#gooddaughteraward

Eh-hem. Yup, you read that hash tag correct. GOOD DAUGHTER!! No, but really.

Over Christmas break, Hubs, kids, dogs and I made the trek to my parent's house in the Northern Sierras. Think ice, cold and snow. And more cold.

So one thing I have started really taking pride in is my ability to meal plan and prep food for multiple meals. Occasionally such pride gets me in trouble when someone approaches me asking for help to which I stammer and worry endlessly that I'll screw up their food or that my ideas a stupid or some other nonsensical concern.

My parents are on a [fairly] strict diet mainly consisting of Vegan fare, though Vegetarian is ok and occasional white meat still makes it to their plates. Due to various health reasons and life choices, this is what they are up against. My household - as you can plainly see - is not so much in Vegan-world. And that's fine! If it were up to me, we'd go meatless at least once/week but Hubs might would have a small heart attack at the mere notion of something non red meat related.

Meat? Good. Potatoes? Good. Me like meat. 

Ah, but I digress (love you Hubs! Xo). So my big Christmas gift to them this year was to go shopping and give them the gift of food. I planned meals and shopped accordingly, wrapping non-perishables in a   box decked out with ribbon and wrapping paper while stuffing refrigerated items in a cooler and placing a red bow on top. When they opened it, they were ecstatic thinking I had grocery shopped for them. I mean, who doesn't want to avoid the grocery store if possible?? But then I elaborated, explaining that the next day I would prep ALL of the food and put it in their (newly purchased) freezer. Cue #gooddaughteraward.

I didn't stick to primarily Vegan or Vegetarian, but a lot was. Here's what they got:

• (4) Spicy Black Bean Soup (homemade beans and Vegan)
• (4) 4 Bean Chili (homemade beans and Vegan)
• (4) Vegetable Spaghetti Sauce (Vegan)
• (4) trays of Chicken/Black Bean/Green Chili Enchiladas (not Vegan)
• (2) Creamy Tomato Soup w/ Cheese Tortellini (Vegetarian)
• (2) large trays of Garden Vegetable Rotini (Vegetarian)
• (6) Containers of Pinto Beans (homemade and Vegan)
• (20) Rice/Bean/Chicken Burritos wrapped in foil for quick lunch or dinner

Mmmmm...Sauteed veggies for the pasta

Tri-color Rotini tossed with above veggies and topped with Parmesan and Mozzarella. Just need to bake it!

4 trays of enchiladas. Perfect serving size for 2

4 bags of 5 burritos each ready to be heated, 2 trays of pasta and 4 enchiladas

Neatly labeled (thanks painter's tape!)

Fully stocked freezer :)

I will add links to the recipes soon so you can make them at home. Super easy and healthy!

Per mom and dad: The enchiladas were great! Yay!!

Peace Out :)

Muffin Madness

This weekend I stocked up on muffins. Like, big time. As I have mentioned before, I really like to have them for the boys and Hubs to eat during the week as it helps the cereal purchasing go down :).

This week our muffins were Sugar Crusted Raspberry Muffins, Brown Sugar Buttermilk Muffins with Spice topping and Lemon Blueberry Muffins. Yum!

Fresh Raspberries

MMM....Blueberries

Raspberry Muffins pre-baking. I just love the color of the batter. So festive!

Spice topped Brown Sugar Buttermilk Muffins 

Leftover batter used to make mini loaves

Blueberry Lemon Muffins

Freezer full and lots of fresh and yummy muffins. 

Merry December

Ok, first and foremost, my WONDERFUL husband gave me my Christmas present early!! A new camera! I'm SOOOOO excited! I had decided that I would rather get it early so I could use it to document the holiday festivities and HOPEFULLY learn how to use it somewhat by Christmas day. You'll have to bare with me as I learn to use it. I'm sure my photos won't be of the highest quality ever :).

Ok, spent Saturday (the 1st) planning and shopping for the month. I have had people ask me how we do it - this whole craze of once a month shopping is starting to catch on. I have experimented for the past several months - shopping on Sundays, shopping every two weeks and now shopping once/month. So far, that has been easiest. Granted the day of it's quite stressful and busy, but knowing the rest of my month is all planned makes me very happy :).

I started with the basics. M-F, I assigned a "theme". Monday - Mexican, Tuesday - Chicken, Wednesday - Burgers, Thursday - Soup/Pasta, Friday - Pizza. The weekends I reserve for those meals that don't really fit into the themes OR that require a little more time. Next I make a list of about four meals per theme day and then add approximately eight more for the weekends. My family doesn't do leftovers well, so when I do double a recipe, I'll stick the other portion in the freezer and it becomes another meal (what they don't know won't hurt them!!). That, or I have taken to purchasing the small disposable tin containers from the dollar store for making individual dinners or lunches (for example, if  Hubs and I have a date and the boys are on their own).

Here's a snapshot of December:

Excuse the horrible picture, I had to use my phone!!

So to make this work, I buy ground beef, ground chicken and chicken breasts in bulk. Sam's club does the beef and the chicken breasts fairly cheap and SOMEDAY, I'll buy a case of each and get them even cheaper. Until then, I buy the large packages (like 5 lbs or so) and divide them up when I get home. First I count how many times we are having burgers and I grab the approximate amount for each person  and label it with the name of the dinner (I try to come up with different names so it's easier to differentiate them in the freezer). Also - typically I eat a ground chicken burger, so one pound of ground chicken will last a month for just MY Wednesday night burgers - this also helps the ground beef go further.

Next I portioned off the other meals that would need ground beef (meatloaf, shepherd's pie, salisbury steak, chili) and bagged and labeled those as well. What I was left with was approximately 3 lbs of ground beef which I cooked and seasoned with salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, cayenne, onion, garlic and crushed red pepper (our staple seasoning for both tacos and chili). Once cooked, I pulled out enough for Mashed Potato Tacos (I know, I know, it sounds weird, but trust me, they are SO good - I learned about them from my boss's wife. Apparently a staple in her household growing up - she's Mexican and swears they're authentic - I don't really care since they're THAT good). 

Finally, time to start putting together some meals!! I got another disposable tin (family entree size) and rolled up some ground beef/cheese enchiladas for dinner on the 10th. 

The ones with olives on top are strictly cheese for me - I don't really like the ground beef.

My Hubs is not a sandwich guy and really likes having meals for lunch, so a while back, those small tins I was telling you about became a staple in our house for heating up leftovers (we don't own a microwave and like to use a toaster oven for reheating purposes). With more of the seasoned meat, I made him four lunches of ground beef enchiladas and two for myself of just the cheese ones :)

Perfect for lunch or dinner 

Once I had used as much of the beef as was needed, I took the remainder (about 1 1/2 cups) and added two cans of ranch beans and a bit more seasoning to make a quick chili for Hubs' lunch. He's been on a chili dog kick lately so once again those containers were utilized. I had purchased buns and hotdogs, so I opened them up and cut the hot dogs in half and topped them (two per tin) with chili and a bit of cheese. Voila! Four more lunches!

One of the easiest things to keep on hand (for us) are bean/cheese/beef burritos. This time, I used ground chicken, refried beans, cheese and olives and wrapped them individually in foil. They are wonderful for a quick lunch or dinner and much better than the frozen ones you buy at the grocery store. 

Stack of  burritos awaiting the freezer. 

Last of all, I made breakfast burritos. Half were made with the spicy breakfast sausage, potatoes, egg and cheese and the other half were made with the maple breakfast sausage and the same items. To the spicy ones I also added a dash of Hubs' favorite hot sauce - Habenero, as he can't seem to function without it. 16 of those went into the freezer as well for a quick breakfast.

Because of our power being out for more than half of the day, that was all I was able to finish, but tonight I attack the chicken preparations as seen on the menu!

Peace Out :)

Turkey Day is looming

Of course I mean that in a good way. I love Thanksgiving. This year, I'm hosting at my house (for the first time) and I could NOT be more excited. Obviously I love cooking (as evidenced that it's the sole subject of this blog) and now I have a holiday based around food!! Yippee!!!

So where have I been? I could give you the whole song and dance of "I can't believe how fast time is flying!" or "I've just been so busy!" or something like that. The reality is?? I kinda forgot. Not in the sense that I blacked out this blog, but honestly, between the house in GV, working on school, trying not to get sick and doing monthly meal planning, it kind of slipped my mind. But I'm here now!!

The past few weeks in a glance:

• I shopped (successfully!) for one month of dinners
• I created a menu and froze all the meals for the month (next post I'll show you what I made)
• We (almost) completed the bathrooms at the GV house and now just have to paint the interior
• My US History class is still boring because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE US!!!!!!
• I have pretty much finalized my Turkey Day menu (exciting!)
• Hubs and I have a pretty good handle on Christmas and think we've got everyone figured out at this point

Not too exciting, but that's it.

Oh, and the cows and mules have left our property (sad). The mules kicked down our fence because they wanted to get into the yard and eat the super green grass. So they are on timeout until our neighbor lets us borrow the electric fence to run along that side of the property. Stubborn asses.

Back to meal planning...er, working.

Peace Out :)

Labor (of love) Day, Part 1

I had many ideas of what to call this post.

Labored Day. The Great Freezer Stock-Up of 2012. A little bit crazy, but much less hungry.

You get the idea. So Labor Day weekend. Started the whole thing off with a family reunion at my aunt's house in Sebastopol. Weather was amazing. Such a relief from the heat of our inland empire. We were celebrating all kinds of things, namely my grandmother's 90th birthday (which isn't until October, but hey! We were excited!). It was wonderful to see family and all get together. Three of my cousins have recently had babies, so you can imagine where I spent a lot of my time (eh-hem, on the "baby blanket" on the grass). My husband was finally able to meet my mom's last brother (he's met the other six, but Tom lives in Hawaii and doesn't often make it to the mainland). All in all, a great day. Lots of yummy food, good times, lots of pictures, lots of smiles.

Sunday morning was leisurely. Hubs and I have taken to drinking our morning tea (weekends only) on the porch swing while discussing our plans for the day, the week, the year and life in general. We gently sway back and forth dreaming of what our property and home will become. I have come to really rely on that special bonding time. We cherish our few quiet minutes before the boys and dogs have gotten up and before we are "supposed" to be doing something else.

Spur of the moment on Sunday late morning I decided to head into town and do my grocery shopping. Now, in a typical household, this would consist of about a week's worth of groceries. But alas, we are anything but typical. I had already made up my menu for the month and consequently had created my grocery list. The question was when the shopping would occur. No time like the present! After hours of carefully monitoring my Excel spreadsheet of groceries and calculating as I went, I was finally done with both grocery stores and people and my car was full to the top. Yay!

Monday. THE day. I say this is Part 1 because not all of my projects were completed. I will finish them today or tomorrow. Here's what I got finished:

Recipe makes two "logs" of cinnamon rolls...Here's the first all shiny with butter :) 

Six trays of cinnamon rolls later....Popped them into the freezer. Now we just thaw, let rise and throw 'em in the oven. Cinnamon rolls on a Sunday morning without getting up at 3AM!

 Six trays of PW Cinnamon Rolls (with a few variations to make them more of a combo of Cinnamon Rolls and my mother's/grandmother's German Coffee Cake). See PW recipe here

Challah Bread BEFORE

After! Punch down and rise again!

 My recipe for Challah Bread is supposed to make one loaf, but a few weeks ago when I made it, it ended up HUGE so I took that same recipe and made two loaves out of it. I then made a second batch of dough strictly to make sandwich rolls for the boys' lunches (I'll do anything to help inspire them to "remember" to pack a lunch). My recipes for two batches of Challah yielded two loaves and sixteen sandwich rolls. YUM!

Golden on the outside, soft on the inside. Challah Sandwich Rolls

Two beautiful loaves of Challah. I just love the braided look. One is happily in the freezer for later use. 

 For the family reunion this weekend, I made Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. It was so popular (with my family!) that I shredded more carrots and doubled the recipe and made muffins yesterday. How can I turn down kids asking to eat veggies?? :)

Two dozen Carrot Muffins cooling...Bread and rolls in the back

 My mother grew up in a HUGE family. Well, huge by today's standards. Then? Large, but not unheard of. Well, yesterday I finally got to feel what she and my aunt, JT, did on a regular basis. I peeled 10 lbs of potatoes in one sitting. Now, this is obviously way more than my family will eat, however, in an effort of being time conscious, I boiled them all up, mashed and distributed them into "throw away" aluminum containers to freeze for those days when I don't have time to come up with dinner (or any potatoes!)

10 lbs later......my fingers hurt

Three large trays of mashed potatoes cooling, waiting to go to the freezer. 

 So, my other accomplishments didn't have any pictures. I made more chicken stock from thigh pieces and boneless breast. The breast meat and stock will be combined (today or tomorrow) to make frozen chicken pot pies. Pictures to follow. The thigh meat will be picked off the bones and mixed with rice, carrots and sweet potatoes to mix with our dogs' current dog food (trying to help with the dog food budget).

I made 20 more of the cheeseburger wraps I wrote back in an earlier post for hubs' lunch. I also baked potatoes and sweet potatoes to be turned into a sweet potato side dish and frozen (much like the mashed potatoes) and also twice baked potatoes (also frozen). In addition I made the following crockpot meals. Now all I (or one of the kids) have to do is find the appropriate bag, follow the instructions and dump into the crockpot! We now have:

2 - Salsa Chicken
2 - Chipotle Salsa Chicken
2 - Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken
1 - Cajun Chicken Fettucini (without the pasta...add that when cooked)
1 - Rancho Style Steak (courtesy of my Grandpa Robert's recipe)
2 - Sweet & Spicy Chipotle Chicken
1 - Greek lemon/herb Chicken
1 - Chili Colorado Beef
3 - PW Chicken Tacos Mix
2 - Ranch Buffalo Chicken
8 - Ground Beef packages, seasoned ready for use

That about covers it for my weekend. However, that's not all the labor that was done on Labor Day. Allow me to continue in this show and tell.....

Looking from the back deck (also from the kitchen back door) to the back of the property. Barn is to the left. Pasture beyond the bushes. 

As I described in "Moving on up!", Hubs and I decided to switch the placement of the garden. Well, the process has begun. Very slightly. Up until now, the bushes above were meant to hide his junkyard collection of trucks. Last weekend, we felt a flip-flop was in order and wanted to put the garden where the trucks were located which resulted in a larger dog yard for our puppies. Because I love spending so much time on the deck and I look out at it, it made more sense to add the garden where we can enjoy it on a daily basis. That being decided, the ugly shrubs had to go. And let me just say, I am NOT sad to see them leave.

Loves to use the chainsaw. 

Mostly all gone! Left enough of a stump so the tractor had something to hold on to when pulling them up. 

 The last shrub on the end wasn't coming down yesterday. As Hubs discovered, it is HEAVILY populated with wasps who were non-too-happy about the loud ruckus of his chainsaw and removal of their brush. Needless to say, that will come down at a later date. That, and the plum tree next to it is in full bloom and needs to be trimmed up as well. However, they are heavily entwined, so it looks like fall is the time for those to get cleaned up.

New View...Tried to do a panoramic one...Picture this pic with the one below it...

Can you see what I was going for? 

So, busy weekend all around. Hubs was laboring. I was laboring. Good Labor Day. I'm tired.

Peace Out :)

I told you I'd post pics!

Pause for effect....Ta-da! I told you I'd get them one way or another. Now, I must beg for forgiveness as the quality is not what one would consider wonderful; the words sub-par or mediocre come to mind. But, that's what you get when you are using a camera on your phone. I have yet to set up my point and shoot camera with this computer. Somehow feels so daunting a task. That or I'm lazy. That is certainly an option as well.

Here go my pics. Be excited.

Really.

Homemade English Muffins. That's right....Cooking on the cast iron

 English Muffins were first on my list of things to attempt. Of course, I was absolutely unwilling to go to all that effort and make a ton if they weren't any good. Silly me. They were amazing. Now I have to make eleventy-billion (yes, that's a LOT) and freeze them. However, I will make them smaller next go around. Because they are homemade, they were a little denser than the store bought ones and therefore, more filling. Which is good. Oh, and they made awesome individual pizzas.

YUM! Cooked English Muffins!

Mmmmm....see how pretty they are all brown and crispy?

Soft crusted sandwich bread. Suuuuper yummy

Sandwich bread is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to save money. Buying bread can get expensive unless you want to eat that white sponge cheap bread. And that is really not even bread. This is way better. And can be made as white, wheat or buttermilk. Or multi-grain. Or honey-wheat. Or rye. Or sourdough. You get the picture.

Homemade hamburger buns topped with parmesan and poppy seeds

Made a TON of these and froze the buns before I cooked them. Now all I have to do is pull out the number I need for dinner and let them thaw and rise....Stick them in the oven for about fifteen minutes and voila! Fresh hamburger buns! And, no wasted extra buns. Because I never have 8 people at the house.

Buttermilk biscuits about to head into the oven

I love biscuits. With butter. With honey. Just plain. These were mainly for my work breakfast.

Breakfast pizza! Biscuit crust topped with sausage and cheddar cheese. Excellent quick morning breakfast :)

Going to tweak this recipe. Used turkey sausage in an effort to lighten the calorie load but of course hubs figured it out. Next we will use regular fat-filled sausage. May try pepperjack though. He likes spicy.

Cheeseburger wraps grilled then frozen for lunches

These I am very excited about. The technique is just about as simple as it looks. I took ground beef and browned it. Added salt, pepper, onion, Worcestershire, spicy mustard and ketchup and combined in the pan. Next, grabbed extra large flour tortillas and put a little shredded cheddar cheese in the middle. Topped with a spoonful of the beef mixture and rolled like a burrito. NEXT, I went to the George Foreman and laid those bad-boys down and let them flatten and brown. Portable cheeseburgers! And they reheated beautifully. In fact, Chad has eaten all the extras I put in the freezer. Time to whip up some more!

Chili Colorado Smothered Burritos. OMG. 

This was my baby. My one true love. It was just that amazing. And I don't even really like shredded beef. I found the recipe on Pinterest (of course) and adapted it a little to our family. I believe it called for stew meat or something equivalent, but I had a small roast in the freezer, so I used that instead. I cut it into large chunks and stuck it in the crockpot with a can of enchilada sauce (medium) and a small can of spicy enchilada sauce along with a few beef bouillon cubes. For my family, I added garlic and onion powder (Chad doesn't like "chunks" in his meat...so I disguise everything by using the ground up versions), chili powder, crushed red pepper flakes and a dash of jalepeno/chipotle rub I have in the cabinets. Let that simmer all day, then when I was ready, grabbed HUGE tortillas and took the meat out of the sauce and shredded it. Dolloped some refried black beans on the tortilla, some meat then jack cheese....Rolled, smothered in the enchilada sauce that was still in the crock-pot and added more cheese. Stick in the broiler until bubbly and hot. Add some homemade Mexican rice on the side?? Divine. That's all I have to say about it.

So it does make me a little proud that these were the pics from my crazy cooking weekend I wrote of a few posts back. The pictures are just a little behind, but now you know I was telling the truth. Now that this new-fangled (spelling??) contraption - i.e. phone with camera and computer - are hooked up and speaking to each other, I hope to be more diligent about keeping y'all updated on my goings on. 

Er - Ongoings? 

What I'm doing. There, that works. 

Phew. I'm tired. 

Peace Out :)

..and...TIRED!

Whew! Just spent the last few hours perusing my Pinterest boards to create a two week menu plan. While this is something that isn't new for our family, I have become much more devoted to it, as I can plainly see the ease in the work week along with the money savings that come with careful planning. We are on a budget (and who isn't?) and it feels as though the food budget is always the first thing (after all the fun stuff is gone!) to get minimized. Granted, it's a stretch, but hey! I'm open to the challenge! In the past few years though, our food budget has changed dramatically.

When I joined the family, there were three boys and daddy. Three GROWING boys, mind you. I thought we were doing great on food, and just couldn't believe the sheer QUANTITY that we were purchasing. And what was more shocking was that after two weeks, I'd have to buy it all again! I mean, who really can finish those huge boxes of cereal from Sam's club in two weeks? HA! Try 4-5 boxes and then you'll fully understand what I was up against. Two teenagers and one pre-teen boy...two of which were active in football and other sports. Holy Moly! 

But life has shifted again....due to summer break, we only have one kiddo at home with us right now. What a difference that makes! My bank-account is sighing in relief to the break it's getting.

Lack of kids is not the only change, however. I have taken shopping/meal planning/food budgeting into a new perspective and am launching forward with this approach. I have always loved cooking and baking - this is no secret. But, I have recently (past year or so) really fully embraced the power of both my slow cooker AND my bread-maker. Holy wonderful appliances. On top of that, I am not afraid of any recipe so this weekend I'm taking on English Muffins. Am curious to see if the homemade ones are any good....If so, guess who will be having an English Muffin Marathon complete with freezing for future consumption??? Mmmmhmmmm. 

IF (and that's a big if) I can complete what I have laid out for myself this weekend, there will be MANY proud pics to follow. Breakfast will be handled for quite a while and so will bread. I hope I can do it!

Peace out.