If you had ten Canadian dollars...

1. Ten dollars at the discount grocery store buys three bananas, a package of tortillas, a package of peppers, and two small bottles of pop to share. (What's for supper? Fajitas made with leftover chicken, along with reheated rice and a can of beans.)

2. Ten dollars buys two DQ cones. Not happenin' here. Well, maybe sometime in the summer.

3. Ten dollars buys three cash bus rides. (Tickets are cheaper.)

4. Ten dollars buys a package of ten razor blades, or a three-pack of socks.

5. Ten dollars at the thrift store buys a scarf, a 75% off cotton cardigan, and some books.

How do you spend ten dollars?

What's for supper? --post-Thanksgiving

Nothing so original; we were mainly going for ease and retro here.

Turkey leftovers cooked in mushroom soup with canned green chilies and paprika
Noodles
Salad

Chocolate cupcakes

What's for supper? Skillet Chili Chicken: did you like it, dear?

Tonight's dinner menu, which felt to me like that thing you make when your boyfriend is coming to dinner and you want to show him you can actually cook:

Skillet Chili Chicken, from Saving Dinner, which is not chili but chicken pieces browned in spices, then simmered in a sauce made of canned chilies and broth plus sour cream added at the end

Mix of brown rice and barley, in the slow cooker

Vegetables: use-it-up mixture of zucchini, peppers, frozen spinach, and a couple of mushrooms

Oatmeal-chocolate chip bars

What's for supper? Pasta Salad and (surprise!) Something from the barbecue

Tonight's dinner menu:

Primavera Pasta Salad

Barbecued Sausage on Buns

How do you barbecue sausages in a highrise apartment building?

Weĺl, in this case, you take the elevator down, walk out the back of the building, and there are picnic tables and propane barbecues, free to use.  When Mr. Fixit went to do the sausage, he was the only person there. Imagine that on a holiday weekend. Maybe it's too cold, or everybody's camping or at the cottage.

Mama Squirrel made a pasta salad to go with the sausages. It was an easier version of a recipe in Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely; easier mostly because I used frozen vegetables and only had to dirty one pot. The trick is not to let either the pasta or the vegetables get mushy.

Pasta Salad, Squirrel Version

Ingredients:

1 package Green Giant Valley Selections Stir Fry Medley

3 small handfuls pasta bowties

1 can corn, drained

3 tbsp. olive oil

A little cider vinegar (the recipe didn't call for any, but it seemed to need it)

1/2 tbsp. basil

A bit of minced, jarred garlic

Salt and pepper to taste

Some shredded cheese, Italian type preferred

In a serving bowl, mix the dressing ingredients and add the drained corn. Boil a large pot of water and start cooking the pasta; after about six minutes, add the package of vegetables, bring the water back to a boil, and cook just a few minutes more. The pasta should still be slightly chewy. Drain well in a colander. Mix with corn and dressing.  Sprinkle with cheese (if it seems too hot, wait until it has chilled a bit, you don't want the cheese to melt). Chill until ready to eat.

What's for supper? Storage room stew

I made this two nights ago from the rather sparse pantry leftovers we brought with us and a few things we had in the fridge. We will be eating the leftovers tonight.

Unstuffed Peppers, or Storage Room Stew

1 lb. ground beef
A bunch of mini red and yellow peppers, tops cut off
Some baby-cut carrots, chopped in thirds
A few mushrooms, sliced
Half a cup of mixed rice and barley
1 small can chopped green chilies
1 can tomato paste plus one can water
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp. jarred garlic
Seasonings: dried onion, smoked paprika, salt, pepper
Leftover potatoes, optional

(I think that was everything I put in it.)

Brown the ground beef and drain as necessary. Add to other ingredients in the slow cooker, except for the potatoes. Cook 4 hours on high, longer on low, or until the grains and carrots are soft. We sliced some leftover baked potatoes and reheated them to serve with the stew.

What's for supper? A new chili recipe

Tonight's dinner menu: Wendy's Copycat Chili Seasoning Mix, plus chili recipe, at Grandma Bee's Recipes.

Tweaks: Since I had only a pound of meat, I cut the seasoning in half. I kept the other amounts about the same. (Two cans of beans, though, not four.)

Verdict: I have no idea if this tastes like Wendy's chili. It's what I'd call diner or homestyle chili, not overly ambitious but tasty just the same. Easy to make in the slow cooker, and would work well as a freeze-ahead.

What's for supper? Using all our gadgets

Tonight's dinner menu:

Beef-potato-onion-carrot stew in the slow cooker (thank you, Mr. Fixit)
Bread from the bread machine
Toaster-oven chocolate-chip cookies.

What's for supper? Improvised chili

A need-groceries dinner menu:

What's-in-the-cupboard Three Sisters Chili, served with cheese and sour cream
Bread-machine whole wheat bread
Assortment of fruit and cookies

What's-in-the-cupboard Three Sisters Chili (not meant to win chili cookoffs)

In the slow cooker, place:

1 can tomato sauce
1 can pinto beans
1 can mixed beans
1 cup leftover corn niblets
1 cup salsa
2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cumin
Some chopped red and yellow peppers

Cook until heated through and peppers are soft.

Fried rice: do it your own way (Do-Vember #18)

Do-Vember

In the freezer: cooked rice, spinach, diced onion. In the fridge: leftover beef, jarred garlic, mushrooms. Dinner: Fried Rice, from The More-With-Less Cookbook.

How did we do it our way?

1. No added eggs; Mr. Fixit can't eat them scrambled.

2. No leftover vegetables. We did have last night's carrots and beans to reheat on the side, but they wouldn't have added much to the rice. I added spinach and mushrooms instead.

3. I  cut the amount of sugar, salt and pepper in half, because I knew our leftovers weren't going to make a full recipe.

Still good!

What's for supper? Almost-free minestrone

Tonight's supper menu: Homemade minestrone soup, with English muffins and whatever you wanted to put on the English muffins (Lydia turned hers into a fried-egg muffin). The soup was "almost-free" because I used up several small containers of leftover pasta sauce and beans that had accumulated in the freezer, along with a box of chicken broth, a bit of frozen spinach, a bit of pasta, and a few mushrooms.

(When you're cooking for two or three, it's hard not to have those leftover half-cans of sauce, beans and other things. One way to deal with them is to put everything in freezer bags ahead of time--make six bags of spaghetti sauce or whatever, and you won't have any stray tomato sauce. Another way is what I just did: use little lunch-sized plastic tubs to collect up the bits and pieces, and then thaw them all out at once when you want to make soup.)

What's for supper? Roast Beef Ratatouille

Isn't it funny when you can go back five years on your blog and find that you had almost the same fresh and leftover ingredients to use for supper?

Well, okay, not everyone can do that, but I got lucky with the leftovers. We might even have some cherry tomatoes in the garden.

What's for supper, when you can't read the package? (Friday)

We bought a package of Knorr Fix Hungarian Goulash mix at the Euro grocery. Unfortunately, the package directions are in Polish.

Not to worry. A video is worth a thousand labels.
 

What's for supper? Toaster oven pizza again (Thursday)

When I made the Chicken Fajita Pizza a few days ago, I froze the other half of the pizza dough to use for something else. Yesterday I took the bag of dough out of the freezer and let it thaw in a bowl. About an hour before we wanted to eat, I preheated the toaster oven to 400 degrees; spread the dough as thinly as I could in a the same greased casserole dish I used last time, covered it with a little can of pizza sauce, and sprinkled it with a few sliced mushrooms and some chopped peppers. The only cheese we had around was a not-too-generous chunk of Cheddar, so I grated that up and put it on top.

I baked the pizza for about forty minutes, until the sides seemed quite firm, and we ate it with a spinach salad. It reminded me of the panzerotti we used to get from a neighbourhood pizza place, especially because of the sauce and the thick crust. You really do need a generous amount of sauce, either baked on or served on the side, because otherwise the crust will be too dry.

What's for supper? Chicken Fajita Pizza

Chicken Fajita Pizza, partly done baking

How to make Chicken Fajita Pizza:

In the biggest (greased) pan you have that will fit the toaster oven, stretch half a recipe of pizza dough; that is, the amount you get if you use two cups of flour. I used a big casserole dish.

Spread with tomato sauce and leftover chicken fajita filling, chopped. I added another chopped pepper. Push the filling down so that the crust goes up the sides of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, and start baking the pizza. Somewhere along the line, take it out and add grated cheese on top.

Keep baking until the crust is done and everything is heated through. You'll probably have to eat it with forks, but that's okay.

What's for supper? How could we be out of pasta?

Well, we weren't entirely out of pasta. We did have elbow macaroni and a few lasagna noodles. I have been allowing certain stockpiled things to get way down there before buying more, and pasta was one of them.

So tonight's dinner was Chicken with Lasagna Noodles. And Peas, and Toaster-Oven Brownies.

Recipe: Brown some cut-up boneless chicken breasts in a large skillet. Add thinned pasta sauce, bring to a boil, and add broken-up lasagna noodles. Let simmer until almost done, stirring occasionally, then add some cheese (your choice what kind). You can turn it off a few minutes before serving, to let it all come together

That's all!

What's for supper? Fajita pie

Tonight's dinner menu: Fajita Pie, if that's what you'd call it, spinach salad, and cherries.

In my yard-saled ceramic dish, I layered chicken that was cooked with salsa; a little can of green chilies; whole wheat tortillas; a little tomato sauce; a can of Romano beans, drained and rinsed; and cottage cheese mixed with shredded cheese; not all in that exact order. I added extra Jack cheese on top. It is baking in the toaster oven right now.

June 1 Daybook

What I'm playing with: a new-to-me skirt.

What I'm reading: Plutarch's Lives of Agis and Cleomenes. The Greek Way and Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, because I thought I knew something about the Spartans (black bread and Laconic answers), but it's obviously not enough. This rabbit trail could be a long one, but there's no hurry.

What's for supper: make-your-own taco salads. Caesar-salad-flavoured green pea chips and tamari almonds leftover from a meeting. Marshmallow cookies leftover from a meeting. (It was an eclectic snack menu.)

What's for supper?

Tonight's dinner menu:

Frozen lasagna
Spaghetti squash
Frozen peas

Pear muffins cake (like apple muffins cake but made, obviously, with pears)

What's for supper?, and a muffin recipe

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken chili (from our freezer meals)
Salad: romaine hearts and broccoli slaw veggies (something easy to put together from the Giant Tiger produce shelf)
Go-withs: cheese, cottage cheese, mini rice cakes, things like that

Apple Maple Muffins

How do you make Apple Maple Muffins?

Start with last night's dessert: apples baked with a little homemade pancake syrup. Chop the apples small.

Combine dry ingredients for a regular batch of muffins: two cups flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt.  In another bowl or measuring cup, combine 1/2 cup oil, 1 egg, and about 3/4 cup milk. Combine the wet and dry ingredients along with the apples and any of their syrup. Add a little more liquid if needed. Spoon into paper-lined muffin cups and bake about 15 minutes at 375 degrees. They don't have to get too brown.

What's for supper?

Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday.