Recipes

As Food Prices Rise, I Get Creative in the Kitchen

by nan on 2011/12/19 · 0 comments

The price of food keeps going up. Every time I go shopping, I realize I can afford less and less. We can’t stop eating, so I learned to make things that were getting too expensive to buy.

> Salad dressing #1 – A large bottle of vinaigrette dressing was about $4.25 last time I checked. Daniel gave me a recipe his mom used when he was a kid. I made it, then tweaked it to be even less expensive and more convenient.

Recipe:
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup olive oil
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 cloves crushed garlic

Mix in a jar and refrigerate. Simple!

Tweak:
Make your salad. Drizzle olive oil on it, and stir it up. Drizzle soy sauce on it, and mix it up again. Eat. No mixing, make it on the spot, no forethought. Simple and inexpensive! A few teaspoons of olive oil and soy sauce go a long way.

> Salad dressing #2 – When cabbage and carrots were fresh in late summer, we were making Cabbage Salad (recipe forthcoming), grating carrots and slicing thin pieces of cabbage. We poured store bought poppy seed dressing on it, but this was getting expensive. I checked the ingredients on the bottle and googled for similar recipes. Cooks.com has the perfect dressing. It uses ingredients you should have right on hand, too!

2 c. sugar
2 tsp. dry mustard
3 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 1/4 cup white vinegar
2 1/3 cup canola oil
3 tsp. poppy seeds

You can blend this in a blender on slow, but I put it all in a one quart mason jar, shake it and put it in the fridge. It tastes the same as the store bought brand! And it’s way cheaper!

> Yogurt – A quart of organic yogurt is $3.79-4.79, depending on where you shop. We eat 2-3 quarts a week. That adds up to way too much money a month. I found a simple recipe to make yogurt in a crock pot from Stephanie O’Dea. Check the link for the whole recipe including ways to add fruit and sweeteners. Here’s my shortened version:

Take 1/2 gallon of milk, and put it in your crock pot on Low for 2.5 hours. Turn it off for 3 hours. Put 2 cups of the warm milk in a bowl, and add 1/2 cup plain vanilla yogurt as starter. Stir, then put it all back in the crock pot, cover and leave for at least 8 hours. Voila! Yogurt! Save 1/2 cup for your starter for the next batch.

I accidentally left it to sit for 9.5 hours last week, and it was thicker than the 8 hour version. I use old yogurt containers to store it in the fridge. I eat it plain with a little stevia or with granola, nuts, honey and raisins. A half gallon of milk is $3.99, roughly the price of one quart of store bought yogurt, and it makes two quarts! This has been a huge money saver for me. Thanks, Stephanie!

> Barbecue sauce – This is what I’m looking for today. My younger daughter, the picky eater, will eat a chicken breast if it is baked with bbq sauce on it. Store bought is about $4.00 a jar, and most contain high fructose corn syrup. Bad! So I’m on a mission to learn to make my own while she is away on vacation with her auntie. I’ll post this as soon as I find a good one.

There are things I have always done to save money and packaging in the kitchen. I make my own tortillas – very cheap, very organic and very fresh. I also cook beans from scratch. Canned beans are such a rip off! For $2.00 or more, you get about a cup of beans. The rest of the can is water. I buy canned beans for emergencies and last minute meals, and I buy refries. But if I need beans for chili, soup, hummus or falafels, I plan ahead and cook them for an afternoon in the crock pot.

And, needless to say, I grow a lot of my own food. Have you looked at the price of produce lately?! If you don’t have a yard big enough for a garden, you can grow in pots in sunny windows or under lights. Pots can go outside in good weather and come in for winter.

Take a look at your food budget. What can you make that would save you money? Cooking at home is better health-wise, too. It’s not always about money, but as food prices keep going up, I am more motivated to make my own so I don’t have to sacrifice my eating habits.

* * *

{ 0 comments }

Swift, Sweet, Simple Squash Soup

by nan on 2011/11/30 · 0 comments

I was so hungry last night, and there was nothing already made to heat up. In the fridge, though, I did find some vegetables. So, while I munched on crackers, I made soup real fast. It was really sweet and SO simple! All these ingredients, except for the oil, bay leaf and rice came off the farm. Squash and kale are fall crops, so you can make this fresh for many months! photo: flickr WhitA

olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large cloves of garlic, smashed and minced
1 quart vegetable broth (This is water I save from steaming vegetables or boiling potatoes.)
bay leaf
cooked winter squash (This is what makes it sweet! I had half a buttercup squash leftover.)
kale
herbs: dill weed and lots of basil
cooked rice

Saute the onion in olive oil on medium heat. When it’s almost completely translucent, add the garlic, and turn the heat to low. Stir to keep the garlic from burning. When it’s almost cooked through, add the broth and bay leaf. Heat to a simmer, then add the squash, kale leaves and herbs. When the kale is cooked, add the rice, and heat it through. All these foods, except the kale, are already cooked, so it doesn’t take long to heat them up! And kale takes 5 minutes to cook.

You can buzz this in the blender to make portable soup. In a bowl, it would be good served with Jack cheese grated on top and homemade muffins. I had neither, but it was still delicious!

* * *

{ 0 comments }

Roasted Garden Vegetables

by nan on 2011/09/27 · 2 comments

This recipe has morphed over time, as all recipes do. It started out as a dish my late friend, Cate, used to make when her kids were little. She’d put chicken legs, potatoes and carrots in a cast iron skillet and baked it for an hour. I expanded that to, from bottom to top, a full cut-up chicken, potatoes, carrots, zucchini and onion in a cast iron Dutch oven. After about 45 minutes, I brought the chicken to the top, then put it back in the oven with the lid off to brown for the last 15 minutes. The chicken and zucchini made juice that we’d pour over the potatoes.

When both my daughters went away to school, I eliminated the chicken and roasted a big variety of vegetables. A typical summer day here is clear and warm until mid-afternoon, when it normally clouds up and rains. The temperature can drop from 85 to 60 in one cloudburst. This is great cooking weather! I don’t know many people that bake in July or August, but we do!

Roasting vegetables is a great way to use up the overflowing garden bounty. Your dish can be different every time, depending on what’s available. If you don’t have a Dutch oven, you can probably use a large baking dish or a lasagna pan. I’ve never had anything but cast iron, so you will have to experiment with what works best for you.

In your baking pan, layer your vegetables. From bottom to top, these are my favorites:

potatoes, quartered
carrots, 1/2″ slices
beets, quartered
zucchini, thick slices
apples, quartered – one or two
onion, thick slices to make rings that cover the top
a few tablespoons of water to keep it from burning until the vegetables start releasing water

Bake at 375 covered. You may want to reduce your temperature to 350. I think 375 works well with cast iron. Experiment! After 45 minutes, check to see if the potatoes are done. When they are, the rest is cooked through. You can bring the potatoes to the top and brown them if you like. I’ve never done this, though.

Sometimes I leave out the potatoes and serve the vegetables over rice. Sometimes I add a box of drained tofu between the beets and the zucchini.

Jack cheese is really good melted over the top of individual servings. I serve steamed kale with this. Greens don’t survive roasting! This dish lasts for several meals, and if there are leftovers, they go into a pot of soup.

Root crops work best for this dish, and since so many are ready in fall, this is a great dish to warm up the house on chilly evenings. Experiment with your favorites. This is another no-recipe recipe with lots of flexibility! That’s the only way to cook, if you ask me.

Enjoy!

* * *

{ 2 comments }

Portable Soup

by nan on 2011/08/29 · 0 comments

Every recipe has a story, and this one is no different. You have to read to the end to see how this dish got its name.

This is another no-recipe recipe. When the greens are overflowing in the garden, this is what I do with them.

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
garlic, crushed and chopped – to taste, which is 2-3 cloves for me
1 quart vegetable broth (Water saved from steaming greens and/or cooking potatoes. I save it in quart containers and freeze it.)
1 bay leaf
3 med sized potatoes, quartered
4-5 carrots chopped
2 huge bunches Swiss Chard, chopped or torn (You can use kale, spinach, beet greens – whatever is in abundance)
herbs (I like sage, tarragon and savory with this, and I add cayenne to everything!)

Saute the onion in olive oil. When it is translucent, add the garlic and stir so it doesn’t burn. When it smells really garlicky, add the broth and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, add the potatoes, carrots and herbs, turn the heat to medium, and cover. When the potatoes and carrots are almost cooked (15- 20 minutes), add the chard. Simmer with a lid on until everything is cooked through (maybe 15 minutes).

Remove the bay leaf, and buzz the soup in a blender bit by bit. Put in a cup or so, and buzz til it’s blended. Pour that batch into a separate pot. Add another cup or two, and buzz. Do this to the whole pot of soup, and you’re done! Serve with grated parmesan or jack cheese melted on top. Dunk bread or crackers in it.

You can exchange the potatoes for cooked brown rice, which you would add after the carrots are done. You can saute zucchini or add grated beets. The only thing you have to be sure of is that everything is cooked thoroughly so it will buzz well. The soup should be a thick liquid.

I put this soup into quart yogurt containers to store. One night, Daniel breezed in on his way back to the farm from town. It was dinner time, but he didn’t have time to sit and eat, so I gave him a container of soup to take home and heat up. He called me later to tell me he drank it in his truck on the ride home.

When I told Kevin Gilkes this story, he called it Portable Soup.

* * *

{ 0 comments }

Zucchini Tofu Delight

by nan on 2011/08/01 · 0 comments

It’s garden season, and I’m in the kitchen. I have unlimited access to any vegetable I’m not growing, so I’m having fun and getting creative. It’s zucchini season now, too, so experimentation goes to a new level.

This is a take-off on a basic zuke/tomato side dish that was served in a restaurant I worked in when I was 19 (a million years ago). I made it that way for years, but now I’ve expanded it. It’s different every time, depending on what’s available. That’s my favorite kind of recipe – no recipe. The name comes from what I see and feel when I serve this to Daniel, the farmer – delight.

1 onion, chopped
garlic – as much as you can stand – 3-4 cloves for me, crushed
5 zucchini, sliced or cut in small pieces
1 jar marinara sauce or fresh tomatoes (paste or salad)
1 box tofu with the water squeezed out and cut in 1″ cubes
herbs of your choice – bay leaf, basil, sage, tarragon, dill weed, winter savory, cayenne, whatever – experiment!
Jack cheese
brown rice

Saute the onion in a big pot. Add the garlic when the onion is translucent. Stir so it doesn’t burn. When it smells really garlic-y, stir in the zucchini. I cover it at this point to steam the zucchini, but you have to keep stirring it to keep the garlic from burning.

When the zucchini is about half done, add the marinara sauce or tomatoes, tofu and herbs. Stir it all together gently, and cover it. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes or so, stirring it once in a while, then turn it off and let the flavors mingle. This is really good if you make it in the morning for dinner, or make it a day ahead.

Put a serving in a bowl, cover with shredded Jack cheese and put it under the broiler to melt. Yum. Heaven. If I need to stretch this, I add rice. It goes good with something crunchy, like a romaine salad or lightly steamed kale. Crusty bread could sop it up.

When I made this over the weekend, I had about 1/2 cup of fresh shelled peas in the fridge. I tossed them in. I frequently add broccoli florets and the inside of the stalks. I’ve grated beets and carrots into it. It’s like soup – the proportions are never crucial, and the ingredients vary with what’s on hand or in season. You can serve it over pasta or with other grains, and the tofu absorbs all the flavors. The variations are endless, which is really handy when the garden is at peak production!

* * *

{ 0 comments }