Use Em Up Cookie Balls

I do love my food processor.

Chocolate Fig Post-Christmas Balls

Ingredients:

A few ugly figs (see Christmas Dinner), hard stems trimmed off
About a cupful of chocolate chips
One container of the edges and crumbles of Christmas no-bake squares, containing a variety of coconut, chocolate, nuts, and cookie crumbs; saved in the freezer for just such as this
Orange juice to moisten slightly

Run everything through the food processor until it forms a thick, slightly sticky mass. Form into balls and roll them in coconut or whatever you want--I used rolled oats run through the food processor (good way to clean out the sticky stuff).  Don't bake, just eat.

Fast and frugal: Black Bean Dip

Something I thought of and made all within about five minutes: combine approximately equal parts of black beans (cooked or canned, drained and rinsed) and salsa.  Run through a Ninja or whatever mashing device you use.  I heated the beans first in the microwave so they'd blend better and so the dip would be warm. Serve with chips or carrot sticks.  The leftovers are going in a pot of chili tonight.

What's for supper? No-bake taco pizzas.

It's too hot to cook much, so we made no-bake taco pizzas for dinner.  I adapted a recipe that I found in the Fix It and Enjoy It Cookbook, but it looked to me like one of those recipes that's been handed around everywhere, at baby showers and kitchenware parties.  The original recipe has a crust made from refrigerated crescent roll dough, baked in a large pan and then cooled before adding toppings and cutting in squares.  Also you're supposed to use typical Tex-Mex garnishes:  shredded lettuce, onions, tomatoes, olives. We just used mixed chopped peppers and cheese.

Instead of making the crust, I layered the toppings on pita bread, in this order:  a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream (mixed in the food processor); ground beef, browned and mixed with homemade taco seasoning; red, green and yellow peppers, chopped together in the food processor; and cheddar and mozzarella cheese, chopped together in the food processor.  (I like my food processor.)  Serve immediately or refrigerate.  A pound of meat covers six big pitas, and that served four of us with leftovers.  If you think you might have made too much and don't want leftover sandwiches, you could just put everything on the table and let everyone fix their own.

Our side dish was canned black beans, heated with a scoop of salsa.

Apprentice, if you're reading this, you should try it.  It would work with tortillas too.

No-sugar apricot treats: gluten-free, dairy-free

I found this recipe in a Company's Coming Kids' Lunch cookbook, but the identical recipe was posted on a vegan forum six years ago. So I'm not sure who borrowed it from whom. In any case, these are easy and very good. I did think they were a bit strong on the orange peel--next time I would use just a spoonful rather than the whole thing. Cut into small slices, they would look nice on a holiday cookie plate.

Apricot Logs/Balls/Slices

1.5 cups dried apricots (about 40--or a 300 g bag)
1 Tbsp water
juice of 1 medium orange
Grated peel of 1 medium orange (or less, see above)
1/2 cup flaked coconut
Flaked coconut, for coating

Measure apricots and water into casserole dish or large measuring cup. Cover and microwave on high for 2 minutes until moist and plump. (Lacking a microwave, you could pour a bit of boiling water over them and cover, or steam them briefly.) Put the apricot mixture and orange juice into a blender or food processor. Blend, stopping the blender and stirring often, until the apricots are very finally chopped. Pour mixture into a medium bowl.

Mix in the orange peel and first amount of coconut. Divide the mixture in half. Roll into two 6-inch (15 cm) logs.

Place the second amount of coconut on waxed paper. Roll the logs in coconut until well coated. Cover each log with plastic wrap. Chill about 3 hours. Cut into 1 inch (2.5 cm) pieces.

Variation: shape the mixture into 1 inch balls. Roll in the coconut and chill.

Sweet Potato Something Dip

Yesterday I was intrigued to read about a new healthy-ingredients cookbook written for University of Guelph students.  Students who are short on food can get assistance through an on-campus food bank, but they tend to take the familiar stuff first and leave the lentils behind.

Yeah, big surprise.

Anyway, the article I read didn't provide any recipes, but it did mention Sweet Potato Hummus.  An online search for a recipe brought up quite a few variations, most of them pretty "hummusy," and that was fine except that I didn't have the extra ingredients called for like tahini.  I decided to try an online recipe for Super Sweet Potato Hummus, which takes it in a whole different direction.  I don't know if I'd call it hummus so much as just an autumn-flavoured dip or spread. Think pumpkin pie with a bit of bean. It's pretty quick: you just cut up the sweet potato, cook it, and then run it through the food processor with drained chick peas, sweeteners and spices.  I did add some lemon juice at the end--it seemed to need a bit of a boost.

I froze half and took the other half to a church meeting, where it got a thumbs-up from those who tried it.  I didn't have a lot to offer for dipping--corn chips didn't seem to be just right, and neither were vegetables.  I settled on whole-wheat tea biscuits (mini ones) and sliced apples.  (Bagel chips would have been awesome.)

And look at all those food groups!  Even public-school lunchbag critics should like this one.

Leftover cereal...leftover cereal boxes

Yes, we buy cold cereal. It may not be frugal but it's part of our life. We do try to stick to the healthier/cheaper varieties, and there are certain sugar limits beyond which Mama Squirrel will not budge.

What do you do with the end-of-the-box crumbles and bits? I save them in a plastic container and use them for baking...usually pulverized in the food processor. Works very well in dried-fruit balls and chocolate-raisin balls, but you can also use them in muffins or oatmeal cookies. I figure we paid for that shredded and puffed stuff, so we may as well use every bit of it up.

What do you do with the boxes? You can use the cardboard for gluing patterns to. You can cut them down a bit to make magazine holders. But if you really want to see how good cereal boxes can look, check out this link at Frugal Family Fun. Wow!

What's for dinner?

Earl's Soup (Potage Paysanne)--lots of chopping but worth the effort...and probably the only time all year that I buy leeks

Frozen pizza in the toaster oven (could have been garlic breadsticks, or Peasant Bread, or rolls, or just toast, but we got the pizza on sale and it seemed like it would bulk up a meal of what is basically vegetable soup)

Banana-peach freeze (frozen bananas and a bit of peach jam run through the food processor, with plain yogurt added if needed to make it run better) (could have been fresh bananas, but we don't have any)

No-bake fruit and chocolate balls, latest incarnation

I've posted about this "recipe" before, but it changes every time I make it. It can be made gluten-free, dairy-free or whatever depending on the chips, cereal etc. that you use.

Latest version, with amounts very indefinite: most of a 12-oz. bag of chocolate chips; half a bag of unsweetened coconut; 1 package (about 12-15) dried figs, with their hard little stems chopped off; small amount of orange juice; and a couple of cupfuls of rice krispie-type cereal, divided. Also something to roll the balls in, either coconut or something else like ground oatmeal or graham crumbs. Run all ingredients except for about half of the cereal through the food processor, until it is a fairly solid, slightly sticky mass of pulverized stuff. Add a little more orange juice if you have to, but not too much. It's okay if there are still some small bits of chocolate etc. that don't get mashed before the mixture won't move around the bowl any more.

Transfer to a larger bowl and mix in the remaining krispie-type cereal, enough to give it some texture but not so much that it won't hold together in balls. Roll in small balls and roll the balls in coconut or other coating...or leave plain if you prefer.

I don't always have rice-krispie-type cereal around and you can make very good balls without it, but adding it seems to lighten up the dense fruit-chocolate mixture a bit, and it also adds a bit of crunch.

A ketchup kind of meal (What's for dinner?)

Dinner's from the freezer--we're low on fresh things.

Frozen cabbage rolls (a small package--they were on sale at Giant Tiger)
Frozen mini-sausages
Baked potatoes (last of the bag--they were getting soft)
Carrot sticks, sour cream, applesauce etc.
Fruity Oatmeal Muffins and Mango Freeze (recipes below)

Fruity Oatmeal Muffins, because the oven was already on at the right temperature:

2 scant cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup milk, swished with the bottom bits of two jars of peach and strawberry jam

Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients. Correct flour if needed (I added a bit more.) Combine gently, scoop into muffin pan and bake 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Mango Freeze:

Part of a bag of frozen mango cubes (frozen fruit was on sale a couple of weeks ago)
3 small fruit yogurts

Run through the food processor until smooth and fluffed up. If you do this ahead of time, scoop into small dishes or one larger bowl and put back into the freezer until you want them.

No-bake Chocolate Fruit Balls

I've always been of the opinion that a cookie on the counter is worth two bags of chocolate chips in the cupboard--if you know what I mean. And I had half a bag of chips and half a block of dates just sitting around.

But it's too hot to bake today, so this is what I made instead; it's a close relative of Christmas "sugar-plums" or the dried-fruit balls I described at the end of this post. It's very adaptable to whatever you have, and shows the real magic of the food processor. (What I mean by that is that sometimes you need to be patient--run the ingredients through twice, or a bit longer than you'd think--and you magically have something that looks a lot better than it started out to be. It doesn't hold true for everything--if you over-process whipping cream, you'll get butter. But it's something to keep in mind.)

Chocolate Fruit Balls

In the food processor, I combined approximately equal amounts of chocolate chips, dates (the pressed-together-in-a-block kind, broken apart), and granola, plus a drizzle of orange juice. If you're doing this, you might want to put on your industrial earplugs, because the sound of chocolate chips grinding is not a nice one. I ran the machine for a couple of minutes until I had a bowlful of crumbly stuff.

But wait, because it's not done.

Crumbly was okay but not really what I had in mind--I didn't want balls that would fall apart.

So I dumped the bowlful back in, added another drizzle of orange juice and a little honey--not for the sweetness but because I really wanted to make sure it would stick together. I don't know if it made any difference, though.

And then I ran it for another couple of minutes--it wasn't so deafening this time--till all of a sudden I had a big pasty mass of stuff that was having trouble moving around the bowl. That's it, turn it off!

And from that point it was very easy to break off pieces and roll them into balls.

You could call them Chocolate-Date Balls if nobody in your house has date antipathies. Otherwise it might be better to say they're Chocolate Granola Balls or Chocolate Fruit Balls.