based business with a toddler and a preschooler at home with me. I had this feeling of panic before the baby came (some might call it nesting, I call it panic, like a tornado was coming,) and I decided that I needed to prepare ahead as much food as I could for those crazy, early weeks after the baby came. That led me to creating a list of everything I could think of that we ate for our dinner meals so that I could also make sure I had the necessary staples on hand that I needed, since I knew I’d have my hands full and Don would still be working days and in school nights. No matter what our situation, I knew we’d still need to eat three meals a day.

I share this with you because even though I’m no longer expecting a baby, that period of panic/nesting actually turned out to be very helpful. When I made my list of all our meals, it lasted me for seven weeks before I had to start back at the beginning of the list again. That didn’t include leftovers, breakfast for dinner, or eating at someone’s house, for example, so really the list lasted us for about eight weeks of meal ideas. But, more importantly, what I noticed when I studied my list was that if I had some very important staples on hand at all times, I could make almost anything for dinner.

For example, I always make sure my pantry has white rice (bought in bulk) and brown rice as well as boxes of rice pilaf, couscous, rice-a-roni (all generic brand) and my potato bin has red potatoes, mashing potatoes and baking potatoes. I keep several boxes of pasta on hand, as well as wide egg noodles. This way, no matter what meal I make, I have a starch to go with it. You can use white or brown rice as a “bed of rice” under a main dish, or on the side. I keep a taco kit on hand as well as soft tacos (which allows us to have tacos, spaghetti tacos and/or quesadillas as meal options.) I also make sure I always have packets of brown gravy mix and boxes of chicken broth as well as both chicken boullion and beef boullion.

When I shop I always buy a large amount of ground beef, a pack of stew meat, a large bag of flash frozen chicken tenders, a bag of frozen shrimp, a bag of frozen white fish like flounder or tilapia, pork chops, pork tenderloins, and ribs for bbq.

I buy a few blocks of cheddar cheese, salsa and food for salads as well as fresh fruits and veggies and frozen bags of veggies (2 each of frozen corn, broccoli, and green beans. One bag of corn or green beans lasts us two meals, the broccoli lasts one meal.)

And yes, all of this and more still only costs $225 every two weeks.

One of my favorite make-ahead meals using several of the above listed items is Shepherd’s Pie. To make a Shepherd’s Pie is kind of a lot of work but it’s a one dish meal and my entire family likes it and I can make two–one to eat and one to freeze.
From the list above I need mashing potatoes, cheddar cheese, approximately 3 pounds of ground beef, and a bag of frozen corn as well as butter and half & half. (Additionally, I want to note that if I’m using our bulk amount of ground beef all up on Shepherd’s Pie this pay period, then the next pay period I might use it to make one and freeze one of meatloaf or a lasagna instead.) I must also note that this meal is NOT incredibly health conscious, but it IS incredibly delicious.

Here’s the cooking process the way that I do it, and I apologize in advance for not having a “recipe” to share.

1) Dice a pot of potatoes for mashing, approximately 10 depending on the size. Usually they’re about the size of my fist. If they’re bigger, use less. My Shepherd’s Pies are made in two 9×13 glass baking dishes. Set them on to boil. Once they come to a boil, simmer for 20 minutes.

2) While cooking the potatoes, put the 3 pounds of ground beef into a large frying pan and cook it all the way through. Drain the meat when it’s done.

3) In a second frying pan, throw in one bag of frozen corn, a half cup of half and half, salt, pepper and about a half stick of butter. Cook that all together until the corn is no longer frozen. Mix it together with the ground beef and pour into the bottom of the two 9×12 baking dishes. If your frying pans are not big enough to hold all of the meat PLUS all of the corn, split it up between the corn frying pan and the meat frying pan so that you have two frying pans of meat with corn.

Kids can be cheese graters

Kids love to be the cheese graters for this recipe!

4) In the meantime employ a child to grate a block of cheddar cheese onto wax paper or into a separate bowl. If your child is too young to grate cheese, you’re on. You’ll need this cheese to go into your potatoes as well as on top of the Shepherd’s Pie that you’re cooking for that night’s meal. When you freeze the second one, do NOT put cheese on top. You’ll need to do so when it bakes in the future instead.

5) Once the potatoes are done, mash them with butter, half and half and some of the cheddar cheese, remembering to save enough for the top of the pie.

6) Layer the potatoes over the tops of both Shepherd’s Pies.

7) Set one pie aside to cool and be frozen. Put the other in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Everything is already cooked through but this baking time sets it all together.

8) Change the oven setting to broil and take the pie out, sprinkle the remaining cheddar on top of the pie and put it back into the oven.

9) Out of your pantry grab a packet of brown gravy. Add one cup of water and mix until it boils. By then your cheddar cheese will be appropriately crisp and your pie will be ready to come out of the oven.

10) You’re ready to eat. If’ you’d like an additional vegetable, add a green one or a salad or both.

Enjoy!

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Happy New Year! Resolutions and Recipes

1 Jan

Time to get a new day planner!

Today is January 1, 2012, the first day of the new year.  On this day each year, so many people make New Year’s Resolutions, do you?

I personally find New Year’s Resolutions to be an odd thing. I think it is because to me, January seems to be the middle of the year, not the start of the year. I have lived an entire lifetime on a school schedule:  I was a student and then I was a teacher, my husband is a school principal and my kids are all in school. Therefore, when I set goals for myself it tends to be in at the beginning of a school year, not at the beginning of a new year and to me a new year really seems to start in September, not January. For example, this year was the first year that my children were all in school all day long after 12 years of having kids at home, so September was a big goal-setting time for me this year. Creating this blog and maintaining it faithfully was just one of my goals.

However, I will share this with you. Several years ago, right before Christmas my husband and I decided that we had used our credit cards for the last time. We decided that we needed to make some real changes in how we managed our money because the economy was changing and not for the better. My home-based business was not bringing in the mortgage-paying money that it used to, and it was essentially like losing my job, even though people don’t often consider home-based businesses to be jobs, this one provided a huge contribution to our family budget and it was now gone. With careful budgeting and frugal living, we were going to pay off all our debt in less than five years instead of taking more than five decades.

I carry a calculator in my purse for when we're shopping.

The commitment to change came at a time when everything in the economy was going downhill and the expenses were all going up between the cost of gas (nearly $5 per gallon at the time,) food and utilities. It meant that we had to (and still have to, we have 18 months left) make a lot of sacrifices such as not eating out EVER unless we had a gift card (or even better, a gift card AND a coupon,) not taking big vacations, and most importantly, not spending what we didn’t have. We pay cash for everything and if we don’t have the cash we don’t buy it, which is very difficult.

One thing we won’t sacrifice however, is our taste for delicious, healthy, home-cooked meals. We both love to cook and (who doesn’t love to eat, right?) but almost immediately we found that we had to change the way we shopped. We used to shop at some of the larger stores, spending several hundred dollars per shopping trip each week (Stop and Shop, Shaws and BJ’s Wholesale store are the ones near us) but at the urging of our cousin and a close friend, that September we decided to try out some of the smaller, bargain stores. We are lucky because not only do we have a Price Rite near us, but we have Aldi’s as well, which I love. Just by making that one change in where we shopped, we saved literally hundreds of dollars per month on food, which is the same food we were purchasing in the larger stores, without sacrificing what we loved to cook and eat. We can shop for our family of five for every meal for about $225 every TWO weeks–the same money were spending once a week at the big stores. We shop as soon as we get paid and other than picking up milk and maybe more fresh fruit at the second week, we don’t do another big shopping again until we get paid again two weeks later. So for five people, three meals a day every day, we spend approximately $500 a month on groceries or less.

In honor of the start of this new year I will be sharing with you some of the tips, and of course recipes, that we have found to help us stick to our grocery budget without sacrificing healthy, delicious meals. I’m sure we’re not the only ones who have “saving money” as our goal each year, no matter what month the year begins, and hopefully you’ll find something that helps you with your goals and resolutions as well.

Additionally, in honor of the New Year’s holiday I am sharing my grandmother’s French Meat Pie recipe today. It’s a recipe she has made for the new year each year since I can remember and last year she was featured in the newspaper for it. At time I shared it with my Facebook friends, and now I am sharing it with you today.

Grandma Grello and the girls

Grandma Grello makes French Meat Pies for everyone, a dozen of them, every new year.

GRAM GRELLO’S FRENCH MEAT PIE

Posted in the Providence Journal – Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Crust for two 9-inch pies (4 sheets of Pillsbury Pie Crust)

1 pound ground beef

1 pound ground pork

1/4 cup butter, unsalted

1 small onion chopped

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon sage

1/4 teaspoon parsley

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon mace

2 cups water

2 teaspoons cornstarch diluted with water

1 stack of unsalted Saltine Crackers, crushed

Milk for brushing crust

Sauté meat in butter and cook until no longer pink. Add onion, seasonings and water and cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Add cornstarch and cook a little longer; then add crackers.

Let cool.

Spoon meat mix into 2 crust-lined 9-inch pie plates. Divide mixture between the two; about three cups each.

Top each with second crust. Press edges together to seal and seal with fork.

Brush top crust with milk. Pierce holes in crust with fork and bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. Lower heat to 375 degrees and bake for 35 minutes or until baked on top.

Makes two pies.

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What’s a Doughboy?

31 Dec

I found this picture of a doughboy soldier on Wikapedia.

This morning we had doughboys for breakfast, one of our extra-special treats. What is a doughboy? Depends what state you’re in and who you ask!

A quick look on Wikapedia shows one meaning:

Doughboy is an informal term for an American soldier, especially members of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. The term dates back to the Mexican–American War of 1846–48.

The term was used sparingly during World War II, gradually replaced by the appellations “G.I.“, “Troop“, or “Dogface“, but was still used in popular songs of the day, as in the 1942 song “Johnny Doughboy found a Rose in Ireland.”[1] It dropped out of popular use soon after World War II.[2]

Then there’s the ever-famous Pillsbury Doughboy too, as seen here on this book that I saw on Amazon.com.

But still no, that’s not the kind of doughboy that we had!!

Our kind of doughboys are sometimes called Funnel Cakes or Malasades if you are Portugese.

Platter of doughboys

Done and ready to eat!

In basic terms, it’s fried dough covered in sugar or cinnamon/sugar or jelly or powdered sugar and it is DELICOUS!! It is *not* healthy, which is why it’s a special treat.

Don makes fantastic doughboys, and this time when he made them, I took photos for you.

The dough for doughboys is sometimes hard to find.

One thing about making doughboys is you need to find dough. Where we live, it’s easy to find and it’s only $1.00 per bag in most places. When we visit my inlaws we bring our dough with us because there’s none to be found in the south.

When Don is making doughboys for a large group he makes 3 or 4 pounds of dough. The dough is stored in the fridge so you need to take it out a little bit ahead of time. It does not need to rise, but it needs to get the chill out before it’s used.

Separate the dough into smaller pieces.

Once it’s at room temperature, you need to separate the dough into smaller pieces which will get bigger once the dough is deep fried.

We use a regular frying pan, as deep as we have, to fry the dough. You fry several pieces at a time in vegetable (or canola) oil until they are a dark, golden brown color.

Once the doughboys are golden brown on both sides, they can be taken out of the frying pan and placed on layers of paper toweling.

Once they’re done on both sides, we recommend taking them out and placing them on a couple layers of paper toweling, to catch the extra oil as it drips off.

We prefer to sprinkle regular sugar on top, but you can sprinkle anything on top that you prefer.

Enjoy!

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Sooo…what was for Christmas dinner? Part 1

27 Dec
Roasted pork chops, sauteed green beans, butternut squash, twice baked potatoes, applesauce

Here's my plate, just before I dug in!

Yesterday’s post showed our pretty ordinary Christmas breakfast, which despite the simplicity of it, we love it. I noted however, that our dinner is more elaborate since we do host Christmas.

We tend to be creatures of habit, so we make the same thing more or less, every single year: Pork roast with homemade applesauce, twice baked potatoes, sauteed green beans and this year my cousin Val made butternut squash with apples as well (one of my favorite vegetables ever, by the way.)

This meal is actually relatively easy to prepare because you can do a lot of it ahead of time. You can use this meal for any occasion, not just Christmas, but it’s definitely our go-to meal for Christmas Day.

Homemade applesauce

Six pounds of apples is a lot to peel, and I'm always amazed at how much this reduces once it's done. It looks like less than it is, once the apples are cooked.

The day before, I make the homemade applesauce using six pounds of apples.

You can find the recipe for the applesauce on my Hanukkah post here.

Homemade applesauce, cooked.

Here's how it looks all cooked.

Once the applesauce is cooked, I put it into the serving bowl for the next day, and put it into the fridge, cinnamon stick and all. Just needs to be reheated in the microwave before dinner.

Homemade Applesauce

Ready to serve on Christmas Day.

Another big part of the dinner which can be prepped ahead of time, is the twice baked potatoes. Don does those.

Tomorrow, I will share that recipe and show the steps to get you from a bag of potatoes to the yummy side dish that we love so much. And, as an added bonus, the recipe for Twice Baked Potatoes gives you a ready-made appetizer as well: Potato Skins. You’ll see how that happens when you read tomorrow’s post.

Here we are, ready to eat our Christmas Dinner. Missing from the photo: Don, who's taking the picture so that I can be in it, for once!

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