The Family Together

Aug. 6, 2009 - Basic Stir Fry

This recipe must be so un-authentic it may well be an insult to the name. I'm not sure; I'm just saying that because I did a search and couldn't find anything like it online. It's adapted from a Better Homes and Gardens recipe from the 80s. We use it quite a bit for its versatility and the fact that it doesn't have any ingredients that cost too much, like rice wine.

Basic Stir Fry

1/2 cup cold water*
3 Tablespoons soy sauce. (That's a LOT of salt. You may want to cut back.)
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon chicken bouillon*
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1 Tablespoon oil
1 cup cooked meat - chicken, turkey, ground meat, pork
3 cups frozen or fresh vegetables, a mix of anything you have on hand (chopped into small, uniform pieces, if fresh,)

Cooked rice

Make the sauce by stirring together the first 6 ingredients. (*We make and freeze our own chicken broth, so instead of the water and bouillon, I just substitute 1/2 cup broth, and it works fine.)

Preheat a large skillet over high heat and add cooking oil. Add frozen/fresh vegetables, cook and stir for three minutes, then push to the outer edges of the skillet, making a well in the center.

Pour sauce into well and cook and stir until thickened, about two minutes. Mix everything together thoroughly, and cover and cook for about 4 minutes, until vegetables are crisp-tender/to your liking. Add meat, stir well and let heat through, about 2 minutes more.

Serve over rice. 4 servings.

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Aug. 4, 2009 - A Little Clarification About Shopping Lists

I realized this morning that I wasn't entirely clear in my post on budget cooking about the matter of shopping lists. While I do not make meal plans, look at recipes, and write down ingredients before I shop, I *do* have a list with me.

I have three "permanent" lists in my kitchen. The first is for the pantry. The second, the fridge. The third, the freezer. They are inside those cheap-o plastic sheet protectors-thingys. (That's the official name, you know. ;) ) When we run low/use up an item, I put a star next to it on its list, using a dry-erase marker. Before we go shopping on Saturdays, I write down everything that has a star, so I know what we need to buy, in addition to any sales/good deals we come across. I add to that the few non-food items we buy, like toilet paper, when needed, and that's my shopping list.

Again, these are staple items I am referring to, so, when I use something, if I'm getting close to the "bottom of the barrel," I make a judgment on whether or not there's enough to get us through the rest of the current week AND the entire following week, as we only shop once a week. If not, I mark it with the star. For instance, on Sunday's baking day, we made a brown bread* we'd never tried before that required 1/2 cup molasses. This left us with very little molasses, so I starred it on the pantry list.

*The recipe we tried is called "Dark Bread" and we found it HERE. While tasty, I would like to point out that it actually came out peanut butter colored, so "dark" bread? Not so much! :) My daughter particularly has loved it. I think she's already eaten half a loaf herself. Also, we buy yeast in bulk. I use about 2 1/4 tsp anytime a recipe calls for "one packet."

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Aug. 3, 2009 - Budget Cooking & Cream Soup Substitute

I have an old cookbook - ©1978 - called "The Budget Cookbook" from the Culinary Arts Institute. On the inside cover there is a handwritten inscription, "To Danielle From Grandma Pat 2 - 1- 98". As I bought it myself at least 8 years ago at a used bookstore, I guess Danielle didn't much appreciate/use the gift. Who knows. Maybe she already had a copy?

In the introduction pages, there's this:

"CAN SHE BAKE A CHERRY PIE?

Today's homemaker may not have grown up in a home where basic cooking was practiced; after all, convenience foods have been around for over a generation. Now, suddenly, she is challenged to practice a skill not learned at mother's knee."

That? Would definitely be me! While in high school, we hosted an exchange student for a week. One night, I served her (and myself, obviously) frozen dinners. Turns out, it was the first time in her life to have ever eaten one. She was amazed at the food - not in a good way, I'm sure, though she was too polite to say - and I was amazed to know someone who *didn't* eat frozen dinners 3 - 4 times a week. My mother was a divorcée who dated frequently and left it up to me and my brother to fend for ourselves from whatever was on the pantry shelf or in the freezer.

I was only 19 when I married, and my husband, a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps at that time, made less than $1000 a month. Even with being able to shop at the commissary, his income, plus my measly $200 a month from a job at a movie theater, meant we were on a tight food budget. We did not have free housing. There was an enormous waiting list for on-base housing, so we were given the oh-so-generous "housing stipend" of $185 a month. This didn't even cover the rent on our tiny 1-bedroom apartment, much less utilities.

At that time, if you had asked me to make pudding, I would've bought the little box, added the milk, and tossed it in the fridge. As far as I knew - that was the *only* way to make pudding. Noodles always came dried in bags. Hamburger Helper was "thrifty." (I still cringe at that now.) I didn't even know there was such a thing as powdered milk, and I thought baking bread was something only really talented people could pull off.

I never bought anything that wasn't name brand. In the 70s, there was this short-lived "generics" craze. All sorts of food items were sold, packaged in these plain, bright yellow boxes and cans. Our local grocery store kept them on a shelf separate from the rest of the store. My mother bought the peanut butter and saltine crackers. The crackers were about as tasty as cardboard and the peanut butter was worse. That left me with a particularly bad opinion of generics and no-name brands.

In the early 90s, just a few years into our marriage, I heard about this newsletter you could subscribe to, called The Tightwad Gazette.* I loved it from the moment I got my first issue in the mail, and it completely changed my way of thinking. One of the first things I learned? Often the items in the store-brand cans came from the exact same factory as the name-brand ones. That got me thinking, and I started looking into store/unknown brands. Many of them came with guarantees. If you didn't like it, you could return it, and the store would replace it with the equivalent brand-name product.

The TG also changed my way of shopping. Up until then, I had been dutifully planning my meals ahead of time, making my list, and sticking to it no matter what! because that's what all the budget gurus advised. It never crossed my mind to walk into a store, see what was on sale, make my purchases, then come home and build my meal plans from that. It was such a novel approach for me, but as soon as I did, our grocery bills dropped dramatically.

Big changes also came when I started to look at things and ask, "Is that *really* a staple, or can you make it yourself?" Once upon a time, I had no idea brown sugar wasn't something only a manufacturer with special equipment/ingredients could make. When we fully made the transition to staples cooking, several things happened. We started eating *much* better, and everything tasted wonderful, compared to what we were used to. We stopped clipping coupons. It was so rare to stumble across a coupon for plain flour or sugar or bananas, it just wasn't worth the time. Our shopping time decreased, even with visiting 3 or 4 stores each week, because there were very few aisles we needed to cover. We discovered that my middle school home economics teacher lied. (LOL!) She always stressed "Never alter the ingredients or change measurements in a recipe!" because it would "ruin the dish."

Nowadays, when I come across a recipe that looks like something my family would enjoy, the first thing I do is evaluate the ingredients. Are there canned/pre-mixed items that I can make myself instead? Are there too many ingredients that would be "one-time use," to make it not worth the cost? Are there items I can substitute? These questions make or break the deal on whether or not the recipe gets added to my personal cookbook.

And speaking of substitutes, there seems to be no end to the recipes that call for a can of cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup. THIS RECIPE for a cream soup substitute is nice to keep handy for such recipes that you may want to try.

*Yes, it was the same Tightwad Gazette you can now buy in book form. I subscribed to it after an article appeared in Parade Magazine.

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Jul. 28, 2009 - Zesty Vegetable Enchiladas

I have seen variations of this recipe on different websites, including this one here at ORTEGA but never one *exactly* like this. This one came from a magazine (Sorry copyright police! I can't remember which any more. If anyone can identify it, please do!) in the early 90s, that ran an article with budget-friendly recipes. I cut them all out and put them in a binder with other collected recipes.

The things I change are: I use 1/2 Tablespoon oil, not 1 full one, and I use whatever suitable cheese I have, be it cheddar, or MJ, or a Colby-MJ blend. Also, unless I happen to stumble across Mexican stewed tomatoes on sale - which has happened to me maybe twice in 20 years - I use regular stewed tomatoes and add some salsa for flavoring, which, interestingly enough, brings it more in line with the Ortega version.

So, here it is: Zesty Vegetable Enchiladas

1 1/3 cup water
1/2 cup dry lentils (3 1/2 oz.)
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 6-inch flour tortillas*
Nonstick coating spray
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced
1 1/2 teaspoon chili powder or ground cumin (I use 1/2 tsp chili powder and 1 tsp. cumin.)
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced (about 2 cups)
1 14.5 oz can Mexican-style stewed tomatoes, cut up
6 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (1 1/2 cups)

1) In a medium saucepan, combine water, lentils, and salt. Bring to a boil; reduce heat. Cover; simmer for 15 - 20 minutes or until tender. Drain; rinse with cold water. Set aside.

2) Meanwhile, wrap tortillas in foil; heat at 350° for 10 minutes. Spray a 3 quart rectangular baking dish with nonstick coating. (Just to note - If you can get your hands on a REFILLABLE PUMP SPRAY, they're very handy to have.)

3) In a large skillet, stir-fry carrots and chili powder or cumin in hot oil for 2 minutes. Add zucchini; stir-fry for 2 - 3 minutes, or until crisp-tender. (Add more oil if necessary during cooking.) Remove from heat. Stir in lentils, half of the undrained, stewed tomatoes, and half of the cheese.

4) Spoon vegetable mixture onto the tortillas, dividing it evenly. Roll up the tortillas; place seamside down in the baking dish. Cover with foil.

5) Bake at 350° for 8 minutes. Remove foil; bake for 7 - 12 minutes more or until heated through and tortillas are crisp.

6) Spoon remaining tomatoes over enchiladas. Top with remaining cheese. Bake a few minutes more, until cheese is melted.

Serves 4. (We usually have some leftover. These are pretty filling.)

My children have been eating these since they were very young, and like them enough to request them occasionally. I've also served them to guests who have enjoyed them as well.

*We make our own tortillas. They're absurdly easy to make. HERE'S a recipe, if you are looking for one.

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Jul. 26, 2009 - Beginner's Bread & Strawberry Jam

THIS RECIPE found at Hillbilly Housewife, is the first yeast bread my daughter made completely on her own. It's a plain white bread, so you wouldn't want to make it often, but it's a good introduction to bread making, if you've never made it before, and it does make a decent French Toast. :) And once you get comfortable with the basic process, you can branch out to make wheat breads and various fruit, herb, or nut breads.

We made English muffins today, from the recipe in the Make-a-Mix cookbook, along with our "regular" baking. We aren't quite done yet with all the baking, actually. We still have a loaf of almond-honey-wheat bread rising on the counter; should be ready for the oven in about 1/2 hour or so. We'll be using it later this week for turkey sandwiches. We got another turkey breast on sale this weekend, so I've decided it will go into a casserole made with homemade stuffing, become sandwiches, and the leftovers will get shredded for quesadillas.

Anyway, we'll be serving the English muffins tonight with some FREEZER STRAWBERRY JAM*, a ham and cheese omelet, and some pineapple chunks.

Supper on Sundays is usually pretty light like this. We eat a big lunch before launching our baking day activities, so we don't need another heavy meal.

*When we make freezer jam, we use less sugar than this recipe calls for, a little more than 2 cups, as opposed to 4. We store it in plastic freezer containers.

ETA - The bread recipe isn't loading right for me right now, but I don't know if that's a site issue, a browser issue, or a computer issue. Anyway, if you load the page and there's a big blank spot where the recipe should be, scroll down and it eventually shows up.

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Jul. 22, 2009 - Homemade Noodles

THIS website shares how easy it is to make homemade noodles. We've been making them for years following a recipe in a cookbook I got from a great aunt. (Just to note - we do use egg in ours.)

One of my son's favorite suppers is chicken noodle soup and bread/rolls. Whenever we have a roast chicken (or turkey), I always cook down the carcass for broth, which we freeze. It's so easy to then make a batch of chicken soup. I just have to thaw and heat the broth, toss in some cut carrots and celery, make the noodles while the vegetables cook, and add leftover cooked chicken and the noodles near the end of the cooking time. All right, maybe it's not as easy as popping open a can and pouring it into a pot, but it tastes way better and it's a lot better for you. :)

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Jul. 19, 2009 - What is shortening?

So, in the "learn something new every day" category, today I learned that our British friends don't regularly use shortening.

Essentially shortening is a fat used in baking. It's white (usually - though there are some butter-flavored shortenings that I understand are yellow in color), and is a semi-solid. Shortening comes in an ALL VEGETABLE FORM, and a MIXED ANIMAL-VEGETABLE FORM.

In some recipes, you can substitute butter or margarine for shortening, but only in those things that you will be baking right away. (FYI - things do *not* come out as wonderfully flaky when you use a substitute. And erm... lard makes fantastic pie crusts and biscuits, though I think most people avoid using it, and we never buy it ourselves.)

In a recipe like biscuit mix, you shouldn't use a substitute like butter, unless I suppose you were to refrigerate your mix and use it up fairly quickly.

The official definition of shortening, according to Wikipedia is:

"Shortening is a semisolid fat used in food preparation, especially baked goods, and is so called because it promotes a "short" or crumbly texture (as in shortbread).Shortening is basically just fat or lard from an animal or vegetable. The term "shortening" can be used more broadly to apply to any fat that is used for baking and which is solid at room temperature, such as butter, lard, or margarine. Shortening often has a higher smoke point than butter and margarine, and it has 100% fat content, compared to about 80% for butter and margarine.

Although the term has been in use for many years, it is now known that shortening works by inhibiting the formation of long protein (gluten) strands in wheat-based doughs. The similarity in terms is entirely coincidental since full understanding of the structure and chemistry of dough is comparatively recent."

In a nutshell, shortening is a goopy, white substance made from oils, that can be hard to measure and isn't terribly healthy for you, but makes great baked goods.

According to the website practicallyedible.com - shortening is available in the UK under the brand names Cookeen, Trex, and White Flora.

So, I'm back off to the kitchen for the next round of baking, with a new appreciation of shortening. ;)

ETA: I am *such* an American. Heh. I really never would've guessed that shortening was something that would be unfamiliar to the Brits. That said, I know my blog is geared toward Americans, insofar as homeschooling goes, because it's what I know, but any time I post about something that gets "lost in translation," please feel free to leave a comment, and I will do my best to explain.

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Jul. 19, 2009 - Because it's Baking Day...

If you have children interested in learning to bake bread and goodies, here are three free publications from the Utah State University Cooperative Extension that have recipes that are very easy to follow:

YEAST BREADS
QUICK BREADS - (includes a homemade biscuit mix)
CAKES, COOKIES, AND PIES

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Jul. 16, 2009 - The Rice Cooker Dilemma & a Rice Cereal Recipe

My husband and I debated for years over whether or not to get a rice cooker. Generally, we believed it was a "useless" purchase, a waste of money. After all, rice can be cooked on the stove with little trouble, so why would you buy an appliance just for that? But every so often, my husband would voice the opinion that he thought it would be nice to have one, and I could agree with that - even if we both eventually would "come to our senses" and decide we weren't spending any money on it.

Then our children reached an age where they started cooking meals themselves. A few times of scrubbing a blackened pot (that produced rice that was still mostly undercooked, no less) and we began to wonder in earnest about rice cookers.

We read reviews; we checked prices.

We started looking around at garage sales and occasionally running a search at Craig's List.

One day, while in Dollar General Market, we came across a Faberware rice cooker that was marked down to $10 in the clearance aisle. It was a bit more than we really wanted to pay. We spent fifteen minutes debating back and forth over it, before finally deciding, that yes, we would give it a shot. According to the box, you could also steam vegetables in it, as well as cook rice, and we finally reasoned (justified?) that we do make a lot of rice, often 3-4 times a week, at lunch or dinner, served with a stir fry, a bean dish, or as a seasoned side dish, so it was an acceptable purchase. (We also put it in soups, and sometimes eat it as a cereal. We buy our rice in big 20 lb bags because we use it so often.)

We brought the cooker home, and even though rice wasn't on the menu that night, I made our first batch that evening, which we then reheated the next morning to eat before church. (HERE'S the recipe.) It really was as simple as pouring in the rice, adding the water, and pressing a button.

Our rice cooker gets enough use that it stays on the counter full time. So far, it has been fool-proof. We've never had undercooked rice or burned rice from it, so we've concluded that it wasn't a bad purchase.

I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone who only eats rice occasionally, because, again, you *can* cook it on the stove easily enough, but we certainly do find it a useful addition to our kitchen.

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Jul. 16, 2009 - Honey Nut Sugar Snap Peas & Make Your Own Mustard

THIS RECIPE is one of our favorite ways to use up a bounty of sugar snap peas. If you want to cook them from fresh - not frozen state - reduce the microwave time to about 3 - 3 1/2 minutes. Also, I've never made them with pine nuts, simply because of the cost. A handful of peanuts works fine. Even my daughter, who normally doesn't like mustard on anything, likes this recipe.

(Making your own mustard is quite easy, too. A little searching brought me to THIS WEBSITE which has a recipe very similar to one we have used - minus all the optional ingredients, and using honey and vinegar where the choices are. Also, we use much less of the seeds, about half the amount in ratio to the powder.)

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Jul. 15, 2009 - It's official! My husband and I have now been married for 20 years.

Wow - as clichéd as this sounds, where does the time go? 20 years ago today, my husband and I exchanged our marriage vows before friends and family. It's so hard to wrap my mind around that number. :)

While he is at work today (I keep wanting to say tomorrow since I haven't gotten to bed yet!) the kids and I are going to decorate our dining area with all our Valentine's decorations, and my daughter and I will be making a CHEESECAKE (IMPOSSIBLY EASY STYLE) with our homemade biscuit mix and chocolate sauce - his favorite.

I printed an I LOVE YOU CERTIFICATE to give him, and we are going to be watching a movie together as a family.

I suppose it's a bit weird to celebrate our anniversary with our kids, but that's just how we do things!

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Jul. 10, 2009 - Frozen Biscuits and Honey-Cinnamon Butter Recipes

Sometimes we like to have freshly baked biscuits with dinner. But, since we do all our baking on Sunday afternoons and our days are pretty hectic, we don't always have time to make them from scratch right when we want them. (And while I grew up eating biscuits from a can, I refuse to make them for my own kids. Heh.)

So, we have a compromise to our "biscuit problem." On Sundays, when needed, we make the dough and cut out the biscuits, and then we freeze them in bags. On nights we want biscuits, my daughter simply takes out 4, puts them on a baking sheet, and pops them in the oven. Fifteen minutes later - biscuits for everyone!

Hillbilly Housewife offers a recipe for freezer biscuits, found HERE.

This recipe is very similar to the one we have (found in an old cookbook.) We use regular flour, salt, baking powder, shortening, and reconstituted buttermilk. Also, we bake ours at 375° for 15 or so minutes. I think anything higher than that - at least in my oven - would lead to burned on the outside, under-baked on the inside biscuits.

We cut our biscuits with a 3-inch cutter, and they bake up huge, so one biscuit per person is enough.

And here's a treat to serve sometimes with fresh-baked biscuits. (It's also good on pancakes.)

Honey-Cinnamon Butter

Set out 1 stick of butter on the counter, to let rise to room temperature. When soft, place it in a medium mixing bowl, and add 1/4 cup of honey and 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (depending on taste.) Beat until smooth and chill until shortly before serving time. Set it on the table and let it warm up a bit for easier spreading.

It's a little costly, with that much real butter and honey, but it makes a nice treat on special dinner days, like birthdays or anniversaries.

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Jul. 8, 2009 - Make your own sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and whipped topping.

If you have recipes that call for evaporated or sweetened condensed milk, you can make your own, starting with powdered milk. (You can also make a quick version of Cool Whip ®, though we prefer real whipped cream when we can afford it.)

You can find the recipes HERE at Hillbilly Housewife.* They work well in baking.

*Recently, Hillbilly Housewife launched a new site called The Hillbilly Housewife Club. I had assumed it would be a free community (like The Homeschool Lounge), but it is not. I do not begrudge anyone trying to make a living online, nor trying to recoup any costs associated with running a website. That said, I feel $15 a month for a website targeted at people living on a budget so tight they make their own evaporated milk is too high a price. But, as I am (obviously) not a member myself, I cannot say it would not be worth it for anyone interested.

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Jul. 6, 2009 - Ketchup or or Catsup or Catchup? (A recipe to make it at home.)

It's funny, but I've always preferred the "ketchup" version of the word. No idea why.

We don't eat it very often, usually only when my husband grills turkey burgers, which we serve with oven fries. (Side note: The Oven Fries recipe found in the Tightwad Gazette is simple and great. I'd print it here, but I've a feeling that's a copyright violation.)

Anyway, rather than buy bottled ketchup, we use this simple recipe: HOMEMADE KETCHUP - it starts with a 6 oz can of tomato paste, has water and seasonings added, and yes, it really is better if left to chill overnight. If you already have the ingredients, because you use them in other things, this is a tasty, cheap alternative to the bottled stuff. If you don't have allspice, you can make a substitute for it. (Here's an ALLSPICE SUBSTITUTE RECIPE you can use.) Honestly, though, the recipe only calls for a "pinch" - so I've thrown in pumpkin pie spice on occasion and haven't tasted any real difference.

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Jul. 5, 2009 - It's baking day.

Sundays after church and lunch are devoted to all the baking we need for the week. So far we've made 24 muffins (oatmeal), a dozen tortillas, and a dozen waffles. We've made dough for two loaves of wheat bread that are rising right now. After taking this little break, we will make a dozen pancakes, hamburger buns, and the dough for some cookies. We keep the dough in the freezer and just take it out when we want cookies. I'm a firm believer in fresh-baked cookies! :) There are several recipes in the Make-a-Mix cookbook for this. Today, we'll be making chocolate wafer cookies to add to the remainder of the sugar cookie dough we already have. We also keep the waffles and pancakes in the freezer and in the mornings, everyone can choose what they want for breakfast and heat it themselves - waffles, pancakes, muffins, or oatmeal. We don't eat boxed cereal because it generally costs too much.

Usually, we will also have some milk, fruit or fruit juice, and sometimes bacon. (We buy bacon and cook it all at once and leave it in the refrigerator so it just needs a few seconds in the microwave.) We do frequently add a few scrambled or fried eggs - two or three times a week because our almost-teen and teen can be big eaters in the morning, and on the days my husband will be working warehouse duty, he needs plenty of protein.

Along with the rest, we'll be making bagels this afternoon, at my husband's request. He likes to take them to work as a snack.

I really like this system of knocking all the baking out in one day, especially because it makes our mornings so easy! My daughter loves baking; she's taking over more and more so now I'm generally just the helper and she's the main cook. Woo. (This explains why I can be sitting here on the computer and reading all these great homeschool blogs while she's already getting the dough going for the bagels. Hee. That random blog thing? Is addictive!)

Our final "baking" thing of the day isn't really baking. We'll be taking the remainder of last week's bread, cutting it up and toasting it with some seasonings, to be used later this week as stuffing. We can do that when the rest of the bread baking is done. I just slide the baking sheets into the oven and leave them for an hour or so. The residual heat from when the oven was on is usually enough to toast the bread cubes.

I'm not making any sweets this week, aside from the cookie dough. Sometimes we will also make snack cakes (again from the Make-a-Mix book), but as we have a lot of watermelon and some fresh peaches to eat - a definite splurge, but they smelled SO GOOD in the store yesterday, I think this week the only dessert I'll be making is CHOCOLATE PUDDING. We don't eat dessert every night; I just like to serve it a few times a week as a treat.

Just to tag on here - if you have a child interested in cooking or baking, here's a nice website to explore: KIDS COOKING. Also, my daughter (12yo) finds the Dining on a Dime cookbook particularly helpful when she wants to learn how to make something.

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Jul. 4, 2009 - Make your own brown & powdered sugars. (And a bit about shopping and meal planning.)

Today is Shopping Day in our household. We shop on Saturdays, going to four different stores to get the things we need. In the first three, we only buy loss-leader items and check for meats on sale. In the last, we buy the things we need because we are low or running out. And shopping is a family event. All four of us go. I figure, you can't expect your children to learn how to shop properly if you don't take them with you when you go.

This afternoon, I will plan our meals for the week. I know that sounds backwards - how can you plan your meals after you shop? It's actually quite simple and cost-effective. We cook everything from scratch, and I do mean everything. Because of this, we only buy staples. Large bags of flour - wheat and white - and long-grain rice. Baking soda and baking powder. Dried beans. Yeast. Cheeses in large chunks we grate and freeze. Oatmeal. Butter. Fruits and vegetables. (Mostly frozen, because they keep longer.) Powdered milk for cooking/baking. Olive and vegetable oils. Shortening. Salt and pepper and other seasonings. Whole nuts. Powdered unsweetened cocoa. When you take the time to learn how to make things yourself, it's surprising how few different items you actually need to purchase from the store. Two places I admit to cheating - tomatoes and peanut butter. I buy cans of already diced tomatoes, paste, and sauce. I've simply never got the hang of growing them. And I buy peanut butter; sadly I have no excuse for that. I'm just too lazy to make it. We don't eat it often - mostly we use it to make cookies and other treats, and so I can't seem to stir myself to the effort of grinding the peanuts.

I do also buy large boxes of instant mashed potato flakes. I don't actually ever make them as mashed potatoes. I use them to make POTATO STARTER BREAD, and as a thickener in some soups.

In any case, what this means is I wait to see what I've come home with (based on what deals I found) and then I plan accordingly. For instance - last week was one of our "Apple Weeks" here, because I found three pound bags of apples for sale for 99 cents each. I bought 4 of them and they became: applesauce, apple butter, and IMPOSSIBLY EASY FRENCH APPLE PIE. We still have plenty of the apple butter to be used this week.

This week has no particular theme, though I did get 5 lbs of ground turkey for $5 today. We'll probably only use 2 lbs or so this week; the rest will be frozen. Generally, I use 1/2 lb to make casseroles and meat pies, and a full pound to make things like tacos or meatballs.

In addition to meal planning this afternoon, I will also grate the cheddar cheese I bought and chop all the onions (from a 5lb bag). I freeze the onions in small portions, to be used in soups, casseroles, stir frys and certain sauces. I will also be cooking a pack of pork chops I got marked down because their sell-by date is today. We won't eat them tonight; my husband is grilling chicken thighs to go with the potato salad I made yesterday. I've got baked beans already cooking in the oven, a watermelon bought from a roadside stand ($2) in the refrigerator, and my daughter will be making biscuits to round out the meal. I plan to cut up the cooked pork chops and use them in a stir fry for lunch tomorrow after church.

So, to get to the other topic of this post: How to Make Your Own Brown & Powdered Sugars.

I buy granulated sugar in large bags. Most is used as is, but when we need brown sugar, I follow this very simple recipe:

To 1 cup granulated sugar, add
1 - 2 Tablespoons molasses*.
Stir together until evenly mixed with a fork.

*1 Tbls makes a light brown sugar; 2 makes dark.

To make powdered sugar:
Put 2 cups of granulated sugar in a blender or food processor, add
2 Tablespoons corn starch.

Blend until ground fine.

It's as easy as that.

ETA: I mentioned the Impossibly Easy French Apple Pie above. I've used this recipe for a long time, only I use my own homemade version of Bisquick. You can find recipes for homemade baking mixes all over the place. If you're looking for one, check the links I have under "Recipes" in the left-hand menu bar.

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