Adding a little FLAVA FLAV

So how do you make cheap and easy meals taste expensive and complicated? Here are a few ideas:

(If you have a lot of cooking experience please skip over this since it probably comes second nature to you.)

- Aromatic vegetables: 

Onions, carrots, shallots, fennel, leeks, GARLIC, celery... Almost all dishes can be improved with some combination of the above. Saute or "sweat" (cover over low heat) them first for best flavor. Here is a great article that goes into greater detail. I always have at least onions, garlic, carrots, and celery in the house.

-Herbs and spices: (Want to know the difference? Read about it here.)

It's really easy to grow your own herbs. Just give them sun and good drainage. Most them like to have their roots dry out in between waterings, basil is an exception.) A lot of them are perennial and will give you years of nearly free flavor. You can even dry some for the winter or bring them inside during frost. I personally grow oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, and lavender. I used to have a much more extensive herb garden but I'm limited to an apartment balcony now. If you have the space, grow tons! They are easy, beautiful, smell amazing, and have lots of culinary and medicinal uses. Sigh... I miss my garden...

As far as spices go: buying in bulk is definitely cheaper, if you can't use it all split it with a like-minded cook. Keep your favorite spices on hand, but don't be afraid to try a new one every now and then. Variety is the spice of life... or variety is the spice of...spices. I'm not going to list all of the spices in my cupboard but will tell you one thing I do: I add cayenne pepper to almost everything I cook. We like a little kick. I find using spices helps reduce the amount of salt required.

- Alcohol:

I'm pretty new to this but have recently discovered that it is wonderful for making a simple dish taste special. White wine for chicken/white sauce, red for beef and red sauce. Beer is used for marinating meat and chili (never tried it, but hear it's delicious). There are tons of sauces that include harder liquor like brandy, vodka, and of course rum in baking. It's really not expensive when you consider how long a bottle lasts... if you only use it for cooking, that is. ;-) Here's a helpful chart about how long it takes alcohol to "burn off"if your wondering/concerned.

-Acids:

Similar to wine, acids like vinegars or citrus juices perk up sauces and bring out flavor in meat. Keep several types on hand. Juices I like to keep on hand: lemon, lime, and orange. Vinegars: white, apple cider, red wine, balsamic, and rice.

-Sauces:

Making canned/bottled sauce is something I've only dabbled in (barbeque and salad dressing are about as far as I've gotten). Store bought sauces may be cheating... but they sure are convenient and can can rescue a kitchen disaster or provide easy flavor to a good start. Some sauces I like to have on hand for cooking: soy sauce, barbeque, ketchup, mayo, several mustards, Worcestershire, Italian dressing, an a couple different hot sauces (I like Cholula, BeefyGeek likes Chipotle Tobasco.)

-Fat:

Don't be afraid of a little fat in your food. If you're cooking from scratch, chances are it's a lot healthier than restaurant or pre-packaged food already. You can use "healthy fats" like olive and coconut oil but they have a low smoking point so you have to be careful if sauteing or frying. Or even in the oven I have found... coating a chicken with a little olive oil before roasting... take out your smoke detector's batteries.  Again, a little goes a long way. You'd be surprised how much a pat of butter can richen up a skim milk "cream" sauce... is richen a word? Anyway... use a little first and you can always add more. Although they are technically not fats, I would include other high fat goodies here like cheese, olives, nuts, and high fat meats like bacon or pancetta. Using them sparingly as a garnish on a plain dish can really up the "yum factor"


Welp, that's about it for now. A super amateur home cooks "secrets" to flavorful home cookin'. What are your favorite ways to perk up your dinner?

40+ Quick Meals Using Ground Beef or Shredded Chicken

So the whole Menu planning thing on this blog was pretty short lived huh? I think I realized why. I'm more of a "pantry principle planner" than a specific day by day menu planner. What I mean by that is that I generally stock up and have on hand 90% of the ingredients for 90% of the meals that I make 90% of the time. Approximately. lol.

Beefygeek has recently started a new job that has him coming home at later, less predictable hours and this has sent me back to my go-to repertoire of quick, easy meals that I can make during nap time or with a baby crawling around my feet.

I've been complaining about how expensive my foodie blog habit has been lately, so I decided that I'll be the change I want to see. As epic as that sounds...

To help me, and maybe you... I've come up with a list of about forty meals that use either ground beef or shredded chicken (two of the easiest, cheapest, quickest to cook and defrost meats IMHO.) I'm going to keep this list on hand in the kitchen so I can quickly pick something for dinner when need be. Here goes:

Ground Beef (or ground turkey if you HAVE to. But most of these allow for draining and even rinsing the fat off before using. A few articles here and here.)

1. hamburgers
2. spaghetti
3. tacos
4. taquitos
5. burritos
6. enchiladas
7. quesadillas
8. sloppy joes
9. chili
10. shepherd's pie
11. meatloaf
12. stuffed peppers 
13. "stir fry" (basically just cook up the ground beef with onions, veggies, and seasonings and serve over rice)
14. omelets
15. pizza
16. homemade hamburger helper
17. meatballs
18. lasagne
19. Beef Stroganoff (never made it, but it's on the to-try list. I actually have some leftover egg noodles and sour cream right now...)
20. any casserole (there are probably at least fifteen variations here alone. just use Amy Dacyzyn’s good old Tightwad Casserole formula.) 
21. soup (Although I've honestly never made soup with ground beef; I found some interesting recipes online. If you have any go-to recipes, please share!)

Shredded Chicken

1. Chicken Pot Pie (I often top with biscuit dough instead of pie crust, it's just easier) 
2. Super easy pot pie variation: mix and cook sauce with meat and veggies on stove top and serve over rice or noodles
3. white sauce/alfredo over noodles
4. enchiladas (red or white)
5. white chili
6. chicken salad
7. add to PW's Sesame noodles
8. add chicken to lettuce salad, Cesar or otherwise
9. tacos
10. fajitas
11. burritos
12. taquitos
13. quesadillas
14. add to any rice-o-roni/hamburger helper type thing, either homemade or bought on sale!
15. chicken divan
16. sandwiches
17. pulled barbeque chicken
18. add to stir fried vegetables (not as good as freshly stir fried chicken but super fast if you're in a pinch)
19. wraps
20. any casserole (use same formula as ground beef)
21. about a million chicken soups (chicken noodle, tortilla, wild rice, vegetable... use soups like casseroles: to use up whatever is in your fridge)

I'm realizing Mexican food is super easy looking at this list lol! With some notable exceptions (lasagne being the most obvious) these are cheap and you probably already have the ingredients in your kitchen (or you should!) I'm going to go back through and link to some favorite recipes, just so i have them all in one place, but that's about it for now! What are your favorite uses for these quick proteins?

Birthday cakes...

Trying to pick a cake for Beefygeek and I (we're both April babies)

This the one time of year I make a cake, so its gotta be pretty ridiculous.

How about this:

Chocolate Mousse Crunch Cake

I think I may just eat my screen.

We're gonna need a lot of milk.

My new favorite banana blah blah blah

Yet another banana bread recipe... but for real... So good. I added some nutmeg and walnuts and cut the sugar.

Sweet Potato Fries

Ohmygoodness.

Beefygeek and I are both professed sweet potato haters. BUT. I've read about how crazy healthy they are for you and so I tried making baked sweet potato fries today and. OHMYGOODNESS.

Here's the recipe I based mine on. (I really like this blog by the way... my blog roll is getting way too long.) I didn't use coriander and I added cayenne pepper, paprika, and garlic powder. Ohmygoodness. Kosher salt. Just discovered it. ohmygoodness.

I think sweet potatoes just made it onto my weekly produce grocery list.

So first cabbage, now sweet potatoes... I'm thinking about exploring leeks or turnips next. I really wanna try artichokes... but that would defeat the tightwad-y element of my cooking experiments. Maybe for a birthday.

Speaking of special occasions, its Valentine's Day, so I'm gonna go be with my Beefygeek. I just had to share my latest food love.

Cabbage

My latest culinary adventure. Learning to do something with this super-duper cheap healthy winter veggie. Never having bought or cooked or tasted one, I was a little nervous. The only time I remember someone eating cabbage was the Bucket family on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. They ate cabbage soup. Every day. Because its cheap.

But it's delicious! Sweet and crunchy. It reminds me of raw corn, except less juicy.

So far I added it to soup and made coleslaw. Both successes. The changes I made to the coleslaw recipe: using half apple-cider vinegar, red onions, adding carrots, and cutting back on the sugar, (I picked this recipe because it was healthier than the creamy kind...a full cup of sugar kinda undoes that.)

That coleslaw is awesome.

Basalmic Chicken

Just made the best boneless skinless chicken breast I've ever made. Here's what I did:

- Into a 9X13 pan... or whatever size: Basalmic Vinegar (enough to cover the pan with out tipping), a smidgen of olive oil, four minced garlic cloves, salt, pepper, and shake or two of crushed red pepper, pinches of rosemary, thyme, and sage.
- Thinly sliced chicken breast into the pan, coat both sides.
- Bake, covered on 375 for about 25-30 minutes, turning once and removing the cover for the last ten minutes or so.

Seriously. As good as that chicken I love at Carrabba's. Especially mixed with a buttered baked potato. Carrabba's definitely dips their chicken in butter.

I read on Slashfood about how there are three kin ds of seasonings : oil/fat, spices/aromatics, and acids (vinegars, wines, citrus fruits etc.). The point of the article was that most of us ignore the third category most of the time. I think that's true, I never thought to add vinegar to anything before Jon taught me some Filipino cooking (they use a lot of vinegar). So now I'm experimenting with acids! (Sounds like a dangerous undertaking.)

Can't wait to buy a decent camera so i can upload some pictures on here. This chicken is GORGEOUS.

Another yummy vegetarian meal

I knew I had something I wanted to post here.

Pioneer Woman's Sesame Noodles. WOW. Seriously up the anti for stir-fry night... unbelievable when combined with a good stir fry and rice. Or rock the house using up leftover noodles that always sit in the fridge until someone works up the nerve to throw out...A WHOLE HALF A POUND OF NOODLES. I hate throwing out food. It's so wrong. It makes me feel like Joey Tribbiani. "Well don't waste it, it's still FOOD."

Seriously, try them, they're better than carry out lo-mein. Even when you only use half the ingredients like me.

I only use the noodles (obviously), garlic, sesame oil, sugar, and sub red pepper flakes for hot chile oil. I'm too lazy to go to the store to buy the things i don't have, and two kinds of oil seems excessive to me. Oh and I throw it all in a pot instead of I bowl 'cause I like the garlic a lil' roasty. Try it, trust me


.

Oh SO GOOD.

Beefygeek took these leftovers for lunch twice. The first time one of his co-workers came to his office asking "WHAT are you eating?" The next time a different co-worker said, "MAAAANNNNN, you eat like a king." Those poor guys only ever get fast food or lean pockets.

Speaking of stir fry... as I was a moment ago. Instead of store bought sauce use: soy sauce, red pepper flakes, a LITTLE corn oil, and... brown sugar. Don't skimp on the brown sugar either, trust me. Takes it from "eh" to "UM." It's loosely based on the sweet and sour recipe here. They say to mix it beforehand, I usually just toss it all in "to taste." Make sure your meat is cooked all the way before you taste anything though, cause that's nasty.

Vegetarian Meal Ideas

Ok so... some of them aren't 100% vegetarian, but they're low-meat, which means cheap.

- Any variation of the breakfast for dinner thing. French toast is great 'cause it uses up old bread. Whole wheat waffles or pancakes are more filling than their white flour counterparts.

- Homemade Pizza! Oh soooooo good. Here's a easy dough recipe.

-Soup. I usually make this with homemade chicken stock, so it's not really vegetarian. But you make the stock using leftovers, so it's pretty much free. (freeze any meat skin and bones, onion skins, carrot and potato peels etc. then throw them in a pot with some water and spices, let 'em simmer for a while and ta-da! Beats the can off Swanson's any day.) Our favorite is lentil and potato. We also love black-eyed pea and green split pea (with a ham bone...)

-Grilled cheese (with or without the soup mentioned above.)

-Bean Chili. Not as good as with meat in my opinion... but passable and once again, cheap. Maybe I just need to experiment with it more.

-Beans and rice.

-Quesadillas. Just with cheese or a little bit of shredded meat.

-Anything with beans really. Buy some dried beans. You'll love the way they look an a shelf in your kitchen and you can add them to any meal to make it healthier, heartier and longer lasting.

-Fried rice. You can do strictly vegetables or add an egg and a few bites of chicken or ham.

-Quiche. This is one I haven't done yet, but the "frugal zealot" recommends it, and I'm gonna do it eventually...

-Another good low-meat meal I make is chicken with white sauce over noodles or rice. I make this when we're on our second or third day of the roasted whole chicken. I (or Jon... usually Jon 'cause I don't like doing it) pick over the last of the carcass, and use whatever's left. Most of the substance from the meal comes from the sauce, vegetables, and noodles. Or you can have it with biscuits and it turns into potpie! P.S. Learn to make a basic white sauce. You can do so much with it. No need to buy Campbell's Cream of Anything.

-Hummus! Not really a meal but I just have to mention it. Make it, don't buy it. Its such much better that its really a different experience than store bought. And of course, much, much cheaper.

That's all I can think of for now. Hope this inspires at least one person to buy some dried beans and learn to cook 'em! We American bean snobs miss out on a lot.

New Year!

New Year's is one of my favorite days of the year. You notice I say New Year's, NOT New Year's Eve. I'm not a fan of the whole staying up really late and watching the BORING ball drop and then being exhausted and sick the next day. I like the following day when everyone else is sleeping off the night before. Its a holiday when nobody does much, which is perfect for this homebody, especially after all the busyness that happens in the preceding month.

It just feels so NEW. And since I'm always making mistakes throughout the year, its nice to turn over a new leaf. New Year's resolution blog posts are lame so I'll just talk about... "things I hope to do/am looking forward to this year."

-My sister in laws wedding! Yay. Weddings are so awesome. And of course, gotta find stuff for it on Etsy! Here's one I LOVE.

-My other sister in law graduating and starting a bakery. And she wants me to experiment with her in the kitchen the summer/fall. So excited for this. Baking is fun, but even more fun with a friend.

-Along those lines, I really want to get in the habit of bread baking this year. I want to perfect a few basic bread recipes. Don't you love the holes in this one? Yum.

-Another kitchen goal I have is raising the number of vegetarian dinners we eat a month from 4-5 to 6-7. Cheaper, healthier, and oh so much fun to play around with. Hoping to draw a lot of from two of my most unique cookbooks: More with Less and The Brilliant Bean.

-I'm looking forward to moving this summer. Our lease will be up and I am so OVER this apartment.

-The BeefyGeek and I have decided that in order to prevent me from growing old before my time, I will be changing occupations this summer. Either cutting my hours, finding a new job, or going back to school. I will have been three years nannying in August, and as much as I love it, its getting to be time I moved on.

-Doing some yoga! Last January I started walking 5 days a week, and I've kept it up, with a few interruptions. Go me! This year I want to add more stretching/resistance training, partly in preparation for babies... the better shape I'm in beforehand, the easier pregnancy and labor will be.

-Getting more organized. No joke. Every time I have even a little feeling of "I may be pregnant," one of the first things I do is check my bathroom closet. Somewhere in my mind there is a voice that says, "if you can't keep this is order now, you won't after a baby's in the picture." I recently got rid of a lot of stuff, but I know there is more to cleanse. I also want to figure out a better system for bill paying/paper organization. Here's an inspiration photo of some nicely stacked sheets from a beautiful website, well worth checking out if you've never seen it.

-I want to do more art this year. I haven't really made time to create lately. I miss it. Such as... basket weaving? I love these baskets. I'd love to be able to make them for myself. Or maybe just buy one. I love the bassinet.

-Read through the Bible with BeefyGeek. This is our year! Hopefully posting updates on our progress here will keep me motivated.

Probably more, but that's it for now. I hope this post is too horrible. I'm super sleepy and my fingers are cold. Not a good writing combo. Plus BeefyGeek is playing Arkham Asylum and its so cool its distracting...

mmmmm....

So I'm sitting here smelling the stew that I have simmering in the kitchen and feeling oh so excited to eat it. And it occurs to me, "it's awesome to love your own cooking."

I dunno if its great cooking. You might not like it. For instance, I know a lot of people don't like their food as spicy as I like it. I put cayenne pepper in everything I cook. And lots of aromatics. Garlic, onions, celery and carrots in practically everything...

But I love it.

And that's a really good feeling.

Now, if only it would cook faster.