March 14-15, the belated weekend

So, looks like I've owed this blog a post for many days now, and I mean a real one, not just me railing about how I can't afford either McDonalds or organic free range arugula nuggets. So I'm going to do one better. Realizing that trying to talk about the whole week would make a post much longer than I'm comfortable with, I'm going to break it down. Here's the promised post about the food I made this weekend. 

Saturday, M had to go in and write a paper for his final project in one of his classes. Before he left, I wanted to give him a good lunch, so while he took Pookah to Petsmart for the adoption event (still no takers! Can you believe it?), I made tortillas. I've been wanting to do that for awhile. I like tacos and quesadillas, but the wraps are not cheap.  Homemade tortillas take more time, and they are not quite the same, but they are very enjoyable, and literally cost pennies. Flour, baking powder, salt, and vegetable oil, that's it! My first batch turned out pretty thick, but I think I can temper that with a little more rolling next time. We went simple with the toppings, folding each one in half and filling them with shredded cheese and fire sauce from Taco Bell. I dipped mine in salsa as well. They were delicious! 

Actually, the biggest cost associated with the tortillas was the rolling pin. After the fiasco with the pasties, where I was left trying to roll out dough with my fingers and the tube from a turkey baster, I decided it was time to finally add this basic utensil to my large collection of kitchen implements. My first thought, being thrifty and all, was that I could go for a French-style rolling pin and simply buy a piece of thick dowel rod at the hardware store. I bopped over to Lowe's to check it out. I spent much more time dreaming over container garden stuff than looking at dowels, but that's okay, I didn't buy anything. As it turns out, they only sell dowel in four-foot lengths, so I would've had either the world's largest rolling pin or three rolling pins, a bit more than I need. And they were 7.50. I thought maybe I could do better, so I headed to Target. I was tempted, oh so very tempted, by the KitchenAid and the Oxo GoodGrips ergonomic, acrylic, cool-colored rolling pins at twenty bucks a pop, but settled on the store-brand, wood, round-handled model for six dollars. I paid the price for being cheap by having to return the first one to the store after discovering a big chip in the handle, but the second one worked just fine. It's nice to have a rolling pin, and you can see it in the picture above. 

For supper on Saturday, I used the big pack of drumsticks I got at 89 cents a pound and made spicy chicken legs. Holy cow, were they good! Really easy, too. Defrosted the legs and put them in the crockpot, cubed butter and sprinkled it overtop, poured an entire bottle (got it on sale, too!) of Frank's Red Hot Sauce overtop, then shook on garlic salt, onion powder and pepper. I deviated from the recipe a bit, I crockpotted it for two hours, then put them all on a pan and oven-cooked them for 40 minutes at 350. While they were in the oven, I took the liquid from the crockpot and reduced it in a pan on the stove, then spooned it over top of the legs while they cooked. When they were done, we ate them with ranch dressing. Absolutely delicious, and enough for lunch the next day, too. I was very happy that they are even better when reheated. Drumsticks are always going on sale, but I've never had anything this wonderful to do with them before. 

On Sunday, we were scheduled for scrambled eggs but we skipped that because we were both more interested in eating spicy chicken brunch. I dropped M off at school to do more with his paper, and then went to a yarn store in the next town over, to check it out and see what it was like. I've been doing just tons of knitting lately, I have a gallon-sized Ziploc full of baby hats and mittens and booties by now. And this knitting store is the type that has classes and knitting circles, and is the sort that promises human interaction. I miss human interaction so much! I went over there, and it was great. I met some really nice people, got some tips on my knitting, and invested a small amount of money in needles that are actually the appropriate size for all the small things I've been doing. I've been back once already and plan to go again. I love M, and the cats and the birds, but if I don't get out a little more, I'll go crazy. 

After coming back and picking up M, I made up a Tuscan White Bean Soup from a mix we got in a care package from M's mom. I wasn't expecting much from it, it looked kind of watery and boring, a bean soup of meh. To kick it up a bit, I added a splash of basil-infused olive oil and half a chunk of ham from the freezer. Wow! It turned out to taste much better than I thought, and was actually very satisfying. And in case you're wondering, I haven't been taking many pictures because my computer has been gone, and it throws everything off. It's back now though, so I'll try and do better in the future. 

March 12, the food

Yesterday was a good food day. Boring oatmeal for breakfast (though I do like the banana bread flavored stuff we got on sale at Meijer for this week). For lunch, we each had leftovers of our similar-yet-separate dinners from Wednesday night. I warmed up sauerkraut, sausage and dumplings and enjoyed myself very thoroughly. For M, I took his half of the leftover sausage and put it between sliced cheese biscuits so that he could warm it up for lunch. He pronounced the hot sausage biscuits "One of the best lunches he's had at school." Hurrah! 

For dinner, I went back to the tomato soup can label to try yet another recipe. I was attracted to Tangy Tomato Soup Chicken because it was ridiculously easy, so much so that they didn't give instructions in words so much as showing a tiny picture of all the ingredients you put in. I browned five chicken breasts (they were quite small, a regular feature of Meijer chicken breasts), and then added a sauce made of a can of tomato soup, a quarter-cup of water, a tablespoon of brown sugar, and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, and let it simmer with the lid on till the chicken was done all the way through. To extend it into a meal, I made roasted potato chunks with onion soup mix and flavored olive oil. My flavored olive oils are running very low. If I don't find a sale soon, I'm going to buy the least expensive plain stuff I can find and try my hand at infusing. 

Dinner turned out great. I was skeptical of tomato soup's ability to come through with the flavor, but even relatively small amounts of sugar and vinegar packed a big punch. I really enjoyed the chicken, so much that I poured the leftover sauce onto my potatoes. There were two chicken breasts left over, one of which I sliced up and put in a sandwich with mozzarella cheese for M, and one of which I shall eat in just a moment. After the great successes of dinner the past two nights, I fear tonight's offering of Tuna Helper is going to feel like a letdown. Tuna Helper was once a staple of our diet, but unless I get a job very soon, I don't think it's going to stay anywhere on the menu. 

In unrelated news, I finished another pair of booties and got halfway through another hat. M knows someone who has a little girl baby, so I sent him off with the first hat and the second booties. I need a baby guniea pig to test whether these things are actually turning out the right size, and what baby doesn't need hats and socks? 

March 10-11, getting very crafty

Yesterday was not a very exciting day for food, so I decided this was a good day for a double post. We did have cantaloupe for breakfast for the past three days, and that was really lovely. I got one for 98 cents at Meijer, a good deal for that much yummy fruit, even if you have to wait a few days for it. The internet tells me that cantaloupes in stores at this time of year are from Mexico, an area that has decreased in price and increased in quality over the past few years. I'm always curious when all the stores have the same fruit on sale when it doesn't seem like they'd be in season.

Lunch was leftover penne casserole, and dinner was grilled cheese and tomato rice soup. I don't know why, but I am no good at grilled cheese. Anyone should be able to make grilled cheese. It's everyman survival food, but I have never gotten the hang of it. I managed to burn two of them black and had to peel them apart, put on a new piece of bread, and try again. The tomato rice soup was good, though. Tomato rice soup is the only appropriate side dish for grilled cheese (and the only way to eat it is dipped), but this was the first time I tried doctoring the much-cheaper tomato soup into tomato rice soup. I had a third of a cup of rice left in my old bag, so I popped it in the cooker with two thirds cup plus a tablespoon of water. Let that cook up, dumped it in the diluted soup, and warmed it all up. Easy peasy. We ate out on the patio for the first time this year. I love when the weather gets nice, but before there are any bugs. It's just perfect.

Today, though, today was a very special food day. I barely ate anything all day (bad for the plan! Bad Cori!)because I was saving up for one of my all-time favorite meals, sauerkraut, sausage, and dumplings. This is another dish passed down through my grandmother through my mom, who I had to call for an emergency consultation during the preparation. I got a nice big rope of beef sausage for 1.50 on my last shopping trip, so this dinner was preordained. It's very cheap. I used two cans of Kroger sauerkraut because I couldn't find Frank's anywhere, and made my own faux Bisquick for the dumplings. The whole meal cost maybe three bucks. Unfortunately M hates sauerkraut and dumplings, so he would have been left with a meal of only sausages. Longtime readers may recall that in my very first daily food post, I wrote how I did not make cheesy biscuits from a mix for Valentines Day. That came in handy, as I made them up tonight for M, creating a tasty and filling dinner. We ate early and both had a late night snack of ramen and cream cheese, which is terrible for us, but oh-so-good. I did laundry today, heavy stuff like jeans, so I don't feel too bad. 

For the past few days, I've been learning a lot of new knitting techniques. I have several large balls of baby yarn leftover from some blankets I did in law school (the yarn is pink, the baby was a boy), so I decided to learn to knit baby stuff. Baby stuff is awesome becaue, except for blankets, it's all instant gratification. I mean in four days, I managed to learn and make two booties, two mitties, and a hat, all while learning things like crocheting chains, making eyelet rows, making and attaching pompoms, and "ribbing without screwing it all up." Since I don't know any babies right now, I think I'll donate these to a hospital or something like that, some place that has babies that need clothes. For the meantime, though, Mr. Woebear is looking mighty sharp! I'm sure I'll do more of these, they're simple and fast and I can do them while I watch my nightly news and humor roundup on the internet. What could be better? 

March 5-8, the messy weekend

My computer is in the shop for repairs, which is why the last entry there is so backdated, and why I haven't posted any food minutae for so many days. I thought that I'd lost that entire post, but thank God for Blogger's autosave feature. I came back today, and there it was where I'd left it. Hurrah! I wish I could hope the same for the contents of my hard drive, but oh well, c'est la vie. At least it was still in warranty and doesn't cost anything to fix but time. Right now I'm using M's old workhorse of a laptop, which is a bit slow, but has a huge screen that is something of a novelty. It's the one we normally use for watching movies. 

There wasn't really much to report on the food front this weekend, except large deviations from the plan. Thursday M had chili for lunch and I had pork, and there was so very much pulled pork left over that we decided to have it again in the evening instead of tuna melts. Five pounds of pork is a lot, seriously. Thursday night, I made shortbread cookies. I loooove shortbread cookies, but they are five dollars for eight cookies, and that's just crazy. Butter was on sale at Aldi's, so this seemed a good week to give it a whirl. With a food processor, making shortbread cookies turns out to be a breeze. Pop in a quarter-cup of sugar and let it spin to fine down a bit, add three-quarters of a cup of flour (My sifter is messed up, so I spun that a bit too), and then chop in a whole stick of butter, pulsing it till it turns into a doughball. Refrigerate for an hour, then divide the ball in eight circles, smash them with a cup, poke them with a fork, and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. They turned out wonderfully. I made two batches, which made sixteen good-sized cookies for basically a dollar's worth of butter and maybe fifty cents worth of flour and sugar. Not bad! Not good for me, but oh well. 

Thursday I also started a new experiment, washing clothes by hand. We've been doing a laundromat trip a month, which is a rather expensive proposition that takes hours out of one single day. What I've been doing is washing 5-10 pieces of clothes at once in the bathtub, rinsing them, then hanging them to dry on a tension rod with a plastic bin underneath it. It's really good exercise, so I don't feel quite as bad about the buttery cookies. If I keep this up, I'll have arms like Michelle Obama in no time! Well, as long as I don't go nuts with the butter, of course. 

Friday I went in to school with M, so a shortbread cookie on the way out the door was all I ate at home all day. Speaking of going crazy with cookies, sheesh! I hung out in the grad student lounge all day and finished another hat, my fourth in two weeks, and got a little much-needed human contact. I also got coffee and even more cookies, as well as a pulled pork sandwich from home for lunch. After M finished his classes, we went to a Friday evening program the UC Wellness Center was putting on. They showed a bunch of 80s cartoons, fed us healthy snacks, and had trivia raffles for fabulous prizes! I fell in love with the amazing taco dip they had there. Full of fresh veggies, guacamole and black beans, it filled a lot of cravings I haven't satisfied lately with the drive for thriftiness. Even better, there was a fresh fruit plate with pineapple, strawberries,  blueberries and muskmelon, all things that are out of our price range when out of season. I'm not ashamed to admit I made a bit of a pig of myself, but since it was lightly attended, there was plenty for all. M and I, being trivia buffs, also did quite well in the trivia raffle. I came home with a giant bouncy ball and a Fraggle Rock DVD, and he scored a set of Matchbox cars and a Barrel of Monkeys. (If you recognize the slap bracelets in the picture, then you know you are from the 80s.) It was a very fun evening, and all free! 

On Saturday, we slept shamelessly late, the last day before springing ahead made us wake up early, and took Pookah in once more to the adoption event at Petsmart. Once again, there were no takers, but she's showing better, without turning her back on anyone who might be the least bit interested. Adoptions have been slow these past few weeks, which worries me. We're going to hit kitten season soon, and fat, loveable five-year-old Pookah is not going to look good against a cage full of adorable, playful kittens. Fingers still crossed! While she was strutting her stuff, we took M to get a haircut. One of his Christmas presents was a card for a dozen haircuts, so he has no excuse to get a real grad-student scruffiness going on. I went over to Kroger and picked up the turkey breast I'd gotten a rain check for. A big six pound breast, originally twelve dollars, now six. That'll be several meals! 

Saturday night, there was a party at one of M's friends' apartment. It's graduate recruitment weekend, so there were new potential grad students who needed to be shown that the department is cool and fun and has parties. (This is in fact true, if you count very nerdy fun, which I do.) For the party, I bought a box of generic Ritz crackers (they actually taste very good) and made a cheese ball from one of the mixes M's mom sent us. A pack of cream cheese, half a stick of butter, once again with the food processer, and voila! White chocolate cherry almond cheese ball. We didn't eat supper that night because we went to the party, where we had nachos and veggie tray, cheeseball and potato chips. We did outlay some money, though. Last year when we were graduate candidates, some of the grad students took us to Graeters, a local institution and home of the Best Ice Cream Ever. They paid for our ice cream and told us that if M came to the school, he should pay it forward next year. So, as promised, we took one of the candidates and took him to Graeters, where we introduced him to the wonders of black raspberry chip ice cream. It was ten dollars for the three of us, but it was worth every penny, and fulfilling a verbal contract. 

Today I would've taken a stab at getting back on the plan, but I had leftovers that needed using up first. For lunch, I warmed up the last of last week's split pea soup, which was getting crowded out of the freezer, and paired it up with corn muffins. Corn muffins make soup a real meal, I think. For dinner, I used the last of the pulled pork and my carefully reserved pork liquid to make fried rice. The cold pork water was gross, with an inch of fat on the top of the lid, but when I removed that and microwaved the jellied juice, it was the perfect medium for cooking rice. I didn't have peas to add this week, but I tossed in two eggs, all the rest of the pork and a packet of seasoning mix, and we got a very good meal of pork fried rice. No picture this time, but you've seen it all before. 

Now, though, I have to totally rewrite the plan for the coming week. Not following the plan for three days means that there are perishables that need eating, and meals that need filling. I was supposed to make penne hot dog casserole tonight and send the leftovers to school tomorrow, so that meal needs filled, etc. It's not a big deal, and I'm still glad to have a plan. My mom tells me that she's been inspired enough to start making a plan, and I'm glad. They waste more food than we eat, I think! Besides, between working out with the Wii and washing clothes today, I'm ready to sit down and let my aching muscles and blistered foot relax. 

Sunday, February 22, the food

Today M and I both slept in, so we didn't end up having our french toast after all. That's all right, the bread and eggs are in no danger of going to waste just yet, so they can be pushed forward. Lunch was pot roast leftovers, though for once M wasn't especially hungry. He was apparently saving himself for cookies and snacks at the party tonight. There is enough pot roast left over for him to take a very large lunch to school tomorrow. 

For the Oscar party, I made a nacho dip and took along a big bag of Meijer-brand tortilla chips. The nacho cheese dip is yet another family recipe, and was reasonably priced to make. It's much cheaper if you can find the cream cheese on sale, which I could not. But the shredded cheese was on sale, at least, which helped hold down the price. I love salsa enough to buy it by the gallon at Sam's, so there's never any lack of it around here. 

Nacho Cheese Dip (also Nacho Dip Pizza)

1 pound (2 blocks) of regular or low-fat but not fat-free cream cheese

1 packet taco seasoning, pick your favorite

Salsa

Shredded cheese

Green onions, black olives, sour cream, guacamole (if desired)

Soften the cream cheese and mix well with the entire packet of taco seasoning. This is easiest to do if you buy a carton of cream cheese instead of blocks, but it's considerably cheaper to buy blocks and use a hand mixer or even just a spatula and some elbow grease to mix and soften it up. When it's very well blended, spread it in an even layer over a platter. Cover it with a layer of salsa, chunky works much better, at whatever spiciness you prefer. Cover that with a layer of shredded cheese, Mexican blend if you can get it. Top it however you like to top your nachos, with green onion, olives, dollops of guacamole or sour cream, whatever. Refrigerate a little to stiffen it up, if you have time, otherwise serve immediately. 

This is a recipe that's great for parties, and also works well at pizza parties for a little variety. Just put it in a pizza pan so it sort of fits the theme and put the chips out next to it. A nacho dip pizza, a couple of regular homemade pizzas, and a dessert pizza, and you've got a heck of a party going. For the Oscar party, I left it plain, because M is a purist and because I didn't have any other ingredients today anyway. It was still a big hit, and the platter was clean by the time we came home. That was one nice thing, even if I am incensed that Wall-E was totally robbed in most of its categories. Stupid Slumdog Millionaire.

Anyway, the other good thing that happened was that our hostess, one of M's friends and classmates, gave us a 12-pack of Campbell's tomato soup! She said she got it from another friend who was pantry cleaning, but she didn't like tomato soup. Score! My first impulse is to combine some with rice next week, as tomato rice soup is the only appropriate accompaniment for a poverty staple: grilled cheese sandwiches. But I think 12  cans of tomato soup is an invitation to creativeness as well. I'm starting to look up recipes using tomato soup. The first one I've come across is for tomato soup cake, the idea of which makes me want to hurl, but I'll keep looking. 

Tonight I ate the last of the cheddar potato soup from Friday, it was very thick. To change it up a little, I added two packets of Fire Sauce from Taco Bell. Taco Bell is our laundry day treat, it's very cheap and right next to the laundromat, and neither of us want to cook after hours of washing and folding. (We do our laundry once every three weeks or so. We have a lot of clothes, especially since when I'm around the house, I don't really care whether my clothes fit or whether they're hanging on me like sails.) Every time we go, we ask for lots of Fire Sauce and save the extra. It comes in handy for seasoning lots of different things. The cheese soup was very good, and quite tasty when I ate it with some of the leftover tortilla chips. 

M got new movies from the library today. We're trying to use the library more often and more carefully, so we dont' get any fines. Star Trek and X-Files this week, could be entertaining. I also found that Harlequin is offering a passel of free e-books to celebrate its 60th anniversary. I like romance, though Harlequin is not generally my cup of tea. But hey, when the book is free, why not give it a try? I've read three of them already and none has been a wallbanger. Just as well, since my computer couldn't stand that nearly as well as a paperback.