Monday Healthy Eating, October 11, 2010

No one wants to hear this, and no one wants to do it. So, I’m going to give you two options, but you have to pick one of them to eat healthfully.

Option 1: Read labels.

Option 2: Cook everything from scratch.

I, personally, mostly do Option 2, with a little of Option 1. I don’t make my own mustard, but I do read the label. It’s up to you which you chose, or how you combine them, but there’s no easy way out of this one. The good news is that reading labels gets much less onerous as time goes on, because you begin to know which brands have the ingredients you prefer (or don’t have the ones you’re trying to cut out), so you don’t have to read those as often.  But, you do still have to read them occasionally, because formulations change.

Why read labels? Largely because if you’ve never done it you’re going to be appalled at what you’ve been eating. Once, of course, you know what “that” its. If you’re eating most store-purchased ice cream, for example, you’re eating guar gum. Do you even know what that is? I didn’t. It’s a thickener, used to keep ice cream thick but soft at deep-freeze temperatures. As weird things in your food goes, it’s not particularly offensive, but it’s also not necessary if you’re eating…well, real ice cream. If you’re buying most canned or jarred tomatoes sauces, you’re eating high fructose corn syrup, same thing with BBQ sauces and even hot dogs. In many of these, it’s the first or second ingredient (including in several hot dog brands–why do you need sugar in hot dogs!?).

Once you see what’s in the food, then you’ve got to come home and look it up, because honestly I still don’t know what 90% of that stuff is and I do this for a living. Which is why I take option #2 most of the time. It’s easier.

Some of these things, like HFCS and MSG, have pretty well-known side effects and long-reaching nastiness like links to cancer and obesity, some add extra calories, some haven’t actually been studied. Essentially, it comes down to this: you can’t eat healthy without the information to make appropriate decisions, and the only way you can get that information from a box, bag, or a can you didn’t prepare yourself is to read the label and see what’s in it, how many calories it has, and how those fit into your eating goals.

Related Articles

• EatingWell: Beware: Misleading Ingredient Names Explained (huffingtonpost.com)

Monday Healthy Eating–Under the Wire!

Technically, it’s still Monday, so this counts. Thank you  all for your patience as I work through some family medical issues.

Today’s healthy eating is a small step to a larger goal. The ultimate goal is to learn to cook flavorful, healthful meals that you and your family will eat. Seriously, almost anything you cook from scratch will be better for you than something form a fast food place or a box, even if it uses nothing but butter, cream, and lard. Ever looked at the back of one of those fast-food boxes with the nutrition panel? I have, and I am still stumped. I have actually tried to pack that many calories into a hamburger, and failed. To this day I haven’t figured out how they even get the calorie-to-ounces ratio they achieve. It’s like the literally inject straight calories into their buns or something. Anyway, the point here is that it’s hard to do worse than processed food, so cooking from scratch is your biggest help in eating right.

That, however, is a pretty big goal, and it’s easy to get discouraged. So, just learn to cook one new, healthful meal each month. That’s not so bad, right? At the end of the year, you’ll have 12 new, healthy meals. That’s almost 2 whole weeks of dinners, or 1 week of dinners and lunches!

Where to start? The easiest place to start is with an old favorite.  Take a dish you and your family already eat, and see what can be improved upon. Use the internet (Google is your recipe friend) to search for healthy recipes, or even just for a healthy alternative.  Just changing an ingredient or two, or switching from canned vegetables to fresh or frozen, can make a huge difference in calories.

Some examples:

Your favorite: Mom’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

The switch: Lean ground beef instead of fatty (grass fed if you can), rolled oats to add some bulk, dice in some green peppers and onions, and tomato paste instead of ketchup on top. Whip up sweet potatoes with some cream of tartar, and if you need some moisture use a bit of chicken stock or skimmed milk. You’ve saved a boatload of calories, and added a lot of vitamins and fiber!

Your favorite: Spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread.

The switch: Whole wheat noodles instead of white. Or, if you’re really adventurous, baked spaghetti squash (cleaned from it’s shell, it’s like noodles!) A can of diced tomatoes tossed into the blender with some herbs (fresh or dried garlic, oregano, basil, and maybe a splash of red wine) and blended to whatever consistency you like.  Whole wheat bread sprayed with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic powder and a freshly ground sea salt, then under the broiler just until brown.  Serve with a green salad if it’s the right season, or toss some kale, chard, or frozen green beans into the spaghetti.

You get the idea. Switch Greek yogurt for sour cream or cream, blended cottage cheese for ricotta in stuffed shells or lasagna, add a few veggies here or there…this doesn’t have to be complicated.

What if you don’t cook? That’s a different story. That means there’s no “old standby” favorites to start from, and you’ll have to learn from scratch. Don’t worry–in some ways, that’s actually easier, because it means no bad habits to unlearn, right?

So, how do you get started if you don’t already cook? Start simple. Possibly whole wheat pasta tossed with rosemary olive oil and vegetables, or maybe a quick stir fry over brown rice. It can even be something like chicken salad over greens, or you could do a breakfast (I like fermented oats, which I know sound awful, but are dreamy). Don’t go crazy until you’ve got one or two simple, easy, go-to recipes down. Once you feel like you can maybe do more, then absolutely do more!

Related Articles

• Meatless Monday: Here’s How You Can Do It (biggreenpurse.com)
• Menu Plan Monday 9/27 (frugalupstate.com)
• Telling people to eat more vegetables has been a miserable failure (futurepundit.com)
• The October edition of the This Mama Cooks! healthy food and diet posts carnival (thismamacooks.com)
• 5 Recipes, 1 Ingredient: Whole-Wheat Pasta (healthnews.ediets.com)
• Weekend Menu Planning: Try Something New with Eggplant (blogher.com)
• Meg Wolff: A Plant-Based Meal Inspired By Bill Clinton (huffingtonpost.com)
• Creativity in the Kitchen (groupon.co.uk)

Frugal and Foodie

Thanksgiving is over, and it’s time to hop back on the frugal food wagon! As many of you know, there are now four adults to feed in the house. We share our gorgeous, huge new home with another  couple that we’ve known for years, and are keeping the budget down by also sharing food. Here’s the next two week’s dinners (some of it in pictures).

November 30th – December 6th

Monday: Venison Sausage and green lentil soup, with homemade bread. One of our favorite soups for winter meets my brother’s venison stash. We were given some ridiculous amount of venison this year (which is fantastic, since we love the stuff), including these fantastic sausages. They were tender and spicy, giving a deep, warm flavor to the soup. As I’ve mentioned before, lentils are a great source of lean protein, are high in fiber, and a very frugal-but-satisfying dinner. We used homemade stock for the broth, and then paired the soup with some of UC’s homemade ciabatta bread. The total cost for the four of us was less than $2.00. If we’d had to buy the sausage, it would have been about $4-5 total.

Tuesday- Creole catfish, with apple & onion hash, mixed vegetables, and salad. This is a bit of a splurge meal. I love apple & onion hash, and since we have apples coming out our ears, this was the perfect time to make this great side dish.

Wednesday-Thai Salmon patties and hot-and-sour sauce, with miso-peanut noodles (whole-wheat), and a veggie. Canned salmon is another great source of tasty, lean protein at a good price, and mixed with TVP it’s an even better price. I’ll whip up some miso-peanut sauce (with a touch of lime), and grab a veggie out of the freezer to round things out.

Thursday- Mexican pinto beans and brown rice. I’ll be using some of our (huge) store of dried beans for these. Coupled with the brown rice this is a great, spicy dinner with lots of vitamins, protein, and fiber. There will be a salad on the side for  more greens.

Friday: Shape-It-Up Meatloaf with whipped sweet potatoes and a vegetable. My most-requested recipe, currently, is this meatloaf. Low in fat and calories, high in flavor and nutrition. Made with lean meat, oats, TVP, spinach, black beans, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and spices, this meatloaf has converted even the most hard-core meat eaters! This looks better baked, and tastes better than it looks period; but:

Saturday-Salmon, mushroom, and vegetable polenta. We love creamy polenta in the winter. It’s hearty, and when you toss in loads of vegetables, canned salmon, and some smoked black sea salt it’s also tasty and healthy. We’ll be using some of the wild mushrooms we collected this year:

Sunday-Venison Chili with cheddar & sour cream cornbread. My special chili gets a twist with venison (thanks, Dan!). Pinto, white, and black beans (soaked and cooked) will make this stew fun and flavorful.

December 7th – 13th

Monday-Salmon and blue cheese pasta. We’ll be making homemade, whole-wheat pasta if all goes well, then topping it with salmon and vegetables in light blue-cheese, parmesan, and lemon sauce. It’ll look like this, but with the addition of salmon:

 

Tuesday-Spanish braised chicken thighs with brown rice and salad. This one-pot meal is reminiscent of paella! Deep, rich Spanish flavors, lots of chicken and vegetables, all cooked with brown rice in a wonderful sauce.

Wednesday-Sweet & Sour Tofu. Our favorite tofu from Twin Oaks Commune will sit amid peppers, broccoli, and other vegetables in this Asian dish.

Thursday-Venison Roast with root vegetables and salad. The leftover root vegetables will be used to make the stew you’ll see later on in the menu.

Friday-Whole wheat pizza night. UC is making whole-wheat crust, our friend Adam is making the sauce, and we’ll all top our pizzas with our favorites. Mine will be light on the cheese, heavy on the roasted broccoli, onions, and TVP. UC’s will be heavy on the cheese and pepperoni.

Saturday- Roasted root vegetable stew. This is another great winter soup. Roasted root vegetables are pureed into a creamy soup, served topped with parmesan cheese and olive oil:

Sunday-Kufta on pita, with the fixin’s and cucumber salad. This Middle Eastern vegetarian dish combines lentils and bulgar for a complete, lean protein:

Right now, we’re spending about $100/week to feed 4 adults.

What’s your meal plan this week?

Two Week Menu Plan

Sunday I got out of bed all by my lonesome, so to speak, and reveled in a perfect morning. The other half was off on an overnight lab-work trip (which I’d been supposed to go on, but had to back out due to work, unfortunately), and I had the morning to myself.  One of the tasks of the day was to start a grocery list and food plan for the upcoming weeks, which UC would help with when he got home. To do that, I felt, I needed more than my usual light breakfast. Since I work out fairly early each morning, my breakfast is usually protein & some fiber, and I eat a heavier snack when I get home. Sunday,I had the freedom to indulge!

In the picture: 0% Fat Fage Greek Yogurt (I prefer TJ brand, but we don’t have one close by), topped with fresh melon, blackberries & strawberries we put up earlier this year in the freezer, chopped walnuts, and a 1/2 tsp. local honey. Eggs, scrambled with leftover seared broccoli (the nutty flavor is deep and rich), mushrooms (mushrooms, in addition to being tasty, have recently been shown to decrease the risk of breast cancer by up to 35%), garden-fresh green pepper, tomato, basil, and thyme. Sided with clementines and a cup of Yoga detoxifying tea. YUM!

Eating breakfast, I started the menu plan, which was finished last night with UC. As we get ready to move, we’re concentrating on making some meals that leave excellent freezable leftovers. The idea is to get things we can heat up quickly in the microwave the week before and the week after the move, so we can avoid eating out (and eating unhealthy foods, too). So, you’ll see some heavier fare here pretty regularly for the next couple of weeks.

DINNERS

Week 1

Monday: Shrimp Enchilada bake with salad and crusty bread. This recipe is from this month’s Shape magazine, and is an experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tuesday: Pork piccata with golden acorn squash, salad, and broccoli. UC loves my pork piccata, which I make with a slightly lighter sauce than some restaurants. It’s important to use flat leaf, also called “Italian”, parsley in this recipe. Actually, I never use curly-leaf parsley other than for garnish, and rarely even then. It just doesn’t have enough flavor. Aldi had great broccoli this week!

Wednesday: Baked whole chicken with baked sweet potatoes and long beans. I’ll slide some lemon and rosemary under the chicken’s skin, rub it with a mixture of herbs (lemon thyme, sage, oregano, black smoked sea salt, pepper, and paprika) and stuff it with a quinoa and grape stuffing. The potatoes take about the same time to bake in foil, and the long beans will be seared (they’re from our garden this year).

Thursday: Rustic Cabbage soup with crusty bread. UC will be cooking this night, as I have an evening activity.  He makes wonderful cabbage soup that’s replete with butter beans and chunks of vegges. We serve it with a hunk of crusty bread (his ciabatta, in this case) to make a wonderfu meal on cold days.

Friday: Leftovers. I’ll be gone all day, and late into the evening working. So, it’s a great time to clean out the refrigerator. Some leftovers will be packed by me for lunch and dinner, some will be eaten by UC for his dinner, and the rest will be packed and frozen for the move.

Saturday: We’re out of town this day to deal with move stuff, so we’ll be eating out from necessity.

Sunday: Pumpkin Bisque with grilled cheese on artisan bread.  ‘Tis the season for pumpkin, one of my favorite things! Since we’ll be coming home late, we needed a fast dinner. We’ve got an amazing bisque recipe from a fabulous restaurant, L’etoile in Charlottesville, at the market last year. The restaurant uses a lot of local products, and the food is amazing. We’ll be serving this up and freezing some for the move. The grilled cheese will be on some of Thadd’s bread, with an-as-yet-undetermined cheese, and smokey chipotle mustard I’ll be whipping up.

Week 2

Monday: Roasted turkey, stuffed with apple, chicken sausage, & cornbread stuffing. Served with whipped sweet potatoes and seasonal veggie. Turkey is a good price right now, and while I’d love to buy our turkey locally, we just can’t spend $70 a bird or more. This is one of the few things we haven’t tried to work into our budget, but hope to possibly next year. With the move so close, it’s just not reasonable this year. What we will be doing is roasting the turkey and eating on it for a day or two. The remaining meat will be ground and frozen, to be pulled out after the move and mixed with mayo, pickles, and a few other things to make a wonderful sandwich spread. The bones will be made into stock, which will also be frozen for later use. I’ll make the cornbread for the stuffing this week, break it up and let it dry out, then store it in a plastic bag until next week. It’s fantastic with local tart apples and a good quality chicken sausage!

Tuesday:  Tofu & Chickpea Indian Curry over Brown Scented Rice. This is one of my specialties.  I don’t do it often for just the two of us because there’s no way to not make a mountain of it, but it freezes fairly well so long as you freeze the tofu separately, which we’ll be doing. My curries are spicy, but in slow-heat, forhead-sweating kind of way. The brown rice is scented with star anise, cardamom, coriander, and saffron. The curry itself has tofu, chickpeas, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, green peppers, onions, ginger, bananas (no, that’s not a typo), and some other veggies (whatever I find that looks fresh and tasty). This is a wet curry, made with yogurt and coconut milk, so it’s perfect over rice.  It’s topped with chopped peanuts,  green pepper, and raisin.

Wednesday: Veggie Lasagna, Shawn-Style, served with salad and garlic bread. There’s a trick to this lasagna that I just can’t give up yet. It’s one of my most asked-for recipes, and even meat eaters dive in for seconds (and thirds, and fourths, if I let them). It’s also got about half the calories of regular veggie lasagna! And nope, there’s no tofu or soy involved.  This will be served with a huge green salad and crusty, homemade garlic bread. I’ll be making two pans so we have enough to freeze.

Thursday: Zirva, with brown rice and seasonal veggie. Zirva is chicken roasted with plums and apricots, and it’s incredible. The recipe is from my mentor, Chef Channon, in her book “Celebration at the Sarayi,” which takes a look at 1500′s Turkish Ottoman Empire cooking. The recipes in this book are just mouthwater (hint: you can buy the interactive book at her website!).

Friday: We’re eating out for the second time in two weeks, which is pretty unusual for us. But, we’re trying to spend time with friends before we leave (yes, we’ll see them again, but not nearly as often), and this is a chance to meet our friend Dave’s mom!  Dave’s creativity is inspiring, and his commitment to environmentally-friendly landscape design is pretty fantastic, so we want to see where he gets it from! Dave and his wife, Mindy, have invited us to the Bavarian Chef for dinner with his mom. This restaurant is it’s very own experience. Go hungry, that’s all I am saying.

Saturday: Venison and Wild Mushsroom straganoof, served over spaghetti squash “noodles.” Another specialty of mine. The trick is in the fresh-ground nutmeg. The venison is from my nephew (my older nepher, though I suspect I’ll be getting some from my younger nephew in November, since he just got his first deer. Congratulations, Josh!!!). The Chicken-of-the-Woods mushrooms were collected and frozen earlier this year, and hopefully I can collect–rather than buy–some oyster mushrooms next week. Courtesy of an idea from UC, this will be served over spaghetti squash “noodles”, which he did with something else a while ago. It was spectacular, so it’s becoming a standard part of our menu.

LUNCHES (mix-n-match)

Leftovers. Tuna salad on whole grain bread. Salad. Probably some things I am forgetting.

BREAKFASTS (mix-n-match)

Steel-cut oats. Greek yogurt with fruit. Whole Grain toast. Scrambled/fried/poached eggs. Fruit. Homemade healthy muffins.

SNACKS

Hard boiled, farm-fresh eggs. Nuts. Cheese. Fruit (pomegranates are in season, yummy!). Fresh salsa & corn chips. Raw Veggies. Steamed artichoke. etc. Homemade healthy muffins.

BEVERAGES

Milk. Tea, caff and non. Water. Coffee.

I haven’t finished shopping for the whole two weeks yet, so I can’t give a definitive cost.

Where Do You Stand?

The USDA publishes average food costs each month. I’ve never posted these before, but a discussion came up on one of our boards. When looking at this, keep in mind it is for food only, not paper products, personal products, etc.

USDA Cost of Food

While we’re fairly frugal, we also eat really well. After deducting  personal products, etc. and averaging the costs for a month, we fall somewhere between thrifty and low-cost, depending on the week. I’ve been able to get us well under the “thrifty” at times, but it’s not a great way for us to try and eat. Thadd needs too many calories to make that reasonable for long (especially without a garden, which we didn’t have until this year due to apartment living), and we do try to eat healthy. Unfortunately, real produce costs a fortune!

So, where do you fit?

Foodie and Frugal, 1.19.09 to 1.21.09

First:

What’s New & Upcoming at EclecticEdibles.com: The Bean Burger Recipe I’d promised last week is now up in the left sidebar. Sorry for the delay. Also, later in the week you’ll get another 10 Minute Lunches update, and I am going to try to get a separate page started for those this week, too. Sometime either this week or next, I hope to post on my latest farm tours. Those of you on my mailing list will also receive another addition of my newsletter.

Foodie & Frugal:

I haven’t been keeping up on the Foodie and Frugal thing as much as I’d like, in part because they’re long posts and I’ve been busy. This will be an abbreviated version in some ways, but it’s the best I could do on limited time (farm visit today).

Large shopping trip today: $50.00

Meat shopping at farm today: $10.00 (approx)

Est. “fresh” trip for perishables next week: $20.00

Total Grocery budget: $80.00 total. $40.00 a week. Right on budget.

Week I (1.19.08 to 1.24.08  )

Monday. Indian Chicken with rice. This is a recipe adapted from this site, one of my current favorites. I love this woman’s site. The chicken recipe was a good base, but I wanted a bit more. So, I’ve added some different spices and tossed in a bunch of greens. We’re serving this over white rice, because I am NOT paying $3/bag for brown rice, which is all they had left today at the local store.  It’s on my list for when I head to my out-of-town store, where I get it for far, far less.

Tuesday. Hobo Casserole with lima beans & salad. We have some local potatoes in cold storage we need to use up before they go bad, so I’ll combine them with our local, grassfed beef, carrots, peas, red onions, and a bunch of spices in my cast-iron skillet and bake it all up. I’ll top it with unprocessed wheat germ (tasteless, but good for fiber). Served with organic salad from Costco and frozen baby lima beans. Yep, frozen. We’re eating a lot of frozen veggies right now, because our local produce selection is just *awful*.

Wednesday. Goulash. Pseudo-traditional goulash for movie night. Folks will bring sides, we’ll watch movies. Should be fun.

Thursday. Herb seared salmon with quinoa risotto and asparagus. Quinoa is a great, lower carb side dish. I’m doing it with Rembrandt Aged Gouda (you can get this at The Frenchman’s Cellar. Run. Now. This post will be here when you get back), black smoked sea salt, and mushrooms. The asparagus is from Aldi. They’ve got great prices on it. I realize it’s not local, nor is it organic. Sometimes, you gotta do what your budget will let you, and given the horrible selection of fresh, and the limited selection of organic frozen, this was a reasonable option.

Friday. Meatballs with whipped sweet potatoes and peas. UC will be doing the cooking for that night while I am delivering my Ready-to-Go Meals at the Frenchman’s Corner. Local beef, as usual.

Saturday. GAME NIGHT. We’re headed over to J & B’s with some other folks. The Guys will be playing Axis and Allies. The Ladies will be watching all 5 hours of BBC’s Pride & Prejuidice. And possibly swimming. Dinner is TBD, but will likely be pizza, I am thinking.

Week II (1.25.09 to 1.31.09)

Sunday. Lasagne with salad and garlic bread. This starts us off with lots of leftovers for UC’s lunch. I’ll be doing my healthy version, which uses no ricotta cheese. Instead, I blend lowfat cottage cheese with a bunch of spices (secret blend, sorry!) and some bread crumbs to use as filling. There will be whole wheat noodles, greens, mushrooms, local beef, and yummy sauce. Served with organic salad and garlic bread made from UC’s ciabatta (baked yesterday in a frenzy of flour and yeast…go check it out!).

Monday. Chickpea saag over rice. UC’s still working out the kinks in his favorite Indian recipe. This week’s version will be made with our home-canned beet greens and spinach.

Tuesday. Salmon Patties with roasted sweet potatoes & red onions and corn. My famous fish patties make a return on this week’s menu. They’re lowfat, full of protein and fatty acids, and tasty. I’ll roast off some red onions and sweet potatoes together, seasoned with Herbs de Provence, black smoked sea salt, and cracked pepper.

Wednesday. Pumpkin Soup, in the pumpkin. We’ve got a huge cheese wheel squash in storage that needs to be roasted. We’re doing this for Movie night, and using the pumpkin to make pumpkin soup, garnished with a choice of porcini mushroom oil or fig balsamic vinegar. We’ll also likely have ciabatta available. Folks, as usual, will bring sides to round out the meal.

Thursday. Peanut noodles with scallops, served with salad and asparagus. This is UC’s birthday, but we’re doing the bigger meal Friday night. Tonight is another of his favorites, but it’s a lot quicker to make since we have spin class.

Friday. Garlic & Sea Salt Roasted Pork Shoulder, with golden potatoes. UC will be cooking his own Birthday dinner, which is the way he wanted it. This is one of his favorite dishes, and also one of his specialties. It’s not terribly healthy for you, but it’s his Birthday, so who cares?

Saturday. Tortilla Soup. After the rich meals for the past two nights, we wanted to switch up to something lighter and easy to make. We love tortilla soup, made with homemade chicken broth, black beans, home canned tomatoes, and lots of other yummies. Topped with some tortilla chips, a pinch of cheddar, and a dab of guacamole.

Foodie and Frugal, Week of 12.13.08

Above: tonight’s dinner: Polenta with wild mushrooms (chicken and puffball), onions, and fricasse’ sauce. It was served with a mix of peas and collard greens. Yummy! Below: last night’s dinner: okra & pinenut pasta with blue cheese sauce and herb rubbed salmon.

I’ve been a bit lax on the whole “Foodie and Frugal” thing, and apparently it’s been missed. Sorry about that. So, here’s the menu plan for this coming week:

Monday: Lentil & Sausage Soup. You see this here a lot because it is very tasty, very hearty, very healthy, and very quick. Mondays see both UC and I gone for classes, me at Body Combat and him at Tai Chi; so, we need a quick meal. We use turkey sausage to keep the fat down. Lentils are a complete protein and full of fiber, so it keeps you full.    The recipe we use makes a huge pot that feeds us for several meals (and occasionally a few helpings even make it into the freezer) for under $3.00. We’re using the chicken stock I am making tonight from the hens we got a while ago as the base:

Tuesday: Not Your Mom’s Meatloaf and Sweet potatoes. This recipe is one of the absolute best I’ve made recently. I’ll try to get it up on the sidebar later this week. It’s also very healthy, and low-cal. Served with sweet potatoes for antioxidants its’ pretty much a complete meal, but we’ll toss in some beets or corn, too. This can be a bit pricier just because it has meat, but it also has veggies in it. It’ll give us two meals, so I’m going to guess $1.50/person per meal.

Wednesday: Chicken or beef kabobs. This is movie night, and we feed lots of people. We make the main dish, everyone brings a side to pass. Tonight, it’s meat and veggie kabobs. I think I’m going to do them in a Thai peanut sauce.

Thursday: Beef Stew. You’re seeing a lot meat on this menu, it’s true. Our veggie dish was tonight. While I like to do more, UC is back to trying to gain weight, so we’re back to eating more meat (its seems to be the most effective thing he can do). This does break the bank a bit, unfortunately, but it keeps him in good shape. Beef stew is a pretty effective use of the beef, and it’ll also mean I can crock pot it. Which is great, since this is our night for spin. I’ll brown off the meat earlier in the day, then toss it in the crockpot with carrots, onion, corn, peas, and potatoes. We’ll have it with some of the sourdough UC is making right now, and probably brown rice.

Friday: Chicken Lasagne. This is one of the dishes you’ll see on my menu for my Ready to Go Meals this week, so I am just going to toss another one in the oven. This will give us some leftovers for later. I’ll be using whole wheat noodles, spinach, TVP, mushrooms, and a low-fat cheese combo I make myself (there’s no ricotta in this, but it’s actually doesn’t need it). This is really frugal, and with all the protein and fiber, it’s incredibly healthy.

Saturday: Yule. This is our holiday celebration with good friends. We’ll be cooking off a turkey and a bunch of other stuff, but the specifics are still in the works.

I expect to spend $35-45 on groceries. The rest is from the pantry.

Check back tomorrow for my Ready To Go Meals selections for this week. Also, check the RSS Feed on the sidebar for my published articles on treating ADD/ADHD and Depresison with diet.

11.5.08 Weekly Frugal & Festivals

Hi, everyone! Sorry for the delay, but I was watching the election when I should have been blogging.

**Before I get to the menu for the week, I want to do some shameless promotion. I’m writing for Associated Content now, and getting paid for it. Please click through and read (or just click through and give me page hits, I’m easy to please) when you can.  It’s all work safe. Thanks!!**

We headed to the Heritage Apple Festival and the Persimmon Festival at Edible Landscaping with our friends, Dave & MJ and Erin and Adam. We had a great time, but it probably would have been a better time if two of the four of us hadn’t been just starting to come down with something. I am really looking forward to next year, when I hopefully don’t feel like collapsing on my face. That said, it was still a lot of fun, and we got a great deal on apples (which we’ll be canning as sauce and apple butter this weekend sometime).

I am so excited because we only spent $25 on groceries for the week (and $5 of that was in rare breed eating apples). This is when our stocking up starts coming into play, and those high summer grocery bills begin to be totally worth it!

This week (starting yesterday):

Dinners

Sunday: Butternut squash soup with homemade onion rolls. We put up squash from one of our favorite farms, Roundabout, and this was the first use of it. The soup was delightful and rich, perfect with UC’s NY Style onion rolls!

Monday: Homemade whole wheat pasta and sauce, with a side of sauteed zucchini. We will be making fresh pasta tonight, and pairing it with our homemade vodka sauce. The tomatoes are from linguisas we got for $1/lb (organic & local). We’ll be adding TVP to the sauce after it’s done to add protein. All told, a super-cheap, healthy meal.

Tuesday: Scalloped veggies. We need to use up some leftover cheeses (Amish butter, morbier, and aged gouda), so I’ll mix those with some standard cheddar and make a nice sauce. That’ll get dumped over some fresh veggies, then baked with a topping of whole wheat and anadama bread crumbs & TVP from homemade bread (we save and dry the ends).  it’s a great meal.

Wednesday: Chicken soup and sides. We’re hosting a movie & dinner night, and I’m making homemade chicken soup out of some local, organically-raised hens we got for $1/lb. They were older laying hens, so they’re perfect for stocks and soups. I’ll be popping in some carrots, and hopefully some homemade noodles (leftover from Monday night’s dinner). Folks bring sides if they want dinner.

Thursday: Pork chops with pickled beet tops and roasted beets. I’ll do the pork chops in one of my favorite spice rubs from The Frenchman’s Corner and pan-sear them. When we were putting up food for the winter, we got a ton of beets with the tops on. We wanted to do something with the tops, since they’re so healthful and tasty, and had initially thought about just cooking them down to can. Then, UC found a recipe for yeast fermented pickled chard. We used the beet tops in place of chard, and tonight we’ll pop a jar and try the results!

Friday: Undecided. Now that the markets are closed, we’ll be heading to some farms & stores directly on Fridays, so as of this week we’ll start our meal planning on Friday afternoon.

Lunches:

tuna salad on onion rolls (this was TASTY today), leftovers, pb&J on homemade bread, soup, and wraps from leftover 100% grass-fed London Broil (Pannill’s Gate) I pulled out of the freezer (along with local lettuces and tomatoes).

Snacks:

pb&J, cheese, smoothies, yogurt & granola, fruit (including some rare local apples!), roasted nuts, sliced tomatoes, carrots, chips & salsa.

Breakfasts

Eggs in a “nest” with toast (the nest is sautee’d spinach and garlic with balsamic dressing), porridge (wheat berry and pearl barley), cereal (got the Good Stuff with no HFCS on sale), and hopefully some homemade english muffin sandwhiches (UC is supposed to make the english muffins this week, but we’ll see if we have time).

Frugal Weekly 10.20.08, Still No Camera

I know, you miss my food pics. So do I. Unfortunately, Things have had to come before New Gadgets, and so still no camera.  You’ll just have to sift through the archives for your fix.

This past weekend, some friends got together with us at our place and canned 3/4 of a bushel of tomatoes, yeilding 24 quarts. Next Sunday, we’ll finish off the remaining 2 bushels (they weren’t ripe yet this week to can), and that should be enough tomatoes for a good, long while. Thank goodness for their pressure cooker! In the meantime, I’ll be canning pickled eggplant and green tomatoes, and giving some jalepenos to M & D (hey, can you guys email me–my email program seems to have lost your addresses) for their pickling pleasure. I’ll also be heading to Roundabout Farms to pick up our cold-storage goods, and I’m really excited to get beets with the dirt still clinging. I do hope I can borrow a camera for the day, so I can post some pics here.

This week in food and cooking, our menu:

Sunday: Herb-seared pork chops, served with balsamic-roasted butternut squash and peppered peas & green beans. This is one of my favorite ways to do butternut squash because it turns out so creamy and rich.

Monday: Tofu & chickpea saag over brown rice. This is one of my DH’s obsessions right now. He’s chosen a few dishes he’d like to get good at making, and since he loves saag this is on the list. Expect to see this on my meal plans a lot for while. Fortunately, it’s tasty. And, cheap, nutritious, and filling.

Tuesday: Roasted chicken with mixed veggies & biscuits. I’ll be brining the chicken overnight tonight, and popping it in the oven tomorrow before I head to weight training. DH will be home to watch it and hopefully making the biscuits, and we can eat after I get home and shower.

Wednesday: Salmon patties with winter squash and apple-onion hash. I serve my salmon patties with dill yogurt sauce, and the winter squash will be steamed. The apple-onion hash is pretty peppery, which compliments everything nicely.

Thursday: Crock-pot chuck steak with potatoes & carrots. My grass-fed farmer feels the latest animal has too strong a flavor, so gave me a chuck steak to try out for critiquing. Since this is one of my very heavy training days, and since both DH and I train together at 6:45 p.m., this is a great night for us to crockpot. I’ll treat it like a potroast.

Friday: Creamy roasted root veggies soup with salad and homemade ciabatta. I cooked up turnips & sweet potaotes as a side dish to my black bean burgers on Saturday. I’ll be using the leftovers, along with some beets, carrots, and mushrooms to make a creamy, rich soup.

Saturday: Friend Alex’s birthday party (Happy Birthday, hon!), so dinner at her mom’s.

Breakfasts:

Porridge (wheat berry & rye), home made “egg mcmuffins,” fermented oats & wheat flakes.

I haven’t gone grocery shopping yet, but according to my pricebook, we should be in undre $100 for the two of us this week. We’re trying, yet again, to up UC’s calorie intake. I never believed stuffing 4,000 calories into someone would 1) be necessary or 2) be this difficult. Since he can’t really have it in simple carbs and sugars, that leaves proteins and complex carbs. Grass fed beef and veggies just doesn’t have the kind of calorie count. His stomach isnt’ big enough to hold as much food as it would take to stop him losing weight with a healthy diet and nothing else. So, back to the Uber-Smoothies twice a day.

Uber Smoothies (600-700 calories each)

-2/3 c. yogurt of your choice

-2 scoops whey protein

-1 raw egg

-1/2 cup milk

-1 banana

-Additions (endless combinations): peanut butter (organic, of course), almond butter, vanilla, honey,  malt, instant coffee, other fruits, oatmeal, almond extract, fruit juices, nutella, and the kitchen sink)

Put into blender, or put into very large glass and use stick blender. Whip until frothy. Stick in freezer for a while if desired (about 15 minutes). Drink.

Obviously, at 5′ and 110 lbs, I can’t go anywhere near this stuff. Just breathing the air around it while I blend it probably adds more calories than I work off in my hardest training sessions. UC, however, can down two, and just about break even on his calories for the day. Maybe. What I wouldn’t do for his metabolism (though, I have no desire to be 6’6″ tall).

Look for another “Consumer Education” blog next week. I am still waffling on the topic, largely because I have too much to say and not enough focus or time to do it in. So, if you’ve got requests, let me know.

In the meantime, eat well.

Weekly Frugal, 9.21.08

The farmer’s markets are alive right now. Produce is in hard and heavy, and the tastes of fall are everywhere. In addition to buying for meals, UC and I are buying to put up for winter. Last week it was peaches and pears for saucing (the peaches have been sauced, still waiting on the pears to be ripe enough), and next week it’ll be all kinds of things:

-Peppers. Roundabout is bringing us their seconds at a nice price, and UC are taking all we can get. We’ll roast them, then put some into oil, turn some into sauce, and flash individually freeze some.

-Tomatoes. Well, these will actually be two weeks from now when the Nelkes return to the market from their vacation. We’ll be getting some unknown-but-large quantity of linguisa tomatoes to sauce. Yum! I hope to can some, since we’re running out of freezer space.

-Chevre. The unpastuerized goat cheese will soon be out of our reach for the winter, so we freeze a bunch of it while we can still get our greedy little paws on it.

-Squash. We’re heading to Roundabout directly to pick up a bunch of winter squash, and we will be taking several of the Nelke’s Long Island Cheese squash. We’ll also be picking up beets and carrots.

And, heaven’s knows what else. Anything we can get our hands on that keeps, really. It’s an expensive time of year; and, though I am very happy to be supporting our local farmers, I also can’t wait until we can have a garden to offset the expense. Spending now is thrifty for us, however, becuase it means healthy, local, fresh foods year this winter. And, it means spending less at the grocery store, too. We’ll be eating quite a bit from our stores as the cold sets in!

This brings us to where we’re putting all this. Well, that’s kind of hard to explain. The short answer is we’re turning a section of our back spare bedroom into cold storage. It’s got two outside facing walls with nothing really resembling insulation, so it stays fairly cool in there anyway. We’re going to keep the door shut and have a small fan running across the shelving for circulation. With some other measure in place, this should keep it at a reasonable storage temperature. It does mean losing the use of the backroom for guests, but it has meant I’ll now have room to set up permanent sewing quarters. I’ll take the trade off for now.

Meals this week are a bit odd, as we have rehearsal almost daily for “An Ornamental Murder,” a dinner theater type dealy we’re in to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Dinners most nights have to be fast if we hope to get anything done at all other than rehearse.

Market bill this week: $60.00. Grocery store won’t get done until Tuesday; but, according to my price book, it should be about $40.00. We’re still trying to stay around $100/wk including household and personal goodes, despite rising grocery costs. What isn’t figured in there is tonight’s meal, because part of it isn’t ours. More on that in a minute.

Today was “Kitchen day,” and I made organic chicken stock (which I need to go drain soon), roasted chestnuts for freezing, froze the peach sauce, harvested paw paw pulp, and will be putting on porridge shortly. UC is still baking, and when he’s done we’ll have ciabatta and whole wheat sandwich bread.

Dinners:

Sunday. Garlic sautee’d shrimp over whole wheat pasta, in a lemon-butter sauce. Served with edamame. One of the meals I’ll be doing for my client this week is shrimp, and unfortunately you can’t buy just 4 large, quality shrimp. So, we decided to have a nice meal and get a full measure for ourselves. UC is trying his hand at the seafood thing tonight, and I’m really excited to taste what he’s doing. This is not in any way definable as a frugal meal. Tasty, but definitely not frugal. Well, we are saving the shells to make stock, but that is about where the “Frugal” ends.

Monday. Grass fed beef and mushroom straganoff using whole wheat noodles. Served with corn. I love the flavor that Panhill’s Gate’s beef gives my stroganoff. It’s rich, but because I use grass-fed beef, low-fat organic sour cream, and organic tomato paste, it’s very healthy. You don’t need all the canned soups and creams to make good stroganoff! The quick part about this is that I’ll be making it in conjunction with my client’s meal. Again, you can’t buy a 1/3 of a pound of grass fed beef, so I’ll be making a full measure and bringing the rest home. Since I do an inclusive menu for her (meaning her groceries are included in her fee), this becomes a good option. She gets more extensive, varied meals that I otherwise wouldn’t reasonably be able to cook for her in the current budge, and all the ingredients get used.

Tuesday. Meat balls. Served with sweet potatoes and sliced heirloom tomatoes. This is UC’s dish, he’s the meat ball guy. Again, grass-fed beef from Panhill’s Gate (hi, Patti!), local sweet potatoes, and heirloom tomatoes from Waterpenny Farm.

Wednesday. Indian Spinach Tofu over brown rice. This is one of those new meals. It’s a crockpot recipe from A Year of Crockpotting, the site created by a woman who swore to cook more for her family by using a crockpot every day for a year. She’s got some really fun and interesting recipes on there, and I’ve spent more time on that site the last few evenings than I could really spare. The tofu will be from the Twin Oaks Commune, near Charlottesville, VA. This is by far the best tofu I’ve ever had, and at $2.00/lb, it’s also a fantastic deal.

Thursday. Spanish Braised Chicken with peppers, served with butternut squash. Another crockpot dish. The peppers are from the Nelke’s, the squash from Roundabout, and the chicken is from safeway. Unf, we just couldn’t use another whole chicken right now. Too expensive, and not really necessary. So, not local, but organic.

Friday. Beef Fajitas. These will be made from leftover London Broil from Panhill’s Gate. The last broil we got was HUGE, so we used some for broil, some for sandwiches, and the rest will be tossed in a skillet with chocolate, green, red, and pueblano peppers, onion, and appropriate spices. Pile onto a tortilla shell with homemade vegetarian refried black beans, diced heirloom tomatoes from Waterpenny, and some sour cream, and you’ve got a meal. The orginal broil cost us abour $20.00, but we ‘ve gotten 3 meals (all with leftovers) out of it. So, 3 x 2 people = 6 portions, plus 3 lunches for UC makes 9 (for most people, this would be 11 or so). That’s about $2.22/portion, and the sides we’ve used have been less than a $1/portion (often much less, like tomorrow, which will be something like $.50/portion). $3.00 or under a dinner isn’t sillycheap, but it’s not bad!

Saturday. No dinner, we’re fed at the play.

Lunches this week will be leftovers and soup I’ll be making just for that (lentil & turkey sausage).  Snacks will be smoothies, fruit, PB&J, etc. Breakfasts will be porridges, eggs, fermented oats, and fruits.

And, dinner is ready. Time to go!