Oh well, we have sunshine on the table.
Showing posts with label pineapple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pineapple. Show all posts
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Party Pineapple Plate
A spring birthday party...and it's snowing.
Oh well, we have sunshine on the table.
Oh well, we have sunshine on the table.
Monday, April 15, 2013
A can of pineapple? (What's in your hand?)
Canned pineapple is a regular occupant of our pantry shelf, but sometimes it sits there awhile waiting to get used. But there really are a lot of ways to eat canned pineapple, even if you bought rings and want crushed, or the other way round. A food processor will turn bigger pieces into smaller ones quickly, or you can just get out the knife or scissors and chop or snip. If you have small pieces and need bigger ones, you can often use them anyway; upside-down cake tastes just as good with tidbits as with rings.
Here are some ideas for using up a can on the shelf...or the half-can in the fridge.
1. Freeze it and run it through the food processor as sherbet. If you freeze the fruit plus juice in ice cube trays (without processing it), you can let kids eat the cubes instead of Popsicles, or suck on them if they're not feeling well. After our first Squirreling was born, I was told to drink pineapple juice to keep my fluids up (it was supposed to be less irritating for the baby than citrus juice.)
2. Put it on Hawaiian pizza. Or fruit pizza.
3. Add it to sweet and sour meatballs, or ham, or one of those oddball baked-bean recipes.
4. Make Potluck Cake. Or add it to carrot cake or carrot muffins, or another fruit bread like banana bread. Pineapple Purée (see #1) works great in baking.
5. Combine it with rhubarb, in muffins or other desserts.
6. Heat undrained crushed pineapple and thicken with cornstarch, as a sauce for cake or waffles. This works better if you have more juice, less fruit.
7. Make fruit salad.
8. If you have big chunks, put on toothpicks with other bits of fruit, marshmallows, etc., for mini-kebabs. Or on skewers with peppers and meat or chicken, for big-kebabs.
9. Mix with cottage cheese or yogurt, granola, and other fruit for breakfast sundaes. I know that's basically fruit salad again, but it tastes different in the morning, doesn't it?
10. Smoothies. Or eat the fruit and then add the juice to other fruit juice, punch, or lemonade.
11. (bonus--I knew there was one I'd forgotten). Make Sue Gregg's Pineapple Yogurt Pie.
Linked from Festival of Frugality #384 at Evolving Personal Finance.
Here are some ideas for using up a can on the shelf...or the half-can in the fridge.
1. Freeze it and run it through the food processor as sherbet. If you freeze the fruit plus juice in ice cube trays (without processing it), you can let kids eat the cubes instead of Popsicles, or suck on them if they're not feeling well. After our first Squirreling was born, I was told to drink pineapple juice to keep my fluids up (it was supposed to be less irritating for the baby than citrus juice.)
2. Put it on Hawaiian pizza. Or fruit pizza.
3. Add it to sweet and sour meatballs, or ham, or one of those oddball baked-bean recipes.
4. Make Potluck Cake. Or add it to carrot cake or carrot muffins, or another fruit bread like banana bread. Pineapple Purée (see #1) works great in baking.
5. Combine it with rhubarb, in muffins or other desserts.
6. Heat undrained crushed pineapple and thicken with cornstarch, as a sauce for cake or waffles. This works better if you have more juice, less fruit.
7. Make fruit salad.
8. If you have big chunks, put on toothpicks with other bits of fruit, marshmallows, etc., for mini-kebabs. Or on skewers with peppers and meat or chicken, for big-kebabs.
9. Mix with cottage cheese or yogurt, granola, and other fruit for breakfast sundaes. I know that's basically fruit salad again, but it tastes different in the morning, doesn't it?
10. Smoothies. Or eat the fruit and then add the juice to other fruit juice, punch, or lemonade.
11. (bonus--I knew there was one I'd forgotten). Make Sue Gregg's Pineapple Yogurt Pie.
Linked from Festival of Frugality #384 at Evolving Personal Finance.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Pineapple cake for a potluck
Tonight was our homeschool group's annual picnic/barbecue. The group provides burgers and hot dogs, and everything else is potluck. I brought Tortellini Salad--the same dressing as the one I used here, but with slightly different salad ingredients. I used a package of dried cheese tortellini, cooked until just tender; a package of grape tomatoes; a package of little tiny mushrooms (they were the same price as regular-sized ones); a chopped red pepper; and a few canned black olives. I left out the extra cheese as I didn't think it would hold up well, and it was fine without it. At least it was all gone by the end of the picnic, so I guess that meant it was all right.
I also took a pan of Ruth's Pineapple Cake, from the Harrowsmith Cookbook. This recipe has been around for years but it's still good, and it's very easy to make. It does get a bit sticky, though, so it's best eaten the same day you make it.
Ruth’s Pineapple Cake
2 cups flour
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups crushed pineapple, un-drained (= 19 oz. can)
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional--our homeschool events are nut-free, so I leave them out)
Combine all ingredients and beat until smooth (just with a wooden spoon is fine).
Scrape into greased jelly roll pan (a 10 x 15-inch pan) and bake at 325 degrees F for 35 minutes or until brown but not too brown. Cut in squares for serving (use a sharp knife and try to work around the bits of pineapple--otherwise you'll get ragged pieces).
I also took a pan of Ruth's Pineapple Cake, from the Harrowsmith Cookbook. This recipe has been around for years but it's still good, and it's very easy to make. It does get a bit sticky, though, so it's best eaten the same day you make it.
Ruth’s Pineapple Cake
2 cups flour
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups crushed pineapple, un-drained (= 19 oz. can)
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional--our homeschool events are nut-free, so I leave them out)
Combine all ingredients and beat until smooth (just with a wooden spoon is fine).
Scrape into greased jelly roll pan (a 10 x 15-inch pan) and bake at 325 degrees F for 35 minutes or until brown but not too brown. Cut in squares for serving (use a sharp knife and try to work around the bits of pineapple--otherwise you'll get ragged pieces).
Monday, May 28, 2012
What's for supper? Meatballs and cornbread
Tonight's dinner menu:
Meatballs in homemade barbecue sauce, like this
Cornbread
One leftover sausage and some leftover perogies from Sunday dinner
Fresh spinach for salad plus cucumber, chick peas, and carrot sticks--mix and match
Canned pineapple and orange pieces, chilled in the freezer
Store cookies.
Meatballs in homemade barbecue sauce, like this
Cornbread
One leftover sausage and some leftover perogies from Sunday dinner
Fresh spinach for salad plus cucumber, chick peas, and carrot sticks--mix and match
Canned pineapple and orange pieces, chilled in the freezer
Store cookies.
Friday, February 18, 2011
What's for supper? Really cleaning out the fridge
(Groceries tomorrow)
4 bone-in chicken breasts, cooked in the slow cooker with sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing, and leftover carrots--it tasted like roast chicken
Mashed potatoes
Leftover bean-pepper salad
Tightwad Gazette Cuban bread (a homemaking lesson from this morning)
Applesauce
Dessert: choice of pears cooked in apple juice (with yogurt or milk), canned pineapple, bran muffins, pumpkin cake (I had a can to use up)
4 bone-in chicken breasts, cooked in the slow cooker with sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing, and leftover carrots--it tasted like roast chicken
Mashed potatoes
Leftover bean-pepper salad
Tightwad Gazette Cuban bread (a homemaking lesson from this morning)
Applesauce
Dessert: choice of pears cooked in apple juice (with yogurt or milk), canned pineapple, bran muffins, pumpkin cake (I had a can to use up)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
What's for Supper? Wednesday and Thursday, Cleaning out the Fridge
Wednesday:
Lotsa Leftovers.
Thursday:
Lunch:
Pressure-cooker soup made with dried white beans, a few canned tomatoes, a bit of pasta, celery, and the last onion
Sandwiches made with this and that
Teatime:
Graham crackers
Oranges
Supper:
Pork Meatballs
Frozen hash browns baked with homemade soy sauce-milk gravy--I baked the meatballs first, then added them to a casserole full of hash browns, poured the gravy over it, and baked the whole thing for awhile longer
Carrots
Bean salad made with a can of mixed beans and some chopped green pepper
Triscuits
Canned pineapple, bran muffins
Photos by Ponytails
Lotsa Leftovers.
Thursday:
Lunch:
Pressure-cooker soup made with dried white beans, a few canned tomatoes, a bit of pasta, celery, and the last onion
Sandwiches made with this and that
Teatime:
Graham crackers
Oranges
Supper:
Pork Meatballs
Frozen hash browns baked with homemade soy sauce-milk gravy--I baked the meatballs first, then added them to a casserole full of hash browns, poured the gravy over it, and baked the whole thing for awhile longer
Carrots
Bean salad made with a can of mixed beans and some chopped green pepper
Triscuits
Canned pineapple, bran muffins
Photos by Ponytails
Monday, June 14, 2010
Just Carrot Cake
This isn't the customizable Blinky-Blink Carrot Cake I posted about a couple of years ago. This one has no nuts, no coconut, no raisins, and no pineapple--which is exactly what The Apprentice requested for her birthday this week. (It's also dairy-free, unless you frost it with cream cheese frosting.) I found it in The Harrowsmith Cookbook Volume 1. It makes lots (a 9 x 13 inch pan), and has a noticeable honey flavour since you're not blocking it out with other ingredients.
Carrot Cake
submitted by Lynn Hill, Ilderton, Ontario
3 cups flour (I used unbleached)
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon (I used only 1 1/2 tsp.)
1 cup honey (I had only 3/4 cup honey, so I filled in with 1/4 cup brown sugar)
1 cup oil
4 eggs
2 cups grated carrot
1 cup raisins or chopped nuts, optional
Measure dry ingredients into bowl. Stir and add honey, oil and eggs. Beat hard by hand for 1 minute. Add carrots and nuts/raisins if desired, and beat to mix.
Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. But be careful--it will brown quickly because of the honey, and might not take quite that long--ours was done sooner. As soon as it smells "done," it probably is.
We covered it with cream-cheese frosting and put an enormous number of candles on it.
Carrot Cake
submitted by Lynn Hill, Ilderton, Ontario
3 cups flour (I used unbleached)
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon (I used only 1 1/2 tsp.)
1 cup honey (I had only 3/4 cup honey, so I filled in with 1/4 cup brown sugar)
1 cup oil
4 eggs
2 cups grated carrot
1 cup raisins or chopped nuts, optional
Measure dry ingredients into bowl. Stir and add honey, oil and eggs. Beat hard by hand for 1 minute. Add carrots and nuts/raisins if desired, and beat to mix.
Pour into a greased 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. But be careful--it will brown quickly because of the honey, and might not take quite that long--ours was done sooner. As soon as it smells "done," it probably is.
We covered it with cream-cheese frosting and put an enormous number of candles on it.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
What's for dinner? Pizza. It's not hard.
Pizza is supposed to be complicated. At least that's what it always seems like to me--because all the best-ever recipes swear that you're going to get something exactly like restaurant pizza, which isn't even really possible unless you've got a mighty hot oven and a pizza stone and all that. Or at least unless you're very ambitious.
But is it okay to just have "pretty good" or "very good" pizza without it having to be international-pizza-competition quality? Sure. You don't have to have a Pampered Anything. You can even have an uneven oven like ours, and store-brand mozzarella cheese, and the simplest possible sauce (thinned-down tomato paste with a sprinkle of dried basil and oregano). And you know what, you can still make pretty good pizza that saves you a phone call and the best part of twenty bucks. (That's what two mediums with delivery go for here.)
This is what we had for dinner:
Two pizzas, made with 2 lbs. of bread-machine pizza dough, the above-mentioned cheese and sauce, a little piece of pepperoni, a bit of deli ham, a few mushrooms, and canned pineapple tidbits. The Squirrelings did most of the putting together. We have no strange magic for the baking--we just put them in at 425 degrees, which is probably hotter than that in the top and at the back of the oven, so I switched them partway through. Bake till somewhat brown on the edges. Let cool a few minutes before slicing.
Soup, made with 4 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup green lentils simmered in the stock/water, then some cooked rice, leftover chopped potato, and frozen mixed vegetables added and cooked until it was soup. You know it's soup when it stops looking like a potful of water with vegetables and lentils floating in it.
Ponytails' special Pineapple-Juice-Gingerale-Orange drink, made partly with the drained pineapple juice.
Giant chocolate cookies, made from an on-sale chocolate cake mix+egg/oil/water, with a cupful of oatmeal mixed in. (Everybody's seen that recipe, right?) And grapes.
But is it okay to just have "pretty good" or "very good" pizza without it having to be international-pizza-competition quality? Sure. You don't have to have a Pampered Anything. You can even have an uneven oven like ours, and store-brand mozzarella cheese, and the simplest possible sauce (thinned-down tomato paste with a sprinkle of dried basil and oregano). And you know what, you can still make pretty good pizza that saves you a phone call and the best part of twenty bucks. (That's what two mediums with delivery go for here.)
This is what we had for dinner:
Two pizzas, made with 2 lbs. of bread-machine pizza dough, the above-mentioned cheese and sauce, a little piece of pepperoni, a bit of deli ham, a few mushrooms, and canned pineapple tidbits. The Squirrelings did most of the putting together. We have no strange magic for the baking--we just put them in at 425 degrees, which is probably hotter than that in the top and at the back of the oven, so I switched them partway through. Bake till somewhat brown on the edges. Let cool a few minutes before slicing.
Soup, made with 4 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup green lentils simmered in the stock/water, then some cooked rice, leftover chopped potato, and frozen mixed vegetables added and cooked until it was soup. You know it's soup when it stops looking like a potful of water with vegetables and lentils floating in it.
Ponytails' special Pineapple-Juice-Gingerale-Orange drink, made partly with the drained pineapple juice.
Giant chocolate cookies, made from an on-sale chocolate cake mix+egg/oil/water, with a cupful of oatmeal mixed in. (Everybody's seen that recipe, right?) And grapes.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Mmm...chicken. Mmm...garlic. (What's for dinner?)
I was really happy that Gayle fixed her menu-plan links to include Chicken, Mushroom and Broccoli Alfredo. I was even happier that the sauce turned out to be based on heavy cream and not on mushroom soup. And that's because the last time we were at Giant Tiger, a man--we think he worked there, but even the cashier didn't seem to be sure when we asked her--came up to us, kind of mumbled something, and handed us two coupons for free milk or cream. Not even a free pint of cream, but a free litre of cream (that's four cups for the Americans). He gave one to me and one to Mr. Fixit.
Whipping cream is $6.19 a litre.
Whoo hoo.
So we got one litre of the slightly lighter cream that Mr. Fixit likes to make ice cream with, and one of whipping cream. And that's why I was happy to have a way to use it up (besides the obvious, making whipped cream).
I left the mushrooms, salt and rosemary out of the recipe, but otherwise made it the way it says, and served it over fusilli. The Apprentice--our Alfredo addict--approved. Crayons couldn't figure out why there was "whipped cream" in the chicken, and we had a brief discussion that somewhat resembled the DHM's playdough story. (For those of you who enjoy the tales of her young friends Blynken and Nod, she has a particularly good one up today, about maps and all the socialization that homeschooled kids don't get.)
We also had a raw veggie plate (I put the mushrooms there instead of in the chicken), canned pineapple, and very small helpings of chocolate cake-in-a-mug. We didn't need dessert, but something about the spring-is-coming sunlight made things feel a bit celebratory.
Whipping cream is $6.19 a litre.
Whoo hoo.
So we got one litre of the slightly lighter cream that Mr. Fixit likes to make ice cream with, and one of whipping cream. And that's why I was happy to have a way to use it up (besides the obvious, making whipped cream).
I left the mushrooms, salt and rosemary out of the recipe, but otherwise made it the way it says, and served it over fusilli. The Apprentice--our Alfredo addict--approved. Crayons couldn't figure out why there was "whipped cream" in the chicken, and we had a brief discussion that somewhat resembled the DHM's playdough story. (For those of you who enjoy the tales of her young friends Blynken and Nod, she has a particularly good one up today, about maps and all the socialization that homeschooled kids don't get.)
We also had a raw veggie plate (I put the mushrooms there instead of in the chicken), canned pineapple, and very small helpings of chocolate cake-in-a-mug. We didn't need dessert, but something about the spring-is-coming sunlight made things feel a bit celebratory.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Baby shower (and no chocolate on the diapers)
Some have been done to death. How many things on a tray can you remember?
So when it was time for a much-anticipated baby shower this weekend (for a mama who's given many memorable parties of her own, we (her friends) decided we had to do something different. But not gross.
When we asked the New Mama's other offspring (who's the Apprentice's age) what they needed, she said that they were well stocked with clothes and all the big stuff...so we thought having a surprise Toys for Boys party would be fun (and probably appreciated after years of pink). That idea also inspired the games and decorations.
The guests were a mix of moms and teenage daughters--plus our own younger squirrelings, plus the New Arrival who got very well hugged and walked around. Plus Baby's Dad and Mr. Fixit, who spent part of the time hanging out in the workshop. Fourteen bodies altogether. We all know each other--we used to get together every couple of weeks during the older girls' younger years--but don't often get everyone together now. So it was kind of like a family reunion too. (The only (female) bodies missing were our friends who moved to the U.S., and a couple of daughters who were travelling or doing other important things.)
GAMES
We browsed both the baby shower sites and the birthday party sites, and started to get inspiration from some of the ideas there: Nursery Rhyme Jeopardy made Mama Squirrel think of doing something like Toy Jeopardy or a toy trivia quiz; the Lego parties sprouted the idea of having some kind of a model contest or race. Just thinking about all the different kinds of toys through the years made me remember how many little bits and pieces we have around here already (and the old catalogues we've been looking at). Finally we used those ideas to come up with two of our own games. Actually three, but we decided that two were enough. (The third was going to be a competition to see who could build the best "baby stuff" (high chair, bed, toy) out of Lego.)
The first was a variation on the tray game, and it was partly inspired by our
The second game came out of the WishBookWeb vintage catalogue site, and it's something that Crayons and I did a couple of times this year for school. What you do is pick an old Christmas catalogue on the site--say 1942--give yourself a reasonable budget for the time--and pick out presents within that budget.
I picked out seven catalogues from the site and printed out about ten toy pages from each one. Each pair of players got those pages in an envelope with the year marked on it and some play money, a sheet of coloured cardstock (3-hole punched), a glue stick, scissors, and markers. (Crayons volunteered her set of fancy scissors too.) The 1933 team got only $5; the 1988 team got something like $25. (Yes, I know that in 1933 you would have been extremely lucky to have had $5 to spend on baby presents; but I didn't want to give them 39 cents either.)
The challenge was to pick out presents for the baby and cut and paste them onto a page for a keepsake booklet--with autographs, comments and so on. We had prizes for the most artistic, most fun for the money and so on. Mr. Fixit and the Baby's Dad each made a page too. The last page of the booklet was left blank, and one of the guests used it to write down the "real" presents when Baby's Mama opened them later. At the end, we tied the pages together with ribbon.
There was lots of laughing and reminiscing over the catalogue pages while everybody worked on them--"oh, I remember those!"--"look what a teddy bear cost in 1933!"--"hey, Mom, you found one of those at the thrift shop."
FOOD
Each family brought a plate of finger-food desserts--cookies and squares. I made some mini cheesecakes from the Momma's Corner website [link defunct]. I thought they might fall apart when people unpeeled the paper cups, but they held together really well. I think ours might have been a bit smaller than Momma's--I was just guessing at how much crust and how much cheese mixture to put into each one. We used half her filling recipe--1 package of cream cheese and so on--and ended up with 36 mini cakes.
High up in a cupboard we found a ceramic container that someone had sent flowers in when one of the Squirrelings was born--not sure which one, and I had probably thought of sending it (the vase, not the Squirreling) to the thrift store more than once, but now I'm glad I kept it, because it did look good with the fruit arrangement. (Photos coming.) I was going to make a batch of plain playdough to stick the skewers into, but I found Play-doh Soft-packs at the dollar store, saving me the trouble. And we saved the Play-doh afterwards.) Ponytails and I put the fruit on the skewers in the afternoon and refrigerated them until after dinner; then she arranged the vase, and we put it in the cold room until the party. (It wouldn't fit in the fridge.)
We made punch (one of the guests brought her punch bowl), from a recipe I saw in Taste of Home while waiting at the dentist's last week. (2 litres club soda, 1 750 mL bottle white grape juice, 1 cup sugar or to taste, 1 cup lemon juice. Mix and serve with ice.) I put on a pot of coffee too.
DECORATIONS
We kept it simple: a dozen balloons, a bright green plastic tablecloth, bright flowered napkins, and Crayons' Toy Story collection (mostly from yard sales) displayed by the front door.
FRUGAL STUFF
We used a lot of things we already had: the old toys for the games and decorations; homemade jam for the cheesecakes, homegrown parsley for greenery in the fruit bouquet, the re-used baby vase, skewers, "real" plates and cups, surplus-store cardstock, and so on. I printed out the catalogue pages mostly on the backs of other printouts (that was partly because we forgot to get more printer paper).
We spent our money where it seemed to count the most: fresh fruit for the bouquet (and a daisy-shaped cutter for the pineapple, although we could possibly have improvised with a knife); cupcake liners and Nilla Wafers for the cheesecakes (graham crackers are cheaper here, but I wanted the "real thing"); a few partyware things. We stopped at a new Dollarama that had a really good craft-supply section, so that's where we found prizes for the games.
MISCELLANEOUS TIPS
If you're planning a shower for a mom whose baby has already been born--and especially if she's nursing--allow time in the evening for her to take care of the baby's needs. New babies can take a long time to nurse, especially if they're heading for a nap. Most guests don't mind entertaining themselves for awhile if the New Mama has to disappear for awhile. For groups that don't know each other well, you might want to have a game or something that doesn't require the Mama's presence. (This happened to Mama Squirrel too when the Apprentice arrived slightly ahead of schedule (and ahead of the baby shower). It wasn't that we were squeamish about feeding the baby in public, it was more that we weren't very experienced at it yet, and our Squirreling wasn't going to go to sleep with all that noise.)
The best idea, I think, is to do what you're comfortable with and what will mean the most to your guests. For this group of friends, that meant--along with no chocolate on the diapers--spending a few minutes at the end thanking God for the blessing of our children and families...and each other.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
WFMW: The advantage of limitations
We've inadvertently discovered a way to save money on groceries.
We (in mid-size-urban southern Ontario) usually do a big weekly grocery shop at either a discount supermarket or one particular independent grocery store. Some weeks, though, we only manage to make it to Giant Tiger, a discount store that (if you haven't been up to this Treehouse before) specializes more in flip-flops and talking-singing-light-up Santas than it does in groceries. Saturdays are short, or we need flip-flops anyway, or we just don't seem to need a lot of food that week.
Which is where the WFMW comes in. You see, we also have some dietary limitations, in this case sodium and related things like MSG: the limits are no longer that severe, but I still check labels for any nasty surprises, and avoid certain kinds of convenience foods.
Which is, to a large extent, what you're going to find at Giant Tiger. It's the kind of place where the fruit section consists of apples, oranges and bananas (and things like canned pineapple and expensive frozen strawberries), and the vegetables are limited to iceberg lettuce, carrots, onions, potatoes and canned (not no-salt) and frozen veggies. Not quite as limited as the corner store, but not exactly loaded with choices either.
So, with my tongue somewhat in my cheek, here's the money-saving tip: shop, once a month or at least occasionally, somewhere where you can't eat at least half of what's on the shelf (too caloric or high-sodium or whatever). Even just a store that's way too expensive will work. Get your cart and cruise the aisles. Stick out your tongue and sigh in frustration at all the preservative-laden or overpriced, off-limits stuff. Grab whatever does work for you (in our case, that included turkey kielbasa, baby carrots, potato flakes, frozen juice, puffed wheat, bagels, milk, and ginger snaps). Then come home and combine that with whatever you have in the cupboards. You'll feel economical and virtuous. ;-)
A frozen spinach...thing
Is this a hot dip? A side dish? We're not sure, but it was quite tasty.
Hot Spinach with Cream Cheese
1 10-ounce package frozen spinach, partially thawed if possible
One third to half a brick of cream cheese
Butter or margarine, a couple of spoonfuls or whatever you like
Some kind of crumbs--I used whole wheat soda crackers, about a cupful
Dash of nutmeg and any other seasonings you like
Milk as needed
This is what I did: In a small covered casserole I put the spinach, all by itself, and let it warm up in the oven while I was baking something else. If the spinach is already thawed, you can probably skip that step. I took it out about fifteen minutes later, mashed the spinach around, and added the cream cheese, cut in pieces--not beaten in, just added here and there. I topped it with the crumbs, butter and nutmeg, and let it heat until the cheese was getting melty and the crumbs were toasted. At that point it also seemed to be getting dry around the edges, so I added enough milk to keep it soft (burned spinach is not nice). We ate this as a side dish along with pineapple chicken-balls and orzo: not that I'm particularly recommending that flavour combination, but it suited what we had in the cupboard and the freezer. The Apprentice in particular thought it was good enough to ask for a repeat sometime.
Hot Spinach with Cream Cheese
1 10-ounce package frozen spinach, partially thawed if possible
One third to half a brick of cream cheese
Butter or margarine, a couple of spoonfuls or whatever you like
Some kind of crumbs--I used whole wheat soda crackers, about a cupful
Dash of nutmeg and any other seasonings you like
Milk as needed
This is what I did: In a small covered casserole I put the spinach, all by itself, and let it warm up in the oven while I was baking something else. If the spinach is already thawed, you can probably skip that step. I took it out about fifteen minutes later, mashed the spinach around, and added the cream cheese, cut in pieces--not beaten in, just added here and there. I topped it with the crumbs, butter and nutmeg, and let it heat until the cheese was getting melty and the crumbs were toasted. At that point it also seemed to be getting dry around the edges, so I added enough milk to keep it soft (burned spinach is not nice). We ate this as a side dish along with pineapple chicken-balls and orzo: not that I'm particularly recommending that flavour combination, but it suited what we had in the cupboard and the freezer. The Apprentice in particular thought it was good enough to ask for a repeat sometime.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Eating with a Smaller Mouthprint: Part Two
This is the second part of the class session on making eating more a matter of faith (as one of the women in the class put it). (Part One is here.)The list was given in a shorter form as a handout; this is my expanded version, but some of it's still in point form because I was just listing ideas as we went along.
A (Not-So-Standard) List of Things People Could Do
1. Co-operating: to ease the burden on our many small households, on older people and singles. Try co-operative shopping, cooking, sharing meals. Trade tools. Invite people to eat regularly with you. Cook a little extra and freeze small portions for older people you care for.
2. Reading: If you have children, read books that give insight into what people ate in other times. In some of our children’s books, it’s made plain that meals years ago were often quite different—for instance, in All of a Kind Family, a picnic at the beach consisted of bread and butter sandwiches, tomatoes, and eggs; and the girls were amazed to find that their mother had brought some small cakes as well. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Ma left a lunch of milk, molasses and something called corn dodgers (like corn pones). You can also find food quotes in your own books. One that always reminds me to keep a positive attitude came from John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, where a man was praising his wife and said something like: “If we have meat, she cooks it along with the beans; and if we don’t have meat, she just goes ahead and cooks the beans anyway.” I also saw something recently in the Little House Cookbook, that said that Laura never complained in later years about the monotony of pioneer food; only hunger was monotonous.
Look at older cookbooks for low-cost meal ideas, and MCC’s various global/justice-type cookbooks—nice gift idea too. Or you can read newer books such as The 100 Mile Diet.
3. Rethinking recipes—cutting back, using less; substituting, filling in with less expensive foods, cooking multiples, using shorter/simpler recipes; “gathering up the fragments.” Having one or two basic things to do with each food item, especially if it's something that you tend to have a lot of. Examples of this that I have used:
Hard pears—cut up and bake with a little apple juice, they’ll get soft in half an hour to forty minutes
Apples—core and bake two hours in the crockpot; make applesauce; slice for dessert
Canned pumpkin—add honey and spices, make pumpkin butter
Bananas—freeze whole & use for baking; freeze and put through the food processor
Sour cream—put in muffins.
Muffins—freeze them.
Canned pineapple—same dessert as bananas (can also use combination)
Piece of cabbage—shred and mix with favourite dressing
Canned/fresh green beans and/or other canned beans—mix with bean-salad dressing
Bits of barley or brown rice—cook overnight as hot cereal
4. Ignoring much of the mainstream shopping advice—such as not shopping with children, shopping only the periphery of the store, and shopping only according to a pre-written menu. (We briefly discussed the pros and cons of each of these ideas.)
5. Shopping with justice and the earth in mind. Consider the energy, transportation and pollution costs as well as supermarket prices; consider the time needed to shop, prepare, cook, clean up—energy costs make cooking even more expensive. Buy vegetable boxes that support local agriculture. You can get involved with fair-trade importing; you can lobby governments, represent those treated unjustly, fight for fair economic policies, food safety, and agricultural issues.
6. Limiting—creating margin around splurges. Maybe limit some foods to celebrations. Just something to think about.
7. Experimenting—have an experiment week. Eat what’s in the cupboard, or spend only an agreed-upon amount. Try new foods. Use your kitchen tools more creatively (use library books about slow cookers, pressure cookers, etc.). Use your freezer too.
At this point we will stop for a little entertainment:
You had for breakfast: two pounds bacon,
Three dozen eggs, one coffee cake, and
Then you had something really awful,
Four kippered herrings on a waffle.
Nine English muffins, one baked apple,
Boston cream pie, Philadelphia scrapple.
Seventeen bowls of Crispy Crunch.
Then you said, "What's for lunch?"—Allan Sherman
OK--back to work now.
8. Studying, working, volunteering— Think about all the ways that you could influence the world through work in chemistry, biology, improving food crops, food additive safety; selling food; even studying or teaching less-directly related subjects like law and urban planning. Those of you with home kitchen experience could run food teaching programs, food box programs (co-ordinating pickup of produce boxes), collective kitchens, breakfast programs, soup kitchen outreaches, seniors’ lunches—teach people to have more food awareness and confidence, feed their families better, depend less on food banks. I’m saying this especially to older people, those of you who are no longer raising families: many people grow up now without even basic kitchen skills; your creativity and patience are badly needed to teach nutrition and budgeting, gardening, preserving food. Let your experience teach the rest of us.
9. Backyard farming (and the kitchen food factory)—join the backyard-hen movement.
10. Budgeting and planning—Do the math and compare, because prices change. (Right now there's about a 20-cent difference here between a litre of fluid milk and the equivalent in store-brand powdered milk--not really enough to make us give up fluid milk, but just enough to make baking with powdered milk worthwhile. But that could change.) Check the unit prices (sometimes bulk is not cheaper). Keep a notebook of what different stores charge. (I noticed a $2/kg difference for yeast recently between two different stores. I know, who buys yeast by the kg?--but it's the principle of the thing.)
Also, use cheaper forms of food. Following Miss Maggie's directions, I bought 1 lb. of dried pinto beans for $1.50, added a few cents’ worth of seasonings, and for that price plus the cost of a few crockpot hours (and almost no effort), I had a whole crock full of refried beans, cheaper than canned.
11. Being realistic—Don’t insist, hard-and-fast, on always having to make everything from scratch. Sometimes it is a blessing to have a bag of cookies or a frozen pizza on hand. People didn’t always expect to have to make everything themselves—that’s why bakeries were invented.
12. Eating potatoes. And other simple foods, without needing to dress them up. (I told a story that I think came from the La Leche League book The Heart Has Its Own Reasons: a mother said that she had bought some berries and they were sitting on the counter. Her preschooler asked what they were for, and she said, in a patient Mommy-voice, "Mommy hasn't quite decided what to do with them yet." The boy asked, "Well, why can't we just eat them?" Duh, light goes on. So they did. )
13. TRUSTING—Many of us have health concerns now with what we will eat—worries about local and organic vs. imported food, contaminated tomatoes, allergy-related and other medical concerns, worrying about whether things are low fat, wholegrain, have additives—and at the same time we’re trying to eat economically and responsibly—sometimes it makes you want to throw up your hands and give up. But even if our situation seems unique, God can provide what we need. And again--nobody can do everything--but anybody can do something.
(If this post seems a little unfinished, it's because at this point I shut my mouth and let some other people talk. So it's your turn--comments?)
A (Not-So-Standard) List of Things People Could Do
1. Co-operating: to ease the burden on our many small households, on older people and singles. Try co-operative shopping, cooking, sharing meals. Trade tools. Invite people to eat regularly with you. Cook a little extra and freeze small portions for older people you care for.
2. Reading: If you have children, read books that give insight into what people ate in other times. In some of our children’s books, it’s made plain that meals years ago were often quite different—for instance, in All of a Kind Family, a picnic at the beach consisted of bread and butter sandwiches, tomatoes, and eggs; and the girls were amazed to find that their mother had brought some small cakes as well. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Ma left a lunch of milk, molasses and something called corn dodgers (like corn pones). You can also find food quotes in your own books. One that always reminds me to keep a positive attitude came from John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, where a man was praising his wife and said something like: “If we have meat, she cooks it along with the beans; and if we don’t have meat, she just goes ahead and cooks the beans anyway.” I also saw something recently in the Little House Cookbook, that said that Laura never complained in later years about the monotony of pioneer food; only hunger was monotonous.
Look at older cookbooks for low-cost meal ideas, and MCC’s various global/justice-type cookbooks—nice gift idea too. Or you can read newer books such as The 100 Mile Diet.
3. Rethinking recipes—cutting back, using less; substituting, filling in with less expensive foods, cooking multiples, using shorter/simpler recipes; “gathering up the fragments.” Having one or two basic things to do with each food item, especially if it's something that you tend to have a lot of. Examples of this that I have used:
Hard pears—cut up and bake with a little apple juice, they’ll get soft in half an hour to forty minutes
Apples—core and bake two hours in the crockpot; make applesauce; slice for dessert
Canned pumpkin—add honey and spices, make pumpkin butter
Bananas—freeze whole & use for baking; freeze and put through the food processor
Sour cream—put in muffins.
Muffins—freeze them.
Canned pineapple—same dessert as bananas (can also use combination)
Piece of cabbage—shred and mix with favourite dressing
Canned/fresh green beans and/or other canned beans—mix with bean-salad dressing
Bits of barley or brown rice—cook overnight as hot cereal
4. Ignoring much of the mainstream shopping advice—such as not shopping with children, shopping only the periphery of the store, and shopping only according to a pre-written menu. (We briefly discussed the pros and cons of each of these ideas.)
5. Shopping with justice and the earth in mind. Consider the energy, transportation and pollution costs as well as supermarket prices; consider the time needed to shop, prepare, cook, clean up—energy costs make cooking even more expensive. Buy vegetable boxes that support local agriculture. You can get involved with fair-trade importing; you can lobby governments, represent those treated unjustly, fight for fair economic policies, food safety, and agricultural issues.
6. Limiting—creating margin around splurges. Maybe limit some foods to celebrations. Just something to think about.
7. Experimenting—have an experiment week. Eat what’s in the cupboard, or spend only an agreed-upon amount. Try new foods. Use your kitchen tools more creatively (use library books about slow cookers, pressure cookers, etc.). Use your freezer too.
At this point we will stop for a little entertainment:
You had for breakfast: two pounds bacon,
Three dozen eggs, one coffee cake, and
Then you had something really awful,
Four kippered herrings on a waffle.
Nine English muffins, one baked apple,
Boston cream pie, Philadelphia scrapple.
Seventeen bowls of Crispy Crunch.
Then you said, "What's for lunch?"—Allan Sherman
OK--back to work now.
8. Studying, working, volunteering— Think about all the ways that you could influence the world through work in chemistry, biology, improving food crops, food additive safety; selling food; even studying or teaching less-directly related subjects like law and urban planning. Those of you with home kitchen experience could run food teaching programs, food box programs (co-ordinating pickup of produce boxes), collective kitchens, breakfast programs, soup kitchen outreaches, seniors’ lunches—teach people to have more food awareness and confidence, feed their families better, depend less on food banks. I’m saying this especially to older people, those of you who are no longer raising families: many people grow up now without even basic kitchen skills; your creativity and patience are badly needed to teach nutrition and budgeting, gardening, preserving food. Let your experience teach the rest of us.
9. Backyard farming (and the kitchen food factory)—join the backyard-hen movement.
10. Budgeting and planning—Do the math and compare, because prices change. (Right now there's about a 20-cent difference here between a litre of fluid milk and the equivalent in store-brand powdered milk--not really enough to make us give up fluid milk, but just enough to make baking with powdered milk worthwhile. But that could change.) Check the unit prices (sometimes bulk is not cheaper). Keep a notebook of what different stores charge. (I noticed a $2/kg difference for yeast recently between two different stores. I know, who buys yeast by the kg?--but it's the principle of the thing.)
Also, use cheaper forms of food. Following Miss Maggie's directions, I bought 1 lb. of dried pinto beans for $1.50, added a few cents’ worth of seasonings, and for that price plus the cost of a few crockpot hours (and almost no effort), I had a whole crock full of refried beans, cheaper than canned.
11. Being realistic—Don’t insist, hard-and-fast, on always having to make everything from scratch. Sometimes it is a blessing to have a bag of cookies or a frozen pizza on hand. People didn’t always expect to have to make everything themselves—that’s why bakeries were invented.
12. Eating potatoes. And other simple foods, without needing to dress them up. (I told a story that I think came from the La Leche League book The Heart Has Its Own Reasons: a mother said that she had bought some berries and they were sitting on the counter. Her preschooler asked what they were for, and she said, in a patient Mommy-voice, "Mommy hasn't quite decided what to do with them yet." The boy asked, "Well, why can't we just eat them?" Duh, light goes on. So they did. )
13. TRUSTING—Many of us have health concerns now with what we will eat—worries about local and organic vs. imported food, contaminated tomatoes, allergy-related and other medical concerns, worrying about whether things are low fat, wholegrain, have additives—and at the same time we’re trying to eat economically and responsibly—sometimes it makes you want to throw up your hands and give up. But even if our situation seems unique, God can provide what we need. And again--nobody can do everything--but anybody can do something.
(If this post seems a little unfinished, it's because at this point I shut my mouth and let some other people talk. So it's your turn--comments?)
Thursday, June 05, 2008
You use what you have (meditations on what's in the fridge)
One essential element of being frugal is that you use what you have, the best that you can. Other people have said this over and over too--Amy Dacyczyn said that she didn't want to print her recipe for pumpkin-blueberry muffins because those things were cheap/free for her but not necessarily for other people. (And yet people are still after her to write a cookbook.)
And that's one reason it's difficult for me to plan menus ahead of time, because the leftovers from pre-planned dinners have to get accounted for too. Coffeemamma just posted a very sensible week's plan and notes that it's based on what's available to her this time of year. We are in that same kind of waiting-for-the-fresh-stuff place right now.
I find the type of groceries we have really varies, depending on where we've been shopping. Last weekend the weather was bad, Mr. Fixit wasn't feeling well, so we were limited to a Giant Tiger trip plus a stop at Bulk Barn. I wasn't about to pay $2.89 for celery at Giant Tiger (although I've noticed that it's expensive at other stores right now too), and for the rest of our vegetables I had to settle for frozen peas, a can of mushrooms, and a head of iceberg lettuce. (I already had carrots and onions.) I knew we'd stock up better later on, but that was what we had to work with for at least a couple of days. Anyway, all that is to say that we had a few a-la-can dinners this week, which isn't necessarily a problem--it's just that sometimes what you have is fresh, sometimes it's frozen, sometimes it's packages, and you have to plan your meals on your feet, so to speak. (Remember my food-box menu plan? In a similar vein, I like what the new Hillbilly Housewife is doing with the Angel Food Menus, based on what's being distributed through another food box plan.) One night we had Giant Tiger's frozen cabbage rolls, plus a package of wieners that I put, frozen, into the oven with a bit of barbecue sauce over top; later I added a can of baked beans. Last night we had chicken spaghetti, with a salad made out of the iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, and sunflower seeds.
And sometimes you just do what makes sense. I've had a bunch of things to do today plus I have a meeting tonight and I don't want to leave a lot of pots and pans. (The Treehouse doesn't have a dishwasher.) We have ground turkey and I was going to make turkey loaf and maybe have mashed potatoes and vegetables with it...then I thought of the loaf of bread that just came out of the breadmaker, and the homemade cream-soup-mix in the cupboard, and the bag of frozen Japanese-style vegetables we bought last night (we did go on another grocery trip--worth a post in itself), and I thought--Hot Turkey-Vegetable Sandwiches. Or Turkey a la King on fresh bread, or whatever you want to call it. It's not a meal I'd make all the time, it's just what works today. (I also had a gi-nor-mous sweet potato from last night's trip, and I cut that up (so it wouldn't take forever to bake) and put it in a pan in the toaster oven.
That's not exactly a leftover story, but leftover-using-up works the same way. Last night's dessert was a what-do-we-have story: plain yogurt (frozen in cubes but mostly thawed by dessert time), one small blueberry yogurt cup, some frozen blueberries and mixed berries (leftovers of each), and graham crackers. Recipe: break up the graham crackers and layer them in a glass bowl with the yogurt and fruit. Let sit until defrosted but not entirely mushy. Call it trifle.
I could have skipped dessert for tonight, but I had some crushed pineapple getting forgotten in the fridge, and part of an orange that nobody finished at lunch. I cut up two bananas, spread the fruit all out in a small pan, and stuck it in the freezer. At dessert time we'll run it through the food processor--instant sherbet.
(Well, I guess that does leave a few dishes. But you get the point.)
And that's one reason it's difficult for me to plan menus ahead of time, because the leftovers from pre-planned dinners have to get accounted for too. Coffeemamma just posted a very sensible week's plan and notes that it's based on what's available to her this time of year. We are in that same kind of waiting-for-the-fresh-stuff place right now.
I find the type of groceries we have really varies, depending on where we've been shopping. Last weekend the weather was bad, Mr. Fixit wasn't feeling well, so we were limited to a Giant Tiger trip plus a stop at Bulk Barn. I wasn't about to pay $2.89 for celery at Giant Tiger (although I've noticed that it's expensive at other stores right now too), and for the rest of our vegetables I had to settle for frozen peas, a can of mushrooms, and a head of iceberg lettuce. (I already had carrots and onions.) I knew we'd stock up better later on, but that was what we had to work with for at least a couple of days. Anyway, all that is to say that we had a few a-la-can dinners this week, which isn't necessarily a problem--it's just that sometimes what you have is fresh, sometimes it's frozen, sometimes it's packages, and you have to plan your meals on your feet, so to speak. (Remember my food-box menu plan? In a similar vein, I like what the new Hillbilly Housewife is doing with the Angel Food Menus, based on what's being distributed through another food box plan.) One night we had Giant Tiger's frozen cabbage rolls, plus a package of wieners that I put, frozen, into the oven with a bit of barbecue sauce over top; later I added a can of baked beans. Last night we had chicken spaghetti, with a salad made out of the iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, and sunflower seeds.
And sometimes you just do what makes sense. I've had a bunch of things to do today plus I have a meeting tonight and I don't want to leave a lot of pots and pans. (The Treehouse doesn't have a dishwasher.) We have ground turkey and I was going to make turkey loaf and maybe have mashed potatoes and vegetables with it...then I thought of the loaf of bread that just came out of the breadmaker, and the homemade cream-soup-mix in the cupboard, and the bag of frozen Japanese-style vegetables we bought last night (we did go on another grocery trip--worth a post in itself), and I thought--Hot Turkey-Vegetable Sandwiches. Or Turkey a la King on fresh bread, or whatever you want to call it. It's not a meal I'd make all the time, it's just what works today. (I also had a gi-nor-mous sweet potato from last night's trip, and I cut that up (so it wouldn't take forever to bake) and put it in a pan in the toaster oven.
That's not exactly a leftover story, but leftover-using-up works the same way. Last night's dessert was a what-do-we-have story: plain yogurt (frozen in cubes but mostly thawed by dessert time), one small blueberry yogurt cup, some frozen blueberries and mixed berries (leftovers of each), and graham crackers. Recipe: break up the graham crackers and layer them in a glass bowl with the yogurt and fruit. Let sit until defrosted but not entirely mushy. Call it trifle.
I could have skipped dessert for tonight, but I had some crushed pineapple getting forgotten in the fridge, and part of an orange that nobody finished at lunch. I cut up two bananas, spread the fruit all out in a small pan, and stuck it in the freezer. At dessert time we'll run it through the food processor--instant sherbet.
(Well, I guess that does leave a few dishes. But you get the point.)
Saturday, February 09, 2008
A post from our past: Valentine's Pizza
(Reposted from Feb. 2007)
Last Sunday night we made a special treat for dessert: Pizza Cake. We adapted our recipe a long time ago from an April Fool's idea in Family Fun Magazine. We don't use red frosting for the tomato sauce, though; I prefer to make a sauce out of jam or preserves.
This is how we do it: I bake half of a white cake mix in a foil pizza pan. (You can bake the rest of the batter in a cupcake pan at the same time and save it for another time, if you want just one. One pizza cake serves about six eager eaters.) Usually I like to make cakes from scratch, and you could use any plain cake recipe you like; but for this recipe it seems the toppings are the exciting part and a mix will do fine underneath. If it bakes slightly unevenly, that's okay.
I make a sauce from a good dollop of red jam (say half a cup), enough water to bring it up to a cup, and a tablespoonful of cornstarch, cooked together until thick and clear. You might want to double that if you like lots of sauce (I did). (Note: jam thins as it heats, so you might want to try a bit less water than the math would say; I think my water level came up to about a cup and a half rather than two cups.) Raspberry and strawberry jam both work fine. This time around I used about half a jar of E.D. Smith Triple Fruits Raspberry. You could probably just use straight preserves too, if they're thin; but I think that would be too sweet.
When the cake is baked and fairly cool, spread it with the fruit sauce. Sprinkle it with something to resemble grated cheese; some people might like coconut, but we prefer a square of grated white chocolate. You can sprinkle it on after the fresh fruit (see below), but we think it looks better sprinkled on first. And then decorate, randomly or in lovely patterns, with your choice of fruit toppings.
Since our grocery store featured blackberries this week (an unusual treat, even in the summer), we got a small box of them and put them on the cake along with sliced bananas and canned pineapple chunks. But you could also use kiwi fruit, strawberries, small orange sections, or whatever else is available. (Note if you're using bananas or anything else that might turn brown: serve as soon as possible after decorating. We made the cake in the afternoon and refrigerated it until dinner, and the banana slices were already starting to discolour just a bit.)
If you're feeling creative and have a pizza box, you can serve it from the box as Family Fun shows; but otherwise it's just fine from the foil pan. Actually I baked it in three foil pizza pans stacked together, for stability; and when I served it I had the foil pan sitting on top of a glass cake plate. I put our pizza cutter out for fun, but a cake lifter will do just as well.
Now Ponytails and Crayons both want pizza cake for their birthdays.
Last Sunday night we made a special treat for dessert: Pizza Cake. We adapted our recipe a long time ago from an April Fool's idea in Family Fun Magazine. We don't use red frosting for the tomato sauce, though; I prefer to make a sauce out of jam or preserves.
This is how we do it: I bake half of a white cake mix in a foil pizza pan. (You can bake the rest of the batter in a cupcake pan at the same time and save it for another time, if you want just one. One pizza cake serves about six eager eaters.) Usually I like to make cakes from scratch, and you could use any plain cake recipe you like; but for this recipe it seems the toppings are the exciting part and a mix will do fine underneath. If it bakes slightly unevenly, that's okay.
I make a sauce from a good dollop of red jam (say half a cup), enough water to bring it up to a cup, and a tablespoonful of cornstarch, cooked together until thick and clear. You might want to double that if you like lots of sauce (I did). (Note: jam thins as it heats, so you might want to try a bit less water than the math would say; I think my water level came up to about a cup and a half rather than two cups.) Raspberry and strawberry jam both work fine. This time around I used about half a jar of E.D. Smith Triple Fruits Raspberry. You could probably just use straight preserves too, if they're thin; but I think that would be too sweet.
When the cake is baked and fairly cool, spread it with the fruit sauce. Sprinkle it with something to resemble grated cheese; some people might like coconut, but we prefer a square of grated white chocolate. You can sprinkle it on after the fresh fruit (see below), but we think it looks better sprinkled on first. And then decorate, randomly or in lovely patterns, with your choice of fruit toppings.
Since our grocery store featured blackberries this week (an unusual treat, even in the summer), we got a small box of them and put them on the cake along with sliced bananas and canned pineapple chunks. But you could also use kiwi fruit, strawberries, small orange sections, or whatever else is available. (Note if you're using bananas or anything else that might turn brown: serve as soon as possible after decorating. We made the cake in the afternoon and refrigerated it until dinner, and the banana slices were already starting to discolour just a bit.)
If you're feeling creative and have a pizza box, you can serve it from the box as Family Fun shows; but otherwise it's just fine from the foil pan. Actually I baked it in three foil pizza pans stacked together, for stability; and when I served it I had the foil pan sitting on top of a glass cake plate. I put our pizza cutter out for fun, but a cake lifter will do just as well.
Now Ponytails and Crayons both want pizza cake for their birthdays.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
A trifle scary
We do not forbid Halloween observance in the Treehouse. We don't make a huge honkin' deal out of it either, but we have some fun with the parts you can have fun with. Last night our menu included a Treehouse-designed Halloween Trifle, and the Squirrelings reverse-trick-or-treated the grandmotherly lady next door with some afterwards (because it made kind of a lot).
Halloween Trifle
1 9-inch chocolate cake (we had one in the freezer, half of a mix that we had baked up and saved for such times as this)--cut up in cubes
1 package of instant vanilla pudding, plus either orange or red-plus-yellow food colouring
Milk or powdered milk to make up the pudding
1 small can mandarin oranges (save the juice to add to the pudding)
1 real orange, peeled and sliced thin (not necessary but we had only one can of oranges; if I'd had two cans I probably would have left it out)
The grated peel of the real orange
1 cup of whipping cream, 3 tbsp. sugar, 1 tsp vanilla (or equivalent other topping)
Part of a chocolate bar, grated (or chocolate chips)
A few dried cranberries (just to add colour on top)
This is what we did:
Ponytails cut the cake into cubes and put half of them into a large glass bowl. (We do have a proper trifle bowl, but since this was family-sized rather than party-sized, we used a big glass salad bowl instead.)
Mama Squirrel used the drained mandarin orange juice plus another cup of milk to make up the vanilla pudding. Actually Crayons mixed it up. We added grated orange peel for flavour and some colouring to make it orange.
Ponytails added a layer of the cut-up orange and mandarin oranges (reserving about half a cupful for decoration), and then a layer of just-mixed pudding; then another layer each of cake and pudding. (I forget whether we had enough oranges for another layer).
Mama Squirrel put the whipping attachment on the food processor and beat up the cream, sugar and vanilla. She spread the whipped cream over the top of the trifle and let it all sit in the fridge while we did other things.
A little while later we gave the top a hefty sprinkling of grated chocolate (just a regular brand of dark chocolate bar) and arranged the leftover oranges and a few dried cranberries as artistically as we could. We had debated doing the top with oranges and pineapple rings to look like a jack-o-lantern face, but chocolate won out.
Halloween Trifle
1 9-inch chocolate cake (we had one in the freezer, half of a mix that we had baked up and saved for such times as this)--cut up in cubes
1 package of instant vanilla pudding, plus either orange or red-plus-yellow food colouring
Milk or powdered milk to make up the pudding
1 small can mandarin oranges (save the juice to add to the pudding)
1 real orange, peeled and sliced thin (not necessary but we had only one can of oranges; if I'd had two cans I probably would have left it out)
The grated peel of the real orange
1 cup of whipping cream, 3 tbsp. sugar, 1 tsp vanilla (or equivalent other topping)
Part of a chocolate bar, grated (or chocolate chips)
A few dried cranberries (just to add colour on top)
This is what we did:
Ponytails cut the cake into cubes and put half of them into a large glass bowl. (We do have a proper trifle bowl, but since this was family-sized rather than party-sized, we used a big glass salad bowl instead.)
Mama Squirrel used the drained mandarin orange juice plus another cup of milk to make up the vanilla pudding. Actually Crayons mixed it up. We added grated orange peel for flavour and some colouring to make it orange.
Ponytails added a layer of the cut-up orange and mandarin oranges (reserving about half a cupful for decoration), and then a layer of just-mixed pudding; then another layer each of cake and pudding. (I forget whether we had enough oranges for another layer).
Mama Squirrel put the whipping attachment on the food processor and beat up the cream, sugar and vanilla. She spread the whipped cream over the top of the trifle and let it all sit in the fridge while we did other things.
A little while later we gave the top a hefty sprinkling of grated chocolate (just a regular brand of dark chocolate bar) and arranged the leftover oranges and a few dried cranberries as artistically as we could. We had debated doing the top with oranges and pineapple rings to look like a jack-o-lantern face, but chocolate won out.
Also on the menu last night: Chicken chili, three-cheese dip with carrot and rutabaga sticks, and a package of garlic breadsticks. Mama Squirrel finally got to make a jack-o-lantern face, on the bowl of dip, with pumpkin seeds (the shelled green ones you can eat as is) and a celery stem. The dip was very good, too; you can find recipes for it including everything from bleu cheese to Velveeta. Mama Squirrel just improvised with what was in the fridge: some grated old Cheddar, Parmesan, and cottage cheese, with a good spoonful of white salad-dressing-stuff and a few drops of hot pepper sauce mixed in.
[Pictures are coming!]
Friday, October 05, 2007
Pan pizzas
I don't make homemade pizza too often, even with a food processor around to mix the dough. Whatever I do or don't do to it, it never seems to turn out with the right "heft," or to be baked just the way I want. (And no, I don't own a pizza stone or any of those things that assure great pizza.)
But last night we made individual pizzas from the Hillbilly Housewife's Pizza Page. I made the Make-Ahead Pizza dough (you mix the yeast dry with the flour) and was pleased to note that it Was Not Sticky--that's a nice change. I rolled out and par-baked five pie-pan-sized pizzas as she recommends--don't overdo this, the last one I put in got a bit too toasty. When Mr. Fixit came in he thought I had gone out and bought pita bread, because that's what the crusts looked like when they were cooling.
I also made up a double batch of the Almost Instant Pizza Sauce (there's a little typo in the sauce--you only put sugar in once), grated some cheese, sliced up some mushrooms and salami, and opened a can of pineapple; then let everybody decorate their own pizzas. And that was it; and "YUM- honest," as Coffeemamma says.
But last night we made individual pizzas from the Hillbilly Housewife's Pizza Page. I made the Make-Ahead Pizza dough (you mix the yeast dry with the flour) and was pleased to note that it Was Not Sticky--that's a nice change. I rolled out and par-baked five pie-pan-sized pizzas as she recommends--don't overdo this, the last one I put in got a bit too toasty. When Mr. Fixit came in he thought I had gone out and bought pita bread, because that's what the crusts looked like when they were cooling.
I also made up a double batch of the Almost Instant Pizza Sauce (there's a little typo in the sauce--you only put sugar in once), grated some cheese, sliced up some mushrooms and salami, and opened a can of pineapple; then let everybody decorate their own pizzas. And that was it; and "YUM- honest," as Coffeemamma says.
Monday, July 02, 2007
A little rhubarb
That's what we had--our still-skimpy plant yielded up about a cupful of diced rhubarb this week. Enough for muffins, but it was pretty hot to turn on the oven. I flipped through rhubarb dessert recipes, and saw a photo of raspberry-rhubarb parfaits.
Well, we could do that, except we didn't have any raspberries. But we did have some leftover canned pineapple in the fridge. And homemade yogurt, and granola. And a microwave oven...
So this is what I did: combined the rhubarb, the pineapple (about a cupful of tidbits), a quarter cup of sugar, and a spoonful of water in a glass measuring cup. (You probably don't need the water, but I'm still new at microwaving and I wasn't sure if it needed a bit of liquid.) I microwaved it on High for a couple of minutes, until the rhubarb was soft.
Then the girls and I layered granola, yogurt, and the rhubarb mixture in our fanciest stemmed glasses (this amount made five small desserts with no leftovers). We also added a spoonful of raspberry jam on the top of each, mostly for colour, and chilled them until dinnertime. And they were very elegant and delicious.
Well, we could do that, except we didn't have any raspberries. But we did have some leftover canned pineapple in the fridge. And homemade yogurt, and granola. And a microwave oven...
So this is what I did: combined the rhubarb, the pineapple (about a cupful of tidbits), a quarter cup of sugar, and a spoonful of water in a glass measuring cup. (You probably don't need the water, but I'm still new at microwaving and I wasn't sure if it needed a bit of liquid.) I microwaved it on High for a couple of minutes, until the rhubarb was soft.
Then the girls and I layered granola, yogurt, and the rhubarb mixture in our fanciest stemmed glasses (this amount made five small desserts with no leftovers). We also added a spoonful of raspberry jam on the top of each, mostly for colour, and chilled them until dinnertime. And they were very elegant and delicious.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Choices, choices
(Apologies to Eric Carle)
We use our share of convenience foods at the Treehouse, but pancake mix is not one of them. Actually very few baking mixes find their way up here--an occasional cake mix, but even that's an exception. I've never found it much of a hassle doing most of our baking from scratch, and as so many people have pointed out, when you bake from scratch, you get to control the ingredients.
In my recipe binder I have about six recipes for pancakes (and waffles), and we use them all interchangeably. Our "usual" (except when Mr. Fixit makes them up as he goes along) is the Buttermilk Pancakes recipe from Food That Really Schmecks. (It's a pretty standard recipe. UPDATE: I added it to the Comments.) We rarely buy buttermilk, but we've used soured milk, yogurt, and thinned sour cream and they all work fine. (I have also used leftover pudding--including tofu pudding--as part of the liquid in pancakes and waffles.) Whole wheat, unbleached flour, even bad-for-you-white all work fine in them. Sometimes we eat them with real maple syrup, more often with homemade maple-flavoured syrup or fruit sauce (recipe below). Or whatever else is around.
We also make Mammoth Flapjacks from a 1998 Flintstones Vitamins calendar--tossed the calendar, saved the recipe. It's easy and doesn't make too many--good for when there are only a couple of us home. And Slightly Sourdough Pancakes 2022 updated link from the 1996 Milk calendar (I think that was a James Barber recipe).
On the other hand, when there are more of us or we're extra hungry, I've used Good Grains Waffle or Pancake Mix (from Vegetarian Times, June 1995) or The Perfect Pancake Mix (from Family Fun magazine, March/April 1993). Because sometimes those 2-cups-of-flour recipes aren't quite enough to make all of us feel pleasantly stuffed and gluey with carbs. And if there are some left, we just freeze them.
Since the recipe for Mammoth Flapjacks is simple and makes only a small batch (you can double it), I'm including it (as originally written) for anyone who doesn't want to get into a big bowlful of batter. (Of course you can always make up one of the mixes and then just use a bit of that as well.)
Mammoth Flapjacks
"Wilma and Pebbles know just how to satisfy Fred's mammoth appetite. Large or small, these pancakes are a family favourite."
What you need:
An adult to help with the cooking
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. granulated sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 3/4 cups milk
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
What to do:
1. Combine first 4 ingredients in medium bowl.
2. Beat egg, milk and oil together in a small bowl; add to dry ingredients. Beat with whisk until smooth.
3. Lightly grease hot griddle or frying pan with oil or butter. For mammoth pancakes, use 1/2 cup batter; for mini pancakes, use 2 tbsp.
4. Spoon batter onto hot pan. When pancakes puff up and have tiny bubbles over surface, flip them over with a lifter. Let brown on other side then remove. Serve with butter and syrup. Makes about 10 mammoth or 36 mini pancakes.
Fruit Syrup
Or Jam syrup.
Measure out a cupful of water; pour as much of it as you can into a jar of jam that has a few spoonfuls left in the bottom. Put the lid on it and shake it up. OR (if your jar of jam isn't so near the bottom), measure a few good spoonfuls of jam into a 1-cup measuring cup and make up the difference with water. Pour the jam-water mixture into a small pot and blend with 1 tbsp. cornstarch. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until the mixture clears and thickens. Serve warm. You can add or use almost any fruit or juice in this recipe--use pineapple or orange juice (or the liquid or syrup from canned fruit) instead of water, or add fresh or canned chopped fruit.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Another Valentine's treat (or April Fool's joke)
Last Sunday night we made a special treat for dessert: Pizza Cake. We adapted our recipe a long time ago from an April Fool's idea in Family Fun Magazine. We don't use red frosting for the tomato sauce, though; I prefer to make a sauce out of jam or preserves.
This is how we do it: I bake half of a white cake mix in a foil pizza pan. (You can bake the rest of the batter in a cupcake pan at the same time and save it for another time, if you want just one. One pizza cake serves about six eager eaters.) Usually I like to make cakes from scratch, and you could use any plain cake recipe you like; but for this recipe it seems the toppings are the exciting part and a mix will do fine underneath. If it bakes slightly unevenly, that's okay.
I make a sauce from a good dollop of red jam (say half a cup), enough water to bring it up to a cup, and a tablespoonful of cornstarch, cooked together until thick and clear. You might want to double that if you like lots of sauce (I did). (Note: jam thins as it heats, so you might want to try a bit less water than the math would say; I think my water level came up to about a cup and a half rather than two cups.) Raspberry and strawberry jam both work fine. This time around I used about half a jar of E.D. Smith Triple Fruits Raspberry. You could probably just use straight preserves too, if they're thin; but I think that would be too sweet.
When the cake is baked and fairly cool, spread it with the fruit sauce. Sprinkle it with something to resemble grated cheese; some people might like coconut, but we prefer a square of grated white chocolate. You can sprinkle it on after the fresh fruit (see below), but we think it looks better sprinkled on first.
And then decorate, randomly or in lovely patterns, with your choice of fruit toppings. Since our grocery store featured blackberries this week (an unusual treat, even in the summer), we got a small box of them and put them on the cake along with sliced bananas and canned pineapple chunks. But you could also use kiwi fruit, strawberries, small orange sections, or whatever else is available. (Note if you're using bananas or anything else that might turn brown: serve as soon as possible after decorating. We made the cake in the afternoon and refrigerated it until dinner, and the banana slices were already starting to discolour just a bit.)
If you're feeling creative and have a pizza box, you can serve it from the box as Family Fun shows; but otherwise it's just fine from the foil pan. Actually I baked it in three foil pizza pans stacked together, for stability; and when I served it I had the foil pan sitting on top of a glass cake plate. I put our pizza cutter out for fun, but a cake lifter will do just as well.
Now Ponytails and Crayons both want pizza cake for their birthdays.
This is how we do it: I bake half of a white cake mix in a foil pizza pan. (You can bake the rest of the batter in a cupcake pan at the same time and save it for another time, if you want just one. One pizza cake serves about six eager eaters.) Usually I like to make cakes from scratch, and you could use any plain cake recipe you like; but for this recipe it seems the toppings are the exciting part and a mix will do fine underneath. If it bakes slightly unevenly, that's okay.
I make a sauce from a good dollop of red jam (say half a cup), enough water to bring it up to a cup, and a tablespoonful of cornstarch, cooked together until thick and clear. You might want to double that if you like lots of sauce (I did). (Note: jam thins as it heats, so you might want to try a bit less water than the math would say; I think my water level came up to about a cup and a half rather than two cups.) Raspberry and strawberry jam both work fine. This time around I used about half a jar of E.D. Smith Triple Fruits Raspberry. You could probably just use straight preserves too, if they're thin; but I think that would be too sweet.
When the cake is baked and fairly cool, spread it with the fruit sauce. Sprinkle it with something to resemble grated cheese; some people might like coconut, but we prefer a square of grated white chocolate. You can sprinkle it on after the fresh fruit (see below), but we think it looks better sprinkled on first.
And then decorate, randomly or in lovely patterns, with your choice of fruit toppings. Since our grocery store featured blackberries this week (an unusual treat, even in the summer), we got a small box of them and put them on the cake along with sliced bananas and canned pineapple chunks. But you could also use kiwi fruit, strawberries, small orange sections, or whatever else is available. (Note if you're using bananas or anything else that might turn brown: serve as soon as possible after decorating. We made the cake in the afternoon and refrigerated it until dinner, and the banana slices were already starting to discolour just a bit.)
If you're feeling creative and have a pizza box, you can serve it from the box as Family Fun shows; but otherwise it's just fine from the foil pan. Actually I baked it in three foil pizza pans stacked together, for stability; and when I served it I had the foil pan sitting on top of a glass cake plate. I put our pizza cutter out for fun, but a cake lifter will do just as well.
Now Ponytails and Crayons both want pizza cake for their birthdays.
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