Making It Meaningful

New Year's Eve

08:21, Sunday, December 31, 2006 .. Posted in Cooking .. 2 comments .. Link

This is what we are doing tonight!

In a few minutes we'll make ice cream in ziploc baggies. Never done it before but it's a hot night and good to give it a try.

What are you doing for New Year's Eve?

What's For Lunch?

09:10, Monday, December 18, 2006 .. Posted in Cooking .. 0 comments .. Link

Oh my. I've been thinking. A lot. About a lot. Mostly old thoughts that I'm cycling through again. Must be a sign that things are getting back to normal after the baby. One of the things I've been thinking a great deal about is the frugality of our lifestyle. Meaning, it's not frugal enough. I got pretty slack with the arrival of the new baby. He's still in disposable diapers (and so is the 2-yr old Jr Spragus), until he stops pooping every 15 minutes

. I've gotten lazy with the laundry -- it's going straight in the dryer because I don't want to take the time to hang it out and get it down again. Apart from the OAMC, I've only been preparing the easiest of meals and throwing out whatever's left in the fridge that I just can't be bothered with.

Really, in my defense, the little one isn't on any kind of schedule yet, and he prefers to eat every 1 - 2 hours. He naps at various times, or sometimes not at all; and he's notorious for being up every hour during the night. So I've been trying to manage everything with a major sleep (and time) deficit.

Nevertheless, I am trying to get back to frugal habits. I recommitted myself today to NOT throwing out any more food. Period. NOT letting stuff sit in the fridge until it's unusable. So, for lunch today, I did a little fridge shopping. I knew I had a half-lettuce in there that was a couple weeks old (it's a Romaine and they do last longer...) and some tomatoes of similar vintage; leftover Dominoes pizza from Friday night; sorta past-it cheese slices; and maybe a couple other things.

Well, the lettuce was unusable, even for lettuce soup (okay, I don't know what lettuce soup would taste like, but I was going to give it a try

). It was only good for the worm buckets. Black. Slimy. Nuh-Uh.

However, I did find the following ingredients to be unappetizing, but usable. 3-day old dried out pizza, 3-week old tomato, and kinda ugly old cheese slices.

Well, I've had worse to work with. Sooooo....what sounds good? How about THIS?:

Yes folks; that's Italian Pizza Egg Casserole. Here's how it works:

Start your oven heating; grease your casserole dish; chop up the pizza into small pieces and chuck them in the dish. In this case there was not enough pizza so I used a few slices of stale hard bread and chucked them in there too. Sprinkle with salt to taste, and about 1/2 tsp of Italian seasoning. Top with cheese slices.

Get out your powdered milk (yep, I know the kids won't drink it, but it's perfect for this recipe!) Use about 1/2 cup milk and mix it with 2 cups water. Stir in 4 beaten eggs, and pour it over the top of the cheese slices and bread mixture.

Now top it all with your yummy (old) tomato slices. Voila, now you have a yummy looking casserole. Well, it even looks like you planned it!

Bake it in a medium-temp oven until it's done (stick a knife into it to test -- the knife should come out clean, except for a little cheese maybe). This was delicious. The older kids ate more than half of it themselves, and Daddy has lunch for tomorrow. (Incidentally, he took a couple of pieces of this same pizza to work with him today and ended up throwing them out. We'll see if he likes the new improved version tomorrow!)

Since I had some stale bread still left over and a hot oven, I made the kids a cheapo treat.

Cinnamon Toast. They gobbled this up too. Oh, and we ate some delicious first-of-the-season plums along with our delicious old lunch.

Bon Appetit!

Slow Cooker Applesauce

11:32, Wednesday, December 6, 2006 .. Posted in Cooking .. 0 comments .. Link

Since I now have 2 hands free

I can now get back to cooking. I bet I could even attempt a OAMC session with this really great cool baby wrap thing! Wow!

Anyhoo, this morning I realized I have a LOT of apples and they aren't getting any fresher. My sister and I go every two weeks to a local farmers market. Everything is super fresh, but because it's locally grown (not grown under conditions for a supermarket shelf -- a lot closer to organic -- and a lot cheaper) it goes stale more quickly. We get great bargains every trip. Last Saturday I bought 3 kgs of Granny Smith apples and 3 kgs of Lady William apples for $4. (That's over 13lbs of apples for $4. We can fill up a shopping cart of locally grown, fresh fruit and veg for under $40. LOOOOOVE it!)

Since this Saturday coming up is Fruit and Veg day again, it was high time to use up these apples. Slow Cooker applesauce is the way to go. The slow cooking helps retain the nutrients, and the kids will eat about 5 apples-worth each in a sitting.

Slow Cooker Applesauce
Peel and cut apples into chunks. Fill up the slow cooker with them -- they cook down.
Add 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Add 1/2 cup water
Add 1/2 cup sugar (since I am a sugar-holic trying to quit, I left it out this time. We'll see how it goes).

Stir it up, put on the lid and cook. If you like the applesauce chunky, stop cooking when you give it a good stir and there's some sauce and some chunks.

Another hour's cooking, and all the apples will disintegrate into sauce. No mill necessary.

Prep:

I'll post a picture of the finished product, when it's finished. Before it gets eaten. I'll have to be quick, LOL -- it's one of the kids' favorites.

Here's the finished product. I did add a spoonful of brown sugar, by the way. All those Granny Smith apples -- oooooh, sooo tart!

Now -- which would you prefer -- some of that tasty, cinnamony, fresh-apple applesauce, or some of that puny pale version from the jar?

NOTE: Don't waste the scraps! Next Post!

About Me

Links

Large Family Logistics
Hillbilly Housewife
Making it Home Magazine
Making it Home Blog

Making It Meaningful

New Year's Eve

What's For Lunch?

Slow Cooker Applesauce

About Me

Links

Categories

Recent Entries

Friends