Category: food

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Ten Bags o’ Dinner, One Hour, and Serious Savings

Two Men with long ponytails in the kitchen prepping food
My husband and son. Teamwork is so awesome.

My husband, son and I took about an hour to make dinner for ten weeknights.  Yep, that’s right.  We were able to do that in an hour.  How?

Well, certainly teamwork counts, but it is also because when we’re really busy and we rely on the crock pot most weeknights. None of us really wants to come home after a long day and cook, and all of us have busy days.

So we take an hour an prep a few Bags o’ Dinner on various weekends.  To make this go smoothly, what we will usually do is choose five recipes that we like and work well in the crock pot, then double them so we’re doing two bags of each.  Spend two or three weekend mornings doing that, and you’re all stocked up with an adequate meal variety for a long time.

Bowls of food and candles
The candles are because they help burn off the eye-watering fumes of onions. You can use a food processor to get around this as well.

When we decide on meals, I will often make a list of what goes in each recipe so that we can streamline prep work.  Ferinstance, every meal we chose to make had onion in it.  It just made sense to figure out how many onions those ten bags needed and do ’em all at once.  While this sort of prep work does use up all your various bowls to hold chopped and prepared ingredients, it makes it a lot easier when it comes to assembling those gallon freezer bags.

Ten freezer bags with meals in them.
Ten bags of food ready to have the air pressed out, flattened, and frozen.

Once everything is chopped, any hamburger is browned and drained (I tried it without the browning step once and found the meals far too greasy), you can start adding ingredients to the bags.  I go with heavy things first like beans or meat.  It helps the bags stand up and makes adding other ingredients much easier.

Ideally, I try to make meals with several ingredients all of them will have, so I would do a hamburger session, then a chicken session.  I didn’t do that this time, and just made two meals based on hamburger and three based on chicken.

Two flattened gallon bags with meals in them to be frozen.
Taco stew and white chili. Two family favorites.

Some people use crock pot liner bags and freeze their meals in the shape of their crock.  If that’s what works for you, I see no reason not to run with it.  I don’t do that, though.  I freeze my meals flat.  Since I don’t use a chest freezer, I need to be able to fit all the meals I make in the freezer on top of the fridge.   Flat works better for that.  I am very careful to label what we do.  After it’s frozen, you’ll have a devil of a time telling the difference between three or four tomato-sauce based meals.    Don’t try. Label them.

I usually take a meal out to thaw the night before, then dump it in the crock pot before work in the morning, turn it on low and forget about it until I get home.  Lately, if the meal needs to be served with rice or pasta, my son will take care of making that in time for his father and I get to get home from work.  If you don’t have someone to make these things for you, yes, a little prep work will need to happen before dinner.  Just not much.

So, how do these meals taste?

Two gallon bags with food, flattened and ready to freeze.
Spaghetti and Malaysian curry.

They’re good.  Are they like the most amazing gourmet treats you could possibly sink your teeth into? Of course not.*  Don’t be foolish.  This is basic, everyday dinner -peasant cooking that’s stewed all day, and that’s what it tastes like.  Then again, ratatouille is a peasant dish, and so are many meals that taste pretty damn good when they’ve cooked a long time.  If you insist on gourmet cooking every night, this is not for you.   This is your guardian against fast food because you’re too damn tired to cook.  This is when you don’t want to (or can’t) spend a lot of money on restaurants, but just don’t have the time to make something every night.  For my family, we really either do this or have a rota for who wears the chef’s hat that night. We’d all rather just take an hour and get it done than have to cook every third night.

Coq au vin in a gallon bag
Coq au vin. Don’t bother. This is the only time I ever made it and it totally wasn’t worth it.

People keep asking for recipes and the link has a couple.   But really, anything that works in a crockpot will work with this.  Some people say that potato-based recipes don’t work well when you freeze them, but my curry has potatoes in it and does great.  So does the beef stew we made last week.

However, if you need recipes or shopping lists, you can check these links out.  The taco stew came from one of them, though I forget which.  Happy hunting! 🙂

___________________

*Except for the curry.  The curry is awesome. 

 

 

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Horace the Reluctant Sourdough Starter

Just like stranded colorwork and being able to do cables is the apex of knitting competence in my mind, being able to make a good, crusty loaf of sourdough bread with no added yeast (cheating!) is the apex of bread making for me.

I didn’t think sourdough really was all that difficult when I first heard of it. Laura Ingalls Wilder described it in On the Shores of Silver Lake as being simple enough.

“When you haven’t milk enough to have sour milk, however do you make such delicious biscuits, Laura?” she asked.

“Why, you just use sour dough,” Laura said.

Mrs. Boast had never made sour-dough biscuits! It was fun to show her. Laura measured out the cups of sour dough, put in the soda and salt and flour, and rolled out the biscuits on the board.

“But how do you make the sour dough?” Mrs. Boast asked.

“You start it,” said Ma, “by putting some flour and warm water in a jar and letting it stand till it sours.”

“Then when you use it, always leave a little,” said Laura. “And put in the scraps of biscuit dough, like this, and more warm water,” Laura put in the warm water, “and cover it,” she put the clean cloth and the plate on the jar, “and just set it in a warm place,” she set it in its place on the shelf by the stove. “And it’s always ready to use, whenever you want it.”

“I never tasted better biscuits,” said Mrs. Boast.

Now, this is accurate as far as it goes. You do combine flour and water somewhere warm and wait for it to start smelling sour. But the process is a bit more involved than that. She leaves out the feeding process. You see, to get a good sourdough really bubbling, you do need to feed it frequently as you’re moving along. Once it starts to bubble, you really should discard about a cup of the starter every day and then feed it with a fresh 1:1 flour and water mixture. It seems to work best for me at a cup each. You’ll know that it’s good and strong because it will start to grow and be a bit thick – like a really hearty pancake batter.

Now, throwing away all that flour offends me. If I had local friends who liked to bake a lot, I could give some of it away to let them get their own starter going.* However, I did something a little different.

At first, I thought that the starter was done after starting to bubble a few days and getting that sour, yeasty smell. I made a loaf of bread from it. But the dough hadn’t risen nearly enough even after 15 hours, and the resultant loaf was a bit too dense and chewy. Because I use a method where I bake it in a Dutch Oven inside my oven, I did get some steam proofing, but it wasn’t up to the standard I like for bread.

Not wanting to give up, I “cheated” and used the starter in making my bread, while adding a little yeast to the dough. Even though the starter wasn’t as strong as it could be, it still added some texture and character to the bread, and allowed me to feed the starter without having to discard a cup of the stuff every day. You have to discard some after you feed it to keep the growth balance right. Don’t just get bigger container. It weakens the strain.

Yesterday, Horace (yes, I named my starter) decided to start partying. He grew so much he bubbled up over the top and soaked into the cloth I had covering him.

So I decided to take a little risk and try making “real” sourdough break without any added baker’s yeast. I mixed up the dough late at night and when I came down the next morning, I saw that Horace had really been flexing his muscles. That’s a better rise than I usually get out of the dough I make this way with baker’s yeast.

Because I make a very slow-rise artisan type bread, it’s really ideal for sourdough. I poured this out on a floured surface, sprinkled it with some flour and set it up to rise for another couple of hours on my pastry board.

And Horace was still as active as ever. I got a nice second rise out of the dough.

As you can see, Horace really did his job on this loaf. That’s as fine a sourdough loaf as ever I did see. I just took this out of the oven and haven’t tasted it yet (other than breaking off a bit of crust), but this looks like the real thing. Well-risen, crusty and delicious.

I’ve included the recipes for the sourdough starter and the bread I make. They’re really pretty easy. Hope you enjoy.

Sourdough Starter

(Horace is pictured on the right. He was fed last night and transferred to a clean jar this morning.)

1c. warm water (Baby bath warm, not Japanese bath hot)

1c. unbleached flour. (I use King Arthur flour as my basic go-to flour and have for years. It’s cheaper than specialty flours and works great for bread. No, it’s not because I live near the local headquarters. I started using it years before I moved up here.)

(optional)1/8 tsp dry baker’s yeast

Combine the water and the flour in a glass or ceramic container that is at least four cups in volume. I use a quart Mason jar. Stir until smooth and let sit. You can, if you are impatient, put in a bit of baker’s yeast. If you’ve been doing a fair amount of bread baking in your kitchen, or it is in the fall, you really don’t need to bother. The wild yeast is enough.

Cover with a clean cloth and let sit. When you pass by or think about it, give the mixture a stir. When the mixture starts to bubble and get a kind of yeasty smell (this may take anywhere from 24-72 hours, depending on how warm your kitchen is and how much wild yeast you have) discard a cup of the mixture and add a cup of water and a cup of flour. If you can’t stand to throw the mixture away, you can use it in pancakes, waffles, muffins or even “normal” bread.

You’ll know your starter is a good and strong with a robust yeast colony when it grows 50-100% in size when you feed it. Then, it’s ready for baking bread.

I bake a loaf just about every day, so I do not bother to refrigerate my starter. When it gets too hot to use the oven, yes, Horace is going into the fridge to be fed once a week and revived in the fall for serious baking. If you bake less often, you can put this in the fridge, too. Just take it out to come to room temperature and feed it about 12 hours before you’re going to bake.

Artisan Sourdough Bread

3 c flour

1 ½ t salt

¼ t yeast (if you’re in the “cheating” phase. Don’t bother if you have a really strong starter)

1 ½ c. warm water

1c. sourdough starter

Mix in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise 12-16 hours. Turn out on generously floured board. Sprinkle top with flour, cover with plastic wrap and towel and let sit for two hours.

Put dutch oven in oven for ½ hour at 450. Gather up dough, add (carefully!) to dutch oven, cover and cook for ½ hour. Remove top, and cook for another 15 minutes.

Let rest. Enjoy!

______________________________

* And if you’re local and want some, gimme a mason jar and I’ll be delighted to give you a cup of starter.

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Making it Too Complex

This morning when I got up, my husband announced to me that Horace the Sourdough Starter had grown so much that it had reached the top of the jar. Since he really isn’t into baking, it was a source of some amusement to me that he even noticed. On the other hand, I suppose sourdough starters seem awfully mystical and complex – almost magic. Never mind that’s how all leavened bread was made for centuries!

I’ve been reading a lot about sourdough starters – how to start them, how to maintain them, everyone’s super-secret foolproof method for making one. I gotta say, I think people are making this way too complex. Some people swear by pineapple juice to start it (never bothered, myself) and others insist that fake mashed potato flakes are the key. I’ve seen reports of tossing in a grape or two. The reason grapes turn into wine is that they collect yeast on their skins. What, did you think early winemakers went to the brewing supply store?

When I started Horace, I started him in the springtime, so yes, I did have the advantage of warmth. I also started him in a kitchen that sees several loaves of bread baked in it every week, so the air was full of wild yeast. And I did use a glass jar. I didn’t worry about stirring him with a wooden or plastic spoon, but just used my usual stainless steel.* I did cheat and use a miliscrunch of yeast to get him going, but from then on, I was just feeding him with a 1:1 volume mix of flour and water. Since I bake a lot, I keep him on my kitchen counter. He’s good and strong, so skipping a day or two of feeding really has no negative effect on his activity. I’ll pop him in the fridge when it gets too hot to bake. This is a far cry from the twice a day feeding and careful weighing of the water and flour feeding that you’ll see some sites recommend. Seriously, people, do you think medieval bakers treated it like alchemy?

What I think is missing when people get complex about the starter is that they don’t pay attention to the real basics—clean utensils and containers, unbleached flour with a fairly high gluten content and water that isn’t too chlorinated. If your tap water tastes good, you’re probably fine. Otherwise, you might want to filter it. In the town I lived my first thirty-odd years, yeah, filtered or bottled water would be better. Where I live now? Tap water is fine.

For flour, make sure you’re using something that’s good for making bread, and there are many so-called all-purpose flours that aren’t. You don’t have to go overboard with this and buy specialty bread flour. Something like King Arthur flour (which I do use) works just fine and isn’t really pricey.

The last problem I see is patience. Most starter recipes will say to wait for 24-48 hours to see the initial bubbling get started. That’s a good average, but don’t sweat it if it takes more like 72 hours. Even then, you’ve only got a beginner starter. It won’t be strong and stable for another week. A lot of people don’t want to wait that long, but really, you want to.

And after that, you’ll have a starter that will last pretty well as long as you’re interested in baking with it.

* Some people think metal will kill a starter or that the acidity of the starter will react with a metal container. That’s true if you’re using tin from the 1800s. Not so much so from modern stainless steel.

Posted on

Horace the Reluctant Sourdough Starter

Just like stranded colorwork and being able to do cables is the apex of knitting competence in my mind, being able to make a good, crusty loaf of sourdough bread with no added yeast (cheating!) is the apex of bread making for me.

I didn’t think sourdough really was all that difficult when I first heard of it. Laura Ingalls Wilder described it in On the Shores of Silver Lake as being simple enough.

“When you haven’t milk enough to have sour milk, however do you make such delicious biscuits, Laura?” she asked.

“Why, you just use sour dough,” Laura said.

Mrs. Boast had never made sour-dough biscuits! It was fun to show her. Laura measured out the cups of sour dough, put in the soda and salt and flour, and rolled out the biscuits on the board.

“But how do you make the sour dough?” Mrs. Boast asked.

“You start it,” said Ma, “by putting some flour and warm water in a jar and letting it stand till it sours.”

“Then when you use it, always leave a little,” said Laura. “And put in the scraps of biscuit dough, like this, and more warm water,” Laura put in the warm water, “and cover it,” she put the clean cloth and the plate on the jar, “and just set it in a warm place,” she set it in its place on the shelf by the stove. “And it’s always ready to use, whenever you want it.”

“I never tasted better biscuits,” said Mrs. Boast.

Now, this is accurate as far as it goes. You do combine flour and water somewhere warm and wait for it to start smelling sour. But the process is a bit more involved than that. She leaves out the feeding process. You see, to get a good sourdough really bubbling, you do need to feed it frequently as you’re moving along. Once it starts to bubble, you really should discard about a cup of the starter every day and then feed it with a fresh 1:1 flour and water mixture. It seems to work best for me at a cup each. You’ll know that it’s good and strong because it will start to grow and be a bit thick – like a really hearty pancake batter.

Now, throwing away all that flour offends me. If I had local friends who liked to bake a lot, I could give some of it away to let them get their own starter going.* However, I did something a little different.

At first, I thought that the starter was done after starting to bubble a few days and getting that sour, yeasty smell. I made a loaf of bread from it. But the dough hadn’t risen nearly enough even after 15 hours, and the resultant loaf was a bit too dense and chewy. Because I use a method where I bake it in a Dutch Oven inside my oven, I did get some steam proofing, but it wasn’t up to the standard I like for bread.

Not wanting to give up, I “cheated” and used the starter in making my bread, while adding a little yeast to the dough. Even though the starter wasn’t as strong as it could be, it still added some texture and character to the bread, and allowed me to feed the starter without having to discard a cup of the stuff every day. You have to discard some after you feed it to keep the growth balance right. Don’t just get bigger container. It weakens the strain.

Yesterday, Horace (yes, I named my starter) decided to start partying. He grew so much he bubbled up over the top and soaked into the cloth I had covering him.

So I decided to take a little risk and try making “real” sourdough break without any added baker’s yeast. I mixed up the dough late at night and when I came down the next morning, I saw that Horace had really been flexing his muscles. That’s a better rise than I usually get out of the dough I make this way with baker’s yeast.

Because I make a very slow-rise artisan type bread, it’s really ideal for sourdough. I poured this out on a floured surface, sprinkled it with some flour and set it up to rise for another couple of hours on my pastry board.

And Horace was still as active as ever. I got a nice second rise out of the dough.

 

As you can see, Horace really did his job on this loaf. That’s as fine a sourdough loaf as ever I did see. I just took this out of the oven and haven’t tasted it yet (other than breaking off a bit of crust), but this looks like the real thing. Well-risen, crusty and delicious.

I’ve included the recipes for the sourdough starter and the bread I make. They’re really pretty easy. Hope you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

Sourdough Starter

(Horace is pictured on the right. He was fed last night and transferred to a clean jar this morning.)

1c. warm water (Baby bath warm, not Japanese bath hot)

1c. unbleached flour. (I use King Arthur flour as my basic go-to flour and have for years. It’s cheaper than specialty flours and works great for bread. No, it’s not because I live near the local headquarters. I started using it years before I moved up here.)

(optional)1/8 tsp dry baker’s yeast

Combine the water and the flour in a glass or ceramic container that is at least four cups in volume. I use a quart Mason jar. Stir until smooth and let sit. You can, if you are impatient, put in a bit of baker’s yeast. If you’ve been doing a fair amount of bread baking in your kitchen, or it is in the fall, you really don’t need to bother. The wild yeast is enough.

Cover with a clean cloth and let sit. When you pass by or think about it, give the mixture a stir. When the mixture starts to bubble and get a kind of yeasty smell (this may take anywhere from 24-72 hours, depending on how warm your kitchen is and how much wild yeast you have) discard a cup of the mixture and add a cup of water and a cup of flour. If you can’t stand to throw the mixture away, you can use it in pancakes, waffles, muffins or even “normal” bread.

You’ll know your starter is a good and strong with a robust yeast colony when it grows 50-100% in size when you feed it. Then, it’s ready for baking bread.

I bake a loaf just about every day, so I do not bother to refrigerate my starter. When it gets too hot to use the oven, yes, Horace is going into the fridge to be fed once a week and revived in the fall for serious baking. If you bake less often, you can put this in the fridge, too. Just take it out to come to room temperature and feed it about 12 hours before you’re going to bake.

Artisan Sourdough Bread

3 c flour

1 ½ t salt

¼ t yeast (if you’re in the “cheating” phase. Don’t bother if you have a really strong starter)

1 ½ c. warm water

1c. sourdough starter

 

Mix in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise 12-16 hours. Turn out on generously floured board. Sprinkle top with flour, cover with plastic wrap and towel and let sit for two hours.

Put dutch oven in oven for ½ hour at 450. Gather up dough, add (carefully!) to dutch oven, cover and cook for ½ hour. Remove top, and cook for another 15 minutes.

Let rest. Enjoy!

______________________________

* And if you’re local and want some, gimme a mason jar and I’ll be delighted to give you a cup of starter.

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The Bean Factor in Frugality

Quart mason jars with black beans, white beans, red beans, and mixed beans
Aren’t they pretty in the jars?

We’re expecting a snowstorm here where I live and it’s coincided with time for a big shopping trip. No, we didn’t go shopping for Snowmageddon. But I did get enough materials to make a bunch of freezer meals for the household.

I like this a lot better than Once a Month Cooking, I have to admit. I guess I just like things cooked reasonably fresh in the crock pot.

But one of the big reasons I’ve been keeping on with doing it is that my husband is fond of it. I was away from home last week, and those freezer meals made life a lot easier on my husband and son. Oh sure, both of them can cook a meal just fine, but when you’re gone all day, there’s nothing quite so nice as dumping a meal in a crock pot in the morning and coming home to it being cooked that night. Anyone who is busy loves a home-cooked meal they didn’t have to prep while tired, after all.

I’ve been trying to come up with about fifteen different dishes so that I can have a month’s worth of meals in the freezer, if I do two each. I didn’t quite manage it, only coming up with ten. But I’m pretty cool with that. That’s still twenty meals squirreled away that I don’t have to spend a lot of time on during the day.

This has been saving me an enormous amount of money. I’m a little surprised, as I thought I was careful – buying meat on sale, meal planning to sales, buying whole chickens, you name it. The only thing I can figure is that I am more organized and take fewer trips to the grocery store. You do spend less money the fewer times you approach the cash register, I do know that!

Though as I think about it, many of the recipes involved beans, so I’m not buying as much meat, and I’m still getting reasonably hearty meals. They’re great in crock pots and are very inexpensive, especially the way I buy them. Dried beans in my area run about a buck fifty a pound. Cheap, cheap, cheap, as that yields a whole lot of beans. They’re not too hard to deal with, either. If you’re used to canned beans and want to try dry beans, just remember a half a cup of dried beans cooks up to about a 15oz can. Throw ’em in some salted water, bring to a boil and simmer for an hour or so while you do other stuff, then they’re all ready to add to the freezer recipes.

And because every time I talk about freezer meals, someone asks for a recipe, here’s mine for chili. Or at least, I do this sometimes when I feel like it. (In reality, I follow whim when making soups and stews).

Noël’s Occasional Freeze-Ahead Chili

  • 1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 lb hamburger, browned
  • 2 cloves garlic, diced
  • 1 c. diced bell pepper (color doesn’t matter)
  • 1 jalapeno pepper, chopped (if you like it spicy. If not, leave it out)
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 2T. Cumin
  • 1T. unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2t. black pepper
  • 2t. salt
  • ½ c. dry red kidney beans, cooked (yield cooked will be about a cup and a half or so) or 1 15 oz can red kidney beans
  • (optional) ½ c diced carrots. This is good if you’re trying to sneak vegetables in on picky eaters.

Throw in a gallon freezer bag, and freeze. Thaw out the night before you want to cook it and throw it in a crock pot. If you have any red wine or beer (especially a dark ale) on hand, throw a half a cup or so in with this and then cook on low for 6-8 hours. The alcohol isn’t absolutely necessary, but it gives it a nice flavor.

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Grapefruit

I like grapefruit. For whatever reason I hadn’t bought them for several years. No, it’s not that I’m the only person in the house who is really fond of citrus fruit. I buy cases of clementines and gorge on them without a qualm every winter. I just… well, haven’t bought them.

I was searching the produce aisle recently and noticed that there were Ruby Reds on sale, so I picked some up and have been having them with my lunch. (You don’t have to have them only with breakfast, right?)

Grapefruit are kind of a nostalgia food for me. Every winter, my parents would buy a case of citrus fruit from a neighbor and we’d all enjoy them for a month or so. Typically it would be the grapefruit with breakfast thing, and I always liked it. It wasn’t only that I liked the taste, but that it was something you made a small game of eating. While of course we were not permitted to play with our food, there was something fun in spooning out the grapefruit sections. But even more fun to me was after all the pulp had been eaten.

You see, Mom would let us squeeze whatever was left into our finished juice glasses. I always got a kick out of it – fresh-squeezed juice and all. I can remember squeezing the shell with my little hands, trying with determination to get a few ounces of juice out and feeling really satisfied if I reall could get a couple of swallows.

Today as I was finishing up my lunch, I found myself doing the same thing. My hands are stronger now, I managed to squeeze out a lot more than I could as a kid. And darned if it isn’t still kind of a satisfying little thing to do. Certainly grapefruit juice I buy in the store can never taste so good!

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The Secret to Enjoying Turkey Leftovers

turkeyThere you are you are faced with leftovers from that enormous bird you bought for Thanksgiving and you just don’t know what to do. You like turkey well enough, but good heavens, you don’t want to eat the same thing for a couple of weeks. Neither do you want to waste.

There’s a secret to enjoying turkey leftovers and I’m going to pass it on to you.

Now, my husband and I were all for a non-traditional Thanksgiving meal, but our son was pretty insistent that we have the traditional meal of turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie. So, being the mean, cruel and overbearing parents we are….

We had turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie.

I’d bought a couple of small pie pumpkins around Halloween, had used one for pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins. We cooked the last one for the pumpkin pie and had about three cups left over. Some of that is likely to find its way into a soup, but I am seeing pumpkin muffins in our future as well. My son has now learned that making something from fresh pumpkin is pretty easy – chop it in half, scoop out the guts, bake it about an hour, scoop out the cooked flesh and puree. Easy peasy. Nuttin’ wrong with using canned, but we just happened to have a pumpkin sitting there.

Because of my habit of being a tightwad, I had considered buying a turkey breast instead of the whole bird. But at price per pound, the whole bird was an enormously better buy. Even though yes, a 12 pound bird was a bit much for the meal, I know how to make good on leftovers, boy howdy let me tell you what. Even so, we don’t want to get sick of eating turkey, do we?

What’s the secret to enjoying turkey leftovers?

The secret to not getting sick of turkey as a leftover meat, however, is to repurpose it in very flavorful dishes. Sure, sure, a turkey sandwich is delicious, as is turkey salad. But it’s just as easy to use those leftovers in other meals that aren’t quite reminiscent of the American white-bread meal that is Thanksgiving dinner. You want spices. You want strongly-flavored veggies. You want differences in color, presentation and texture.

The bones are going to go for stock, oh yes! If you’ve never tried turkey stock, give yourself a treat. It’s delightfully flavorful and enhances any dish where you’d use chicken stock. We’re not going to do Carcass Soup this year, tasty as it is. Instead, we’re going to use the turkey to make a few freezer meals. We’ll be doing turkey burritos (my family are crazy for burritos), freezing up some bags of diced turkey for stir frys or the (sorta) Puttanesca, and freezing up some bags of diced veggies and turkey for some delicious soups.

Except for the (sorta) Puttanesca, these are great freezer meals as well.

Turkey Burritos

2 ½ c. Turkey chopped fine 1 can chopped green chili peppers
2 t. cumin 1 T. minced garlic
1 small onion, chopped 2 t. pepper
1 t. salt 12 8-inch flour tortillas
1 can refried beans 2 c. shredded cheese (preferably cheddar or a mix of cheddar and Monterey jack)
Sliced Black Olives Salsa
Sour Cream

Preheat oven to 350 and grease large pan.

Sauté turkey with chili peppers, cumin, minced garlic, onion, salt and pepper.

Spread tortilla with ~2 T refried beans, add ~ 2T meat and 2T cheese. Fold sides of tortilla in, and then roll tortilla, being careful not to roll too tightly and tear burrito. Arrange all 12 in pan, and bake at 350 for ~20 minutes. Serve with salsa, sour cream and gorilla nostrils.

If you intend to freeze them, skip the baking wrap well and freeze. When you intend to use them, defrost and freeze according to directions.

Turkey (sorta) Puttanesca

2 ½ c. diced turkey ¼ c. black olives, chopped
¼ c. pitted green olives, chopped ¼ c. chopped onion
1T chopped garlic 1 medium bell pepper, chopped
1 6 oz. can tomato paste 1T capers
2 tsp. dried red pepper 2 tsp. oregano
1 tsp black pepper Dash salt
3 T olive oil

Set aside turkey breast. Combine all other ingredients but the olive oil and tomato paste. Mix well and let sit to let the flavors marry a bit. Sauté the turkey breast in olive oil, then add the olive, pepper and spice mixture. Sauté until the onion is translucent, then add the tomato paste. Turn to low and cook for about fifteen minutes. Serve over pasta.

Turkey Pot Pie

For pie crust:

2 c. flour 1/3 c. shortening or butter
1 t salt 1/4 c. cold and I mean icy water

For Filling:

2 ½ c. shredded turkey, cooked 2 ½ c. mixed veggies (or one can of Veg-all)
2 cans of cream of mushroom (or celery) soup.

To make the Pie Crust:

Combine salt and flour. Cut in butter or shortening until fine. Add cold water slowly until a stiff dough is formed. Divide dough in half. Roll each half in a 12″ circle. Use one circle to cover the bottom of deep 9″ pie plate. Do not trim edges.

For Filling:

Combine turkey, veggies and cream of mushroom soup. (Gosh, that was hard, wasn’t it?). Dump it all in the pie dish, cover the mess with the remaining circle of pie crust dough, fold the edged together and pinch together around the edges. This is a chance to make it look pretty, if you want. Cut a vent for steam to escape in the top of the pie. (I usually use a fork to poke the words I and You in it and cut a heart out in the center –nauseating, ain’t I?).

If you intend to freeze it, wrap well, label and do so. Then defrost and cook for about 1/2 hour at 425 o or until a nice light brown. If you don’t intend to freeze it ahead, just cook it according to previous directions.

Turkey Curry

2 ½ c turkey, diced 2 medium potatoes, diced
1 c. milk 1 c. plain yogurt
1/4 c. raisins 1/4 c. cashews
1 c. peaches, mango, or apricots 1 15 oz can coconut milk
Olive oil for sautéing 1 large onions
3T garlic 3T sliced fresh ginger
4 T curry powder 4 T. spring water

If you intend to freeze for later, toss all the ingredients but the coconut milk in a gallon freezer bag and freeze flat. When you want to serve it for dinner, defrost, toss in a crock pot for 6-8 hours and serve over rice.

Otherwise, toss in crock pot for 6-8 hours. Serve over rice.

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Freezer Cooking Another Way

I like to do Freezer Cooking, OAMC (Once a Month Cooking), whatever you want to call it. I like to cook. But the reality is that there are nights where I blasted well don’t feel like cooking. Maybe I’ve been on my feet teaching all day. Maybe I’ve dived into my writing to the point where I look up and realize it’s getting on to dinner time and I don’t want to take the time out to make a meal that night. Maybe the family’s just plain busy and it’s not realistic to dump the cooking duties on someone else. So, I like to have a few meals in the freezer for those times.

If you do a search for some variant on the keywords “Crockpot Freezer Cooking” you’ll find a new method for making meals for the freezer that has taken me two days to fall in love with.

What you need: A slow cooker, some recipes you like, some gallon freezer bags, and a freezer. (And you have to like crock pot meals. If you don’t, stop reading now. This isn’t for you).

This is a psycho easy way to have meals prepped to pop in the crock pot of a morning. My family and I prepared about a month’s worth of dinners this way and it took us an hour and a half from start to cleanup. If you don’t have a sous-chef you might want to tack on another half an hour to 45 minutes, but that’s about it. Still, you’re looking at under three hours of prep time for a month’s worth of dinners. This is nothing like the all-day cooking sessions for classic OAMC.

When you do classic OAMC, you cook meals in advance, thaw them and then heat them up on the day you want to serve them.

With Slow Cooker Freezer Cooking, you only do the prep work and store the uncooked meals in the freezer to thaw and toss in the crock pot the morning before you want to serve it. Just prep everything like you would to pop it in the crock pot, but put it in a freezer bag instead, and freeze it flat. Yes, it’s that easy.

One thing with this cooking method, you’re gonna wanna label everything, and add any special instructions. I don’t freeze most of these meals with a lot of additional liquid. So if you need to add stock, or coconut milk or something like that when you cook it, write those instructions on the bag. Don’t count on remembering it.

If you’re a crock pot aficionado, you probably already have dozens of recipes. Don’t sweat it, they’ll work using this method. I do recommend browning the hamburger so you can drain the fat for any meal using ground beef, but other than that, no real cooking in advance is necessary.

If you need some recipes, these are some that I used for my last session. They fit in a three quart slow cooker, and will usually provide a couple of meals for my three-person family. (Why yes, I do freeze leftovers for another meal!) If you’re using a six quart crock pot due to a larger family, you’ll want to double these recipes, but they won’t fit in a single gallon freezer bag.

White Chili

½ lb. Dry white beans, cooked (or two 15 oz cans)

1 lb. chicken breast, diced

½ c. chopped onion

2 T chopped garlic

1 T oreganof

1 T Cumin

2t. black pepper

1 can chopped green chili peppers

Put all the ingredients in a gallon freezer bag. Freeze.

Defrost in the fridge for 12-18 hours, put in crock pot, add ~1 quart chicken stock. Cook 6-8 hours on low, serve with salad.

Chicken Curry

1 lb chicken breasts, cut into small pieces

3c. potatoes, diced

1 c.  plain yogurt

1/4 c.  raisins, ground

1/4 c. cashews, ground

1 c. peaches, mango, or apricots, diced

½ c. onion, diced

3T garlic, chopped

3T fresh ginger, chopped

4 T curry powder

Put all the ingredients in a gallon freezer bag. Freeze.

Defrost in the fridge for 12-18 hours, put in crock pot, add 15 oz can coconut milk. Cook 6-8 hours on low, serve over rice.

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Would have baked a cake

I’m baking a cake for my son’s birthday party tomorrow. Now, today was a busy day and I had to do a lot of shopping, so when I was making the list, I considered picking up a box o’ cake mix and making one from that.

I didn’t.

This isn’t a “go me, look at what a good Mommy I am” moment. The cake I am making probably won’t taste much different from a mix. It’s your incredibly basic chocolate cake that I’d be perfectly comfortable talking a ten year old through making. The reason I didn’t buy the boxed mix was nothing more than looking in my pantry, realizing I had everything I needed to make a cake anyway and figuring it was stupid to spend the money, plus the knowledge that in terms of time, it would have been six of one, or a half a dozen of the other. If I hadn’t had all the ingredients, it might have been a box o’ cake.

I would have felt no guilt about that, either.

It did get me to thinking, though, about how we perceive the effort involved in making a meal as well as a book I’d read recently.

When researchers watched thirty-two two-income families cook dinner for four days, here’s what they saw: It took people an average of fifty-two minutes from the time they opened the refrigerator door to the time they sat down at the table, whether they used a box kit like Hamburger Helper or cooked everything from scratch. The only difference was that meals cooked from scratch required about ten minutes more active time— minutes spent chopping and sautéing, for example— than box mixes.

McMillan, Tracie (2012-02-21). The American Way of Eating (pp. 211-212). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

While it’s partially a matter of perception, she goes on to say something else that’s a really interesting point:

Box meals don’t save us time any more than going out to eat does, and they don’t even save us money. What they do instead is remove the need to have to come up with a plan for dinner, something that’s easy when you’re a skilled cook— and bafflingly difficult when you’re not. The real convenience behind these convenience foods isn’t time or money, but that they remove one more bit of stress from our day.

McMillan, Tracie (2012-02-21). The American Way of Eating (p. 212). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

It’s why I, who am definitely a skilled cook, considered choosing a box mix for a cake when preparing for a party. It wasn’t that it was going to save me time, really. What it meant was that I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble to look up a recipe for the materials I already had on hand. (My smartphone has become my cookbook. What can I say?)

Though one thing Ms. McMillan may not have considered (and this is probably because as she mentions in her book, kitchen skills played no real part in her childhood or growing up years) is that even skilled cooks will order out or have an easy go-to when tired or stressed. There are ways to avoid it if one knows how, of course. Meal planning, shopping to a list, planning meals based on likelihood of how busy one will be on a particular day – all of these things are necessary to being able to have cooking be less of a stressful chore and more of a pleasant routine. And this isn’t a skill that’s generally taught, even in home ec classes these days.

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How to Make Dessert Shooters

I’ve been doing No-S as a diet lately. If I’ve never mentioned it before, it’s quite simple. No Sweets, No Snacks and No Seconds, except (sometimes) on days beginning with S. It’s less of a quick weight loss scheme and more of a way to regulate eating. While I’m not overindulging, I’m certainly eating enough!

But, being an S-day, I wanted a treat. While a huge sweet would be perfectly legal, I like the idea of moderating treats. You know, like they say the French do. (Wonderful food, but small, delicious portions).

So, one of the things I’m doing for treats is making them deliciously special, but small.

Small is definitely the point here. This is a mini martini glass.   It holds about two ounces, so you’re talking about something the size of a shot glass.  In fact, shot glasses make superb glasses for dessert shooters.  (Hey!  Maybe that’s where the name came from.  Hint:  Yes.  It did.)I bought these glasses because I love a dirty martini or an appletini, but frankly, those 8 oz. cocktail glasses I have are just too big for what is essentially a drink that’s pure alcohol.  (Trivia fact: Cocktail glasses used to be about 4oz.   They’ve gotten bigger!)But not only are they good for enjoying alcohol in moderate amounts, they’re good for enjoying desserts in the same way.
The principle behind a satisfying dessert shooter is to layer tastes and textures.  The base layer should be fairly firm.  Think cake, cookies, or anything sweet that retains a reasonably firm texture.This particular shooter has small cubes of pound cake I had left over from the pound cake.But in building your shooter, you don’t have to choose something neutral like vanilla pound cake.  You can pick something strongly-flavored like gingerbread, dark chocolate cake or anything that has a firm texture and a distinct taste.
Remember, principle is to contrast flavor and texture.  So if you choose a neutral base layer, you should be choosing something with a stronger, more distinct flavor.  If you chose a strong flavor for the base layer, choose a milder flavor for the secondary layer.In either case, you also want to contrast not only the flavor, but the texture.  The base layer should have a firmer texture, so the secondary layer should be something smoother or creamier.  Think ice cream, pudding or something along those lines.This particular shooter is using mint oreo ice cream.
After you add the secondary layer, you can use a tertiary layer of some other flavor. In this case, I didn’t but repeated the pound cake/ice cream theme.
The final layer can be another flavor if you wish.  In this case, hot fudge, which gave not only a flavor and texture contrast, but a temperature one, too!This is also a good time to use a garnish, if you want.  Say a berry or two, or maybe a sprig of mint. My grocery store didn’t have any.  Hey, I live in rural New Hampshire and it’s February in a snowstorm.  What the devil do you expect?

These were a big hit at my house this evening! Everyone in my family loves tasty things, and this was an amazingly easy treat that looks impressive and tastes wonderful. You could make up a bunch of these for parties. Because they’re so quick and simple, you could even serve several different sorts to suit several tastes.