Breakfast for Dinner (part 1)

Often, when I want something fast and easy, I make some eggs.  Breakfast is a fast, easy meal, and so popular in my house that the kids are usually done eating before I'm done pouring drinks.  There's also so many variations on the theme that I had to label this "Part I" because I'm assuming that I'll be making breakfast for dinner in some other incarnation before long.

First, I made some pancakes; they can always be re-heated in the microwave but aren't as bad if they get cold as the eggs are.  So, as soon as I made them, I put them on a plate in the microwave; the insulation kept them warm.  I mixed up 2 cups of bisquik, but you can make pancakes from scratch with this recipe: Beat 1 egg with 1 c milk and 1 Tbsp vinegar.  Sift together 1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 3/4 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp sugar.  It only makes 5 or 6 large pancakes, so you'll want a double batch if your family eats as much as mine do. 

I should add that I started with 2 cups of bisquik, and ended up going back into the kitchen and making another batch of pancakes.  The bisquik is $5.99 a box when not on sale, and the box contains 9 cups.  I used 4 cups tonight, for a total of $2.66.  Bisquik can be mixed with water (the milk is in the mix) or milk.  I used tapwater (free) and 2 eggs. 

 

Next, I made the bacon.  It was on sale a few weeks ago for $2.50 a pack, so I bought several.  Tonight, I made half of a pack, or $1.25 worth of bacon.

The bacon, also, was placed on a microwave-safe plate and put in my oven to keep warm.

Lastly, I made the eggs.  I mixed 8 eggs (because that's how much my family eats) with some milk.  I just poured it into the bowl after the eggs were scrambled, roughly 1 part milk to two parts egg.  This is how I was always taught to make scrambled eggs.  I don't know, but I think it makes them "fluffier".  I poured the eggs on my griddle and kept stirring them right on the griddle (with a plastic spatula) until they were cooked.  Then I scooped about half of them onto a serving plate. 

To the other half, I added cheese.  You can add whatever kind you want, depending on what kind of "taste" you're going for.  Cheddar, American, and Mozzerella all have very different flavors when mixed with eggs.  I used Mozzerella tonight, because I have this jumbo bag I've been using for a while.  I just sprinkled some cheese on top, put a little water (a teaspoon or so) in an upside-down metal lid, then put the lid down on top.  The water evaporated into steam almost instantly, so the eggs didn't burn while the frozen cheese melted. 

The pancakes only needed nuked about 20 seconds and the bacon was still warm.  The kids drank milk.  I had planned on yogurt for dessert but everybody had seconds of pancakes and then were too full for yogurt.  Since I calculated the cost of the extra pancakes, I won't include the cost of the yogurt in tonight's total.

Speaking of which, 12 eggs = $1.89 and I used 10 = $1.58.  Half a pack of Bacon = $1.25,

and 2 batches of Bisquik pancakes = $2.66.  Add $1 for the sprinkling of cheese on the eggs,

and we have a total of $6.49

volcano-shaped birthday cake

They used to advertise a "volcano" cake that "erupted" frosting "with the push of a button".  Well, my kids have a thing for volcanoes, so I've made 3 volcano cakes within the year.  I, of course, never bought the "erupting" kind - mine are just chocolatey-peanut-buttery-goodness.

To make one, put a shot glass upside-down in a glass bowl, and spray the whole thing with baking spray.  Pour in a chocolate cake mix and bake as directed:

Mine rose a little too much this time and so it looks like it's floating here:  When it's baked, flip it over onto a cookie sheet (or a cooling rack covered with waxed paper, or whatever you're going to serve it on.  Remember, you won't be moving the cake again) and remove the shot glass.

Make peanut butter frosting (1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1 cup powdered sugar, and milk or water until it's the right consistency) and add red food coloring.  Mine is never "dark" enough so I added some cocoa powder to darken the look of the "lava".  Heat it in the microwave, just 30 seconds or so, until it's "pourable", and pour it over the cake.  I always pour unevenly, so you can see some of the cake through the "lava".  When you're done, you have a "volcano" cake.

(More traditional) Pizza

My homemade pizza recipe leaves something to be desired.  On the one hand, it is cheaper than a store-bought frozen pizza, and includes enough dough to make 2 pizzas, so you can do something fun with the left-over dough, like make cinnamon rolls, fried dough, or garlic breadsticks.  On the other hand, it is flatter and less tasty than most pizzaria pizza.  So tonight I tried a new recipe.

Unfortunately, it takes more rising time than my other recipe, which is one reason why the post is so late.  The other reason is because I didn't have any sides in the house that sounded good to me.

So my new recipe came from experimentation, but, like any good scientist, I documented carefully.  A non-reproducible experiment is as bad as a non-productive one.  So... here's my new recipe:  Stir together 3 cups flour, 4 tsp yeast (or 2 packets) 1 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/4 c sugar.  Melt 2 Tbsp margarine in 1 cup hot water (110 to 130 F degrees) and mix that in (the recipe also allows for 1 c heated milk instead of "butter water" but this recipe already called for twice the yeast and 4 times the sugar as my other recipe, and theoretically one should only alter one variable at a time, but this was a kitchen experiment - not a controlled, designed-for-journal-publication experiment.  Also, no way on earth was I making 4 batches of dough to change each ingredient separately.  So anyway, Knead for 5 - 8 minutes on a floured board until the dough is springy. 

HERES THE BIG DIFFERENCE: Before, I allowed the dough to rise, then rolled it out and cooked it. This time, I rolled it out and put it on the tray, then allowed it to rise. In this case, I bagged it with a clean plastic bag, then put it in my vehicle with the windows up to rise (warm but not hot today, surprisingly).  It took a little more than half an hour.  While I waited, I diced up my toppings and watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Once the dough had risen, I topped it and cooked it as usual, with my Pizzaz.

With the leftover dough, I made sandwich rolls, since my oldest didn't want pizza tonight. He had a toasted cheese sandwich on a fresh roll.  These rolls were cooked in my toaster oven.  They're smaller than they look here.  The large one is probably a six-inch roll; the small one was probably 4 inches. 

I can't measure it now because my son ate it.

 

After having eaten it, I must say that the new recipe is tastier than my old one. I have an addition to try next time, however.  If I'm not using the dough for a dessert (like fried dough or cinnamon rolls) I think I will add garlic powder at the beginning, with the yeast and flour, before the warm water.  Or maybe some italian seasonings.  Not much, just maybe 1/4 to 1/2 tsp.  Either way, the pizza tonight was a vast improvement over my previous attempts at home pizza-making.

For a side dish (and this is the other reason I'm so late tonight) there was nothing delicious in my cupboard, so all 4 of us walked to our local grocery store, where we bought a bag of apples ($3.49 for a 3-pound bag, which contained 8 apples) and a container of blueberries ($1.88 a pint) and a container of cinnamon rolls for our dessert tonight (a "special of the week" deli item for $1.69 for 6)

We had to eat outside tonight because I was painting Andrew's birthday pinata. But I took a pic of the cinnamon rolls before they were mercilessly devoured.

They're totally gone now.







So, I had previously calcuated the cost of pizza dough to be $2.55 per batch.  This included the "extra" dough that went into making the sandwich rolls tonight, as well as the cheese on the pizza.  Tonight, we had pepperoni ($3 a pack but we used less than 1/3 of a pack so $1 is an over-estimate) and, on my three slices, onions, green olives, and banana peppers.  I'm just going to guess $0.50 for all of that, although, again, probably an over-estimate.  As a family, we ate 2 apples (cost of 1/4 of $3.49, or $0.88, and about 1/4 cup of blueberries each - believe it or not : the recommended serving size -  for Luke and for me, or 1/4 of $1.88, or $0.47.  Dessert was $1.69, because, of course, we managed to eat all 6 cinnamon rolls despite there only being 4 of us. 

Our total is now: $2.55 dough and cheese + $1 pepperoni + $0.50 other toppings + $0.88 apples + $0.47 blueberries + $1.69 cinnamon rolls = $7.09.  Happy eating.

Grilled Chicken Salad

So the last two days I was down at my sister's house.  She has this beautiful backyard garden and for dinner last night she told me we were having grilled chicken salad.  "Oh!" I said, "That sounds like something for my blog!"  She replied that it's more than perfect, since the lettuce came from her garden, so it's free, even!

First, we marinated some chicken she bought on sale.  She belongs to the store's shopper's club so she only paid $10.72 for this bag.  She started talking about how many pounds were in the bag and how many pounds she thought we were using and I responded with something like, "whoah, the bag comes with three split breasts and we're cooking one, so it's 1/3 of the bag, also known as a little more than $3 worth."  (Now that I'm home, I did the math - it was $3.57, assuming all 3 breasts were of equal size.  To be on the "safe" side - we can call it $3.75 worth of chicken)

She diced the chicken, then shook on garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and left it in the fridge for a few hours while we took the kids out.  When we were ready to eat, we pan-fried it and went outside to pick the lettuce. 

She and her husband had planted gardens in the "raised beds" shown here, including radishes, tomatoes, lettuce, and spinach.  I'm sure they've got other plants I haven't identified.  I am not nearly such an accomplished gardener.  My crops tend to be the kind you can plant and forget about completely until you need to harvest them.  Like rhubarb and raspberries. 

Our salad contained lettuce and spinach leaves.

The "other" salad toppings were all things she had in her fridge and cupboards, including: apples, sunflower seeds, cheese, carrots, green olives, croutons, and craisins. 

Ironically, it was the most traditional of these toppings, the carrots, that were largely ignored by the 8 of us.  We also thought the turntable, known as a "lazy susan", which belonged to our mother, would be really cute and handy, but in reality the 3 people farthest from it still ended up stretching and passing our plates down, because once all the toppings were piled on we did not want to risk moving the whole lazy susan up the table.  Perhaps we should have started with it in the middle.  But we didn't.

The chicken is on the bottom, in case you were wondering

In addition to chicken salad, which was fantastic, she served fresh, locally grown corn on the cob.  My sister lives in Amish Pennsylvania, "Dutch Country", and there are many local farmers with corn for sale.  She bought 18 ears for $6.  We ate almost all of it.

The green things in the ends of the corn are a fast-cooling plastic that screws into the cobs, making them less likely to fall out, and the corn much easier to serve.  I've never seen them before but apparently they are sold somewhere.

Dessert was ice cream cones using up the last of some ice cream my sister had frozen a while ago, and some brand-new Keebler waffle cones.  She told me she had no idea how much they cost but I googled them and you can buy 12 cones here for $4.65.  We had 8 cones, for $3.10, assuming similar prices.  Since I buy ice cream for $2.50 to $3.00 a carton, and we used probably one whole container (among the several mostly empty containers which we cleaned out - really, I was doing her a favor, eating up leftovers like that)

And so, our total for 8 people was: $3.75 chicken, free lettuce, $6 corn, $3.10 cones + $3 ice cream, + toppings for salad.  My total allowance for 4 people is $10; we fed 8 people so I'd give a $20 allowance.  That means we could have spent $4.15 on salad toppings and been ok. 

I, personally, think we probably cut it close but this was delicious.

Homemade Birthday Pinata

So this has very little to do with food, but my oldest boy's birthday is coming up, and, for the fourth year in a row, he's asked for a piniata.


Now, the last few years, I would see the "cartoon character" pinatas for sale at most large stores.  Kids could beat the snot out of Dora, SpongeBob, or Spider-Man.  While a large part of me also wanted to beat the snot out of those lovable characters, I was attempting to curb the violent tendencies in my children.  So, I went looking for some villain pinatas and couldn't find any.


So it turns out making a homemade pinata is actually very simple, as long as you're not too picky about it looking like a specific character.  Or if you have enough artist in you to see shapes in clouds, you can probably "see" the intended shape in the final product.  So I've made pinatas that look like: spiders, bats, and eggs.  This year is going to be a Super Mario Goomba.  Hopefully it will turn out well (seeing as it's not technically done right now.)

Basically, you blow up a large balloon in the basic shape you want: The spider's body, bat's body, and "egg" were all "balloon" shapes, but you can get long, narrow balloons to make, I don't know, a snake or a caterpillar or something.  Then you hang the balloon by a string somehow.  I just tied to to my ceiling fan.  With the fan off, of course.  Then, you cover the balloon in at least 3 layers of paper mache, made with flour and water, mixed into a liquidy paste (thinner than dough, about as thick as cake batter), with torn strips of newspaper dragged through the "paste" and laid on the balloon. 

NOTE: Allow each layer to dry completely before adding the next layer and ALSO: keep a hole at the string large enough to put the candy through.  When the 3 layers are on and dry, cut it down, pop the balloon, and you have... a hornet's nest.  Yeah, it's basically a hornet's nest.  That's why you add legs, wings, and paint until it looks like what you wanted it to look like in the first place. 

Then, poke 2 or three holes with a pencil and thread through your hanging wire or string.  Then, fill up with candy or small cheap toys (like tops or whistles, those are good *sarcasm*).  Then, close up the hole with some more paper mache  and finish painting. 

All in all, this is a multi-day project because of all the drying time.  This is what Andrew's Goomba looks like now:

I will post pics of the finished product when it's done.

"roast beast"

I wasn't sure what to make for dinner tonight, but I had a couple of hours to make a "real" meal, so at 3:00, I pulled this "Pork Loin Center Loin Roast" out of my freezer.  It was a cheap roast I bought months ago (apparently back in January) and tonight was as good a night as any to cook it.

The package instructions were, well, not actually instructions on how to cook the pork.  The sticker was just a reminder to "cook thoroughly", to "keep refrigerated until ready to use", and to "wash hands after handling raw meat".

So I had to look this one up.  Fortunately, I own a "Betty Crocker Cookbook" (purchased in my early days of wedded bliss, in other words, a long time ago).  This cookbook does not contain just recipies; it's a guide for how to cook, and has helpful things, like, how to cook a pork roast.  There are actually several approved methods; I went with the fastest one, which only required 30 minutes per pound.  Since this was a 2.5 pound roast, that would require an hour and fifteen minutes.  If I put it in the oven now, it'd be done at only 4:15, which would be too early.  Luckily for me, it was frozen solid.  I thawed it using the "thaw" feature on my microwave, which is no easy feat considering that my microwave's time display is broken and I have to carefully push each button or 30 seconds could become 300 and I wouldn't know it until I burned whatever I was trying to heat.  Somehow, I thawed the pork successfully, and at 3:20, I put it in the oven. 

One of Betty Crocker's methods (I am sooo not making this up) is "The Italian Method".  In a glass baking dish, spray the roast with baking spray (as in Pam or the like), rub with garlic salt and italian seasonings, flip the roast and repeat, then bake, for 30 minutes per pound at 450 degrees.  Again, easy.  Instead of "italian seasonings", though (because I use that a lot) I went with a generic "Cajun Seasoning" (AND garlic salt, of course), which, by the way, was delicious. 

The only problem with this method was a personal one: I wanted brownies for dessert.  I already had a pack of brownie mix (Pillsbury extra thick, on sale a few weeks ago at $1.50 a box).  Unfortunately, they have to cook for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.  If I put them in after the roast was done, they would be too hot to eat at "dessert time".  If I put them in before the roast, then dinner would be delayed.  Plus, I'd already put the roast in.

 

So.... It went like this: I mixed up the brownie mix, decided to add some melted peanut butter (yum!) which I just melted in a mug in my microwave and poured on top, then ran a knife through to make that fancy pattern that people do for brownies. 

I also added some generic "chocolate-flavored chips" to half.  Notice, I didn't say "chocolate chips".  That's because these are not chocolate chips.  I bought them in error and would simply throw them out if my upbringing allowed for such wastefulness.  It does not.  So I put them on the brownies thinking "the kids will eat them".  They did, by the way.


So you may have noticed my roast was cut into three pieces up there.  There's a reason for that.  I baked it for the first 30 minutes at 450.  Then, because thinner meat bakes faster, I sliced it into three pieces, lowered the oven temp to 350, and baked the brownies for 40 minutes.  Then, I pulled them out, put the oven temp back up to 450, and cooked it for an additional 40 minutes.  It did cook all the way through, although I nuked it 3 minutes for good measure ("cook thoroughly"), and I would not recommend changing the oven temp partway through.

Now that's what I call a hot mess.

In all honesty, I only did it for the brownies (and might I add: totally worth it).








As a veggie, I served frozen broccholi, steamed in my microwave.  I used one of those generic "Steamer" packs which I found buried in my freezer along with the pork.  I can't honestly say how much it cost, but it was probably $2, since that's how much they usually cost when on sale, and I can't see myself buying one at full price, since I usually steam veggies in the microwave without a fancy bag.

The kids liked the pork roast, although I had to explain repeatedly that it was not roast beef.  And I had to do this because I quoted Dr. Suess: "He, himself, carved the roast beast".  That conversation led to an explanation of how meat comes from animals, and that there's "farm pigs" and "wild pigs" and that yes, some people do eat boar, but usually only at a big party like a luau or a ren faire.  And they really liked the pork. 

And they really, really liked the brownies.

So our total cost for tonight was: $5.85 for the pork, $2 for the broccholi, $1.50 for the brownie mix, and probably $0.50 for "extras" = $9.85

deep fried dinner

I am quite happy to own a deep fryer.  Sometimes, when I don't feel like putting a lot of effort into dinner, I can just drop something in.  Well not literally, or I burn my fingers with the splash-back.  Now, while deep fry items are available at most grocery stores, I almost always buy mine from Best Buy Foods across from CCMH on Rte 6.  They sell Tyson all-white-meat, hormone-free chicken products, and even though they're more expensive than generic ones, I don't feel as bad about serving my kids meat and starch with little-to-no veggies. 

This bag of Tyson chicken tenders contained 32 fingers and cost $19.71.  I ate 3 fingers (they're big).  Basic math tells me that's $1.85 worth of meat.  The kids wanted nuggets so that's what they got.  The whole bag was 2 pounds worth for $5.99.  I counted 29 nuggets in the bag, which means the 11 nuggets I made for the kids (4 for each of the older kids, 3 for my littlest one) cost $2.27.  The fries were $4.50 for 5 pounds.  I cooked maybe a pound's worth, at 90 cents.  These are big fat fries, so I didn't need to cook as many to fill up my kids. 

Dessert was actually the drinks; since the kids had sparked this dinner by requesting McDonald's, and specifically milkshakes, so I made some with my blender.  I had some freezerburnt chocolate ice cream, so I just added some milk and puree'd it in my blender.  My daughter, however, wanted a smoothie, which I made with some ice cubes, a heaping spoon of yogurt, a splash of grape juice, a smaller splash of lemon juice, and heaping spoon of sugar.  I don't know if I did it "right" or not, but she liked it, and it was probably the healthiest thing any of us ate tonight. 

And I know that they don't teach the "food pyramid" anymore. (Seriously, they don't.) but when I was a kid we learned that starches, like potatoes and the breading on the chicken, were the biggest part of any meal.  All right, now I'm just rationalizing.

All kidding aside, dinner was $1.85 + $2.27 + $0.90 + dessert = $5.02 + dessert, which is FAR less than $10, and also far less than if I'd actually given in and bought 4 McDonalds meals.  Some nights when the kids do this I put the "meals" in brown paper bags and draw on them, or put old Dollar General toys inside, to add to the "Happy Meal" feeling.  Tonight I was lazy, I mean, justifyably tired, so we just went with something fast, cheap, and easy.  Veggies with dinner will resume Monday.

The Great Debate: Pre-made vs Home-made

I had a conversation the other day with a woman who said eating around here is expensive.  I was confused.  She had moved here from a city, but, in my experience, food costs more in big city grocery stores.  The reason her bills were so high, it turns out, is because she doesn't actually cook.  She tends to buy pre-made dinners and "cook" them.  It's more convenient, it doesn't require any planning ahead or defrosting, and she knows that she and her husband both like the taste.  But since "everything is freezerburnt" (her words, not mine) she and her husband have been eating out every meal. 

Now, just about anything you buy pre-made can be made at home, but I will admit that there are some advantages to pre-packaged food. 

Sometimes, it's cheaper.  Factory-made pizzas and pies are made in extremely large batches, literally hundreds a day, and the factories can get bulk flour and yeast a lot cheaper than you or I can.

Sometimes, it's tastier.  A lot of the folks in my generation grew up with fast food more often than once a month, and we enjoy the taste of Kraft Mac N Cheese more than a home-made version.

Often, it's faster.  Occasionally not, but Often enough to consider it "Always".  Yes, it is faster to open a can of soup than to make soup from scratch.

Sometimes, of course, you don't have the equipment to make it yourself.  Even though I really enjoy cooking, I still don't own a vegetable steamer or dehydrator.

So, food I buy, that I could make myself: loaves of bread, cans of soup, mac n cheese, and cake mixes are the big ones.  I make cookies and frosting from scratch.  I think I buy cake mixes because I despise washing all those measuring cups.

And sometimes, I do make home-made soup, and pizza, and steam vegetables in the microwave.  There's something to be said about doing things for yourself and your family, and knowing exactly what went into those cookies that are disappearing by the minute.  Ummm... gotta go.

steak and corn

Tonight I just wanted something fast and simple.  Last week, corn on the cob was on sale for 50 cents an ear, so I bought 4 ears, and I still had, in my freezer, that cheap, thin steak that was on sale for $3.29/lb. 

 This week, it was even cheaper, and a thicker, juicier cut, but I couldn't justify the purchase while I still had steak in my freezer waiting to be used.  Since it's only Monday, I may buy some of the juicier steak before the end of the week.

Since I was interested in speed more than anything else, I thawed the steak in my microwave, peeled 3 ears of corn (since I knew my boys would split an ear), chopped the steak into "serving-sized" chunks, and pan-fried it with some Italian dressing and water. 

The corn I boiled for 12 minutes and served with margarine and salt.  Like I said, I was after "simple".  Dessert was a bisquick coffee cake, recipe off the side of the box.  I would recommend making twice as much crumb topping.  This wasn't nearly sweet enough for my taste.

Bisquick coffee cake recipe:  Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a 9 inch pan.  In a small bowl, combine 1/3 cup bisquick, 1/3 cup packed brown sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 2 Tbsp margarine to make crumb topping.  In larger bowl, mix 2 cups bisquick, 2/3 cup milk, 2 Tbsp sugar, and 1 egg.  Spread batter in pan and cover with crumb topping.  Cook 18-22 minutes until golden brown.

In the end, I only used about 2/3 of the steak.  The rest I diced into "stir fry" sized chunks and put in my freezer for future use.  As far as costs go, the steak was $6.76.  I used about 2/3 of it, so that was roughly $4.50 worth of steak.  The corn was 50 cents an ear.  I bought four but only cooked 3 tonight, so that's $1.50.  The bisquick cake is hard to calculate but a whole box of bisquick only costs $5.99 when not on sale, and the side of the box says it contains 9 cups of mix, so I used 2 and 1/3 cups, or roughly 26% of the box, or $1.56 worth.  Since I also used small amounts of milk, egg, etc, we're going to call this a $2 dessert.  Total spent tonight: $4.50 steak, $1.50 corn, and $2 dessert = $8.00