Iced In...Comfort Foods

Do you have those foods that you make that immediately take you somewhere else? There are so many things that I make on a regular basis that remind me of the person that taught me to make the dish. My life has been blessed with many people that shared their love of cooking with me.

Pancakes and omelettes remind me of cooking with my Dad.

Gravy and biscuits, pasta salad, peanut butter cookies and vegetable soup take my back to my Mom's kitchen.

Fried Cornbread brings back my Mamaw.

Scrambled Eggs remind me of my cousin Iris and the summer she visited us for a while.

Dumplings remind me of my Granny and my great grandmother.

Several cakes I make, remind me of my friend Yvonne.

Jalapeno cornbread brings to mind my friend Allyson.

Pat taught me to make homemade pizza.

Some of these people are no longer here with me in this life, and several more are separated by many miles. Cooking is something that makes me happy and complete and I am so grateful for those that shared their skills and recipes with me.

But this post is about the picture above.

I ate a lot of meals of my Granny's house and she made so many good foods. My absolute favorite time to eat at her house was on Thursday nights. You see Friday was grocery day so on Thursday nights she would pull out all of the left overs and make a meal out of them. It was like a feast with the variety of foods! Some dishes only had a few spoons left, but it was still good. One of the favorites of mine was this simple dish of jumbo elbow macaroni and a jar of home canned tomatoes. 

So simple, just two ingredients.

When I made it in my kitchen last night I was immediately transported back, to me ten years old, in my Granny's kitchen. 

The reality though, my kitchen is about 175 miles from her kitchen, Granny lives in the world of her memories as Alzheimer's disease takes her present knowledge and leftover night at her house is a thing of the distant past. But last night my memories took me back there.

And now? There is a little girl in my life, that I am teaching to cook from my memories. And she knows that while cooking can be learned from a book or the internet, that there are many, many more things that can be learned by one person, passed on to another and then another connecting hearts across miles and generations.

Pizza Night

We really like pizza in our house and since it is one of the few things that will deliver where we live, on occasion, we will order out. The last time we did though, it was kind of expensive and really not that good***. And Kip and I like very different toppings on our pizzas.

I make different types of pizzas and rotate them through my meal plan but sometimes I like to just make the crust, pull out a jar of my pizza sauce and a bunch of toppings and we can just make whatever we want.

It helped that I had already chopped up a bunch of veggies for an omelette, so prep time was even quicker. Individual pizzas are a great way to use up small amounts of leftovers too. We were both happy with our own pizza and Kip didn't have to pick the tomatoes off his pizza and I didn't have to take off the olives and peppers. Other than making the crust and letting it rise, it was quicker than delivery and cheaper and tastier too.

***One of the great pluses to trying to give up eating out and saving money is that I have learned I can make replicas of most of our favorite restaurant foods now. Since I can make them cheaper than a night out, we are saving money. The only negative is that homemade foods taste better so eating out has kind of lost the appeal and if we do go out, I am a little disappointed. A girl needs a break from the kitchen on occasion! The plus side of that is we are not spending our eating out budget so it accumulates and we can afford to splurge for nicer meals out.  

One for Dinner--One (or two) for the Freezer

I have a lot of recipes I have collected over the years that work well for the freezer. Many of them are designed for the crock pot, but some of them are complete meals that can go in the oven. When I make one of these meals for dinner, I will make one or two for the freezer. 

I try to keep at least 8-10 meals in the freezer so I have a selection of things to choose from on days when I just can't, or don't want to cook. Having them ready to go also allows me to take a meal to someone. Yesterday, I made a batch of soup for a friend that got out of the hospital and I also gave her a meal from my freezer so that she would have an additional meal as she recuperates.

They key is making sure your meals get rotated enough that you don't lose them in the freezer! My method is very simple. I have a dry erase board on the freezer that lists the meal and the date that they were assembled. New meals get added to the bottom of the list and I scratch them off as we eat them. I also write the name of the meal, date assembled and cooking directions (if needed) on the outside of the zip top bag, a sharpie works great for that! For ease of marking, I label the bags before filling them, I learned that lesson the hard way!! These are labeled on the other side.

This is a taco soup that we really like.

Taco Soup

1 lb ground beef

1 onion, diced

1 small can of tomato sauce

1 can kidney beans, with liquid

1 can chili beans with sauce

2 cans diced tomatoes, we like the petite diced

1 can of corn, with liquid

1 can diced green chilie

2 cups of water

1 pkg of taco seasoning

Cook the ground beef until it is done and drain. Let cool and add to the freezer bag. 

Add everything else to the bag and freeze.

To use: I pull out the night before using and let it cook in the crock pot for 6-8 hours on low.

If I forget to pull it out the night before I will let the frozen bag sit in the sink with water until it starts to defrost.

Weekly Menu

Here is our menu for the week. I don't schedule as much on the weekends as I do during the week. It is a great way to use leftovers, grab a quick sandwich or heat some soup. Some weekends we are out and about and will grab lunch somewhere while we are out.

I know I save money and frustration when I take the time to plan our meals, but I am still learning what works best for us. I don't want to over plan, because I end up spending more and have more food waste, but I also don't want to under plan, because then we are tempted to eat out too much. I try to have healthy snacks available, but try to not have too much that is perishable. I normally pack Kip's lunch and a snack for morning and another for the afternoon. Lots of days he only eats one of his snacks, so if I plan too many snacks that might go bad, I end up with food waste.

The menu board on the fridge also helps me save time, As I am cleaning up from on night's dinner, I can see what is for the next night and I can go ahead and pull out anything that needs to be defrosted and stick it in the fridge. If I already have something defrosting, it is much less tempting to forget the menu plan and go out.

The menu board also helps Kip know what is available if I am not here. As the name of this blog suggests, I mostly buy what he considers "ingredients" and not "food" that can be eaten as is. On Thursday nights I have a crochet group that I meet with and he is on his own. Sometimes we have lots of leftovers and foraging for his dinner is no problem, other times there aren't any and he has to come up with dinner on his own. I try and keep sandwich stuff and a few things in cans that he can heat and eat.

Menu planing helps me keep within my food budget and has almost eliminated food waste. It is still evolving though and I have to tweak it a bit every once in a while. 

Cooking with Samantha

Samantha and I have been cooking again! Since she has moved to middle school we haven't had as much time to cook together as we used to, but we are trying to get back into regular cooking sessions. I picked the meal this time and decided to go with a white veggie pizza. This is a pizza that I make frequently at home, but it was the first time making it with her. I knew she would love it because it had some of her favorite ingredients on it.  Next cooking session, Samantha will be in charge of the recipe, I can't wait to see what she picks.

White Veggie Pizza

(I call this a white veggie pizza because I start with a white sauce)

1 recipe pizza crust

Alfredo sauce

pesto sauce

1 large jar of artichoke quarters, roughly shopped

frozen spinach that has been defrosted and drained 

mushrooms 

mozzarella cheese

Parmesan cheese

Roll out pizza crust onto baking stone. Spread the Alfredo sauce over the surface of the crust. Add several tablespoons of the pesto and kind of swirl it in with the Alfredo sauce, not completely mixing. Add the mushrooms and artichokes and then the spinach. Top with mozzarella cheese and then about a quarter cup of the Parmesan cheese. Bake at 450 for about 15 minutes.

Spinach Strawberry Salad

Lunches around my house are almost always leftovers. Sometimes there is a little less left over than I would like, so I will include a salad. I easily get bored with food if I eat the same thing all the time. There will probably be at least 2, possibly 3 salads in lunches for a week. Instead of sending the same tossed salad with the same dressing, I try and make them all a little different. Doing that also helps me use all of the food that I have bought so that I have no waste. I had bought the spinach to use for a recipe and had about a third of a bag left and a few strawberries.

Spinach Strawberry Salad

fresh spinach, torn into bite sized pieces

sliced strawberries

sliced almonds

Balsamic vinegar

olive oil

Salad ingredients go into a bowl and I just made a quick dressing with the vinegar and oil. I love strawberries and balsamic vinegar together so I make the dressing kind of tart!

Belated Birthday Post

I have been out of town a lot over the past couple of months and haven't really been posting with any regularity. Hopefully life is getting back to normal for me! I wanted to take the next couple of days to play catch-up with some of my photos that were taken, but never made it out of my camera!

I will start here with Kip's birthday cake. I always make his cake and will try to tie it in with a theme to go with his gifts or something that delights his geeky soul. He loves the game Portal so I made a cake to go along with that game. I had a little help with this one too, Samantha wanted to help and since she has more experience working with fondant than I do, I gladly accepted her offer. And at 12, she also has a lot more cake decorating tools than I do.

The cake was a marbled vanilla and chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream icing.

Here is the happy birthday boy with his gift. Like I said, I normally try to tie in the cake with his gift but I wasn't sure I would be able to find the Batmobile or not when I was planning the cake. He was happy with both though, so that was all that mattered to me.

Salad Dressing

One of the first things I started making when I was changing the way we ate was salad dressings. I have only bought maybe a couple of bottles of dressing in the store in the past 3 + years. I usually mix up a new one every week or so, with Ranch and Blue Cheese being the ones I make most often. 

Last week I made a Baked Reuben for dinner so I needed some Thousand Island dressing. I like to gather my ingredients before starting to make sure I have everything I need.

I will add the ingredients directly in a wide mouth mason jar, which is how I will store the dressing. A few shakes and it is mixed, nice and easy. Sometimes I will use a mini whisk to make sure everything is combined. 

Very little clean up, the jar is great for storage.

 Blue painters tape gets used a lot in my kitchen! Since I do make a lot of our condiments and most are stored in mason jars, I need to label them--the painter's tape comes off easily and doesn't leave a sticky mess.

Thousand Island Dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoon white vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
1 teaspoon white onion, finely minced
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Changing Food Habits

It has been over a year now that we have been making the changes with our food choices. Our health was my number one motivator in starting these changes. Some of the changes we have made have been easy and some have taken a lot more work and dedication. I am happy to report that I have lost more than 20 lbs since spring. To me, 20 lbs. is a significant amount of weight, it means that I am doing something right and it isn't just body weight fluctuations.

Here are a few of the changes I have made.

NO DIET SODA--I had my last can or diet soda on April 1st.  This was a hard one for me. I still look at them every time I go to check out at a store and there sits that case of perfectly chilled diet soda. I used to grab one almost every time I would check out somewhere. and then another with dinner. If we were eating out, there would be a couple of refills too. I just stopped one day. It has gotten easier, but sometimes I do miss them. I do still drink a soda every once in a while, but is it almost always ginger ale, or maybe another clear soda. Mostly I drink water.

FOOD RULE #1--  Make as much as possible from scratch and eliminate overly processed foods. I am trying to not label foods good or bad. I love food and trying new food combinations and cooking is one of my favorite things in the world to do, so denying myself that would make me very unhappy. So I still eat pizza--made at home with extra veggies with the pepperoni or tacos-once again made at home- with lots of lettuce and tomatoes. 

REDUCE EATING OUT-- We used to eat out at least 3-4 times a week, a couple of lunches a week plus a couple of dinners. Now, I make lunches every day and we only eat out for dinner when we plan it or are meeting friends. I am not a huge calorie counter, but I know what is in the food I prepare at home and the calories in fast food, and what I make is usually at least half the calories of what we eat in a  restaurant. This has also helped out budget!

MEAL PLANNING-- Meal planning has saved us so much money. I buy what I have planned and not a lot extra. I look at the sales papers before planning our meals to make sure I am stretching out part of our budget as much as possible. Since I have a plan, I avoid that "what-am-I-going-to-make-for-dinner" rush. Because, honestly, sometimes the answer was I don't want to cook, lets go out.  

Since I plan all of three of our meals each day, I know what days I can splurge and make something that might be a little on the not so healthy side. I still meet a friend or my MIL for lunch here and there, Kip still eats out with co-workers on occasionally and we still plan to meet friends for dinner. The difference is those things are planned for, and not a default because there isn't food here or I ran out of creativity to throw together a meal.

DRINKING MORE  WATER-- Since I am no longer drinking my soda of choice, I am drinking a lot more water. Drinking water isn't something that bothers me, even when I was drinking soda, I still drank quite a bit of water. I usually just drink it iced, but I also usually have sliced cucumbers, lemons, limes or oranges in the fridge if I want to flavor my water for something different.

PREPPING FOOD--I try to prep and wash a lot of my food as soon as I get home from the grocery store. If I do that, it is easier to grab an apple instead of a bag of chips. It also cuts down on the time it takes to pack lunches, because I am so NOT a morning person!

Time Saver

In our efforts to both eat healthier and save money we are trying to be more consistent with packing lunches and not eating out. I am not a morning person at all, so if I waited til morning to make lunches they wouldn't get made most mornings. I cook dinner every night and often make extras for our lunch and "everyone for themselves" dinner night. I find that if I go ahead and assemble meals as I am cleaning up for dinner, it makes my life much easier. All we do is grab one and stick it in the lunch box along with a piece of fruit.

In addition to being a huge time saver, it also saves us money in a couple of ways--they are quick to grab so on those crazy mornings, lunch still gets packed and we don't have to rely on fast food, and on nights that one of us is not here, we have a ready meal that can just be reheated--no calling for pizza delivery! Another benefit is that I don't have a bunch of containers of leftovers in the fridge that get overlooked and just end up getting tossed. I hate throwing away food!

For most meals, I like these Easy Lunch Boxes. The have three sections, so I can make sure lunch also included veggies. I also like that they have different colored lids so that I can tell which lunches need to be eaten first or who I packed it for! I also have a thing for Bento boxes so I have lots of great containers for lunch.