What to do with that (some kitchen tips)

Bits and pieces...

1. If you have a few less-than-tasty apples, not rotten but lacking texture, it's easy to turn them into applesauce. Peel them, cut them up (no cores), and cook them in a slow cooker or on a low burner.  Cook till they're fairly soft, then mash them with the back of a spoon. The process by which mealy apples can be reconstituted into decent applesauce would make a great homeschool science lesson. (It's all about cells.)

2. If you have a cup of orange marmalade, you can mix it with soy sauce, ginger, and garlic to make a good cooking sauce for four pork chops. If you have half a cup, you can do two pork chops. We found the recipe in a freezer-cooking download from $5 Dinners, and it is the best orange sauce we've tried--way better than recipes using frozen orange juice. There are variations of the recipe all over the Internet, but it's basically a smaller version of this recipe on the Smucker's website (but with soy sauce instead of teriyaki sauce).

3. If you have a few small, slightly stale dinner rolls, you can slice them into thirds or quarters, spresd them with garlic butter, and toast them to go along with spaghetti or stew.

Ketchup is not Chinese (Do-Vember #3)

Do-Vember

I don't pin a lot of recipes, because I honestly wouldn't remember to go look for them if I did. In the realm of food, I post more links to general things like "Ten Healthy Freezer Meals." But one of the first recipes I ever pinned, probably a year ago, that I never ever have printed out or made, is Crockpot Sesame Chicken. I was sucked in by that delicious-looking photo, and it has stayed on my Supper board ever since.

When I looked at the actual list of ingredients today (thinking that it was time to fish chicken or cut bait, I realized that the sauce is almost identical to the magic ketchup-based Honey Garlic sauce for chicken and pork that we've been making for several years. The recipe is the one from A Year of Slow Cooking, except that I cut the soy sauce in half and it still tastes good. It works in the slow cooker, in the oven, and on the stovetop. We've even put it in small bags of pork or chicken for freezer meals. It is the tastes-most-like-Chinese-restaurant thing I know how to make, and I realize how bizarre that sounds (ketchup? basil?), but you have to try it to believe it.

So I guess it's time to unpin the Sesame Chicken photo; and next time I make Honey Garlic Chicken, I might try sprinkling some sesame seeds on top as well.

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? Unstuffed cabbage

Here is a non-recipe for unstuffed cabbage.

Start with: one pound ground pork; half a can tomatoes, frozen; 2 cups rice and lentils, frozen.

Add in: half a bag leftover shredded cabbage.

Brown the pork and stir in the rice and lentils.

Layer in a casserole with tomatoes and cabbage. I used too much cabbage so it ended up a little soupy but still tasty. Add salt and extra seasonings if needed.

Sprinkle with paprika. I also added a cupful of tomato sauce on top (not in photo). Bake at 350 degrees until heated through and cabbage is cooked.

Casserole out of the oven.

Eat with rye bread.

What's for supper? Pork balls, fruity bars

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pork meatballs with barbecue sauce
Sweet potatoes
Green beans

No-bake dessert bars made with raisins, bran flakes, white chocolate chips, apple juice, and a bit of coconut, with oatmeal in the bottom of the pan and sprinkled on top

What we had for supper: finish off those packages

Last night's dinner menu:

Ukrainian-style pork dumplings, which look like big tortellini. We got them frozen from the Eurofoods store.

Macaroni and cheese, made with very small farfalle (bowties) that we needed to use up.  I used The Boy's Smack 'n' Cheese recipe that I learned years ago from Coffeemamma, and let it sit to thicken towards the end rather than overcooking the small pasta.

A skillet vegetable mixture of (reheated) butternut squash, red pepper, and corn, heated with honey and water (that is, the end of a honey bottle swished out with water), salt, pepper, margarine, and nutmeg. I thought it would go well with the pork dumplings.

What's planned for supper: Orange Ginger Pork Meatballs (the easy way)

Tonight's dinner menu, on guitar and choir night:

Orange Ginger Pork Meatballs, the easy way.  That is, make meatballs, and heat them in what's left of the VH Orange Ginger sauce.

Rice, and frozen Oriental--style vegetables (I think we still have some, I'll have to look)

Apples, apricots, and maybe some cookies.

What's for supper? (leftover pork)

Tonight's dinner menu:

Ratouille.  One big pan made with diced leftover pork chops, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, red pepper, a little tomato sauce, and canned white beans.  One small pan made with cherry tomatoes, zucchini, red pepper, a little tomato sauce, and canned white beans.  And Italian seasonings.  Cheese, optional.

Gemelli pasta, one of my current favourites.

Fruit, yogurt, and last night's Brannies.

Dinner, in progress

Perogies, Broccoli

Garden tomatoes (the Romas seem to have gotten over their blossom end rot)

Sticky Chops, from A Year of Slow Cooking

Brannies, in the toaster oven (I used chocolate chips and cut back on the sugar)

Oranges. sliced up

What's for supper? Honey garlic pork and peppers

Tonight's dinner menu:

Honey garlic pork and peppers (ground pork, sliced peppers, and A Year of Slow Cooking's honey-garlic sauce--this is really, really easy to make)
Frozen mixed vegetables, frozen spring rolls, rice

Thawed frozen blueberries and vanilla ice cream.

What's for supper? Pork and rice

Tonight's dinner menu:

One-dish bake made of:: brown rice, two Polish sausages, a couple of cut-up slices of cooked pork from the weekend, one piece of leftover chicken, and half a bag of baby-cut carrots.  Plus water for the rice.  Cover and bake as long as it takes for the rice and sausage to be done.

Miscellaneous bread and crackers.  Cottage cheese.

Butterscotch dumplings with blueberries added to the sauce.

What's for supper? Something we do with tortillas

Tonight's menu:

Skillet dinner made with ground pork (browned first with onion), cut up tortillas (doesn't matter if they're a bit dry), salsa, cheese, chili powder, cumin, and a bit of milk.  Layer in skillet and cook until tortillas are soft and everything is hot.  Cut in wedges to serve.

Corn.  Green pepper strips.

Blueberry-cranberry crisp and vanilla yogurt.

What's for supper? Chinese meatballs

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pork meatballs with homemade honey-garlic sauce
Reheated rice mixed with a few frozen vegetables
Celery sticks, cut-up green pepper, baby carrot sticks

Choice of melon balls, oranges, pears
Pieces of a Euro chocolate bar.

Frugalities (doll sleeping bag) and what was for supper

1.  Supper menu: leftover-pork enchiladas, rice, spinach, carrot sticks.  Mixed fruit bowl: frozen blueberries, one sliced frozen banana, two sliced fresh bananas, one and a half chopped apples.  (One half had a mushy bruise, the other side was fine.)

2.  Reuse, recycle: one doll sleeping bag, made from a bandanna and a thrifted, much too small pink terry cloth skirt.  The whole thing took exactly half an hour from thought to finish.  I was just cleaning up the fabric and stuff from recent sewing projects, when I noticed that the skirt and the pink-and-turquoise bandanna looked pretty good beside each other.  I cut the skirt in half, cut off the waistband, and sewed the two halves back together to make one large flat piece (that would fit the bandanna); sewed it right-sides-together to the bandanna, leaving a gap; and turned it right side out, so all the seams were hidden inside.  Then I folded it in half, lining-side-out, and sewed across the bottom and most of the way up the side, to make the sleeping bag.  That's all-- turned it right side out again, inserted a doll (it happened to be Crissy), and gave it to Dollygirl.

Size Note:  if you're making a sleeping bag with a bandanna-sized piece of fabric (or a fat quarter, which would be about the same size), it should be big enough for an 18-inch doll, if you keep the seam allowances small, and leave enough of a slit near the top to get the doll in and out.  This one fits Crissy very well, but she's slimmer and just a notch shorter than the AG and Springfield dolls.

What's for supper? "P" words.

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pork (with sauerkraut)
Perogies
Peas (frozen)

Pudding (chocolate, homemade).

What's for supper? Cranberry pork chops

Last night's dinner menu (after our afternoon out):

Cranberry pork chops in the slow cooker, made with a package of boneless pork chops, a can of cranberry sauce, 3/4 cup of chili sauce, a tablespoonful of brown sugar, and half a tablespoonful of lemon juice.  The sauce breaks down a lot more in the slow cooker than it does on the stovetop, so I had to thicken it with cornstarch at the end.  Ponytails was at a friend's, but Grandpa Squirrel came over and helped us polish them off.

Sauerkraut-filled perogies from the Euro foods store.  Sauerkraut might sound like the worst thing ever with the cranberry-chili sauce, but it actually worked.

Frozen peas.

Oranges, bananas, and Christmas cookies.

What's for supper? Honey-garlic chicken

Tonight's dinner menu:

Honey Garlic Chicken, but in a skillet, not in the slow cooker; I've tried it both ways, and I much prefer the last-minute version. I cut the soy sauce in half (and used low-sodium soy sauce), used chicken breasts instead of thighs (because that's what I had), and also added cornstarch to thicken the sauce. The sauce ingredients may sound kind of non-traditional, but they work.  UPDATE: we also really like this sauce with pork--it's a good way to use up leftovers.

Hot pasta (fusilli)
Mixture of frozen green beans and frozen Asian vegetables (end of the bag)
Crackers, applesauce, sliced cucumber

What's for supper? Autumn veggies and leftover pork

What's on hand tonight?  Half a package of whole wheat tortillas, leftover boneless pork chops, a bag of grated cheese, tomato sauce, chicken broth, red and green peppers, butternut squash, rice.  I could have chopped the meat and peppers and made fried rice, but I went with Pork and Pepper Tortilla Stack instead.   I used this very easy enchilada sauce recipe from A Year of Slow Cooking (except I used a can of no-salt sauce instead of crushed tomatoes, since that's what I had).

The menu:

Pork and Pepper Tortilla Stack
Butternut Squash (baked in the toaster oven)
Rice

Grapes
Chocolate lunchbox cakes (bought on sale)

Hollering down from the treehouse...and what's for supper?

We have been busy up here--just haven't been blogging about it.  All the extra-curricular stuff has been winding up (with year-end recitals, festivals and such), plus we've been dealing with some on-again-off-again viruses (the germ kind, not the computer kind) that have thrown a wrench into schoolwork.

And today Mama Squirrel volunteered to be a styling head, to help The Apprentice finish up the few things she has left to do before she becomes a  licensed stylist.  That was fun.

So Mr. Crockpot is handling the bulk of the dinner preparations.  Mama Squirrel adapted a cookbook recipe and came up with this:

Beef and Pork Chili Mac

1 pound ground beef, browned in a skillet with a chopped onion and two cloves garlic
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes, drained
1 cup no-salt tomato sauce
1 tbsp. chili powder (the recipe called for two tbsp., but some of us here are wussy about hot stuff)
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 can baked beans, since we didn't have any cooked or canned plain kidney beans or chickpeas
1 cupful cut-up cooked pork from last Sunday's dinner
Hot cooked pasta
Cheese, optional

Combine hot ground beef plus onions and garlic with the other ingredients (not the pasta and cheese) in a slow cooker (we used a 3 1/2 quart size).  Cook on low for the afternoon while you sit reading recipes under the hair dryer.  Serve with hot cooked macaroni or other pasta.  Top with cheese if desired.

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