Tag Archives: shopping on a budget

By popular demand: A recipe for another of Sue’s treats

19 Apr

These little bits seem like one small bite, but you can never eat just one!

Last week we had PTO and Book Club. Sure enough, my good friend Sue brought snack for us all. It was one of my faves, a chocolate/caramel/matzo snack that she makes for passover. I was so lucky, she sent some home with me (and no, she hadn’t seen the 4/13  blog post about her snacks yet!)

This photo is from the ones she sent home with me. When we took the photo the camera was accidentally on the wrong setting, so the color is slightly off. However, once we ate the snack there was no retaking the photo!

Since I wrote about Sue and all her yummy desserts, I’ve had several requests for the matzo snack. Sue actually recommended making it ahead and freezing it if you’d like to. She said it stays well.

I actually have two different recipes for it so I’m going to post one today and one tomorrow. One calls for Saltines, one calls for Graham Crackers. One uses salted butter and one uses unsalted. Although they differ slightly, the snack is basically the same overall. You can pick one and sub in the matzo crackers for the Saltines or the Graham Crackers. I have made both.

Here’s the first version for you. This one I posted on Facebook in March 2010 after seeing it in an issue of Country Living Magazine a few years back. Here’s the post:

“Mama’s Sweet and Saltines”

Not my mama this time. I got this recipe out of Country Living magazine and it’s Trisha Yearwood’s mama I guess.

I’d actually had this before, but just found the recipe for it the other day. The only thing I didn’t have on hand was the unsalted butter, which Don promptly bought after seeing the recipe.

40 Saltine Crackers (can use graham crackers for a sweeter taste.
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup light brown sugar
8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (about 1 1/2 cups.)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Line a large-rimmed cookie sheet with foil and the forty crackers. Be sure the pan you choose will fit in your freezer and be sure you have space in your freezer for the pan!!!

In a medium saucepan melt butter and brown sugar together and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and pour over crackers covering them evenly.

Put cookie sheet in oven and watch closely. Bake for about 5 minutes (mine took three) until just bubbly.

Remove from oven and pour chocolate chips over crackers.

When chips begin to melt, spread them over crackers with a knife.

Transfer pan to freezer for 15 to 20 minutes or until completely cold. The chocolate covered crackers will forma solid sheet. Break into pieces and store in airtight container.

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Balsamic Glazed Salmon

18 Apr

This sauce was great over salmon, and later over chicken!

I love seafood, but recently I discovered that I’d developed a shellfish allergy. Therefore, there’s only certain seafood that I can actually eat. Thankfully, salmon is one of them. I love salmon. Usually I make it with hollandaise sauce over it and the last time I did, that went over well with everyone. However, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to serve things so when the Allrecipe.com Daily Recipe came for Balsamic Glazed Salmon, I had to try it. I love balsamic vinegar.

The recipe was easy and fast, and I served the sauce “on the side” so that if someone didn’t want sauce they didn’t have to have it. We had some sauce leftover and Don thought it’d be good on chicken so we saved it for another night. Sure enough, a few days later we served it on the side again, this time with some chicken breasts and it was just as good.

Here’s the recipe from Allrecipes.com

BALSAMIC GLAZED SALMON

Simple ingredients....and the chance to use my microplane zester!

INGREDIENTS

8 three ounce fillets of salmon about 3/4″ thick (I used five fillets since there’s five of us).

Freshly ground black pepper (or the kind in the jar)

3 tablespoons olive oil

SAUCE INGREDIENTS

4 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 and 3/4 cups chicken broth

3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 teaspoon grated orange peel

orange slices for garnish (we didn’t do that)


Grating one medium sized orange all the way around with the microplane zester was just enough for the amount of orange peel needed in the recipe.

DIRECTIONS

1. Place the salmon in an 11×8″ shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with black pepper and drizzle with oil. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork.

2. Stir the cornstarch, broth, vinegar, brown sugar, orange juice and orange peel in a two quart sauce pan over high heat to a boil. Cook and stir until the mixture boils and thickens.

3. Place the salmon on a serving platter and serve with the sauce. Garnish with the orange slices.

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After School Snack: Strawberry Banana Yogurt Smoothies

11 Apr

Great for sore throats, warm weather, a healthy snack!

We had an unusually warm, hot actually, March this year. The weather broke all kinds of records and we loved the taste of summer that came during spring. It meant a couple of things for us though: First it meant that springtime allergies kicked in early, so everyone started with sore throats and runny noses in March instead of April. Second, it meant that the daily “can we get ice cream” and “can we get frozen lemonade” questions started early as well.

When I pick my kids up at school we drive by one of our city’s popular ice cream drive ups as well as past our favorite frozen lemonade stand. On occasion, on super hot summer days we’ll stop there after school as a treat, but I wasn’t really ready to start that in March. Not yet. It’s an expensive treat, one we don’t do too often.

One particularly hot afternoon, as an answer to their pleas, I decided to make smoothies, something I often do as an after school snack, but not usually in March. On this particular afternoon though, I had fresh strawberries in my fridge, (frozen works well too) and I had bananas in my freezer, which I often use for banana bread, but they work well for smoothies too. I had some vanilla yogurt in my fridge, so I felt I could easily pull off some smoothies for an after school snack.

A blender doesn't have to be expensive to make a delicious treat!

My “recipe” isn’t exact, but into my blender I threw: a bunch of strawberries, two frozen bananas, milk, about a cup of vanilla yogurt, and some ice to make it have a frozen feel, like a milkshake, but healthier.

I added a dollop of whipped cream and a straw and I had a restaurant-quality summer beverage for my kids for after school. Not bad! Everyone was happy and I was glad there was even enough for me to have some!

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Shrimp and Asparagus Pasta

10 Apr

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I really love the “Daily Recipes” that I get in my email inbox from Allrecipes.com. I’m constantly making a note to try one out “some day” and last week I had a chance to try a new one. I had everything on hand with the exception of one ingredient: mushrooms, which I had actually had on hand but it turned out they weren’t good anymore so we threw them out. The recipe was fine without them but I’d add them in if I had them next time.

Everyone loved this recipe and I’d definitely make it again. I made some notes and adjustments below.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 pound fresh asparagus (I used a bag of frozen from Aldi’s.)
  • 1 (16 ounce) package egg noodles (I used a pound of wheat spaghetti.)
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (This was a lot. I’d do less next time and add a bit more lemon juice instead.)
  • 1 cup butter (I think you could cut some of this out as well. Maybe down to  1 1/2 sticks instead of two.)
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 pound medium shrimp – peeled and deveined (I used a bag of frozen from Aldi’s.)
  • 1 pound fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

  1. In a small saucepan, boil or steam asparagus in enough water to cover until tender; chop and set aside.
  2. Bring a large pot of salted water to full boil, place the pasta in the pot and return to a rolling boil; cook until al dente. Drain well.
  3. In a large saucepan, saute garlic in the olive oil over medium-low heat until the garlic is golden brown.
  4. Place butter and lemon juice in the saucepan. Heat until the butter has melted. Place the shrimp in the saucepan and cook until the shrimp turns pink. Place the mushrooms and asparagus into the saucepan, cook until mushrooms are tender.
  5. Toss the shrimp and vegetable mixture with the egg noodles and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

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Pizzelles: a special treat this Easter

9 Apr

Easter isn’t the same as Christmas, where we have a ton of different kinds of cookies, or even like Thanksgiving, where we have tons of homemade pies for dessert. We usually have Grandma Rose’s Rice Pie for dessert as well as the Easter Sweet Bread and that’s usually it (and don’t get me wrong, that’s plenty!!) This year though, we had a special treat: I made Pizzelles! Pizzelles bring me right back to my childhood whenever I eat them. Grandma Grello still makes them and I love them.

We’d been having a discussion about them with her recently and I realized that even though we received a Pizzelle Maker years ago from my mother-in-law as an anniversary gift, it’d been a really long time since I’d used it. I thought that this Easter would be a great time to make them for an extra-special treat.

The great thing about the Pizzelle Maker is that it comes with the recipe, several of them. The basic recipe is a quick and easy recipe and once you get the hang of how much batter to put on the machine, the pizzelles come quickly, about every 30 seconds. It says the recipe makes about 30, but I probably broke up at least six of the “mistakes” into bits for the kids to eat as I was getting the hang of how much batter and how long to cook them. I also let them each eat a whole one once I did get the hang of it. We ended up with about 20 of them at the end.

For the batter, they recommended using one heaping teaspoon in each of the two molds, but when I tried that, they were too small, only about half the size of a regular cookie. So I upped it to one heaping TABLESPOON instead and it worked out perfectly. They also recommended putting the batter into the center of the mold more towards the back, which seemed to work out well.

One important trick is to be sure to take them off and place them on a flat surface to cool (assuming you want them to be flat.) They come off the mold warm and soft, and they will form any shape you put them on, so even a plate that isn’t entirely flat will cause them to be off-kilter a bit. I put them directly onto a plate and then brought them to the cooling racks on the table and quickly slid them onto the racks to cool completely flat.

I think that’s all the important things to note. Here’s the basic pizzelle recipe I used as well as my adjustments to it.

INGREDIENTS

3 eggs

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1  3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup melted butter, margarine or oil (I used oil)

3/4 cup sugar

DIRECTIONS

Beat eggs and sugar.

Add cooled melted butter or margarine (or oil) and vanilla.

Sift flour and baking powder and add to egg mixture.

Batter will be stiff enough to be dropped by spoon. (Use one heaping tablespoonful per cookie.)

Batter can be refrigerated to be used at a later time.

Makes 30 pizzelles.

*For chocolate pizzelles add 3 tablespoons cocoa and 3 tablespoons sugar.

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Just in time for Passover: Meringue Cookies

6 Apr

Cookies for Passover!

Good Friday and Passover fall on the same day this year, so I am making sure to post recipes for both. On Wednesday I posted my family’s Easter Sweet Bread recipe and today I am posting a recipe passed along to me by my friend Pam. I tried these out with my “focus group,” aka my three kids, and they all immediately gave them two thumbs up. They were quick and easy. I worked that day and got home about a half hour before the kids did, and the timing was perfect; the cookies were just coming out of the oven.

As I was making them, I questioned whether or not they were in fact a healthy treat since they did not contain egg yolks or flour. However, I figured out as I went along that the chocolate chips and sugar kind of cancelled out any healthiness they might have had.

The kids loved these cookies and are already asking me to make them again. They’re certainly easy enough that I could make them any time.

A few notes:

*The recipe below calls for mini chocolate chips but I only “do” regular chocolate chips, so that’s what I used. It also said that you could use any variety of chocolate chips, but I only had the chocolate variety at the time.

*Pam noted that you could use food coloring to make the cookies fit any desired theme.

*It says to use Parchment Paper on the tray, which I missed and a few of my cookies stuck to the tray, I’m assuming because of it. Next time I’d be sure to use the Parchment Paper.

Enjoy!

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Chocolate chip meringue cookies

makes 2 /12- 3 dozen cookies
2 egg whites
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cream of tarter
1 tsp. vanilla
¾ C sugar
6 oz. mini choc, chips, or any flavor you like or feel free to mix and match
·       in large dry mixing bowl beat egg whites till foamy
·       gradually salt, cream of tarter and vanilla
·       slowly pour in sugar, ¼ C at a time
·       beat until peaks form and will be white and shiny
·       fold in chips
·       drop tsp. worth of batter onto parchment covered cookie sheet
·       bake 300 degrees for 20minutes
·       cool before removing

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Knorr sauce mix: sometimes you just need quick and easy

5 Apr

I was going to put the salad right on the plate, but I just couldn't. I'm definitely an "on the side" girl!

Not everything has to be from scratch, not everything has to be a full course meal every time.

Yup, that’s what I try to tell myself on a regular basis.

Don’t get me wrong, we have mac and cheese with hot dogs at our house too.

Sometimes.

On occasion.

Next time we do, I’ll take a photo and post it.

Shortcuts are good!

I actually LOVE mac and cheese and hot dogs, and it has to be the kind of mac and cheese out of a box.

With the powdered cheese sauce.

But, I digress.

With busy schedules that are never the same and with holidays and birthdays mixed in there, sometimes I just need something quick and easy to make for dinner.

Last week’s dinner was one of those nights. I had to leave right after dinner for Girl Scouts and while I was cooking dinner I was helping whoever needed it, with homework too. This ended up also being the night that my daughter accidentally fell on the stairs while trying to jump up and touch the door jamb, hitting her head instead and knocking herself out, with a slice of pepperoni in her mouth.

It was a crazy night.

But again, I digress.

My cousin had given me a package of Knorr Garlic and Herb sauce that she’d tried, when I was at her house last. She’d had it over veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots) and she thought I’d like it.

I was going to make it over a veggie to go with our meal last week, tortellini, when I realized that on the front of the package itself it showed the sauce over tortellini, so I decided to try that. I chose asparagus for my veggie and had a fast and easy, complete, relatively healthy meal in a matter of a few minutes.

My kids all liked it, so I’d make it again for sure.

So today’s post isn’t a recipe exactly, it’s more a product review I guess, or a meal suggestion. The recipe for the sauce is contained on the back side of the packet of sauce. Give it a try and see what you think.

And tell me: what is your best shortcut meal idea?

Everyone gave this meal a two-thumbs-up review!

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The Un-birthday-cake Birthday Cake

2 Apr

Although I'm crafty, I'm not an artist so birthday cake decorating is not really my thing. But, each time, my kids always say they love my cakes and that means so much to me.

Every once in a while I have one of those slap-myself-on-the forehead realizations, the kind where I think to myself, “Why didn’t I think of that,” or even “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

Birthday party cakes was one of those moments.

Although I don’t bake them from scratch, I always make our cakes at home and do my best to decorate them despite my lack of artistic ability, but the funny thing is none of us in our immediate family actually really like the traditional birthday cake kind of cake, you know the yellow or chocolate cake with the birthday cake frosting on it. Yet, I just kept making them three times a year, six times if you count friend parties AND family parties. Sometimes I’d do cupcakes instead, but still it’s like cake.

And then last year it happened: my sister in law and her family were here for Elizabeth’s birthday and I made some kind of comment about making the cake even though none of us actually eat it.

Her brilliant answer: “You know, I’ve done brownie cakes and chocolate chip cookie cakes instead, and frost them just the same. It works out great.”

Light bulb.

Slap on forehead.

Why didn’t I think of that????

We love brownies! And, we love cookies!

Elizabeth's "cake" this summer was our first brownie birthday cake.

So last summer I tried out a frosted brownie cake for Liz’s party and it worked out great! I did it two more times over the summer, once for her friend party and once for July 4th, and then again in October for Caroline’s party. Over and over I just kept thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I never thought of this!”

Here it is again, birthday party time and once again, we are doing the un-birthday cake birthday cake. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying out a cookie cake this time and I even grabbed the recipe from my friend Shelley, but I just didn’t have the time to pull it off this weekend. Next time….

In any event, a great time was had by all, and everyone loved the “cake.”

Surprise, it's a brownie! And, this was a budget-friendly brownie cake with the brownie mix from Price Rite and the frosting from Aldi's. My secret ingredient: I throw chocolate chips into the batter.

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In honor of Oreo’s 100th Birthday

30 Mar

If you'd like to celebrate right along with Oreo in honor of their 100th birthday, I highly recommend these Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Can you find the Oreo Cookies in this picture?

I bet you can’t, they’re hiding INSIDE the cookies!

Last year I posted this recipe on Facebook after seeing it in a Macaroni Kids newsletter that I get in my inbox each week. From what I read, they got it from a blog too, so I have included that in the recipe information as well.

I made these several times last year, including as an End of Year gift for our kids’ teachers and for a birthday gift for my sister-inlaw.

They are SO delicious but each one is like eating THREE cookies, just so you know.

Here is the recipe for you. It’s easy and makes about 25 cookies.

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS

2 sticks softened butter

3/4 Cup packed light brown sugar

1 Cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 Tablespoon pure vanilla

3 1/2 Cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

10 oz bag chocolate chips

1 bag Oreo Cookies

DIRECTIONS

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.   In a stand or electric mixer cream butter and sugars until well combined.  Add in eggs and vanilla until well combined.

2.  In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda.  Slowly add to wet ingredients along with chocolate chips until just combined.  Using a cookie scoop take one scoop of cookie dough and place on top of an Oreo Cookie.  Take another scoop of dough and place on bottom of Oreo Cookie.  Seal edges together by pressing and cupping in hand until Oreo Cookie is enclosed with dough.  Place onto a baking sheet and bake cookies 9-13 minutes or until cookies are baked to your liking.  Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.  Serve with a tall glass of milk, enjoy!

Makes about 2 dozen VERY LARGE Cookies

Please visit Jenny’s blog at picky-palate.com

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Another new recipe!

29 Mar

I love anything with balsamic vinegar, so I thought this recipe was worth trying.

I get daily recipe emails from a few different places. One of them is Allrecipes.com, whose website I frequent. This one sounded good and I love anything with balsamic vinegar, so I decided to try it. It’s one reason I bought so many cans of diced tomatoes last time they were on sale. I had several recipes calling for them and this was one of them.

Overall, I think everyone liked it. We served it with whole wheat spaghetti, so anyone who didn’t like the chicken could have pasta and the tomatoes were big enough that they could be picked out if anyone didn’t like those. I liked the whole thing and I think I’d make it again.

BRAISED BALSAMIC CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (I used about 10-12 tenderloins instead.)

ground black pepper to taste

1 tsp garlic salt

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, thinly sliced (I chopped rather than sliced.)

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar (I ran out and only had 1/4 cup but I think 1/2 would have been too strong.)

one 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried rosemary

1/2 tsp dried thyme

DIRECTIONS

1. Season chicken breasts with ground black pepper and garlic salt. Heat olive oil in medium skillet and brown the onion and seasoned chicken breasts.

2. Pour tomatoes and balsamic vinegar over chicken and season with basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme.

3. Simmer until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear, about 15 minutes.

We served ours on a bed of whole wheat pasta, which worked out great!

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