apple pie a la mode

....without the boring "pie" part. :)

I just chopped up apples and made the spiced sugary filling out of them, then baked them in a covered dish instead of bothering with a pie crust. It produced a REALLY delicious, syrupy apple-pie-insides kind of thing. I took one taste and realized it has to be dumped over vanilla ice cream for best effect, so I am getting some of that later tonight. :D

a quick catch-up

I did trick almost all the family into going "apple picking" at the farm near us. (Amy couldn't come because her parents in law were up for a visit that weekend.) We ended up picking raspberries and blueberries, and buying apples, peaches and corn from the farm stand because I was a bit too tired to keep going on with the pick-your-own. We also got some ridiculously yummy feta, tomato and basil dip which is just perfect on veggie crackers!

Since starting maternity leave, I have made soda bread, strawberry-peach jam, quiche, beef stew, apple pie, many pancakes, and a bunch of more regular meal stuff. The jam came out especially tasty. A bit thin, since I didn't put a lot of sugar in, but who doesn't want low sugar, seedless strawberry peach jam? I usually share my jams with the rest of the family, but Alex has pretty much forbidden me to do that this time!

delicious dish

Ripped off from my beloved Mommie, of course--who better to steal tasty recipes from???

1 link (1 lb) of turkey kielbasa (just as yummy as the pork stuff but MUCH less fatty)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 cup rice
about 1 tomato can's worth of added water (at least for my rice, which is proving to be somewhat incorrigible about water quantities and cook times)

Throw it all in a skillet and simmer it until the rice is tender.

DONE!

And it's ridiculously good. You wouldn't even believe it. Bo was feasting delightedly on the grains of rice I gave him, because they were so tasty he thought they must be meat.

check your ingredients list

I was VERY offended to find that some pudding mix that I bought had aspartame in it! This was after I had specifically chosen the "regular" one that was sitting right next to the "sugar-free". WHY would you use artificial sweeteners in the one that's already sweetened with sugar?? (It's probably cheaper, one would assume.)

Anyway, aspartame is one of the items that pregnant ladies are specifically not supposed to eat. Good thing I read pretty much everything that's in front of me, and my eyes wandered over the ingredient list while I was mixing up the pudding!

a cooking frenzy!

Tonight I made giant batches of beef stock, beef stew, chicken stock, chicken pot pie, and followed it all up with a loaf of delicious soup bread (made with beef stock instead of water). I am soooooooooooo tired! I think I was in the kitchen for at least 3 hours straight. But I probably made enough to feed me and Alex for the better part of a week. :D

EDIT: I forgot to mention the jello (with blueberries from the farm down the street) and the mac & cheese that ended up being dinner!

bread experiment

I was getting sick of the tiny bit of sweetness that shows up in my Favorite loaf of bread, so I decided to try a batch with NO sugar added.

Well, it really didn't rise much, ultimately, even though I gave it more time. I did know that the sugar is there to feed the yeast, so I'm not too surprised. It tastes good anyway --it's just about 1/2 the size of usual loaves!

baked macaroni & cheese casserole

This is the best mac & cheese in the WORLD and makes a giant casserole. It used to feed my whole 5-person family when I was growing up, with leftovers!

1 box (16 oz.) elbow macaroni --$1.20
8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated --$2.00
2 tbsp butter or oil --8 cents (vegetable oil)
1/4 tsp salt --negligible
2 tbsp flour --2 cents
2 cups milk --50 cents
1 sleeve saltine crackers --43 cents
Total: $4.23

That's less than $1 per person.

If anyone wants me to start posting recipes instead of just ingredient lists, I can totally do that, but for right now I'm mostly excited about the prices (and how low they are)!

gorgeous bread!

I have a favorite bread recipe, which I make pretty much whenever the weather's not too hot. I prefer making bread at home to buying it in the store anyway. I made this today:...and then in the spirit of what Alison and I have been talking about, I got to wondering whether/how economical it really is to make my own bread. I did a bunch of research, and here's what I came up with:

1 package yeast --67 cents
1/4 cup warm water
7/8 cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp salt --1 cent
1 1/2 tbsp sugar --2 cents
1 tbsp vegetable oil --4 cents
3-3 1/2 cups flour --56 cents

Whole loaf: $1.30
Comparable loaf from the store: $3.89
Saved: $2.59!

Even if you're just getting a loaf of Wonder Bread, it's $3.19. I'd much rather have mine!

the latest challenge

Since my stomach seems to have given up entirely on the whole don't-give-it-back thing, I am working on what I can eat that at least won't be TERRIBLE to taste again for the next six hours.

Foods so far: Apples, pancakes.

.... though there definitely could be worse menus, this could get dull.

yum yum

I came up with a big pile of sliced tomato, avocado, orange bell pepper and cucumber with a light drizzle of Greek dressing. It was REALLY good!

pot roast turned out well

I did it by my mom's method. (It's my favorite way to get acquainted with cooking a new food--try it how my mom does it and then play with it from there, if I even need to!)

In this case it meant I browned it on all sides, then nearly submerged it in water and gave it a good simmer until it got really tender. I also threw in some carrots and potatoes to boil in the meat water as the meat finished up.

At the last minute I decided I wanted to make some gravy too. I don't really know the first thing about gravy, except that you start with a roux, and that it involves flour and meat juices, but it turned out okay--a bit bland but definitely edible. Some salt and bay leaf fixed that up okay, and the meat was tender and moist enough that it didn't really need gravy anyway. The thing I ended up being proud of with the gravy was that I didn't burn it to the bottom of the pot. :)

new things to cook with

Alex and I were grocery shopping and I got inspired by artichokes and pot roast. Not that I've ever cooked either.... but I will! And they're going to be GOOD. :)

another tasty dinner by the Bowlings

Alex and I were feeling inspired by the beautiful weather that we had today, so we decided to go to the store and see what jumped out at us for a good springtime dinner.

We found some yummy-looking pre-marinated pork tenderloin, but decided we could marinate some ourselves (pre-marinated was $7 and change and non-marinated was $2 and change, which was good motivation).

We also got corn on the cob to boil up, and then the real stroke of genius was getting apples and onions to boot.

We rubbed the tenderloin in this ridiculously yummy stuff called Maple Pepper. Aside from those, it also has garlic and some Secret Ingredients. My sister and brother in law gave me a jar of it from a restaurant somewhere in the boonies a while ago, and it turned out to be the perfect complement to the pork.

So we baked the pork while we fried up the apples and onions in yummy butter, then we poured the apples and onions onto the pork and baked it all some more.

This was possibly the yummiest thing we've EVER eaten. I'm not exaggerating, either. The pork was so tender we could cut it by waving a fork at it. I think it helped that we had a cover on the baking dish, so all the moisture stayed inside. Also, we threw a little brown sugar into the apple/onion mixture, which helped to caramelize it gorgeously.

The only flaw is that it used up a bunch of maple pepper! We'll have to find out where it came from, so we can get more. :)

real vegetables

I am in LOVE with fresh, GOOD produce. We got some tomatoes from Stop & Shop (which turns out to be kind of 2/3 of the way in quality and price from a Market Basket to a Hannaford, for those of you who have any idea what I'm talking about).

Anyway, the tomatoes were so ripe and perfect that the whole display of them smelled like REAL tomatoes--the kind you can pick off the plant and just gobble down. MMMmmmmm.....

(ASIDE: I am SOOO sick of "vegetables" and "food" that are in fact not truly edible at all! For instance, supermarket cucumbers are a joke. They are foamy plant fiber and water, and nothing else. A home-grown cucumber is a thing of flavorful beauty. I NEED to get some garden space!)

Anyway, it's a couple of days later now and the tomatoes still smell like that, and every time I smell one I just want to dig in!

Eating these delicious tomatoes reminded me that my mom grows tomatoes when the season is right, and that they are invariably damn tasty.... This combined with my general state of disgruntledness at bad veggies, and resulted in me hatching a plan to see how I can earn a supply of Mom's tomatoes for myself, and maybe get some more kinds of fresh veggies to boot. :)

perfect pizza topping

Okay, so the absolute BEST cheese combination to put on a pizza is mozzarella, sharp cheddar and a sprinkling of Parmesan over the top. I am not kidding--it's to DIE for!

food today

I had some extra time today so I did some cooking.

YUM, as it turns out. :)

I started with potato soup, since Starbucks had some whole milk that was expiring, so I took it home to cook with. Don't worry, I made sure it hadn't actually spoiled before I threw it in the soup.

Alex and I ate the whole pot of soup in maybe half an hour. :) AND I am thinking about making a whole extra batch tomorrow. I made it from a recipe that was pretty bad, so I wrote in my changes for next time (more potatos, add cayenne pepper, things like that...).

I am really happy because in Oregon you could pull cans of potato soup off ANY grocery shelf, and in New England you just can't find potato soup without YUCK CLAMS. AKA clam chowder, which people around here are crazy about despite the presence of, well.... clams.

And then, I was having such a good time cooking that I made a chocolate cake. But chocolate cake is so much better with fruit sauce! So I made some sauce out of a bunch of mixed berries, and the cake soaked up a bunch of it really nicely. It was deeeelicious.

Just when I was running out of steam and couldn't face cooking for myself, Alex made TWO grilled cheese sandwiches for me in the knick of time. :)

I wish for....

On the way home tonight I expressed a wish something along these lines:

I am really jealous of places that have meat markets. Where you can just walk up and say "I'm making chicken tonight. Give me some chicken for dinner." And then you get enough for just that night, and the next day you come back and say, "Hi, I'd like some pork tenderloin for two." I really wish I had a place where I could go and get fresh meat just like that.


Later on, Alex and I were at Hannaford and lo, there was a meat counter! They had a bunch of fresh cuts of meat laid out, some seasoned for you with fascinating things like mango chutney. And then a little way down the back wall of the store, there was a fish counter with fresh cuts of fish, clams, etc.

This is my newest delight in the cooking world. The whole point is that the meat is FRESH! :)

cooking with espresso?

This goes on the Starbucks blog due to the espresso and the cooking blog due to the creative inspiration:

The espresso machines at work just got fixed so they pull really REALLY good shots, so I was thinking of making mousse or something with espresso added. Peter, one of the store's regulars, was there while I was tasting the newly repaired shots, and he told me that you can actually use espresso in soups, to marinade meats, in virtually every dessert dish thought of by man, and so on. I will have to start experimenting!

vanilla beans

Tomorrow I go on a quest to the natural foods store to see whether they carry inexpensive vanilla beans. Woo! :)