Saturday, February 21, Cooking and Shopping

This morning we got up to take our foster cat, Pookah, to the weekly Petsmart adoption event. She's a scaredy-cat, but we're hoping someone sees past that to the lovey kitty she is inside. Before we went out this morning, I whipped up some pancakes from a box of mix. One cup of mix makes enough pancakes for both of us, so a single box will go three or four breakfasts. Not too bad, especially since I only cook breakfast on weekends. 

After hitting up Petsmart, we stopped by Target. I'd forgotten to put canned mushrooms on my shopping list, so I had to get a can, thereby denting my twice-a-month resolution. Next month I will be better at reviewing my list of ingredients before I shop. We also looked at the Brita Filters. Yesterday after I made my wish list and decided what was actually important, I started looking around on Amazon.com for things to fit the bill. You can sometimes get really good deals that way. Amazon had a 5-pack of Brita filters for 25 dollars, free shipping. Not too bad. At Target today, though, they had a 3-pack for 14 dollars, and I didn't have to wait. Score! That three pack should last six months, though I know I'm using it heavily and our water is bad, so maybe not quite that long. 

This afternoon we're having leftover soup for lunch, but for dinner I'm going all out. I got a pot roast a few weeks ago at Kroger for half price, 2.5 pounds of meat for 4 dollars, no bones. I put it in the freezer to let it sit. It might just be my imagination, but I think a pot roast is actually better once it's frozen and thawed. I thawed it overnight and finished defrosting in the microwave, then got out my crock pot. I love my crock pot. It's huge, I think it's the biggest size they make. Got it for a wedding present. Got five crockpots, actually, but I only kept three, including one adorable baby-sized one for cheese dips. You can cook anything in a crockpot and it'll probably come out tasting good.

Anyway, I cut up three potatoes in chunks and put them on the bottom of the crock pot, then added about a pound of baby carrots on top of that. I love pot roast carrots, possibly more than the roast itself.I took the thawed meat and made shallow crosswise cuts across the whole surface, then seasoned it liberally with garlic salt and fresh ground pepper, flipped it over, and repeated it. The meat went on top of the carrots, and then I added the rest of my ingredients. Here's the recipe I got from my mom. It's wonderful, you just need to adjust your main ingredients to suit your needs and the size of your crockpot.

Best Pot Roast Ever

1 chunk of pot roast meat

Potatoes cut in chunks

Chunked and peeled or baby carrots

1 packet onion soup mix

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 can mushrooms, pieces and stems

Splash of red wine, cooking wine is okay

Splash of Worcestershire sauce

Dash of minced garlic

Add main ingredients as described, then as follows, for best results: Shake onion soup mix over everything, then add cream of mushroom soup. Fill can half with water and stir to get the last of the soup out, dump it in. Open mushrooms and do not drain, dump it all in. Add wine and Worcestershire, then garlic. Put the lid on, set to cook six hours on high or 10 hours on low. Use your good judgment to decide when it's done. The meat will fall apart and your whole house will smell wonderful. 

There's a lot of ingredients here, but only the potatoes and carrots need to be bought close to prep time. You can trim a whole lot off the price by keeping an eye out and getting ingredients when they're on sale. Things like Worcestershire and wine will last you through many, many pot roasts. And, like most of what I cook, with two people in the house, this dish will easily last two meals. We're not at the smelling wonderful phase yet, but it's been cooking less than an hour. I will try to take a picture and add it when it's done, but I sometimes lose my head around a really good pot roast. 

Friday, February 20, the food

This morning we got into the box of Generic Choco-Peanutty Butterpuffs, or whatever the Meijer version of Reese's Puffs is. I wouldn't say it's the most healthy cereal you can buy, but it's cheap and it tastes good, which means that we will actually eat it instead of letting it go stale, as is the sad fate of many healthy but gross cereals I've tried. Cereal with milk for breakfast, and then turkey sandwiches for lunch. I got an excellent deal on Kraft 2% Singles at the beginning of the month, and bought a double-pack of smoked turkey slices at Sams, so there's always the makings for turkey sandwiches around. 

I like to put mine on our little George Foreman Grill (5 dollars at an auction a few years ago), to give it some texture. I don't think I've ever cooked a piece of meat on the George Foreman Grill, but it's excellent for hot sandwiches. The sandwich always ends up flat as a pancake, but that's part of its charm. It's actually an idea I picked up at college, where they had a little sandwich grilling station with two of the big industrial-sized GF Grills, that could each hold two and a half sandwiches at once. Those were good sandwiches, with different kinds of meats and cheeses, but then, each meal cost a lot more than what I spend now. 

For dinner tonight, I used a mix we got in last month's care package, one of those Bear Creek Cheddar Potato Soup things. Theoretically all you need to add is water, but that's not going to get you a very satisfying meal. Considering that those things are usually four bucks a pop, it pays to stretch them a bit! I took a chunk of my frozen ham and let it thaw in the fridge overnight, then chopped it up, cooked it in a skillet for a bit, and tossed it in the soup. I also added two more potatoes, cooked, skinned, and mashed up, and about half my leftover peas from tuna casserole. The rest are for the fried rice, but since M complained of an excess of peas in last week's fried rice, I figured I should give peas a chance, nyuck-nyuck. All this made for a very thick soup, so I added a couple extra cups of water and let it simmer nice and long. Corn muffins on the side finished it out very nicely. The soup turned out great, and there are enough leftovers to knock Ramen and Cheese off the menu for lunch tomorrow. Ramen is an excellent staple carbohydrate when things are tough, but I sort of consider any ramen meal that is avoided to be a small victory.

Playing With the Rice Cooker

I got a rice cooker off Freecycle this summer, and have only recently started to use it. It's adorable, like a baby crockpot with only one setting, but unfortunately I do not have any instructions for it, so cooking has been a bit hit or miss. The first set of instructions for cooking "perfect white rice" I found online told me to cook the dry rice in hot olive oil for a few minutes before dumping it into the rice cooker. This would, along with various other seasonings that I didn't actually want in my casserole or fried rice, ensure perfection in kernel form. 

I did that the first couple of times, and the rice turned out fine. It turned out very much like plain Minute Rice, in fact, but much cheaper. Today I decided to dispense with that extra step and extra pan. Why did I need perfect white rice for a casserole? All I needed was adequate fried rice! So I put in the water, turned on the cooker, then dumped in the rice, straight from the bag. Turns out, it was a bit of a mess. The cooker kept boiling over, and when it was done, the rice was mushy and a bit wet still. Huh. Well, it was (barely) adequate, so it was fine for the casserole. Fried rice comes up on the menu in a few days though, and for that I will go back to obeying the nonsensical instructions that actually  work. I can be taught!