Creative Cooking

Hello, friends! With everything going on with COVID-19, we have been carefully budgeting in our household and something that we have been really appreciative of is free breakfasts/lunches from the school. The only challenge is that sometimes there are certain foods that the little ones don’t enjoy. We don’t like wasting food so I have been pretty creative with making those foods into family dinners.

My last such meal was a success, so my girlfriend said I should blog about it! I made a Chicken Shepherd’s Pot Pie from almost completely all leftover school ingredients. Here goes!

Chicken Shepherd’s Pot Pie

Chicken Shepherd’s Pot Pie

Servings 6; Prep time: 15 min, Cook Time: 30 min

Ingredients:
Baby carrots (steam first if you don’t want them crunchy)
Peas
Corn
Chicken patties/nuggets (cut into bite-size pieces)
Cooked potatoes wedges
2 cups shredded cheese
3 tbsp butter
2 cups milk
3 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp thyme
Salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350 F. Put carrots, peas, corn, and cut up chicken in a pie plate or a 9×9 baking dish. Put butter in a skillet and melt on medium heat. Add flour and whisk until combined. Slowly add the milk, continuing to whisk. Add spices and bring to a boil, stirring to keep from sticking. Cook for 1-2 minutes, or until thickened. Add to chicken/veggie mixture and stir well. Add potato wedges on top so it covers the best you can (you can also use mashed potatoes). Sprinkle cheese on top. Cook for 25-30 minutes. Let sit for 15 min before serving.

Have you exercised your creativity in cooking this pandemic? If so, feel free to share recipes below! I hope you enjoy it! If you try it out, let me know what you think!

Vivir el Dream

Hello, everyone,

In case you hadn’t realized, I wrote a book and published it on May 19th! It is called Vivir el Dream and is a Latino Christian fiction book about an undocumented college student trying to make her way in the world.

You can find it on Amazon for $16.99 in paperback, $3.99 in ebook. Also signed copies are available for $15 (plus $3 shipping if you’re not local).

I was inspired by my friends, family, church family, and community who haven’t given up even when they’ve been through unimaginably difficult circumstances. I wanted to give a glimpse into the life of undocumented people in the U.S.: why they come here, what they have to go through to get here, and what things are like for them once they arrive.

It is also rich with descriptions of authentic Mexican cuisine and culture and has elements of inspiration, light romance, and humor.

You can also find out more information on my Facebook author page and on the Facebook book page.

Here’s a little more about the book:

The fates of an undocumented college student and her mother intertwine with a suicidal businessman’s. As circumstances worsen, will their faith carry them through or will their fears drag them down?

Linda Palacios crossed the border at age three with her mother, Juanita, to escape their traumatic life in Mexico and to pursue the American dream. Years later, Linda nears college graduation. With little hope for the future as an undocumented immigrant, Linda wonders where her life is going.

 

Tim Draker, a long-unemployed businessman, has wondered the same thing. Overcome with despair, he decides to take his own life. Before he can carry out his plan, he changes course when he finds a job as a mechanic. Embarrassed about working at a garage in the barrio, he lies to his wife in hopes of finding something better.

 

After Juanita’s coworker gets deported, she takes in her friend’s son, Hector, whom her daughter Linda can’t stand, While Juanita deals with nightmares of her traumatic past, she loses her job and decides to go into business for herself.

 

Will the three of them allow God to guide them through the challenges to come, or will they let their own desires and goals get in the way of His path?

Pear Cobbler

Still bubbling from the oven…

I was in the mood for something sweet after a long day and looked in the pantry. Canned pears….so I googled a recipe and gave it a shot! Thanks to this person for a yummy recipe!

https://bunnyswarmoven.net/pear-cobbler/

ATA Virtual Writers Retreat

I am really excited about this retreat tomorrow. There is still space available: https://audreyhughey.com/2023springretreat

So if you want to be inspired, meet cool writerly friends, and learn stuff, sign up today! I’ll see you there!

Still cooking…

Creamy Chipotle Chicken

Hey, everyone, I am still cooking! The other day I made Thai Coconut Curry Shrimp, and today I made Creamy Chipotle Chicken. It was delightful!

What have you made lately?

Vivir el Dream is free for Kindle!

Hey everyone! I wanted to let you know my debut novel Vivir el Dream is free on Kindle for the next five days so grab yourself a copy now:

http://bit.ly/allisonkgarciaauthor

This multi-award winning novel of mine is being shopped for the big screen. Fingers crossed! Hope you enjoy a free copy!

January Challenge Review!

Banana Cream Pie

I meant to write this last week but it didn’t happen! We ended up spending $221 on groceries last month and greatly reduced eating out by like half of what we normally do! I really enjoyed cooking and eating yummy meals from scratch!

In fact, my wife and I liked it so much we made a whole plan for February as well! We figured out some glitches to avoid for this month, and we need to restock some meat but are also experimenting with non,meat proteins (lentils and beans) as well!

So far for February we made chili, ribs, macaroni and cheese, banana cream pie, and lots of leftovers!

What fun things have you made lately? Any experiments gone wrong or experiments gone right? Let me know below!

Pumpkin Smoothie

Miguel-approved

We have continued our pantry-emptying journey. This week we ate shrimp with wontons, falafel, soup, biscuits eith sausage gravy, and pot roast with potatoes and carrots. We have eaten out once or twice but still going strong with our cooking.

Tonight I made pumpkin muffins and pumpkin bundt cake from frozen pumpkin. It only required three cups of pumpkin and we had four so I decided to make a pumpkin smoothie. Here’s the recipe:

Pumpkin Smoothie (serves 1)

• 1/2 cup pumpkin
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup raw cane sugar
• Sprinkles of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves

Use a blender or whisk to froth up. Enjoy!

Waste not, want not! Now my kiddo had an extra full belly before bed (he only had pot roast and a giant cupcake and licking the spoon…lol growing boy!). I sort of wished there was more. Maybe I’ll find more frozen pumpkin as we eat away at our freezers!

Anyway, what recipes have you incented lately? Tell me below!

Tired of cooking…

So we got busy over the weekend and ended up eating out a couple times and I feel like it totally tanked my energy and motivation. I especially noticed it last night.

We still have used up lots of our reserves (as shown in pictures above) and have been marking off inventory as we go so we know what we have.

We haven’t bought many groceries at all, except for some fresh veggies, meat, dairy, and snacks but we did eat out more this week than the rest of the month.

All in all, I am happy with our experiment and want to continue it into next month but I do feel tired. Not gonna lie.

Financially, this has been pretty sweet. We have only spent $199 on groceries this month. I spent $90 on eating out. I have learned snacks and eating out are the priciest of all the things! Those $90 are really only 3 meals of eating out. Also of those groceries snacks were like $60 of it. Dang!

Anyway, any tips for yummy snacks that kids will eat and will travel well and can be made with pantry and freezer items? Our family particularly enjoys chips.

Tired but still cooking…

Cole slaw was better without the carrots, brussel sprouts were perfect, crab cakes were salty and oily. Not my best!

This brisket, pickle, cheddar, bbq panino was sooo good

This banana bread was delightful!

This week we have done pretty well, though we ate out one night and I bought tamales instead of making them (because I was hanging with a friend). We still have really only spent about $80 on groceries so far this month, which is sort of amazing. We spent about $30 eating out. Not awful.

My crab cakes didn’t turn out well and my soup last night turned out more like pasta (alphabet pasta really puffs up!)

Tonight is leftovers and tomorrow is tuna noodle casserole. Not sure what the rest of the week holds. I better look it up! We probably have some fresh veggies and a few things to buy this week. Overall, I am really enjoying cooking more.

Oh and I just saw the show Easy Bake Battle starring Antoni from Queer Eye. It is about home cooks making easy meals fast and learning hacks from them and getting new ideas. It is giving me awesome ideas! If you are out of ideas, I recommend checking it out on Netflix!

Any cooking experiments lately? If so, share below!

Only $32 spent so far

Menu for the month

We are 10 days into January and so far we have spent $32 on food. We do need to buy milk, bread, and peanut butter today so that number is about to go up but I feel pretty darn good about this so far!

We’ve also done fairly well with fixing meals and not eating out. I’ve only bought a fancy tea at my coffee shop and have made coffee at home or the office. Today and yesterday I didn’t have milk for my coffee so I used Swiss Miss. A little trick I learned from my clients who’d been incarcerated.

We haven’t done as great with remembering the fresh veggies in the fridge but otherwise we have slowly been eating down our reserves, with things left! I have enjoyed pupusas every day since Friday and will snarf down the last 2 today.

A goal for this week is to bake bread. I also seem to have added some adventurous meals for this week. Crab cakes tomorrow and then pot roast and then turkey with stuffing. Oof. Wish me luck! It also looks like I was planning to make tamales on Saturday but ironically my friend reached out and wanted to try local tamales so might end up buying them at a local panadería.

I’ve actually enjoyed this challenge so far and, as always, having a menu for the week (and month!) is super helpful.

What helps you avoid eating out? What gives you joy these days?

January meals!

Well, friends! So far, so good! We cooked every night so far and have followed the schedule! We did have one snafu that I discovered last night.

Apparently when doing inventory on the deep freeze, I failed to put back 3 containers. So we lost some food! Thankfully 2 of them were pupusa things that I had everything to make from scratch. The other was not soup like I thought but Indian curry! Not a total loss.

Today I am making pupusas using a bit of brisket, refried beans, and cheese. We do have to buy cabbage, carrots, and cumin but not too bad! Smells good! I am about to eat the first 2, hoping they’ll be yummy for this evening! No curtido yet since my wife is picking up the cabbage.

What have you made lately?