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 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?

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!

Leftover Tamales

So, I don’t have any pics because we ate all the tamales but last week I made some tamales from leftovers in my fridge. They turned out really good, and I ended up making about 20 tamales from one chicken breast, some salsa, and some other simple ingredients. That was like 7-10 servings from one chicken breast. Woot! Saving dinero and making delicious food. 🙂

Recipe: Chicken Tamales with Green Salsa (7-10 servings)

1-2 chicken breast, cooked and shredded

1 jar of green salsa (homemade or canned)

1/2 bag of Maseca (extra if dough too wet)

1 cup of Crisco or lard

3 cups chicken broth (extra if too dry), heated

Salt to taste

20 corn husks, set in warm water for 15 min to soften

1 steamer or tamale pot

 

Mix chicken with salsa on the stove until well cooked. You can add an onion and some olive oil for extra flavor if you like. Set aside.

Mix maseca with lard and chicken broth (or water). Add salt to taste. Mix until no lumps of lard and it is the texture of a wet, spreadable play-doh.

Get corn husks. Take a husk; hold it so the wider part is at the top. Spread a thick layer (1/2 inch) of dough in the middle of the top half. Spoon a spoonful of chicken and salsa into the middle of the dough. Fold one side in over the dough, then the other, and then fold the bottom up. Sit in the steamer with the closed part on the bottom.

Fill all the tamales. Put sufficient amount of water in the steamer or tamale pot. Cover and let water boil. Reduce temperature to medium, so the water is still bubbling. Steam for 2-3 hours, making sure to add water about every 30 min the pot doesn’t burn.

Knowing when they’re done is a bit of a guessing game. I usually cook tamales at night and let them stay in the steamer all night. Then in the morning I eat them for breakfast. But if you want to eat them for dinner, just make sure they’re not undercooked (smushy). Maybe let them sit for a bit.

Every time I make tamales, they turn out a little less horrible. I’m almost in the realm of making them really good now! Don’t despair if it takes you a few attempts to make them correctly. Bad tamales are better than no tamales at all! 🙂

These are tamales from Delgado’s Antojitos Mexicanos. Better than mine but then, that’s their speciality! 🙂

Tacos Dorados de Raja y Queso Oaxaca con Salsa Casera

My best friend recently returned from a mission trip to Oaxaca, Mexico and brought me fresh Oaxacan cheese, which is similar in texture to mozzarella but tastes a bit different and is rolled into a ball like yarn. It is the never-ending ball of queso! So I’m coming up with new recipes to use it up!

Here’s the one I made up today:

Tacos Dorados de Raja y Queso Oaxaca con Salsa Casera
Ingredients for Tacos
3/4 poblano chile
Queso/cheese Oaxaca
3 tomatoes
1 jalapeño
1 small bunch cilantro
1 tbsp oregano (fresh is bettee)
Salt to taste
1 whole clove
2 cups Maseca (I used amarillo/yellow)
1/2 cup olive oil (or enough to lightly fry)
Ingredients for Salsa
3 tomatoes
2 jalapeños
1/4 poblano chile
2 whole cloves
Salt to taste
3 cloves garlic
1/4 onion
1 small bunch of cilantro
1 tbsp oregano (fresh is better)

To make tacos:
Put tomatoes and jalapeño in a sauce pan with a little water. Cover and boil for a minute or two. Put in blender with cilantro, clove, oregano and puree.

In a bowl put maseca and salt. Add enough of the pureed salsa to make into a Play-Doh-like dough.

Cut poblano and cheese into small strips (you could cook the chile strips in oil or without oil ahead of time so they are soft. I didn’t do that but they were a bit crunchy and I think I will cook them ahead next time).

Heat the oil in a large skillet.

Roll the dough into golf ball sized balls and flatten with either a tortilla press or between two round plates with a piece of plastic shopping bag on either side so the masa doesn’t stick. Don’t press  too hard so the tortilla is a little thick. Holding the tortilla in your hand, place a piece (raja) or two of poblano and a piece of cheese in the center of the circle. Fold in half and press together to form a half circle.

Place the tacos in the oil and fry until golden, then flip over. Place finished tacos on a plate with a paper towel to soak up the oil. Repeat until you use up the masa.

Enjoy with the following salsa recipe!

To make salsa casera:
Put the tomatoes and jalapeños in a sauce pan with a little water (less water will make thicker salsa). Cover and boil for a minute or two. Put in blender with other ingredients. Blend to desired consistency. Enjoy!

Getting Back to Cooking…

So, while we were in my Mexico, I only cooked like three times, and since I’ve been back, I haven’t done much better, but this weekend, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and got to cooking again!

I really want to eat only, only, only real food, because I know it is the healthiest for me. It is so delicious and not really that hard to do, but it takes thinking and planning. Ay, there’s the rub.

What I’ve done in the past is write up a little menu for each week, but that really only lasted a week, because it took like an hour to make the menu (I may be a perfectionist sometimes).

I think that this time I will publicly profess my goal to eat real food this month, as often as I can! I currently have chicken soup, pozole, blueberry scones, and egg bake in the fridge (all homemade). My plans are to make chiles rellenos (or chile relleno pie, I just invented this) and beef stew later in the week.

I shall update you on Friday and let you know how it went! Wish me luck!

Wordless Wednesday

Apparently I am a Renaissance Woman…

I have been told recently (by coworkers) that I do way too much stuff outside of work. One coworker jokingly commented: “I am sick and tired of hearing about everything Allison does before she even gets to work in the morning.” I do get up at 5am…and why waste the time? 🙂 Anyway, lately I have been really working hard on watching less television and movies and doing more productive things.

Here are the things I am currently working on:

1. I am in a weight loss competition in my gym (lost 0.8 pounds last month…mrrrrrr)
2. I like to cook real food from scratch (today I made pizza – crust, cheese, and sauce from scratch…currently there is a haze in my house from the burnt-cheese smoke billowing from my oven…)
3. I have been attempting to garden (not my forte) and use the food I harvest to cook my own meals from scratch
4. I have been writing. I just finished my forth or fifth novel (the first three to four are crap), and I just entered the latest in a contest! Woot!
5. I love music! I play piano, guitar, flute, ukelele, and sing. I also love writing music.
6. I also love to dance (this is a new development). I have taken an Irish Dance class, a hundred or so Zumba classes, and am currently practicing for a church talent show where we are performing the Jarabe Tapatio (a traditional Mexican dance from Guadalajara, where my hubby is from!)

Wow, that is a lot of stuff! But, seriously, I think God gave me a few gifts (I’m not amazing or anything, just average at stuff), but I figure since He gave them to me, I better use them! Anyway, my hubby helped me take this amazing picture, compiling all the stuff I do in one very special photo. Enjoy!