Food Fun

I have been enjoying my kitchen so much lately.  I am trying to stick to whole foods as much as I can.  These things definitely take more time, but it is real food and so worth it.  The Green Smoothie Girl points out that it actually doesn't take away your time, it gives you time in health and energy!  Love that.  I will share just a couple of our recent adventures here.   My kids like eating raw veggies and salads with ranch but I have become adverse to the ingredients and felt like I was filling them with chemicals and saturated fat.  The homemade alternative is so easy and cheap! Especially Winco prices.  Here is the GSG recipe for Ranch:
1 C buttermilk1C Sour Cream1 T each of Dried parsley and chives
1 t each of salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic


Blend briefly in a high-powered blender until just mixed.  Pour into a jar and put in fridge for a few hours to meld flavors!  Next time I want to use homemade yogurt instead of sour cream.  This is the best to dip with english cucumbers, carrots and sweet peppers.





This Veggie sandwich is my favorite lunch lately.  I could eat it every day:
2 slices WW bread 2 T Neufchatel CheeseDiced green onionSliced Tomato, cucumber, and avocadoSalt and Pepper to tasteOptional: sprouts



Mix diced green onions with cheese and spread half on each slice of bread.



Layer veggies, add salt and pepper and enjoy!


I am trying to dedicate one day each week to preparing foods and trying new recipes. On this day, I had 4 things going at once!  I had yogurt in the crock pot, dehydrated corn chips in the food dryer, black beans in the pressure cooker, and salsa in the blender.  All of these things were thrown together, not a lot of preparing going on here.  I think I used my blender 5 times on this day.  It is definitely the best kitchen tool to have for this lifestyle. 




Note on yogurt:  I am zero for 2 tries with this method, but I will not give up! It looks like the easiest thing in the world, but I guess i am yogurt impaired. It is made with food storage powdered milk, which I have a lot of so I know it will be worth getting right.  I want to make yogurt cheese with it for my sandwiches among many other things. 
Here is a link to the how-to video with powdered milk: HEREHere is a link for making crock pot yogurt with regular store bought milk: HERE

Recipes

Several people have been asking for Meatless recipes, so I thought I would share some.  I have been LOVING Pinterest.com which is a way to visually catalog all your favorite links with pictures that you can click on.  I was happy to finally start putting all my links in one place that you can easily see. 

I have not tried all these recipes, but I must say the Lentil Chile with Corn Fritters is a must have at our house because it is quick, easy, delicious and healthy.  I have made it a couple of times and it is kid approved (for the most part).  I have many meatless meals bookmarked here if you would like to see some things I have found around the web and I will keep adding to it:


http://pinterest.com/pricillad/

Potato Balls

When Peter and I were dating after his mission, he decided to bring me on a date to his grandparents house.  He asked his Grandpa to teach us to make something I had never heard of: Potato Balls!  I didn't quite get it. Peter just said he had always had them throughout his life, it was a Norwegian food that had been passed down generations and they tasted like a potatoey ball.  Sounds interesting.  So Peter's Grandparents enthusiastically showed us the ropes. I will never forget the excitement in Grandpa's demeanor as it became time to eat.  Like a kid in a candy store.

Here is what the potato ball procedure looks like:  Peel raw potatoes and grind them with and old fashioned, hand crank meat grinder.  Mix with flour until it is a sticky consistency and add a good amount of salt.  That's it. You drop them into boiling water like dumplings and cook them for about 30 minutes while the water gets thick and starchy.

At the table you put a few balls on your plate along with the "juice" and totally smother them with butter.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and that is your whole meal, nothing else. Grandpa is a very skinny man so we got a kick out of how much he ate. I think he himself consumed a whole cube of butter.  They are delicious by the way. The best part is slicing up the extras in the morning and frying them in butter. Best hash browns ever.  It was such and endearing experience that I have made them several times since we got married.  I use a food processor since I don't have and antique grinder. 

Peter loves to have Grandpa over to play pool so the other day, he came and brought all of his equipment. Once again we grinded and made the delicious dumplings together, making more wonderful memories of this strange and delicious food.  Grandpa was as excited as ever to eat. 

Cooking Potato Balls

 We could hardly wait for them to get done.

 Did I mention the teacher is a 95 year old pool shark?

 Ta da! Appealing right? You should see how they look the next day.  I have to add a side story: When we were in college we made them one night and Peter took some left overs to school the next day.  By then they were kind of a blueish gray color.  His study buddy was totally appalled by what Peter was eating and could never quite get over what kind of weird food Peter's wife had cooked for him.

 The kids loved them too.  Lily at so much I couldn't believe it.

So, wanna feed your family a yummy dinner and breakfast for about 2 bucks? I highly recommend it.

Thanksgiving Food

I love the Internet for finding great recipes.  You can take everything to the next level with all the possibilities out there.  I am not hosting Thanksgiving, but I am in charge of the Turkey this year!  I have been very curious about brining so I volunteered for the chance.  I found a great post and Alton Brown recipe here.  I also watched the entire Good Eats - Romancing the Bird episode.  Fascinating and hilarious by the way if you haven't seen it.



Now my bucket is ready and I am nervous being new to brining and all.  I did read on another site that you should not brine the Turkey as long if it has been frozen and preserved in a salt water solution.  It suggested 12 hours at most.

For my dessert contribution, I think this Pumpkin Cream Trifle sounds awesome and I love a reason to use my trifle bowl. Well, once I pick up a new one since mine got broken.  Nothing made of glass seems to last around here. We have been through 4 6-packs of Ikea glasses in the last 6 months. Yeesh!

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love a great chocolate chip cookie, but have never been particularly good at making them.  Honestly, I just don't bake that much, even though I enjoy it. My favorite cooking program is Americas Test Kitchen on PBS. They take a recipe and test it for weeks at a time in their test kitchen and find ways to improve it and make it better.  It is very fun.  Now that we don't have broadcast TV I found that I can watch episodes from this season on line.  Anyway, I couldn't pass this recipe up when I saw it. 

Here is a little about why this recipe is different(from the website):

[Why this recipe works: Rich and buttery, with their soft cores and crispy edges, chocolate chip cookies are the American cookie-jar standard. Since Nestle first began printing the recipe for Toll House cookies on the back of chocolate chip bags in 1939, generations of bakers have packed them into lunches and taken them to potlucks. But after a few samples, we wondered if this was really the best that a chocolate chip cookie could be. We wanted to refine this recipe to create a moist and chewy chocolate chip cookie with crisp edges and deep notes of toffee and butterscotch to balance its sweetness—in short, a more sophisticated cookie than the standard bake sale offering.


Melting a generous amount of butter before combining it with other ingredients gave us the chewy texture we wanted. Since we were melting butter, we browned a portion of it to add nutty flavor. Using a bit more brown sugar than white sugar enhanced chewiness, while a combination of one egg and one egg yolk gave us supremely moist cookies. For the crisp edges and deep toffee flavor, we allowed the sugar to dissolve and rest in the melted butter. We baked the cookies until golden brown and just set, but still soft in the center. The resulting cookies were crisp and chewy and gooey with chocolate, and boasted a complex medley of sweet, buttery, caramel, and toffee flavors]
 
So here it is in the wait and stir phase. 

Just out of the oven

Ready to eat.  Oh, it did not disappoint.  Browning the butter is genius! Now I can say I can make great chocolate chip cookies.  So yummy. I highly recommend using the chocolate chips they suggest too(Ghiradelli semi sweet with 60% cacao)

This recipe is very different, but didn't take too much work and you don't use a mixer, which for me, means less cleaning. I will never go to the back of the package for the recipe again.

Here is a link to the recipe and video.  You have to give your email address, but trust me it is worth it!,

CLICK HERE 

Mongolian Grill

One of our favorite restaurants is Chang's Mongolian Grill.  It is better than any other place like that by far.  We had our friends over a few weeks ago and decided to try our own.  It was really fast prep work with a food processor and I didn't have to cook ahead(except noodles), just laid it all out.  Then everyone put together their own meal and I had 2 hot frying pans with oil ready to go.  We each cooked our own dish as well, two at a time.  Everything was sliced so thin that it only took 3-4 minutes to cook each plate and it was a huge success.  So yummy.  Since you mix your own sauce at the restaurant, I knew exactly what I liked in it and it tasted just the same! It is a super fun and unique food/dining experience that can be done at home.  I highly recommend it for a small group stay-at-home activity.

Here are a few tips for making at-home Mongolian Grill:

1. Slice all your veggies in your food processor with a thin blade plate first which may include(we used the *):

*onions

*celery

*carrots

mushrooms

*cabbage

*green pepper

scallions

broccoli

zucchini

You can also use *pineapple,

 *bean sprouts,

*and cilantro

2. Process meats last (so you don't get your veggies gross). The major thing to know about slicing meat is to use slightly frozen meat(not solid) in your food processor so it can hold its shape for slicing. Meats may include:

*Beef

*Chicken

Shrimp

Fish

Lamb

Pork

Any other kind

3. For noodles you can use regular old spaghetti noodles.  Cook them a little past al dente and rinse with cold water.  Then toss them with cooking oil so they are ready for frying.

4.  You can be creative with the sauces but here are some ideas(if mixing sauce is intimidating for anyone, the Yoshida sauce is pretty fool proof):

*Yoshida sauce

*soy sauce

*diced garlic

*pureed ginger

*lime juice

*soy ginger dressing

*pineapple juice

salt water

sugar water

sesame oil

*hoisin sauce

dry spices

5. Serve with steamed rice, plum sauce and hot chile sauce.  I would love to find out where to buy the thin rice pancakes that they have at the restaurant, then it would have been perfect.

Cook Once, Eat Twice

OR ten times!!!
I was at Costo a couple of months ago and decided to invest in a HUGE tube of lean ground beef because it was only 1.99 a pound.  I hate dividing raw meat for freezing, but wanted the savings.  When I got home I thought, why not just cook it all and freeze it?  I didn't know how hard it would be to cook 10lbs of hamburger at once, but it was so easy, I wanted to share.  I used my biggest pot, I think it is 8 quarts and just dumped it all in and squished it all in there with a potato masher.  It fit, that was the first concern but it was just fine.  I turned the burner to Medium so that nothing would burn with that large amount of meat. 

Stiring with a big wooden spoon was hard and almost broke the thing, so I switched to a long knife instead.
This worked great.  I stired every 3 or 4 minutes.


Once it was cooked and loose, I switched back to the wooden spoon.

20 or 30 minutes later I had this! I divided into 10 freezer bags, let it cool and threw it all in the freezer.  Over the last several weeks, it has made for some super fast meals, like 5 minutes! I will definitely do this from now on. (What I will do next time: season the meat and add a bunch of sauteed onions and veggies.)  Afterward, I referenced my Make a Mix book which has a recipe for this, but it is for 5 lbs of meat.  Ten is totally doable though.   Another thing I want to try is making this double by making a big batch textured vegetable protein TVP(made from soy) which you can buy in bulk at Winco, and using half of each in each bag.  That would make 20 meals of healthy meat mixtures.

Quick Enchillada Trick

We really like to eat enchilladas, I make several different kinds. Last week I wasn't feeling well and my sweet hubby was nice enough to do the grocery shopping. I put whole wheat tortillas on the shopping list, but not what size. He came home with the giant wrap sized ones. I was planning enchilladas so I didn't quite know what to do with those huge things. I decided I would just make them anyway and realized what a time saver it was. I made the filling, rolled it up in 4 giant tortillas in a couple of minutes and that filled up my whole 9x13 pan. It was so fast that I thought it was a tip worth sharing. To serve I just cut the tortillas to size with my spatula and served them.

Laundry Soap

After reading that you can make your own laundry soap for very cheap, I just had to give it a try. It was so easy (about a 20 minute project) and kinda fun. I was doubtful that it would really turn out, but after letting it set for a day, it gelled and truly became a liquid detergent! I was able to find these 3 ingredients at Winco believe it or not. I also had to buy a 5 gallon bucket at home depot. My initial investment was about $10, but the actual batch of soap cost less than $3. It should last at least 6 months, maybe longer and then for the next several batches, I will only have to spend $1.50 for the bar of soap. Amazing!!! Sorry I don't have a review for how well it works yet, it is still too soon to tell. I am so excited to take out expensive laundry soap from my budget. I wish I had a front loader, it would last forever!

Here is the recipe from the Dugger Website if you are interested:


Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap- Front or top load machine- best value

4 Cups hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.

-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

German Apple Pancake

I wrote about this on my last post so I thought I would add the recipe. You can click to enlarge it. It is our favorite Sunday breakfast ever! Just imagine something like crepes with apple pie filling. MMMM...it is so good, you must try it, you will be in for a real treat. Note: I didn't have half and half one day so I used whole milk and I couldn't tell the difference.This is from my favorite America's Test Kitchen Cookbook.

Super Saturday, Gardening, Playhouse, Other Projects and More

I finally unloaded my camera so I am going to put the whole shabang on here so I can count it done! I was actually sad that I haven't taken more pictures lately because we have done a lot of great stuff, but sometimes you just can't do it all. Here we go:

Super Saturday Crafts:

We picked crafts and classes to try to go with our theme "Home can be a Heaven on Earth".

FHE BOARDS:

The oh so popular FHE boards were a hit. This was my first time doing vinyl but I found a great site that sells this all in one piece so it was super easy to put on. Here is a link if you are interested, it was a great bargain too click here . I just bought the boards at Home Depot and had them cut to size. I got the shapes at Micheals. This is only a one hour project.

I love how there is one heart just waiting for our little arrival. It makes me smile everytime I walk by it. If we ever outgrow this board, I will just put 2 hearts on a hook to pair people together for a job. We are going to use our board tonight for the first time. I also love the font on this, it is called Papyrus.

GOSPEL STANDARDS QUIET BOOK:

Quiet booksare always good so we created a couple of different ones. This first one I came up with myself. I wanted to make one for primary children so I used the My Gospel Standards and went from there. Isn't this the cutest scrapbook paper?

Each page had a sentence from the Gospel Standards and a scripture to go with it. I downloaded pictures from lds.org Gospel Art Kit that corresponded with the words and had them printed in wallet size at Costco. We also used a sponge and an ink pad to distress the edges of the words to bring it all together. These are just dollar store photo albums but the ribbon through the binding really made it cute. For the last page of the book I printed a 4x6 of the Articles of Faith since primary children are usually memorizing those. I would be happy to email you directions and references if you are interested in making one of these.


NEW ERA QUIET BOOK:

This book was super easy. I didn't come up with this one, just found the idea googling. These are the New Era posters that you can order as postcards from lds.org. If you use the front and back cover you can fit 40 posters, which is 5 of the 7 sets of 8 that are available, so I just picked the sets I liked the most.

PROGRAM TRACKING/FHE BINDER (don't miss this one!)

This is the coolest thing every that EVERY LDS mom should have. It is a tracking binder for all of the programs our church uses including Faith in God, YW, YM, and Scouting programs. Not only is it a way to keep track of all your children's progress in one binder, here is the genious part. Each program has a page of FHE ideas that your children can do with the family to pass off requirments on family night! We had a stake activity and made these so we made them again for those who hadn't had the chance to get one. This one is worth its weight in gold.

We also had a special guest speaker come from our stake to educate us on using Coupons. She has a very popular website at http://www.beingfrugalisfabulous.com/. She was really informative and had lots of stories of walking away with tons of stuff for just pennies. She showed us how she organizes it all and all the basics. Check out her site it is really neat.

Our other class was based on the Mix-A-Meal cookbook. Wow, there is so much you can do with these mixes to use your food storage and save time. We also learned about a really valuable food storage site at http://www.everydayfoodstorage.net/.

Salt Part 2:

Speaking of food storage, here is another salt picture I found on my camera. I guess i can see why this made sense to Tanner. If you have ever seen a Thomas video, there are often materials used like this to look like snow.

Gardening:

We are enjoying our little garden that we planted. There are only 7 or 8 plants, but the kids really liked this project and we love watching it grow. I can't wait for fresh vegetables!




Playhouse:

The kids have really been into this project as well, especially Dallin. Dallin worked hard every day at school for 2 weeks so that he and Daddy could build a little each night. They usually only had a few minutes before bed time. He never missed a second of the process and was very interested in every detail. Even if he couldn't help with a certain part, he never left Peter's side.

Here it is with a roof going up. Tanner is really a great construction superviser here, ha ha!

Here it is all built. We haven't decided what color to paint yet. Dallin really wanted the windows to have the latice crosses.
Dallin and Eden have taken the liberty to do a lot of wall decoration in there already. I didn't oppose it because it is really their space, so I stayed out of it. The inside is stocked with a plastic kitchen, food and table, and a couple of small throw rugs.

Since we know an electrician the house even got a light and a plug in for a radio. There are still many things we plan to do out here, but the kids are loving their house. They even slept in it one night already with Daddy. Next, I am going to get some of that chalkboard paint to put on one of the walls inside.

Other Projects:

Charts are becoming such a part of our lives, it just helps me keep the kids organized. This was a fun one we just made as we are starting to teach our kids a little bit about nutrition. We will be having a lot of Family Night lessons about it so this was to get us started. I bought the board at Walmart and the Letters at the dollar store. I just glued the ribbon on with tacky glue. The magnets are made from .75" magnets using glue stick, hot glue and floral marbles from Michaels. I googled the pictures and made a word document with the right sizes. If you are interested, email me and I will send you the picture pages.

Each child has a space where they have all the nutrition requirements for a balanced diet for a day. Whenever they eat something from a food group, they move the corresponding magnet over from the left to the space on the right. I used the USDA's charts for how many servings each person should get. The first letter of each person's name shows their designated area. The kids are really excited about eating foods for their chart and are already pretty good at figuring out food groups.

These magnets turned out cute, but really ended up being more tedious and expensive than I originally thought. Oh well, I love it now that it is done. There is bread, apple, broccoli, meat, and milk to represent each kind of food. This board is as much for me as it is the kids so that I can track how well they are eating(or how I am feeding them!)

A Take on Flannel Boards:

This is so cool! I found a website where someone had downloaded every flannel board story ever printed in The Friend Magazine and colored them in Paint. Click Here for the site. I just downloaded, printed them and laminated them. (tangent: I love having a home laminating machine! It is cheaper than running to Kinkos and I use it all the time. I have the no heat Xyron version that sells at Office Max for $50 that I love, but I noticed there is a heated one at Walmart that is quite a bit cheaper, something in the $20 range.) You can buy magnet strips for really cheap at Walmart and I just use this beat up magnet board that we had lying around to tell the stories with. It is great for telling scripture stories, the kids always beg for more.

These are just the Book of Mormon stories. I keep each story in a sandwich bag in this dollar store basket.

Fun Snack Idea:

This was something that my roommate used to eat back in my BYU days. I was trying to come up with some fun nutritous snacks for the kids and this came back to me (thanks Heather if you ever read this!) Crumble graham crackers in a little bowl and put sliced peaches on top. Drizzle with honey and oh my it is so good! It is one of my favorites now too!

The Other White Meat

I have discovered a way to enjoy 3 totally different dinners in a row with very little effort at all. We gave up fast food and eating out about a month ago, so fast home cooked meals are a must around here.

I love making pork loin roasts. They usually come in a package with 3 small roasts and are very affordable. This is where I start.

Sunday: In the morning put 2 pork roasts(1 is enough for dinner and one is for tomorrow)in the Crock pot. I season it with Montreal steak seasoning. Fill the rest of the pot with large pieces of potato, onion and carrot. Cook on high for 4-5 hours or low for 8. After dinner, save the second roast and about 2 cups of veggies.

Monday: Shred the second roast and mix with barbecue sauce to make pulled pork. Heat and serve on hamburger buns.

Tuesday: Make a simple cheesy potato and ham soup. Instead of boiling potatoes, use the flavorful left over veggies mashed up. I always keep cubed ham in my freezer so I just toss a cup of that in. Serve with sourdough bread or bread bowls. This only takes about 10 minutes.

Good home cooked meals in no time at all. I am sure there are tons of combinations, but I just like how these are all different. I was thinking maybe next time I will make 3 roasts and have a fourth night with enchilladas.

Cream Soup Substitute

cream soup substitute
I get so mad when I have to buy those cream of mushroom or celery cans for over a dollar at the store. Especially when a recipe calls for 2 cans. So here are 2 recipe solutions. I think the first one could be great for using your food storage and for always having it on hand. These cost a fraction of what a can of soup would cost and you can pronounce all of the ingredients!

Cream Soup SubstituteINGREDIENTS:
2 cups dry milk
3/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup chicken bouillon granules
2 tablespoons dried onion flakes, optional
1 teaspoon dried leaf thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried leaf basil, optional
1/2 teaspoon dried leaf oregano, optional
1/2 teaspoon ground marjoram, optional
1/2 teaspoon pepper2 to 3 teaspoons butter

PREPARATION:Combine all ingredients except butter together and store in airtight container. To use, mix 1/2 cup dry soup mix with 1 1/4 cups water and cook until thick; add butter. This is equal to one can cream soup.The mix makes enough to equal 9 to 10 cans. For cream of mushroom or celery soup, add chopped sauteé mushrooms or celery along with the butter while cooking

Cream Soup Substitute II

INGREDIENTS:1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup low sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup low-fat or fat free milk
salt and pepper to taste

PREPARATION:Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir in flour; keep stirring until smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat and add the chicken broth and milk, a little at a time, stirring to keep smooth.Return to heat. Bring sauce to a gentle boil; cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens. Taste and add salt and pepper, as needed to taste.Use in casseroles in place of condensed cream soups.Can be varied by using vegetable broth, sauteéd chopped celery, celery seed, or sauteéd chopped mushrooms